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September 03rd, 2014

9/3/2014

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MARYLAND LEADS IN COMMISSIONS, BOARDS, AND COMMITTEES THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PUBLIC INTEREST OR OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY----THEY ARE THERE TO MAKE SURE THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN!

I want to spend a few days looking at individual government commissions at each level of government to show how dysfunctional they are.    Policy goes there to die or it is called one thing while doing another.
  You see just that in the article below about Massachusetts and its commissions.....I give an example of the same in Maryland.

The surge in states creating commissions and quasi-status for NGOs was a step towards moving the business of legislating away from state and local legislators and handing major public policy decisions to whatever appointee a Governor or Mayor made. Fast forward to neo-liberals and neo-cons controlling our major parties and you have global corporate pols appointing corporate people working in corporate/shareholder interest and against public interest. WE DO NOT WANT COMMISSIONS ETC CIRCUMVENTING OUR LEGISLATURES. This same process has Congress with appointed committees that write entire policy ------ten pols writing critical public policy and then taking it to the floor of Congress to 'tweak'. NONE OF THIS IS REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY.

A DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN WOULD NOT SUPPORT THESE CENTRALIZED POLICY-MAKING ENTITIES. GET RID OF THE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.

Meanwhile the committees that were once filled with the general public in local communities/boards are languishing.  In their place----private corporate non-profits headed by directors appointed by corporations funding an issue.  As the article below states, and this is true in Maryland-----no oversight or accountability or even attention to staffing is happening with public committees and community groups.

In Maryland, the commissions that are active and filled with appointees by Governor or Mayor have most of their meetings behind closed doors calling issues proprietary and minutes reflect that lack of transparency.  This is why Maryland citizens never know what is happening in policy until it comes to vote......too late to organize and protest.


Imagine if all of those boards and committees met in our local schools in the evenings to discuss the issue assigned to these committees.......that is what we used to do.  This is the democratic discussion of issues that has been allowed to wither as boards meet during a workday in places not convenient to the general public. 

WE NEED EVERYONE DEMANDING PUBLIC COMMITTEES AND BOARDS AND GETTING OUT TO PARTICIPATE.  YOU ARE THE ONE WHO LEGISLATES.


State study confirms unfilled job boards


By Todd Wallack  | Globe Staff   July 30, 2014

Massachusetts is failing to properly staff and track hundreds of state boards, committees, and commissions, a Senate panel concluded in a report released Wednesday, resulting in what some call “zombie boards” that never meet.

The Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight discovered dozens of state panels that have not met or produced reports in years, alongside new committees that have not been able to start because of empty seats, while still other panels appear to be redundant. The review found that 48 boards are probably no longer needed either because they have completed their work or outlived their missions, such as one that issued its final report on the future of Boston Harbor beaches in the 1990s.

“I was surprised that we hadn’t taken action earlier,” said Senator Cynthia S. Creem, the Newton Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight, who added that many people count on state boards to champion issues they care about. “I think it’s been neglected.”

The Senate researchers’ work was complicated, however, by the fact that the governor’s website for boards and commissions omitted some panels where the governor does not make appointments. And information for the roughly 700 boards that were listed was “often absent, incomplete, out-of-date and/or incorrect.”

“The Commonwealth’s current system for appointing commission members and monitoring commissions’ activities is inadequate,” the report found.

The Senate launched the review last spring after the Globe reported that more than one-third of the seats on state boards and commissions were either vacant or filled with holdovers whose terms had officially expired months or years ago — a figure that took many state officials by surprise. The Globe also found that some boards had not met in decades (including at least one with a member who was dead), while others struggled to gather a quorum because of the vacancies.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that Massachusetts appears to have far more boards than other states its size, according to a Globe survey of a dozen other states,making it difficult to keep track of them and fill all the vacant positions.

Senator Robert L. Hedlund, a Weymouth Republican on the post audit committee, said he believes lawmakers and the executive branch have become too eager to set up commissions and too reluctant to eliminate them when they are no longer useful.

“It seems as though government in general expands and it never really contracts,” said Hedlund, the assistant minority leader. “I would like us to be a little more serious when we form a commission and be judicious, so that when we do form a commission it is taken seriously.”

Officials in the governor’s office, which controls the majority of board appointments,
said they are already working on ways to eliminate unneeded boards.

“We have made tremendous progress in deactivating boards and commissions that are no longer current, where it is within our power to do so,” said Heather Nichols, a spokeswoman in the governor’s office. “Where it is not, we are happy to work with the Legislature to sunset those boards and commissions that have already served out their purpose.”

Patrick administration staffers said they do the best they can to fill vacant positions, but noted that it can be challenging because the vast majority of positions are unpaid and require significant hours to attend meetings, often during the day. Many vacant seats are also controlled by state lawmakers and other officials outside the adminstration’s control.

The Senate review made a number of recommendations to address the problems, some of which would require legislation:

■ Requiring the governor’s office and departments to review whether commissions are riddled with vacancies, struggled to gather a quorum, have not met in a year, or are no longer needed;

■ Creating a sunset review commission to determine whether boards or commissions should be dissolved because they are redundant or defunct;

■ Streamlining the background check for new board members;

■  Giving the governor more flexibility to fill seats when he cannot find someone meeting all the requirements specified in state law;

■ Reappointing holdover members to new terms if new members cannot be found;

■ Making greater efforts to update the state’s boards and commissions website, as well as to add details on panels that are currently missing;

■ Posting meeting agendas, minutes, and reports for all commissions online;

■ Changing the law to automatically eliminate special commissions after they have issued their final reports.

But Hedlund, the Republican committee member, worried that the government has become so lax about following up on commissions that it probably will not follow through on the Senate panel’s recommendations either.

“It will be treated in the same way,” Hedlund predicted. “Tomororrow, it will be yesterday’s news.”


__________________________________________
This is one example of a commission on fracking created by O'Malley and neo-liberals under the guise of protecting Maryland from fracking abuses.  Neo-liberals support fracking and O'Malley led the Governor's Commission on exporting natural gas----an action that places fracking on steroids.  So, we have pols painted as being 'green' because they formed a commission that did absolutely nothing and never had any intent to protect Maryland Marcellus Shale from fracking.

The millions of dollars sent to this 'study' more than likely went to subsidize natural gas exploration in Maryland to find the best land to frack and then allowing the same connected people to buy that land.



For Immediate Release Thursday, April 3, 2014 - 4:05pmFood & Water WatchContact: Jorge Aguilar – 202-683-2529; JAguilar@fwwatch.org
Rich Bindell – 202-683-2457; RBindell@fwwatch.org

Fracking Health Study Narrow, Hasty, and Underfunded Say Health Experts

Call On Gov. O’Malley and Maryland Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission To Extend Deadline On Health Study

WASHINGTON - Today, a commissioner from Governor Martin O’Malley’s Marcellus Shale Commission joined three leading medical advocacy groups at a press conference in Baltimore in critiquing the timeline and scope of a study on the possible health impacts of shale gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” that is scheduled for release in June.

Representatives from the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (ANHE), Maryland Environment Health Network (MdEHN), Concerned Health Professionals of New York  (CHPNY), Food and Water Watch and Ann Bristow warned that the study is poised to fall woefully short of meeting international standards and health study guidelines for protecting public health.

They called on Governor O’Malley to commit more resources and to extend the health study deadline in order to fully assess the potential health effects to all Marylanders. They also noted that the study is limited to investigating possible impacts on public health only among residents of Western Maryland, even though exploitable shale gas reserves are located across the state.

“We are watching the emerging science from other states show increasing harms from fracking. We’re hearing about poisoned drinking water and radioactive waste, as well as smog in places that used to have pristine air.  So it is clear that an eight month study period, funded at $150,000 does not suffice to assess even the top tier of costly health impacts that fracking will likely have in Western Maryland, let alone the rest of the state,” said Rebecca Ruggles, Director of the Maryland Environmental Health Network said.

 “As it currently stands, the State of Maryland is conducting a flawed, rushed, and superficial study that will not help inform Maryland residents—nor their elected officials—about the full burden of possible health risks from the entire process of shale gas extraction,” said Katie Huffling, a registered nurse and the director of programs for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. “As nurses, we are also gravely concerned that they will not be including a health cost assessment in their study. If the public is being asked to assume health risks from fracking, it deserves a comprehensive investigation of those risks and their economic costs, not a fig leaf."

Health professionals across the country have argued that a Health Impact Assessment (HIA)—a specific National Research Council-sanctioned process developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization (among others)—must be conducted to inform any decision as critical as whether or not fracking should be permitted in states.

“Drilling and fracking operations are inherently dangerous and pose demonstrable risks to health, especially for children, pregnant women and other vulnerable people living nearby,” said Sandra Steingraber, PhD and cofounder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York. “The proper tool for investigating these impacts is a comprehensive Health Impact Assessment with its vetted protocols and seal of approval by national and international public health institutions. A comprehensive HIA with full public participation, not a rushed study with a political deadline, is what the people of Maryland need and deserve. “

The Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission is currently scheduled to make a final recommendation on fracking in August to Governor Martin O’Malley that will include the health assessment report. 

Ann Bristow, a current commissioner on the Advisory Commission, also joined the medical advocates in calling for more time.

“As a member of Governor O’Malley’s Safe Drilling Initiative Commission, I am very worried that we are moving too fast and not getting all the health data we need to make protective recommendations to the residents of Maryland," said Bristow. “Several commissioners have repeatedly asked for more time and a more thorough scope of work on these critical health issues. If the health study team were on schedule, we would have received the baseline health assessment, with public commentary, last month. We need more time and a guarantee of transparency and public participation."


Food & Water Watch Southern Region Director Jorge Aguilar added that the O’Malley administration should pay attention to the demands of the health community.

“After two years of a largely unfunded process, Governor O’Malley’s administration now seems to be rushing through the final year, when specific studies just got started,” said Food & Water Watch Regional Organizing Director Jorge Aguilar. “The health study team has already missed its first deadline and it’s not clear that the health community will have time to comment on the final report.  The writing is on the wall: this will be an inadequate study unless the time line is drastically modified to address the concerns of the health community.”

###Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.


____________________________________________

You will note that it was an out-of-state organization that outed this commission for failing to do its duties on the mission tasked----not any Maryland organization.  Note as well Heather Mizeur is on this commission and ran as protecting Marylanders from fracking. 

YOU WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ON THIS COMMISSION IF YOU WANTED TO DO THAT.

Now, as this out-of-state organization says----this commission ----NARROW, HASTY, AND UNDERFUNDED----never meaning to find anything.  What this commission should be is a long-term, citizen-filled exploratory group committed to research and planning for the public interest.  This is why public committees and boards
tasked with doing just that are languishing without support.

WE MUST ENGAGE IN POLITICS----BE THE CITIZENS FILLING THESE BOARDS, COMMITTEES, AND COMMISSIONS IF WE ARE GOING TO REMAIN CITIZENS.


MARCELLUS SHALE SAFE-DRILLING INITIATIVE ADVISORY COMMISSION


David A. Vanko, Ph.D., Chair (appointed by Secretary of the Environment & Secretary of Natural Resources)

Appointed by Secretary of the Environment & Secretary of Natural Resources:
Shawn Bender; Ann R. Bristow, Ph.D.; Stephen M. Bunker; George C. Edwards; Margaret J. (Peggy) Jamison; Jeffrey F. Kupfer, Esq.; Clifford S. Mitchell, M.D.; Heather R. Mizeur; Dominick E. Murray; James M. Raley; Paul Roberts; William R. Valentine; Nicholas Weber, Ph.D.; Harry Weiss, Esq. Montgomery Park Business Center, 1800 Washington Blvd., Baltimore, Maryland, February 2004. Photo by Diane F. Evartt.


Staff: Brigid E. Kenney c/o Department of the Environment
Montgomery Park Business Center, 1800 Washington Blvd., Baltimore, MD 21230
(410) 537-3085
e-mail: bkenney@mde.state.md.us
web: www.mde.state.md.us/programs/land/mining/marcellus/pages/index.aspx

  • Maryland Marcellus Shale Public Health Study, July 2014
  • Interim Report, July 2014
  • Initial Report, December 2011
Final Report (with Dept. of the Environment & Dept. of Natural Resources) due Aug. 1, 2014.

In June 2011, the Governor created the Marcellus Shale Safe-Drilling Initiative Advisory Commission (Executive Order 01.01.2011.11). With the Department of the Environment and the Department of Natural Resources, the Commission is studying the short-term, long-term and cumulative effects of producing natural gas from the Marcellus shale formation. This formation underlies portions of Western Maryland: Allegany and Garrett counties being the only parts of the State with natural gas reserves in Marcellus Shale. Drilling for natural gas from the Marcellus shale involves a process called hydraulic fracturing. This requires very deep wells with long horizontal sections through which pressurized water, sand, and chemicals are blasted to crack rock and release the natural gas.

Authorization for the Commission extends through May 1, 2015.

_______________________________________
Keep in mind who supports O'Malley and neo-liberals every election in Maryland-----labor and justice leaders.  Anthony Brown will be worse than O'Malley if that is possible.  Of course all of these corporate policies are Republican so you do not vote Republican to get environmental policy.

Let's look at who these people are that O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly placed in charge of Departments that protect our land and water.


Keep in mind, this happens all the time and all Maryland pols know this is what Maryland Assembly and neo-liberals and neo-cons do with all these commissions.


Department of the Environment

21 August 2014

doe    DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT

Governor Martin J. O'Malley

Water Management      Jay G. Sakai
Robert M. Summers            Secretary

Guess what!  Sakai is from Baltimore with Baltimore's Public Works and a Hopkins graduate.  Hopkins is VEOLA Environment----privatizing public water works and Hopkins is a great big shareholder in natural gas and exporting raw energy.
  That is someone you would put in an agency to make sure commissions like this Marcellus Shale protects the fracking interests.

DO YOU HEAR MARYLAND ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS SHOUTING THIS COLLUSION WITH CORPORATIONS THAT KILL THE ENVIRONMENT?  I DON'T.



Previously, Mr. Sakai also directed the technical support functions for the City of Baltimore’s Department of Public Works, an agency with more than 3,400 employees, where he administered application development contracts and large-scale information technology implementations.

He serves on the board of the Maryland Association of Municipal Wastewater Agencies. Mr. Sakai is also a member of the American Water Works Association and the American Public Works Association.

Mr. Sakai succeeds Robert M. Summers, Ph.D., who is now MDE’s Deputy Secretary. A licensed professional engineer, Mr. Sakai holds a Master of Science in Business and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.


WOW------another Johns Hopkins grad in Natural Resources---water agency.  Don't forget, Hopkins is behind the collapse of our Baltimore water system as all of state and city revenue that should have gone to upgrading infrastructure went to building Hopkins global corporation...... and it's bid to take Baltimore Harbor global will kill the Chesapeake Bay with invasive species and pollution.  The Baltimore Harbor recently received an 'F' in pollution, and it was this Department of Natural Resources with the Department of Environment that approved the construction at Harbor Point on toxic waste dump.
  So, it takes lots of failed policy to remain at 'F' in environment for decades.

SEE WHY THIS MARCELLUS SHALE COMMISSION IS KNOWN FOR BEING NARROW, HASTY, AND UNDERFUNDED.





Dr. Summers received his B.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1982) in Environmental Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining Maryland’s environmental programs, he worked as a post-doctoral research associate at the State University of New York, Marine Sciences Research Center in Stony Brook, NY and as a research assistant at the Johns Hopkins University’s Chesapeake Bay Institute.




DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES


Governor Martin J. O'Malley

Joseph P. Gill    Secretary


Land Resources    Kristin Saunders Evans



Mr Gill is a Georgetown grad in law with a history of leading a quasi-public land trust.
  Now, if you live in Maryland you know that public land is disappearing faster than ever usually under the guise of public private partnerships.  You place M and T Bank Stadium on public land and it is no longer public land.  You give the Port of Baltimore to a private investment firm and you no longer have public land/water.  You hand public land to expand natural gas export terminal and you lose public land.  You place a private residential high-rise on public housing land and you no longer have public land.  You privatize public schools to private charters and you no longer have public land.  You hand all waterfront property in Baltimore and National Harbor et al to private developers and you no longer have public land.  You give public parks/mansions -----public universities over to private non-profits and you no longer have public land.  You privatize public water and waste----you give private rights to natural gas, BGE, and CSX lines and the public loses large swaths of land.  All this is happening today in Maryland.  Baltimore is seeing all of its public land handed to private developers.

What is Maryland Environmental Land Trust?  Well, the development in Maryland is anything but environmental.



Maryland Environmental Trust


Company Description:

 The Maryland Environmental Trust (MET) is quasi-public statewide land trust established in 1967. Staffed with funds from the Department of Natural Resources, it is directed by an independent Board of Trustees. This unusual structure has resulted in the protection of over 100,000 acres of privately-owned forest, farm, and open space land across the State of Maryland with permanent, donated easements.



Below you see Ed Rendell of PA.....a state totally destroyed by fracking and a pol handing complete control of public land to fracking corporations.....teamed with Anthony Brown---do you hear Maryland Environmental Trust going crazy over all this?  Not a word.  They are represented on this Marcellus Shale commission by Mr Gill's appointee.

Maryland’s New Public-Private Partnerships



Date: Thursday, May 9, 2013 « Back to Events Start:May 9, 2013 8:30 amEnd:May 9, 2013 11:30 amCategory:News

Maryland’s New P3 Legislation Maryland’s New Public-Private Partnerships Legislation Maryland’s newly passed P3 Legislation sets the stage for Public-Private
Partnerships to increase investment in the state. This is the best and first
chance to hear about Maryland’s new P3 law from people who know what this means
for Maryland’s economy. The panel, moderated by Ballard Spahr, includes leaders
from the public and private sectors with extensive P3 experience in commercial
and institutional development, as well as infrastructure projects. Keynote
speakers include Maryland’s Lt. Governor Anthony Brown and former Pennsylvania
Governor Ed Rendell.
Plan to join us on May 9 at the BWI Hilton. We will be announcing the panel in
the near future, so check baltimore.uli.org for details and updates. Featured Speakers:
· Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown
· Ben Stutz, State of Maryland
· Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell

Moderator: Brian Walsh, Ballard Spahr
· Chuck Watters, Hines
· Andy Garbutt, KPMG
· Leif Dormsjo. Acting Deputy Secretary, MDOT
· Chris Guthkeltch, Skanska USA
· Tom Rousakis, Goldman Sachs

Master of Ceremonies:
· Sandy Apgar, Apgar Company


__________________________________________
Below you see a Department of Natural Resources staff charged with such things as appointing members of commissions like the Marcellus Shale with a long history of bad environmental results.  All of Maryland's environment is at risk because the Department of Natural Resources has such a skeleton staffing that no oversight happens.  As you see below stewardship of the land is not key in this public agency.

When we elect pols like O'Malley who are simply working for corporations they will staff agencies with people looking to move money to the right people and not to doing the work of the public.  Then, you compound that by having these same appointees choosing who participates on these commissions and you get the results outlined at the top. 

Public commissions, public committees, and public boards should have people passionate about the issues from the public perspective, not corporate profit.

YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS KEEP SUPPORTING THE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS CREATING THESE POLICIES-----PLEASE GET RID OF THESE INCUMBENTS!


Below you see who will be involved in these fracking and land use issues and who is appointed to commissions developing plans.

Remember, Maryland is one of the richest states in the nation----plenty of money for this stuff being lost to fraud and corruption.


   Kristin Saunders Evans

Secretary for Land Resources.


Study finds Md.'s parks, after deep cuts in staff and services in recent years, need an infusion

State parks in peril


November 09, 2007|

By Candus Thomson | Candus Thomson,Sun reporter



"I don't think anyone was surprised by the findings," said Kristin Saunders Evans, assistant secretary of the Department of Natural Resources who oversees parks. "We're trying to the best of our ability and resources, but in some instances we've let our stakeholders down."


Below you see yet another 'nationally recognized program' in Maryland that does not really exist.  It is all propaganda to make Maryland look progressive.
  Our Health Care reform and our Education reform is all called 'a national model' and is a mess because we have no oversight and accountability or pols in office working in the public interest.  JUKING THE STATS makes everything done a national model.


Indoor projects raise questions

Md. auditors criticize use of funds designated for open-space projects


August 08, 2008

|By Laura Smitherman | Laura Smitherman,Sun reporter

Program Open Space, Maryland's nationally recognized effort to create outdoor recreational opportunities and preserve untouched lands, has been spending money on the indoors - including golf-course building renovations, community centers and an indoor aquatic center.

Call it Program Enclosed Space.

State auditors criticized the longstanding practice in a report yesterday on the Department of Natural Resources and said that the General Assembly's counsel advised them that the use of open-space funding for indoor recreational facilities doesn't appear to be within the law.

Agency officials told auditors that they believed the indoor projects qualified for funding because the facilities accommodate recreational activities, such as swimming, that are typically done outdoors. And, agency officials noted, the public would be able to enjoy year-round use of the indoor facilities, making them a better investment.

John R. Griffin, natural resources secretary, promised to seek clarifying legislative language in the next General Assembly session to ensure that such expenditures follow the letter of the law. Nonetheless, agency officials said they were surprised by the dispute.

The open-space program has been used to build or acquire indoor facilities since the 1970s, they said, and state lawmakers are typically enthusiastically supportive, attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the projects throughout the summer. They said the indoor facilities must be related to the mission of the program and are often nature centers or recreational facilities.

"Bottom line is, this has been going on for a long time, and this is the first time we've seen it raised by legislative auditors,"
said Eric Schwaab, the agency's deputy secretary. "These local projects have long been supported. It's not like this has been conducted in secret."

In recent months, $2 million in open-space funding has been approved for Calvert County's first indoor aquatic center, $1.4 million for the purchase of the Sonic Sports Arena in Cecil County and about $240,000 for indoor tennis lights in Montgomery County.

Program Open Space, established in 1969, is funded through transfer taxes on real estate transactions. The money is split between the state government and local communities based on a complicated formula, and much of it goes toward buying large tracts of land for preservation or parks. About $276 million has been allocated to the program over the last two years.

Local governments develop long-range plans on land preservation and recreation, and individual projects for which they seek reimbursement must be approved by the state's Board of Public Works. Public comment can be made at several times in the process.


"It's a wide-open, very public process," said Kristin Saunders Evans, assistant secretary for land resources at the natural resources department.






Logging GRSF 3

In the coming months, the Forest Service will publish the FY2011plan for the Green Ridge State Forest. As with previous plans, the Forest Service will propose cutting down more than 200 acres of trees in several sites.Most of the logging will leave about six trees per acre.DNR cuts trees that are 90-100 years old, far short of their biological maturity,1with the stated goal of optimizing production of timber.2Other goals, such as encouraging wildlife growth and breeding, providing healthy forests for Maryland citizens, stabilization of soil, or sequestering carbon are subsidiary or have not been considered.


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August 16th, 2014

8/16/2014

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I want to spend one more day shouting to the middle-class to WAKE UP!!!!!!  STOP LOOKING AT THE TV NEWS AND THINKING THIS MILITARIZED POLICING AND SPYING IS ONLY HURTING THE WORKING CLASS AND POOR.

The small government of neo-liberals and neo-cons gutted oversight and accountability and public justice.  We want to be clear----when equal protection disappears everyone is hurt but women and people of color the most.  The middle-class is seeing its life savings and investments shredded by fraud and corruption linked to this outsourcing of the public sector.  The unemployment in the US is at around 36% and is called a permanent fixture because that 36% is the middle-management that gave oversight and accountability to corporations and government.  All of this plays hard on people of color and the working class in the form of poverty issues, but it opens as well to the fact that 80% and soon 90% of American people will fall into this category.  Republican voters must see that small government effects all people's rights as citizens-----not just the poor and/or people of color.  It will come to your family!

WE MUST FIGHT AGAINST THIS ILLEGAL ATTACK ON OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AS CITIZENS, EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER RULE OF LAW, AND OUR BILL OF RIGHTS.

Baltimore City State's Attorney does not even have a white collar criminal unit and no funds to build one.  Rawlings-Blake and City Hall are overseeing a systemic fleecing of government coffers and have no interest in public oversight and accountability.  Baltimore City is one of a few governments not having routine audits -----it all happens because Johns Hopkins controls public policy and revenue in the city and does not want oversight and accountability.  They want only to control the symptoms of the poverty this creates.


Baltimore City Will Hire 2 New Prosecutors To Reduce Violence

July 11, 2013 7:01 PM

Mike Hellgren WJZ general assignment reporter

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A new plan of action. The recent spike in city violence sparks local and federal lawmakers to enact a new plan of action.

The mayor, police commissioner and U.S. attorney appoint two special prosecutors to target violent offenders.

Mike Hellgren has more on the new partnership.

These two new experienced prosecutors are veterans of the system. They have not yet been selected; background checks are underway now. They will have the full resources of the federal government.




I shared with everyone that Maryland's Attorney General Doug Gansler ran with an agenda item being dismantling the prosecutor's office assign to provide oversight and justice from government malfeasance and corruption.  This office was created as a result of the Agnew years.  Well, fraud and corruption never left and the attorneys running for these state's attorney and Attorney's General offices simply ignore and defund agencies tasked with public justice.  There is so much business fraud in Maryland against citizens that people have to work hard to find an honest contractor and then watch them like a hawk-----just because these public justice agencies are dismantled.  These are the same agencies that protect people's civil rights as with police brutality and unconstitutional policing.  So, THIS AFFECTS EVERYONE FOLKS!

THINK WHICH GROUPS IN MARYLAND BACK NEO-LIBERALS LIKE ANTHONY BROWN AND DOUG GANSLER ----AND REPUBLICAN HOGAN WILL DO THE SAME-----LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS IN MARYLAND BACK THE VERY POLS DOING THIS DAMAGE.  MARYLAND HAS NO LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS THAT ARE NOT CAPTURED BY THIS PROCESS.


People need to see that the white collar crime that empties the Baltimore City coffers----and this happens all across Maryland----is directly related to the crime and violence in low-income communities.  If billions are stolen by Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins through fraud and corruption then cuts to social services and community programs occur.  If Johns Hopkins writes policy that floods the city labor market with immigrants who are then fleeced of their wages ----or workers brought from out of state to work in Baltimore
-----high unemployment drives crime and violence.  The middle-class in Baltimore are being hit with car/home break ins/robberies because people are not able to be employed.  RAIDING CITY COFFERS WITH FRAUD AND CORRUPTION AND THEN BRINGING LABOR TO BALTIMORE WHO ARE THEN FLEECED OF WAGES-----all involving suspended Rule of Law and public justice.  THIS WILL AFFECT EVERYONE.

IT IS NOT ONLY THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF POLICING--IT IS THE SUSPENSION OF RULE OF LAW FOR ALL WHITE COLLAR CRIME.


This report simply shows the pattern that exists throughout Baltimore City government.  If you look at the report on SAIC from yesterday and the corruption in that Hopkins corporation the problems are the same.  If you go further and look at the structure for Wall Street financial instruments filling our financial industry with fraud-----it is all the same model.  Creating multiple layers of service and responsibility and then claim it is all too complicated to audit.  Baltimore does not have a revenue problem----the revenue is being stolen and diverted to the same people.

IInside City Hall: What a federal audit tells us about city spending Baltimore ranks at the bottom of cities audited by HUD's Inspector General. Where, exactly, did the $9.5 million in homeless funds go?

Mark Reutter December 5, 2012 at 7:11 am


Homeless men and women sit near the city’s Harry and Jeanette Weinberg homeless shelter at 620 Fallsway.

Calling for audits has become a popular pastime at City Hall.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake wants one to look at Comptroller Joan Pratt’s Municipal Telephone Exchange office, while Pratt is calling for numbers crunchers to sift through the contracts of the Mayor’s Office of Information Technology.

Councilman Carl Stokes has called for audits of all city agencies, something the mayor and majority of the City Council don’t want to do. But the mayor and Council did agree over the summer to audit selective agencies beginning in year 2014.

Given all the fuss, wouldn’t it seem that when an audit does appear, elected officials would rush to find out what it says about how the city spends money?

Such a report arrived last month. The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released an audit of Baltimore’s use of $9.5 million for homeless programs awarded under President Obama’s 2009 Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

A Crash Nobody Heard

City Hall seems to be pretending that this audit does not exist, like the proverbial tree that fell in the woods with a crash nobody heard.

There’s been no comment about the report by top officials, not least by Mayor Rawlings-Blake, whose Office of Human Services and Homeless Services Program stand accused of ineptitude and mismanagement by HUD’s auditors.

The report says that the city did not properly monitor the homeless funds, paid sub-providers based on a preset formula rather than on actual expenditures, lost track of money in several instances, and paid city staffers according to estimates, not on the actual time they spent on grant activities.

Calling 100% of Baltimore’s homeless expenditures “unsupported” by required documentation, HUD’s Inspector General is recommending that the city either provide proof that its homeless payments were legit or return the dough – all $9,472,118 – to the federal government.

The Inspector General faulted Baltimore’s homeless program.

“Baltimore Was Delinquent”

While Rawlings-Blake and her staff haven’t publicly responded to the audit, the Homeless Services’ rebuttal to HUD was published in the report.

It’s revealing. The city admits that it violated federal regulations because it did not have the staff to ensure compliance and because it found the program’s regulations too complicated.

“The City of Baltimore was delinquent in monitoring the program’s sub-providers as required because we lacked resources to conduct an appropriate level of monitoring, both fiscally and programmatically,” Kate Briddell, director of Homeless Services, wrote.


She acknowledged a number of management infractions. Among them: “the fiscal director improperly directed the fiscal staff to draft funds . . . to reimburse itself,” the Board of Estimates approved a homeless contract “in error,” the language of another contract “was not amended in title or terms to accommodate” the federal program, and funds “that appear to be drawn” improperly from one account were in fact used without documentation for a related program.

After making these admissions, Briddell went on to deny that they had any real consequences. “[W]hile some of the paperwork was not completed or kept in a standard we would like, no waste, fraud or abuse was conducted during the course of administering this project,” she wrote.

Briddell’s statement was flatly contradicted by her own acknowledgment that the Prisoner’s Aid Association of Maryland did not properly handle $270,550 in homeless funds – HUD claims the group was double billing the government for clients they had placed in emergency housing.

Perhaps that’s why HUD’s reply to Briddell begins so bluntly: “We disagree with the city’s statements.”

At the Bottom of Cities Audited


To check whether other cities shared Baltimore’s managerial shortcomings, The Brew reviewed a dozen HUD audits of city and county governments that also received funds under the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program.

Compared to Baltimore’s 100% “unsupported” expenditures, HUD’s Inspector General found that less than 1% of the funds spent by New York City, Houston and San Francisco to be “unsupported” or “ineligible.” The exact percentages were: New York (0.6%), Houston  (0.48%) and San Francisco (0.7%).

The Los Angeles Housing Department was also audited. HUD found $29,004 of the $29.4 million awarded was not properly documented, or less than 0.001%.

Even the worst offenders – Buffalo with 6.6% unsupported documentation and Newark with 8.5% unsupported, according to HUD – look like like fiscal angels compared to Charm City.

HUD certified in its audit of Baltimore that it followed generally accepted government auditing standards.

Coming Back for More

The lack of sufficient internal controls has been a longstanding criticism of Baltimore government.

City departments, including the Mayor’s various offices handling criminal justice, CitiStat operations, information technology, health and human services, are budgeted a certain amount of funds for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

But the practice of letting departments come back for more funds during the year, through supplemental appropriations approved by the Board of Estimates, undercuts fiscal discipline, critics say.

This coupled with the lack of oversight by the City Council – the Budget and Appropriations Committee chaired by Councilman Helen Holton has yet to reconvene a hearing concerning agency spending last year – and the necessary checks and balances are absent.

Farming Out Responsibility

A larger issue brought out by the HUD audit was the lack of programmatic oversight by the city.
The Mayor’s Office of Human Services did not even hand out the homeless grants. The task was farmed out to its fiscal agent, the United Way of Maryland.

That process split up management functions, which effectively meant that nobody was minding the store and determining whether the sub-providers were actually fulfilling the needs of the homeless as well as meeting the requirements of HUD.

Until effective accountability is instilled at the top, the future audits promised for city agencies are likely to suffer the same fate as the HUD homeless audit – official silence from those in charge, leading to more public cynicism about the workings of local government.

_____________________________________________



Below you see the supposed Democratic candidate for Maryland Attorney General.  If you look at the issues you will never see or hear the words----massive corporate fraud and government corruption as any justice candidate's platform.  You see selected justice issues that are always aimed at low level criminals such as scammers targeting senior citizens.  The subprime mortgage fraud targeted seniors and the parking ticket settlement was a disgrace yet Frosh never mentioned the injustice---he instead looked at individual solutions to foreclosures.  The fact that Maryland was the source of the fraud----MERS operated out of Frosh's Montgomery County as well as Virginia's Washington beltway----Maryland was the hardest hit by subprime mortgage fraud-----and it is the state with the highest number of foreclosures happening even now.  All of this shows there is no public justice at work in this particular case.  I choose Frosh and his statement on protecting seniors as a way to show how these issues mean nothing.  Sure, there are scammers targeting seniors but that exists because there is absolutely no public justice agency in place preventing these predations.  Maryland TV programming is filled with businesses that scam people.  Our local and state agencies of Licensing and Regulation DLLR is a skeleton crew and this is what allows for contractors to act criminal at will.  Frosh never mentions this and will not do anything to change this.

If you listen to Republican candidate for Governor Hogan he will use the fraud and corruption issue but as with Frosh-----he means he will look at low-level scams like Food Stamp and Pension fraud and never mentions the systemic culture of corporate fraud and government corruption.  So, don't vote for a Republican just because neo-liberals have made the Democratic Party so corrupt.....

GET RID OF THE NEO-LIBERALS!  THEY ARE ONLY PROTECTING WEALTH AND PROFIT AND WILL NOT HOLD POWER ACCOUNTABLE.


Neo-liberals always talk about gun violence and control but they are the ones implementing the policies that kill labor and justice....creating the conditions for this increase in crime and violence.  So, if a candidate simply shouts a mantra of gun control and gun violence without shouting that the Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City Hall passes policy that creates the conditions for crime and violence----he/she will do nothing about solving these problems.
  Now, FROSH is definitely better than Jon Cardin but the point is Maryland never has a candidate for public justice that will provide public justice.

Google  '
Frosh and government corruption and corporate fraud' and you will get nothing.

THE GOVERNOR HAS THE ABILITY TO CREATE SPECIAL TASK FORCES AND PRESSURE MARYLAND AGENCIES TO ENFORCE LAW-----


neo-liberals like Brown will protect the fraud and corruption----Cindy Walsh for Governor will fight and reverse it!



PETER FROSH FOR MARYLAND ATTORNEY GENERAL



Issues Protecting Kids Online


Information technology has made our world more connected and productive than ever before. Unfortunately, the anonymity and freedom of the Internet have also created greater opportunities for crime, exploitation, and abuse. As a father of two daughters, I know firsthand the threats the Internet brings into the lives of young people today. Through that expe...

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Protecting Seniors Our seniors deserve the respect and care that they have earned throughout their lifetime. Maryland's senior population will only continue to rise in the coming years. As a result, the number of crimes against seniors will also increase. Far too often, scam artists perceive senior citizens as vulnerable and relatively wealthy due to their ability to access...

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Making Maryland Safer Protecting people - it’s what I have done in the courtroom and in the legislature. My number one priority as Attorney General will be keeping Maryland families safe. I have been a leader in keeping Maryland families safe by: Leading the fight for the Firearm Safety Act, landmark gun safety legislation that will prevent gun violence and save thousan...

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Protecting Maryland's Environment We know that the beauty of our state isn’t just something we enjoy, but it is also one of the things that make our economy strong. Responsible and sustainable utilization of our natural resources should be a guiding principle for Maryland businesses and individuals. Everywhere I go, Marylanders tell me they want clean water to drink and clean air to...

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Protecting Maryland Consumers As a young man, I was taught the importance of justice and fairness, and to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. I have carried those values with me throughout my career in public service: championing laws to protect children from ingesting harmful chemicals in baby bottles and formula; expanding the Attorney General’s power t...

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The only oversight in Maryland comes from the Federal government and as we all know Eric Holder and Obama have made it their top priority to get rid of that with the help of Congress.  You see below that all of the agencies tasked with oversight and transparency are the ones cut in the attack of small government.  THAT IS ALL THESE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS CARE ABOUT---HIDING THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION TRAIL.

This is third world.  It is what Trans Pacific Trade Pact does----eliminates a sovereign nation's ability to limit corporate profit in any way.  I had a young black Republican in Maryland tell me WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH PROFIT?  Well, you are being sold a bill of goods if you do not understand the power of Rule of Law and Equal Protection and Bill of Rights in everyone's life.



Continued cuts to legislative branch budget hurt transparency, accountability, and capacity

.
by Matthew Rumsey
  • policy
July 9, 2013, 4:16 p.m.


This morning, the House Appropriations Committee's Legislative Branch Subcommittee marked up its FY 2014 funding bill, agreeing to a plan that would cut funding for Congress and legislative support agencies well below FY 2013 levels, and even beneath sequestration levels for most offices.

Committee leadership claimed that cuts were necessary to "lead by example" and help get the government's "fiscal house in order,"
but, in reality, the cuts will likely limit accountability, access to information, and the ability of Congress and the legislative support agencies to do their jobs efficiently and effectively
. The shrinking budgets could also make it more difficult for Congress to implement a number of important transparency initiatives.

Specifically, the plan would continue several years of cuts to House operations and the Government Accountability Office that have diminished the capacity of both bodies.

The GAO exists to help Congress fulfill one of its most important functions,
overseeing and improving the accountability and efficiency of the federal government, and pays for itself many times over through the cost savings that it identifies every year. Unfortunately, Since major budget cuts began three years ago the GAO has lost more than 14% of its staff and seen its ranks fall to the lowest staffing level since 1935. The GAO cannot continue to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government and help to save taxpayers billions of dollars every year if its budget keeps shrinking.

Meanwhile, the House has cut individual office budgets by more than 17% over the past few years, reducing Representatives' ability to understand and enact complex policy, communicate openly and efficiently with constituents, perform oversight, and do the job of governing that they were elected to do. Unfortunately, Congressional staffs have been shrinking since the late 1970's. These cuts will most likely accelerate that trend and further diminish Congress' policy expertise and ability to conduct oversight.

Finally, limited budgets could make it harder for Congress to move forward with important transparency reforms, including opening Congressional Research Service reports and reports from the Executive branch to Congress to the public.

The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up their Legislative Branch funding bill on Thursday. Hopefully they will push for funding necessary to ensure that Congress and its support agencies can do their jobs effectively.


_____________________________________________

The same forces dismantling public justice for citizens in poor communities is that dismantling oversight and accountability in government and corporations.  The idea is that chaos and unaccountability allows the few in the autocracy to control everyone else----and that is what people in third world nations
live with every day.  When my friends dread having to find a contractor to do simple work because everyone is fleecing consumers---the middle-class are losing  rights as the people in poor communities enduring 'stop and frisk', home invasions, zero tolerance, and now youth curfews......loss of citizenship.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO WAKE UP TO THE CULTURE OF CRIMINALITY WE HAVE IN GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATIONS.


Below you see the political culture of neo-liberals and neo-cons.....O'Malley is the mirror of Cuomo and both are raging Wall Street neo-liberals----Clinton's farm team.  If you have leadership in government openly committing fraud as you do today---you have no
Rule of Law being enforced anywhere.


I went to the Baltimore Comptroller's office for FOIA request on a statement made by Mayor Rawlings-Blake during a Board of Estimates meeting.  The mayor's lawyer Nilson was there and stated out loud that the FOIA would be used against the people included in a lawsuit to which the BOA employee stated.....well, we can lose that information.  This is so pervasive that a lawyer feels no problem with suggesting that information disappear.
  You can just see how this behavior is mirrored in the Baltimore City Police Department.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL CONDUCT!  PROVE IT!


Wednesday, Jul 23, 2014 09:30 AM EST  Salon


Report: Andrew Cuomo under federal investigation for allegedly thwarting ethics inquiries

The governor of New York and possible future presidential candidate may have tried to shield his donors Elias Isquith

According to a new bombshell report in the New York Times, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, widely expected to coast to reelection this fall and long rumored to have presidential ambitions, is under federal investigation for allegedly trying to thwart his own anti-corruption commission after it began looking at his political allies.......


Why Is the Cuomo Administration Automatically Deleting State Employees' Emails?

Wednesday, 13 August 2014 10:23 By Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica | Report

Governor Andrew Cuomo (Photo: Diana Robinson / Flickr)New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration — which the governor pledged would be the most transparent in state history -- has quietly adopted policies that allow it to purge the emails of tens of thousands of state employees, cutting off a key avenue for understanding and investigating state government.

Last year, the state started deleting any emails more than 90 days old that users hadn't specifically saved — a much more aggressive stance than many other states. The policy shift was first reported by the Albany Times Union.

A previously unpublished memo outlining the policy raises new questions about the state's stated rationale for its deletions policy. What's more, the rules on which emails must be retained are bewilderingly complex – they fill 118 pages – leading to further concern that emails may not be saved at all.

"If you're aggressively destroying your email, it looks like you're trying to hide something," said Benjamin Wright, a Dallas lawyer who has advised companies and government agencies on records retention.

ProPublica obtained the memo through a public records request.

In the June 18, 2013, memo, Karen Geduldig, the general counsel of the state's Office of Information Technology Services, described New York's decision to automatically delete emails as a way to cut down on the state's "enormous amount of email data."

But the state implemented the policy as part of a move to Microsoft's Office 365 email system, which offers 50 gigabytes of space per email user — enough to store hundreds of thousands or even millions of emails for each state worker. The state's version of Office 365 also offers unlimited email archiving.

The Office of Information and Technology Services declined to comment on the record. An official in the office said even though the state can store large quantities of email, it can still be difficult to manage.

"Just because you have a big house doesn't mean you have to shove stuff in it," the official said.

Geduldig's memo also pointed out that some federal government agencies and corporations automatically purge employees' email. "Such a system will aid the State in improving its email management," Geduldig wrote.

But many states take a different tack.

Florida, for instance, requires state employees to keep routine administrative correspondence for at least three years, and emails dealing with policy development for at least five years. Connecticut requires employees to keep routine emails for at least two years. Washington State requires workers to keep emails dealing with public business for two years, and emails to and from top officials for four years. Those states also do not automatically delete email.

"It shouldn't be an automatic process," said Russell Wood, the records manager for the Washington State Archives. "There should be some point of review in there."

Emails that qualify as "records" are supposed to be preserved under New York's policy. But determining which emails qualify and which don't — a task left up to individual state employees — can be mind-numbingly complicated.

The state's rules include 215 different categories of records — including two separate categories dealing with office supplies.

"We don't think it's plausible at all that agency personnel are going to meticulously follow" those rules, said John Kaehny, the executive director of the good-government group Reinvent Albany. If the rules for preservation aren't followed, emails will be purged by default.

The length of time emails are required to be kept varies by category. Any emails related to "human rights training," for instance, must be kept for six years. Emails concerning "agency fiscal management" must be kept for three years. Emails about "the development of internal administrative policies and procedures" must be kept for a year, but emails "used to support administrative analysis, planning and development of procedures" can be deleted as soon as they're "obsolete," according to the rules.

The governor's office has its own rules detailing which emails must be saved, with 55 categories, from emails of weekly reports to emails "related to Native-American affairs." Anything that doesn't fall into one of the categories "should be deleted" once they've been opened, the governor's office advises.

There is no internal or external watchdog to make sure the rules are being followed, Kaehny said.

The state also doesn't have a standardized system for preserving emails that do have to be saved, according to the Office of Information Technology Services official. State workers can save their emails by printing them out, pasting them into Microsoft Word documents or placing them in a special folder in the email program itself.

"Everyone does it differently, and some people are still learning how to do it," the official said.

Emails related to potential litigation and freedom of information requests are not supposed to be deleted under New York State's policy. But Karl Olson, a San Francisco lawyer who has represented news outlets including the Los Angeles Times in freedom of information lawsuits, said that deleting emails after such a short period of time might mean they're gone by the time reporters need to request them.

"It may take a while for evidence of misconduct to bubble to the surface," Olson said.

Emily Grannis, a fellow with the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said New York's automatic deletion policy "strikes me as inconsistent with the goals of [freedom of information] laws, and to have such a short timeframe is particularly troubling."

Government agencies often adopt deletion policies to help protect themselves from potential lawsuits and freedom of information requests, said Mark Diamond, the chief executive of Contoural, a records management consulting firm. Getting rid of emails after 90 days, though, risks deleting correspondence that employees might need down the road. "I don't think it's a well thought-out strategy," he said.

Cuomo's aides have also developed a reputation for using their personal email accounts to conduct state business — a move that can make it more difficult to seek the emails under the state's freedom of information law. The Cuomo administration has denied that it does so, but a ProPublica reporter and others have, in fact, received such emails from officials.

New York isn't the only state that destroys unsaved email after 90 days.

California's governor's office, for instance, has automatically deleted employees' sent and received email after 90 days for more than a decade. But the office also requires employees to save far more than in New York, including official correspondence, memos, scheduling requests and other documents.







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August 14th, 2014

8/14/2014

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WE CAN REVERSE ALL OF THESE POLICIES EASY PEASY BY SIMPLY VOTING FOR POLS THAT SHOUT OUT AGAINST GLOBAL CORPORATIONS DRIVING MARYLAND'S ECONOMY AND FOR REBUILDING RULE OF LAW


I have been speaking with and handing my research to Baltimore police officers for a few months now making sure they understand that Johns Hopkins has told City Hall and the Chief of Police Batts to move towards privatization of Baltimore police and fire departments.  Since the economic collapse Baltimore has seen an explosion of fraud and corruption that is taking a billion dollars a year from city coffers and we cannot afford to support public sector employees as middle-class when all the money is being sent to corporate fraud and subsidy.  The public union-busting by neo-liberals and neo-cons in Baltimore and Maryland-----those neo-liberals O'Malley/Brown and the Maryland Assembly with the neo-cons Rawlings-Blake and the Baltimore City Hall are now getting rid of our public police and fire.  Remember, Clinton, Bush, Obama have almost finished privatizing the US military.....the manufactured sequestration cuts for the military were all about getting rid of public military and their benefits so now these global corporate pols are doing the same at the state and local level.  When you are bringing a formerly first world nation to third world status you must have all security working for corporations and not loyal to the public as public sector employees say Johns Hopkins.


Baltimore Chief of Police Batts was brought to Baltimore to do just that.  The Hopkins-owed SAIC surveillance and security systems Batts installed in Oakland, California are now being installed in Baltimore.  Batts is paid a salary that looks like the corporate executive he is.  The Baltimore Police have been battered with wage and benefit cuts and changes in shifts and hours that have Baltimore police one of the worst work environments and pay in the state and that doesn't even include the crime and violence and chronic intra-departmental problems.  If one didn't know better it almost seems like they are trying to get Baltimore police officers with tenure and pensions to leave the city!  Talking with officers that is indeed what is happening.  Police officers with ten years invested in pensions are leaving because of the hostile environment brought by Hopkins and their pols at City Hall.  The more stress on the police the more stress on the job.  Baltimore City is a tinderbox as citizens are tired of crime and violence and the police ignoring civil rights and liberties in the communities.  All of this is caused by the public policy written at Johns Hopkins and played out in City Hall.  Deliberately high unemployment and a stagnant economy is impoverishing people and the police department is headed by a chief known for abuse inside and outside of the department.  Remember, injustice necessitates chaos and that is what neo-liberals and neo-cons are allowing to happen under the guise of budget cuts and small government.

The Baltimore Police Department has sent representatives to Europe to contract with an International Security Corporation to send private security workers to Baltimore to replace existing public forces.  The fire department will go next.  The citizens already have trouble with police acting outside of the Constitution and when International security forces come----they will be working under Trans Pacific Trade Pact-----which replaces the US Constitution say the neo-liberals and neo-cons. 

ONLY THE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION SO ANY ATTEMPTS TO INSTALL TPP CAN BE REVERSED AS ILLEGAL.



What does life under International Security forces look like?  Well-----third world.


State Police, or Police State? --Nathan

Eleven facts about police militarization:
1. It harms, and sometimes kills, innocent people.
2. Children are impacted.
3. The use of SWAT teams is often unnecessary.
4. The “war on terror” is fueling militarization.
5. It’s a boon to contractor profits.
6. Border militarization and police militarization go hand in hand.
7. Police are cracking down on dissent.
8. Asset forfeitures are funding police militarization.
9. Dubious informants are used for raids.
10. There’s been little debate or oversight.
11. Communities of color bear the brunt.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/13/not-just-ferguson-11-eye-opening-facts-about-americas-militarized-police-forces/


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A police representative going to Europe to talk International Security contracting for the Baltimore City Police force would no doubt find an organization like the one below.  This is a US global corporation that does much of its work overseas but we see these operations moving into Western nations under the guise of 'terrorism'.  The threat of 'terrorism' falls squarely with dissent and protest---crime and violence by American citizens.  As 70% of Americans fall into poverty from the massive corporate frauds and the deliberate global corporate stagnation of our domestic economy-----and with that 70% growing to 80% and more----this third world society will see people WAKING UP and this is the structure O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly and Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Hall are building.  It is of course coming to your neck of the woods as well!

As important as a militarized government structure is we need to think as well how much taxpayer money is being spent on all of this Stalin-like security buildup.  The article below states that so much taxpayer money was funneled
to SAIC to create this Hopkins corporation that much of what all taxpayers paid in taxes for years went into building this surveillance structure unrolling in cities like Oakland, Calif, NYC, and Baltimore, Maryland.


You can see the job categories to see this organization will take over all public security duties as a global corporation.  Our Bank of America in Charles Village Baltimore already has contracted International Security outside their bank branch.

ISIO - INTERNATIONAL SECURITY INDUSTRY ORGANIZATION
Security Case S
tudies and
Applications


Belong to the most formidable International NETWORK for Security Professionals

ISIO Demographics

Reach
increases world-wide. Security Directors, Managers, General Managers, Trainers, Staff in all sectors, namely, Military and Defence, Buildings, Mall and Security, Law Enforcement, Prisons, Investigators, Assessors, Consultants and Advisors for Ports and Cargo, Hotel and Casino Security landside and on ships. Location (289071)United States, (89152)United Kingdom, (38194)India (34709)Canada, (31546)South Africa


The Focused Security Professional, is able to identify companies that have experience in providing security solutions for [Their] region of interest.

* Bank Security

* Border Security

* Building Security

* Business and Commercial Security

* Cargo Security

* City Security

* Control Station Security

* Event Security

* Homeland Security

* Hospital Security

* Hotel, Casino & Landmark Security

* Military and Defense Security

* Industrial Security

* Law Enforcement Security

* Oil and Refinery Security

* Port Security

* Prison Security

* Rail/Tunnel and Subway Security

* Retail and Store Security

* School Security


PROVIDING INTERNATIONAL SOLUTIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES. ISIO Global is a boutique, international solutions provider headquartered in the U.S. with operations in North and South America, Africa and Asia. The ISIO Global team of Principals and associates is comprised of a unique and diverse set of professionals with backgrounds in government security, intelligence, logistics, political strategy, energy, finance, international trade, risk management, and the military.

ISIO Global provides comprehensive custom-tailored solutions to meet our clients’ needs. Our client list includes countries, presidents and other high ranking officials from both the private sector and the military, high net worth individuals, and Fortune 100 companies. Through our vast international experience and contacts, ISIO Global is uniquely positioned to quickly and efficiently design and implement comprehensive solutions for the most pressing problems and exciting opportunities around the globe.

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You can see how neo-con SAIC and Hopkins is with this connection to Bush/Cheney and Halliburton----the biggest fraudsters in the world.  The reason I speak now about what most people who study this knows is that this is what will be brought to Baltimore -----and has been in the works for a while-----and it is completely ineffective, corrupt, and will work with no transparency or with any regard to Rule of Law.  If you think Baltimore Police Department is lacking transparency or attention to Constitutional policing wait until this ISIO/SAIC consortium comes our way.

THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CON FOR YOU----THIRD WORLD SOCIETY
. 

STOP VOTING FOR THEM.  REMEMBER, IN MARYLAND WE HAVE LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS BACKING THESE NEO-LIBERALS EVERY ELECTION.  VOTE FOR BROWN OR GANSLER SAY BALTIMORE MINISTERS AND MARYLAND LABOR UNION LEADERS----WELL, THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE PUSHING ON THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND.



This is an attempt to make a blog in which I comment on scientific issues.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Who or what is SAIC? Vanity Fair has a quite interesting article about SAIC, a company I had never heard about before.

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow
Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.
The article goes on to describe SAIC, and their less than stellar record. The article also touches on why such companies exist.
It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS.
This is hardly a new trend. In his 1980 book, Fat City, Donald Lambro describes much the same going on. It goes without saying that this is not a cost effective way of running things, and that it creates problems with oversight and conflict of interest, as the article also explains.
In Washington these companies go by the generic name "body shops"—they supply flesh-and-blood human beings to do the specialized work that government agencies no longer can. Often they do this work outside the public eye, and with little official oversight—even if it involves the most sensitive matters of national security.

[....]

SAIC's relative anonymity has allowed large numbers of its executives to circulate freely between the company and the dozen or so government agencies it cares about. William B. Black Jr., who retired from the N.S.A. in 1997 after a 38-year career to become a vice president at SAIC, returned to the N.S.A. in 2000. Two years later the agency awarded the Trailblazer contract to SAIC.
I highly recommend the article - go read it, and see what the US taxpayers' money is really used on.


__________________________________________

SAIC is Johns Hopkins and represents billions of taxpayer dollars sent to Hopkins in development funding and as you see below-----it operates world-wide just as Baltimore Board of Estimates operates here in Baltimore.  The corruption in cost overruns and bid-rigging is breath-taking and you see the same ethics permeates all of what these Ivy League Universities are involved. 

SAIC is the spying network behind the NSA that Snowden exposed to the world and it is in the consortium of security and surveillance groups that operate as ISIO above.  ISIO would be an example of what the police privatization in Baltimore would look like.  For decades SAIC and ISIO have operated in developing worlds but they are now moving into Western countries to control dissent of Americans et al to being taken third world.


Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin have worked hard to send Federal funds to build these kinds of systems through Hopkins.  HOW TOTALITARIAN OF THEM!


The article states that despite the known corruption in SAIC that Bloomberg of NYC handed a multi-million contract to the same and the reporter wonders why give business to a known criminal element-----WELL, HOPKINS IS BLOOMBERG.

'SO INEFFECTIVE'-----DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE GOVERNMENT IN MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE???


Just How Corrupt is SAIC?

Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 7:23PM
David Callahan The latest revelation in the CityTime corruption case offers yet more evidence that the Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, may have an unethical organizational culture. SAIC is one of the largest and most well-connected government contracting firms in the country, with 45,000 employees worldwide. It's incompetence in handling the CityTime contract, with hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns, appears to be part of a pattern -- with other clients, like the FBI, reporting similar experiences.

But now comes evidence of something darker. According to a files unearthed by New York City Controller John Liu, SAIC tried to exert improper influence over the top city official monitoring its work. Juan Gonzalez, the New York Daily News reporter who has been on top of this story all along describes the new revelations about SAIC:

On Jan. 28, 2002, Richard Valcich, then the director of the Office of Payroll Administration, wrote a one-page note to William Russell, a senior vice president for Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).

"I appreciated meeting with you to discuss SAIC issues that are pending with the Office of Payroll Administration," Valcich wrote. He then apologized to Russell "if I seemed rude and abruptly shortened your discussion on a future post city-employment position with SAIC."

"[I]t is inappropriate to discuss any post employment with a company that I do business," Valcich warned him.

Valcich went on to say that he was "flattered you would consider me for such a position with SAIC but there are restrictions due to the city's conflicts of interest rules."

Such restrictions include a lifetime ban against working on the same "matter" that a city employee handled while in government. 

Wow. Of course, those familiar with how big contractors and lobbyists corrupt government officials will not find any of this surprising. There is a long history of companies using offers of lucrative jobs to exert improper influence. These deals are simple and often hard to scrutinize: Do our bidding now, companies say, and we'll give you a job paying a million dollars a year (or whatever) down the road. A big focus of ethics reform in recent decades has been to crack down on "revolving door" enticements.

SAIC's tactic in this episode raises questions about its corrupt dealing around other contracts. Stay tuned for more on that topic. 

Gonzalez's latest article on the subject of SAIC includes a kicker near the end: 

Amazingly, despite years of red flags on the CityTime project, the Bloomberg administration confirmed yesterday it recently awarded a new $40 million contract to SAIC.

So what is it about Michael Bloomberg and SAIC?
Why is a mayor so famously focused on efficiency so forgiving to a contractor that is so ineffective? That is a question that deserves closer attention. 

 
0 Comments

August 13th, 2014

8/13/2014

0 Comments

 
Do you hear your labor and justice leaders shouting out against this?  NO, they are backing the neo-liberals who are embracing Trans Pacific Trade Pact pretending it will create jobs.  Well, you will be working as a third world Chinese sweat shop employee with these neo-liberals.

Below I show the local effect of PERESTROIKA of American citizen's assets by global corporations.  I have spoken before about the goal of privatization of public water.  We see the effect in Detroit, a city gutted with fraud and corruption just as in Baltimore.  The American people have paid loads of taxes over a few decades that would have rebuilt state and city infrastructure if that revenue was not being looted by Baltimore Development Corporation and Hopkins to expand global interests.  Now, they want to raise public water bills over double the amount to pay again for rebuilding infrastructure and guess what----the same Johns Hopkins is there to pocket the profits from this public work as VEOLA ENVIRONMENT.  Remember, these Ivy League universities made their billions in endowment profits from the subprime mortgage fraud and AIG investment firm that was spun to become HighStar.  So, all of that profit was based on fraud.  They used that money made from fraud to by VEOLA ENVIRONMENT from the French global corporation.  These same Ivy League universities like Hopkins are now pushing Baltimore City Hall to privatize public transportation to French Veola and privatize public water and waste to HighStar VEOLA ENVIRONMENT.  So, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, et al of the Ivy League are using those endowment funds to privatize public water and waste all over the world.  At the same time they are buying all fertile land and fresh water sources around the world at the same time contaminating US and world aquifers with fracking.....as in Maryland with the Marcellus Aquifer.


I am writing today after coming from the center of fraud and corruption----Baltimore City Hall and the Board of Estimates meeting.  I attended today because they are handing contracts to private corporations for public water service that everyone knows is only steps towards water privatization.  There is Jack Young and Mr. Black for Rawlings-Blake and Comptroller Pratt ready to vote for privatization of Baltimore city public water and waste.  All working for the most neo-conservative institution in the world----Johns Hopkins while running as Democrats.

PRIVATIZING PUBLIC WATER----HOW NEO-CONSERVATIVE OF THEM!!!!!


Jack Young as head of the Board of Estimates has worked hard to make sure public interruptions do not occur during meetings by placing a police officer to escort citizens out if they try to speak.  You know, the public is not allowed to speak about public policy in public in Maryland and especially in Baltimore.  So, instead of speaking during the Board of Estimates meetings on camera for all to see, people like Cindy Walsh must speak to the room before the meeting starts.  Only today, when I explained to all in the room what the goal of this privatization is and how Johns Hopkins is involved-----Jack Young called the police to drag me out BEFORE THE MEETING EVEN STARTED.  He works so hard to make sure no one knows what is happening that he was prepared to throw me out for just speaking in the City Hall room.  I of course reminded him that the meeting had not started and he could not throw me out of the room -----he immediately called the meeting to order.

YOU KNOW WHO LEADS IN PRIVATIZATION OF ALL THAT IS PUBLIC?  O'MALLEY/ANTHONY BROWN.  YOU KNOW WHO BACKED BROWN DURING THE ELECTION FOR GOVERNOR?  LABOR UNION LEADERS.  KNOW WHO WAS THERE TO PROTEST PRIVATIZED WATER----LABOR UNIONS.  ASK FRED MASON OF MARYLAND AFL-CIO WHY HE BACKS NEO-LIBERALS DOING ALL THIS DAMAGE?

We need labor union leaders working for their membership's interests when they support candidates.  You cannot support the neo-liberals installing these policies and then pretend to fight against them.  Union members and labor and justice need to see how VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY BAD THESE PRIVATIZATION POLICIES ARE FOR EVERYONE!

IT TAKES A SOCIOPATH TO PLAN THESE KINDS OF CORPORATE POLICIES AND THE POLS HIRED TO PUSH THESE GOALS INTO PLACE ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.
ALL OF MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.


Don't privatize Baltimore water
[Letter]June 23, 2014

The presence of the private water industry at this week's United States Conference of Mayors meeting threatens public health and democracy in Baltimore.

Time and time again, experiences in other cities that have privatized their water systems have demonstrated that privatization fails to provide secure and equitable water access to residents. The industry's strategy of placing profits over the human right to water is reprehensible and undermines the democratic system.

As a voter and someone who calls Baltimore my home, I strongly urge Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to take a stand at the USCM and keep the private water industry out of our city.

Jacob Fishman, Baltimore


_________________________________________


Did you know that it is Johns Hopkins who is a major shareholder in Veola Environment through HighStar Investment firm that is pushing the privatization of public water and waste?  Did you know that Veola Environment and HighStar have Ivy League endowments in the other cities pushing the privatization of public water----like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Berkeley.  Privatization of public assets to maximize profits for these endowments.

Did you know the goal is to privatize water, end public subsidy of water as water rates rise, use SMART METERS to ration water to what the every growing impoverished public can afford all to maximize profits for Johns Hopkins endowment? 

You must be listening or reading Maryland media -----they make sure you do not know----especially Marc Steiner.

VEOLA ENVIRONMENT is a global corporation bought from the French global corporation VEOLA of transportation fame.  The one known for slave conditions for their workforce all over the world.  VEOLA ENVIRONMENT is working all over the world to privatize the world's public water and waste and in nations having the pleasure of a few decades of their presence water rationing with SMART METERS has been in what followed.  Now, Wall Street and Ivy League endowments want to bring it to America since they are taking the US to third world levels.  That Trans Pacific Trade Pact may not be in place in the US but Maryland and neo-liberals in Congress are preparing for it.



I wonder if an interview with Hopkins staff will let people know what the goal is and who is behind it?


Water Privatization in Baltimore

08/12/14 Marc Steiner
August 11, 2014 –

Segment 3 We turn to the topic of the possibility of water privatization in Baltimore, with: Lauren DeRusha, National Campaign Organizer of Corporate Accountability International; and Dr. Lester Spence, Center for Emerging Media Scholar-in-Residence and Associate Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.




The Dangerous Return of Water Privatization

Community waters systems have sustainably provided safe drinking water for generations but corporations are now using local fiscal crises to push for water privatization. By Maude Barlow and Wenonah Hauter, from Sojourners
January/February 2014
  Utne


It’s time for an integrated, holistic national water policy, including the establishment of a federal water trust fund. Instead we face the cannibalization of our public utilities by private corporations.

The United States has one of the best public water supply systems in the world. More than 250 million people count on local governments to provide safe drinking water. Over the last 40 years, federal, state, and municipal governments have worked together to improve and protect water resources. The Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act have kept the U.S. on target for preserving rivers, lakes, watersheds, wetlands, natural aquifers, and other sources of fresh water.

Great strides have been made in managing waste water and storm water. More than 90 percent of community water systems in 2012 met all federal health standards. Public water utilities have been a tremendously successful model for the U.S. and continue to keep drinking water safe, accessible, and affordable for all Americans.

It hasn’t always been this way.

During the 1800s, private companies controlled the water systems of several large U.S. cities—to dire effect. Because the companies were more interested in making a profit than providing good service, many poor residents lacked access to water. As a result, cholera outbreaks were common in poor neighborhoods; water pressure was sometimes too low to stop fires, which destroyed both homes and businesses.


By the turn of the 20th century, city governments, including Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, and New York City, had taken over drinking water provision from private companies. The goal of government was to improve service, reduce waterborne diseases, and increase water pressure to better fight fires. New York City, for example, assumed control of its drinking water services from the bank and holding company called the Manhattan Company, the predecessor of JPMorgan Chase, after an outbreak of cholera killed 3,500 people and a devastating fire caused extensive property damage.

These cities learned the hard way just how important public water provision is for human and environmental health. The shift to a public utility system, responsive to community needs, allowed local public control of water and sewer services. Public utilities helped local governments manage water resources, growth, and development, and ensured that safe and reliable services were available to all.

Now, just past the turn of the 21st century, our national water framework needs rethinking with climate change and sustainability in mind. It’s time for an integrated, holistic national water policy, including the establishment of a federal water trust fund. Instead we face the cannibalization of our public utilities by private corporations.

Despite our success over the last 100 years, public water utilities face daunting challenges in the days ahead:

1. Water systems nationwide are aging and wearing out. Last summer more than 150,000 residents in the greater Washington, D.C. region faced the specter of being without water for days because of a stuck valve on a major water main. Delayed maintenance on the valve due to funding cuts led to the crisis.

________________________________________________

Ivy League university endowments were heavily invested in the subprime mortgage loans knowing they were fraudulent and would bring down the economy.  They took the profit made from those fraudulent loans and started buying land overseas with the intent of cornering the next market----privatized public works like transportation and water and waste.  They starved governments with massive frauds and corruptions just to pretend we now have to hand all that is public over to the same institutions creating and profiting from the frauds.


I'm picking on Ivy League universities today but there are plenty of other bad guys profiting from these policies.  Look how rich Ben Cardin and Nancy Pelosi are getting from Insider Trading for example!  Those Clinton neo-liberals who voted for global corporations and markets have worked two decades to advance these policies.  IT'S THE REPUBLICANS THEY SAY-----

WELL, MARYLAND IS ONE BIG NEO-LIBERAL STATE SO IT'S BOTH NEO-CONS AND NEO-LIBERALS.




US universities in Africa 'land grab' Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out
  • John Vidal and Claire Provost
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 8 June 2011 15.18 EDT


US universities are reportedly using endowment funds to make deals that may force thousands from their land in Africa. Photograph: Boston Globe via Getty Images Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study.

Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from "land grabs" that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world.


The new report on land acquisitions in seven African countries suggests that Harvard, Vanderbilt and many other US colleges with large endowment funds have invested heavily in African land in the past few years. Much of the money is said to be channelled through London-based Emergent asset management, which runs one of Africa's largest land acquisition funds, run by former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs currency dealers.

Researchers at the California-based Oakland Institute think that Emergent's clients in the US may have invested up to $500m in some of the most fertile land in the expectation of making 25% returns.

Emergent said the deals were handled responsibly. "Yes, university endowment funds and pension funds are long-term investors," a spokesman said. "We are investing in African agriculture and setting up businesses and employing people. We are doing it in a responsible way … The amounts are large. They can be hundreds of millions of dollars. This is not landgrabbing. We want to make the land more valuable. Being big makes an impact, economies of scale can be more productive."

Chinese and Middle Eastern firms have previously been identified as "grabbing" large tracts of land in developing countries to grow cheap food for home populations, but western funds are behind many of the biggest deals, says the Oakland institute, an advocacy research group.

The company that manages Harvard's investment funds declined to comment. "It is Harvard management company policy not to discuss investments or investment strategy and therefore I cannot confirm the report," said a spokesman. Vanderbilt also declined to comment.

Oakland said investors overstated the benefits of the deals for the communities involved. "Companies have been able to create complex layers of companies and subsidiaries to avert the gaze of weak regulatory authorities. Analysis of the contracts reveal that many of the deals will provide few jobs and will force many thousands of people off the land," said Anuradha Mittal, Oakland's director.

In Tanzania, the memorandum of understanding between the local government and US-based farm development corporation AgriSol Energy, which is working with Iowa University, stipulates that the two main locations – Katumba and Mishamo – for their project are refugee settlements holding as many as 162,000 people that will have to be closed before the $700m project can start.
The refugees have been farming this land for 40 years.

In Ethiopia, a process of "villagisation" by the government is moving tens of thousands of people from traditional lands into new centres while big land deals are being struck with international companies.

The largest land deal in South Sudan, where as much as 9% of the land is said by Norwegian analysts to have been bought in the last few years, was negotiated between a Texas-based firm, Nile Trading and Development and a local co-operative run by absent chiefs. The 49-year lease of 400,000 hectares of central Equatoria for around $25,000 (£15,000) allows the company to exploit all natural resources including oil and timber. The company, headed by former US Ambassador Howard Eugene Douglas, says it intends to apply for UN-backed carbon credits that could provide it with millions of pounds a year in revenues.

In Mozambique, where up to 7m hectares of land is potentially available for investors, western hedge funds are said in the report to be working with South Africans businesses to buy vast tracts of forest and farmland for investors in Europe and the US. The contracts show the government will waive taxes for up to 25 years, but few jobs will be created.

"No one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans, create jobs or improve food security," said Obang Metho of Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia. "These agreements – many of which could be in place for 99 years – do not mean progress for local people and will not lead to food in their stomachs. These deals lead only to dollars in the pockets of corrupt leaders and foreign investors."

"The scale of the land deals being struck is shocking", said Mittal. "The conversion of African small farms and forests into a natural-asset-based, high-return investment strategy can drive up food prices and increase the risks of climate change.

Research by the World Bank and others suggests that nearly 60m hectares – an area the size of France – has been bought or leased by foreign companies in Africa in the past three years.

"Most of these deals are characterised by a lack of transparency, despite the profound implications posed by the consolidation of control over global food markets and agricultural resources by financial firms," says the report.


"We have seen cases of speculators taking over agricultural land while small farmers, viewed as squatters, are forcibly removed with no compensation," said Frederic Mousseau, policy director at Oakland, said: "This is creating insecurity in the global food system that could be a much bigger threat to global security than terrorism. More than one billion people around the world are living with hunger. The majority of the world's poor still depend on small farms for their livelihoods, and speculators are taking these away while promising progress that never happens."

______________________________________________



Why is Harper Selling Canada's Fresh Water Supply to French Companies?


Posted: 10/18/2013 12:35 pm EDT Updated: 01/23/2014 6:58 pm EST   Huffington Post


Prime Minister Harper has just signed the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and Canadians who care about our freshwater heritage should be deeply concerned for three reasons.

First, the massive increase in beef and pork exports that have been negotiated will put a terrible strain on our water supplies. Beef producers can now export close to 70,000 tonnes of beef to Europe and an undisclosed but higher amount of pork. Meat production is highly water intensive. It takes over 15 million litres of water to produce one tonne of beef, for example.

Already Alberta's dwindling water supplies are over-taxed by a beef industry that is rapidly expanding and expected to double its water footprint by 2025, according to an assessment done before this deal was signed. Intensive hog operations in Manitoba are killing Lake Winnipeg, their waste creating nutrient overload that covers over half the lake in blue green algae. To protect our precious watersheds, what we need is more sustainable and local food production, not massive new trade deals that will strain our water sources beyond their capacity.

Second, this deal will give French companies Suez and Veolia, the two biggest private water operations in the world, access to run our water services for profit. Under a recent edict, the Harper government has tied federal funding of municipal water infrastructure construction or upgrading to privatization of water services. Cash-strapped municipalities can only access federal funds if they adopt a public-private partnership model, and several cities have recently put their water or wastewater services contracts up for private bids. If Suez or Veolia are successful in bidding for these contracts (and under the new deal, local governments cannot favour local bidders) and a future city council decides it wants to move back to a public system, as municipalities are doing all over the world, these corporations will be able to sue for huge compensation. Private water operators charge far higher rates than public operators and cut corners when it comes to source protection. Privatization of water services violates the essential principle that Canada's water is a public trust.

The same "investor-state" clause contained in the Canada-EU deal poses the third threat to Canada's water. The rules essentially say that if a government introduces new environmental, health or safety rules that were not in place when the foreign corporation made its investment, it has the right to compensation, which a domestic corporation does not have. For instance, an American energy company is suing Canada for $250 million in damages using a similar NAFTA rule because Quebec decided to protect its water by placing a moratorium on fracking. Moreover, transnational corporations are now claiming ownership of the actual water they require in their operations. Another American company successfully sued Ottawa for $130 million for the "water rights"; it left behind when it abandoned its pulp and paper operations in Newfoundland, leaving workers without jobs or pensions. The new deal with Europe will give large European corporations similar rights, further eroding the ability of governments to protect our fragile watersheds and ecosystems.

The Harper government has gutted every regulation and law we had in place to protect our freshwater supplies. Now this deregulation is locked in as corporations from Europe as well as the U.S. can soon claim to have invested in an environment without water protection rules and sue any future government that tries to undo the damage.

On a planet running out of clean accessible water, this is a really stupid way to treat our water.




________________________________________________


The same investment firms pushing to privatize public water and waste are behind these fracking industry expansions.  Exporting natural gas places fracking in the US and around Maryland on steroids as profits rise and that means more and more fresh water sources will disappear.  NO WORRIES.  VEOLA ENVIRONMENT will sell you water from overseas and if you cannot afford the price----they will use SMART METERS to ration what you can pay.

THAT JOHNS HOPKINS----LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING THEIR WAY TO PROFITS AND THEN USING THEM FOR EVIL-----



Fracking Spreads Worldwide

By Nidaa Bakhsh and Brian Swint November 14, 2013


Bloomberg Financial

The hydraulic fracturing of shale in search of oil and gas has hardly started outside the U.S., but that’s changing. A record 400 shale wells may be drilled beyond U.S. borders in 2014, with most of the activity in China and Russia, according to energy consultants Wood Mackenzie. (In contrast, thousands of shale wells will be drilled in the U.S. next year.) The number of rigs used onshore in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region has increased 10 percent over the past year, data compiled by oil services company Baker Hughes (BHI) show. Most of those rigs are meant for shale. “It’s likely there will be a revolution,” says Maria van der Hoeven, executive director at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. “But not everywhere at the same time. And you just can’t copy the U.S. experience.”

Fracking in the U.K. will start next year, after the government lifted an 18-month moratorium imposed when a fracking company found it had accidentally caused earthquakes. Two utilities—Centrica (CNA:LN) of Britain and GDF Suez (GSZ:FP) of France—have bought stakes in British drilling licenses to help bankroll the drillers and win a cut of any profit.



The shale boom has moved the U.S. closer to energy independence, added jobs, helped revive manufacturing, and lowered gas bills. Yet the conditions that fostered the U.S.’s success don’t exist elsewhere. In some countries, landowners don’t own the oil and gas in the ground: The state retains all mineral rights. Or a country may levy much heavier taxes on oil and gas profits.

Story: U.S. Shale-Oil Boom May Not Last as Fracking Wells Lack Staying Power Once they start drilling and fracking, though, countries such as China, Argentina, and Russia could experience new oil and gas booms. China has the largest shale gas reserves, estimated to be the equivalent of 212 billion barrels of oil. In shale oil, Russia tops the list with about 75 billion barrels, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says. Australia, Poland, and Algeria all have big reserves.

Fracking activity outside the U.S. is likely to be good for the big oil players. Royal Dutch Shell (RDS/A) teamed up with China National Petroleum Corp. this year to explore in Sichuan, the province that accounts for 40 percent of China’s shale reserves. Hess (HES) is exploring with CNPC in the western Xinjiang region. YPF (YPF), the Argentine oil company, has joined with Chevron (CVX) to tap deposits in Argentina’s vast Vaca Muerta formation. Says Edward Morse, head of commodities research at Citigroup (C): “Within three to five years, there should be exponential growth in drilling as there was in the U.S.”


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As I stated with health care and the deliberate building of a perfect storm for antibiotic resistance and world health epidemics we see the same characters------Wall Street, Ivy League universities like Hopkins, and their neo-liberal and neo-con pols working to break our public health and environmental protections to profit from selling what will become a scarce resource.  Not to mention how large populations unable to obtain fresh water are easily managed when made desperate.

This is what Maryland Assembly and O'Malley/Brown and in Baltimore, Baltimore City Council and Maryland Rawlings-Blake are working toward.  They are neo-liberals and neo-cons who do not care about anything but maximizing corporate profits.


SIMPLY REVERSE ALL OF THIS BY VOTING THESE POLS OUT OF OFFICE AND REBUILD RULE OF LAW AND PUBLIC JUSTICE------AND REBUILD A DOMESTIC ECONOMY WITH SMALL AND REGIONAL BUSINESS WHILE KEEPING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AT BAY IN MARYLAND.

Contaminated freshwater systems caused by ‘fracking’

Friday, April 4, 2014 13:52

Fracking fluids from oil and gas extraction is contaminating our freshwater systems. http://www.blissful-wisdom.com/contaminated-freshwater-systems-caused-by-fracking.html

A local resident recently wrote about the monetary significance of hydrocarbon extraction and exportation.  What many advocates of the oil-dependence industry seem to ignore completely is the short-sighted and toxic process with which ‘unconventional oil and gas sources’ are being extracted. This process is known as ‘induced hydraulic fracturing’, or ‘fracking’ (for short).

There is growing peer-reviewed scientific evidence of the harmful effects of shale gas development.  ‘Pro-fracking’ opinions focus on the big bucks and ignore the detrimental effects on our limited, freshwater systems.


There are a million well sites in North America which have used fracking.  A horizontal well in a shale formation can use between 7.5 million to 19 million litres of water.  That water used for extraction in gas shale ‘plays’ becomes toxic by the addition of: water‐based fracturing fluids mixed with friction‐reducing additives; biocides to prevent microorganism growth and to reduce biofouling of the fractures; oxygen scavengers and other stabilizers to prevent corrosion of metal pipes; and acids that are used to remove drilling mud.   80 % of this fracking fluid comes back to the surface and 20 % stays in the shale excavation ‘play’. This fracking fluid is highly toxic and contaminates local well-water, rivers, and underground water systems. 

This is the part which outweighs the financial benefits of present ‘fracking’ and non-conventional oil extraction methods. Our North American water reserves are limited.  Toxifying our limited water resources is insanity to say the least.  No amount of remuneration can justify contaminating underground water beds and surface-water courses for coming generations.

As of 2012, 2.5 million hydraulic fracturing jobs have been performed on oil and gas wells worldwide!

Do an internet search on the topic of ‘fracking’ and why it is so controversial. Be wary of industry-backed politicians who would smooth over the environmental collateral damage left from ‘fracking’ practices.

  Water well testing must take place both prior to and after seismic testing operations
If a well-owner does not test and show healthy conditions were present prior to nearby  ‘fracking’, then there is no possibility of claiming damages when contamination does eventually occur.

For the last hundred years, water rights belong to the owner of the land.  Tough luck for  those landowners and city-dwellers downstream, since liability favors industry not local taxpayers.  High cancer rates and damaging side-effects to human and animal life occur where tailing ponds and fracking fluid has escaped into underground and above-ground waterways. 

How can we not seriously demand alternatives to oil/gas addiction and its collateral damage?  There is money to be made and jobs to be had, but it requires focusing on developing those alternatives.  Industry is not going to encourage that shift.  Politicians serve industry and corporate interests, not the long-term health of the nation.  And once again…fresh, drinkable water is becoming threatened by ‘fracking’ practices.


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August 12th, 2014

8/12/2014

0 Comments

 
I want to take a few days to look at why Johns Hopkins and Harvard think 'if you are born poor you stay poor' and look at how neo-liberalism and neo-cons are working hard to reshape Western society to reflect this ideal.  The corporate frauds of tens of trillions of dollars in the US alone is mirrored all over the world wherever The Clinton Foundation moved in to recruit and educate people who were placed as leaders to do in those nations what was being done in the US.  You can follow Harvard graduates from other nations to see where the fraud and corruption emanates in those nations.  All over the world the same wealth inequity from fraud and corruption exists and it is because of the philosophy of neo-liberal/neo-conservative free and global markets.  No matter how many times a Republican states free markets can work, if you take away the oversight and accountability from corporations and government----they will become systemically criminal and corrupt as exists now in the US.  Baltimore and Maryland is at the bottom.  You'll notice that not one mention of fraud and corruption will be found in social research from universities.

This is the consolidated wealth.  What the American people need to remember is most of this involves criminal activity and lots of unconstitutional actions and all of this can be reversed and recovered.  A government aiding and abetting crime and suspending Rule of Law is denying citizens DUE PROCESS and therefore Statutes of Limitations are not in play.  So, just engage in politics and take back your government!
Rebuilding Rule of Law and public justice should be the top issue for every American.

Make a good life for your children and grandchildren.


Must Read: The Corporate State of America – Widespread Crime, Corruption and Fraud


October 18, 2007, 10:28 am  PR WATCH


Corruption widespread in India, says US report |

Business Line
 www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/international/... 

There is widespread corruption in India in all ... the Bombay High Court ordered that a special team be formed to investigate an alleged fraud in which money ...




EY raises alarm over cybercrime, widespread corruption ... www.vanguardngr.com/2014/06/ey-raises-alarm-cybercrime...    West Africa Leader of EY’s Forensic/Fraud ... respondents who perceive bribery and corruption to be widespread in Nigeria. 72 per cent of the ...


Compliance and law combine to stem corruption in Brazilian ...

www.insidecounsel.com/2014/06/23/compliance-and-law...   CachedJun 23, 2014 ·

A study has determined that 70 percent of Brazilian executives interviewed believe that corruption is widespread in ... fraud and corruption is ...



One in five executives thinks corruption is widespread in Canada’s business world, EY report shows
Claire Brownell | June 11, 2014 | Last Updated: Jun 11 5:29 PM ET Financial Post






US commission finds widespread waste and corruption in ... www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/0901/US...   CachedSep 01, 2011 · US commission finds widespread waste and corruption in wartime ... Afghanistan has resulted in as much as $60 billion in waste and fraud ... .


_________________________________________________

This article does a good job summing up the war on the middle-class.  He cleans up his commentary by not declaring fraud and corruption as the problem and you can see an allegiance to Clinton when he points fingers at all the Presidential culprits but cannot name Clinton.  Rather he speaks of breaking Glass Steagall/deregulation/  Nafta without mentioning Clinton's name......and the massive subprime housing fraud was a transfer of wealth.  I do like how he identifies THE SEQUESTRATION AND FORCED BUDGET AGREEMENTS TO PAY DOWN THE $17 TRILLION DEBT as simply the final attack on public wealth by neo-liberals and neo-cons working together.  These trillions of dollars in cuts......the deliberate manipulation of inflation to zero etc are all assaults on what is left of the American middle/working class wealth and what we won't get will be handed away as corporate subsidy or lost to continuing fraud.

Here in Maryland all pols are neo-liberals and Maryland has moved further than most states in dismantling Democracy and public justice......


SIMPLY REBUILDING A DOMESTIC ECONOMY WITH SMALL AND REGIONAL BUSINESSES AND KEEPING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AT BAY ALONG WITH REBUILDING RULE OF LAW AND OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED TO REVERSE THIS ATTACK!


It’s Official: Rich Declare War on the Middle Class

by 

Robert Freeman


For the past thirty years the rich have been waging war on the middle class.  It’s been astonishingly effective, partly because it has been undeclared.  But even that pretense is now being abandoned.  The President’s National Deficit Commission has effectively declared that the rich will now go after what is left of working and middle class wealth and will take whatever steps are necessary to seize it.  If allowed to succeed, their plan will reduce Americans to a state of serfdom.

Ronald Reagan began the war on the middle class with his “supply-side” economics.  Its very purpose, according to David Stockman, Reagan’s Budget Director, was to transfer wealth and income upwards.  It cut the marginal tax rate on the highest income earners from 75% to 35% while dramatically expanding spending for war.  The results were two-fold:  massive federal debt and an astonishing rise in the share of income and wealth going to those who were already the wealthiest people in the world.

The national debt quadrupled between 1980 and 1992.  George W. Bush would repeat Reagan’s policies and double it again between 2000 and 2008.  Meanwhile, the share of national income going to the top 1% more than doubled, from 9% to 24%.  The share going to the top one-tenth of 1% of income earners more than tripled.  We now have the most unequal distribution of income in the developing world and the inequality is growing rapidly.

Shifts of this magnitude over such short periods of time have never been seen in American history.  With the rich getting much, much richer, its means that everybody else is getting poorer.  And in fact, real wages for median workers are lower today than they were in 1973.  Indeed, while the inflation-adjusted income of the bottom fifth of workers fell by $6,900 between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% saw its annual income increase by $741,000!

To try to keep up with living standards Americans resorted to debt.  They increased their personal debt-to-income ratio from 62% in 1980 to 130% in 2008.  When housing prices fell 35% nationwide in the recent collapse it left Americans with a smaller share of equity in their homes, 48%, than at any time since the Great Depression.  The share they have lost has been taken by the banks.

In other words, all of the income and wealth gains for middle Americans from the “golden years” between 1945 and 1975 have now been wiped out.  Or more accurately, have now been transferred to the very rich.  The top 1% holds 34% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50% holds just 2.5%.  The bottom 40% owns absolutely nothing.


These effects and numbers can be numbing, even dizzying.  But it’s important to understand that they have not been the result of random events or impersonal market forces.  Rather, they have followed as the intended consequences of the relentless application of a wide array of government and industry policies.

The massive run-up in debt is one such policy. The wealthy are net lenders. This means that massive public and private debt transfers interest income to them from the rest of the economy.  Another method for effecting massive wealth transfer:  Beginning in 1981 the Reagan administration effectively stopped enforcing anti-trust laws, allowing monopolies to gouge everyone who had to buy their products.

The government actually provided tax subsidies so that corporations could eliminate jobs in the industrial heartland and ship them to Mexico and later, China, India, and other low-wage countries, reducing wages and pitting American workers against each other for those jobs remaining.

The bank deregulation that began in the early 1980s reached its apex with the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act in the late nineties.  This set up the “casino capitalism” of the next decade that would spawn massive criminality and mortgage fraud by the nation’s leading banks—none of which has been prosecuted.  The result was the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.

But even as more than five million homeowners have lost their homes, the wealthy had their losses covered by the Bush and later Obama administrations.  Bloomberg news estimates that the transfer to the banks through the financial bailout comes to some $13 trillion dollars.

We could go on and on and on with the roster of ways the wealthy have used the government to transfer national wealth to themselves.  Environmental and health laws that are not enforced.  Deals with the pharmaceutical industry so they don’t have to compete with foreign manufacturers.  Health care “reform” that forces tens of millions of Americans to buy questionable insurance products, even as insurers continue to kick legitimate claimants off their rolls.  Give-aways of the telecommunication spectrum worth hundreds of billions of dollars to media monopolies that ladle out state propaganda as if were news and never, ever challenge official narratives.

In these and a thousand other ways, the rich have conspired with the government they largely control to shift more and still more of the nation’s wealth away from the working and middle classes, to themselves.  It amounts to the most insidious class warfare and the most rapacious looting of public and private resources in the history of the world.

The result is vast impoverishment, demoralization, and the destruction of the American middle class.  One out of eight Americans are on food stamps.  One out of five people are in official poverty.  One out of four children are raised in poverty.  Twenty five million people cannot find enough work, while their skills atrophy and their families and communities are destroyed.  These are not figures describing a banana republic, a disaster-stricken region, or a third world country. They describe the United States of America after three decades of plunder by the rich.  And now they want to go in for the kill.

Not satisfied with the staggering wealth they have already siphoned away, the ultra-rich are now using Barack Obama’s National Deficit Commission to propose even more brazen plunder.  And the looting is no longer taking place behind closed doors or under the cover of arcane public policies.

The commission proposes to cut the federal government’s budget deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade.  But 75% of the “savings” will come from gutting programs that help stabilize the middle class and their communities.  None of it comes from policies that would harm the rich.

For example, the commission proposes cutting the tax deduction for mortgage payments.  Not only will this render housing much less affordable for millions of prospective home buyers, it will reduce housing prices, perhaps substantially, for without the tax writeoff, buyers will be able to afford much less house.  This will decimate the sole source of wealth of tens of millions of Americans.

It is housing wealth that undergirds retirement security for the middle class.  Or, at least it did until one out of four homeowners went underwater on their mortgage in the recent bank-triggered collapse.  Then, even as the Commission plans to decimate home prices and owner equity, it proposes cutting back benefits to Social Security recipients.

It would lower Social Security cost-of living adjustments while raising the minimum retirement age.  And this is being proposed at the very moment that the bank-owned Federal Reserve Board is beginning to print hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks from what’s left of their toxic assets still held from the housing crash.

The ensuing inflation is going to destroy the value of retirement incomes at exactly the moment that 77 million baby boomers head off into retirement.  It was exactly this process of money printing and bankrupting of retirees that destroyed the German middle class in the early 1920s, giving rise to Adolph Hitler.

The Commission’s proposals would increase co-pays and deductibles for Medicare, making it unaffordable to millions.  It proposes taxing as income the health insurance benefits millions receive from their employers.  The Child Tax Credit would be eliminated as would 10% of all federal government jobs.  This, at a time when more than 20% of the workforce is already underemployed and there are five workers trying for every available job.

We should be crystal clear:  these policies amount to a mortal assault on what remains of middle class solvency and the democracy that a vibrant middle class makes possible.

But even as it girds up for this assault, the Commission barely touches the ultra-rich on whose boards they serve and who have gained so much over the past 30 years.  And it cannot go without being said that it was these same professional predators who actually wrecked the economy, pitching it into its greatest collapse since the Great Depression.

The Commission’s proposals would actually lower the maximum tax on the highest income earners, from 35% to 24%.  The nominal tax rate on corporate income would fall as well, from 35% to 26%.  There is nothing proposed to raise taxes after so many decades of steadily amassed wealth.  No financial transactions tax (as the IMF recommends) to stanch the kind of tsunami of speculative buying and selling that brought down the economy.  Such a tax would raise over $700 billion over the next decade.

Of course, there will be no claw-backs of the trillions of dollars transferred to the rich under the phony duress of “saving the system” during the height of the financial crisis.  No proposal that the cap on earnings subject to Social Security withholding should be removed.  That proviso alone would raise more than half a trillion dollars over the next decade.

In fact, it is in comparison with other give-aways to the rich that the take-aways from the middle class by the Commission can be seen as so one sided and venal.  Remember, they propose to save $4 trillion over 10 years.

But the war in Iraq, which we now know was entirely premised on lies, will cost more than $5 trillion, according to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz.  It has proven a huge boon to the rich weapons makers, bankers, logistics companies and oil companies that Bush used to coddle as his “base.”

As mentioned above, Bloomberg news estimates that the financial bailout cost some $13 trillion, all of it going to the very richest people on the planet.  There is not a syllable in the Commission’s report proposing getting any of that back to help reduce the deficit.

Or consider the notorious Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 where fully 40% went to the top 1% of income earners.  Obama once promised to overturn them but, as is his typically cowardly pattern, is now folding.  The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated that they will cost the government more than $18 trillion over their lifetime—four times what the Deficit Commission claims it will achieve in savings.  But God forbid we should ask for even a penny of that back to help battle the deficit.

In other words, there are many, many substantial and just ways that the savings the Commission proposes to create could be secured via small contributions from those who have gamed the system and gained the most over the past three decades.  But that is not the Commission’s plan.  And it is in that omission that its true intent is revealed.

There is no more time for stealth, no more need for subtlety.  Western capitalist economies are declining at a pace that is frightening their elite stewards and compelling such desperate, slovenly measures as the wholesale printing of money to postpone the inevitable.  While Obama sings lullabies of “hope” and “change” to tranquillize the suckers out front, the rich are backing the truck up to the vault in the back, no longer even deigning to disguise the heist.  And of course, why should they?  They have the additional diversion of the moronic Tea Party vigilantes (“Keep the government out of my Medicare”), ever ready to cut other people’s throats to cure their own nosebleeds.


The Commission’s proposal is the most naked, undisguised declaration of class warfare possible.  Its agenda is not to reduce the deficit but rather to reduce what is left of the American middle class and American workers, to a condition of servitude, of feudal peonage.  Their poverty will make them docile and subservient.  This will make possible the final looting of America by those whose sociopathic greed has brought it so low already.  The battle over this proposal is the last bulwark against the devastation and final destruction of America.  It must be fought and won or our freedom and security ceded forever.  There is no other choice.











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Below you see one quality of life issue being tackled by US corporate media.  You look above and you see why the middle-class is fading and you look below and you would never see that all of this simply needs justice to reverse who has the money.

In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins is pushing Michelle Rhee education privatization and that includes removing playgrounds from schools and building parks for the children to be 'reflective'.  There is often no recess,
yet amazingly the hype for education and health care reform in Maryland is wellness and fitness. 


The other stat that is interesting is that 20% of Americans are doing OK----FOR NOW.  They are moving for only 10% so you better watch out!  I point this out because it shows exactly the percentage of voters coming to the polls in elections.  THOSE 'LIKELY' VOTERS.  Indeed, 80% of Americans are disaffected because they are the victims of the frauds and corruptions listed above and those 20% doing OK are profiting from the fraud and corruption.  See why salaries for people in government are rising above $200,000?  Taxpayers are not paying for quality employees.....the rich are buying loyalty.  So, in Baltimore we have Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins skimming billions of dollars of city and state revenue that means they have to allow those minions in City Hall skim thousands just as is done in Afghanistan.  Baltimore City Hall actually preys on Baltimore citizens with corrupt fines, fees, and taxes.  IT IS BREATH-TAKING.  This is what is happening in those nations listed above and the #1 winner----Wall Street banks and their investment firms.

If you notice, the conversation in college athletics is not why are coaches and sports departments being allowed to become corporations----it has become making the college athlete a paid worker.  There goes amateur sports.  Look below again and you see the real picture----the vocationalizing of K-12 with children tracked into sports training at youth.  That is what sports in America will look like just as it does in China say the neo-liberals and neo-cons.  We only need children playing sports if they can create profit as professionals!


WAKE UP!!!!!!  LET'S SIMPLY TURN THIS AROUND.


Sports & Leisure 2/03/2014 @ 5:11PM

As The Middle Class Fades, The Casual Youth Athlete Dies Out With It


As businesses are ignoring political debates and determining that climate change is real, so, too, are they stepping out of the arguments over income inequality by operating as if it exists. In particular, that there are two markets: the few and the wealthy, and the many and the not-so-wealthy. The market that doesn’t exist — or at least not like it used to — the middle class.

From The New York Times:


“Those consumers who have capital like real estate and stocks and are in the top 20 percent are feeling pretty good,” said John G. Maxwell, head of the global retail and consumer practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers .

In response to the upward shift in spending, PricewaterhouseCoopers clients like big stores and restaurants are chasing richer customers with a wider offering of high-end goods and services, or focusing on rock-bottom prices to attract the expanding ranks of penny-pinching consumers.

“As a retailer or restaurant chain, if you’re not at the really high level or the low level, that’s a tough place to be,” Mr. Maxwell said. “You don’t want to be stuck in the middle. …

In 2012, the top 5 percent of earners were responsible for 38 percent of domestic consumption, up from 28 percent in 1995, [economic] researchers found.

I bring this up because I think the decline of the middle class, the greater presence (and acceptance) of an all-or-nothing economy, has something to do with why, according to one major report, fewer children are playing team sports.

The Sports & Fitness Industry Association, a trade group for what it calls “leading industry sports and fitness brands, suppliers, retailers and partners,” in January reported that since 2008, or around the start of the Great Recession, “team sports have lost 16.1 million participants or 11.1% of all team participants, measured by those who played at least once a year.” The sports taking the biggest hit in 2013 were the biggest sports: football, basketball and baseball — a trend that the National Sporting Goods Association, a retail trade group, noted in June (and that are increasingly being reflected in high school sports participation numbers).

The Sports & Fitness Industry Association is very sure of why that decline is happening. The issue is not so-called “core” athletes, who play frequently. In 15 out of 24 team sports measured, the number of core athletes increased (compared with only five out of 24 in 2011). But the occasional athlete, the weekend warrior, the kid just trying out a sport — those numbers are falling hard. From a news release quoting the association’s director of communications and research, VJ Mayor:

 “The degradation of the casual team sports participant cannot be ignored,” said Mayor. “Casual participation is the gateway to more core participants. We have already begun to see a decline in core participation among traditional team sports over the last five years which is alarming. The drop could be influenced by several factors including increased single sport specialization, overuse injury, athlete burnout, safety concerns, and the marginalization of the recreation player. …”

Actually, the several factors spelled out by Mayor are all related to one factor: the increasing professionalization of youth sports and younger and younger levels. Parents are savvy enough to know that their children, at very early ages, are being sorted by a well-organized system into the pile as future athlete, or the pile as future nonathlete. There is no third pile. And there are many businesses out there — not just sporting goods businesses — that know how to exploit the ambitions and/or fears of the parents who want their kids in the athlete pile.

Exacerbating this system is a top 20 percent (as Maxwell described it) willing to spend more on kids’ education — including sports careers — out of the willingness of any parents to do what they can for their kids, while also aware that their peers are doing the same thing and thus could squeeze their kids out.

As for the other 80 percent — well, while there are long-told tales of athletes using sports as their perceived only way out of poverty, the middle class is also looking at sports as their only perceived way for their kids not to slip into poverty. At the least, spending big for a college scholarship so they have a chance at graduating from school without mounds of loans to pay. But those 80 percent have to weigh, constantly, whether the cost of play is worth it, with that cost of play driven by the upper 20 percent’s ability and willingness to pay. So you end up with two populations — the one that’s all in, and the one that’s shut out.

Of course, in the whole of the population, there are kids who will opt out of the youth sports rat race because they’ve found other interests. But a nagging question is, if they had access to sports that weren’t hard-core, would they find joy and pleasure in them, and keep playing? Or would they have a chance to discover at a later age, like 10, that they might enjoy a certain sport?

We’ll never know, because like in the American economy as a whole, increasingly there is no middle ground in youth sports. So I would expect that participation surveys in future years will show more of the same — a few playing a lot, most playing not much at all.


_________________________________________
US Attorney General Eric Holder who along with Obama can see no corporate fraud really hates when his time is pulled back to the American people demanding justice as if they were still citizens with rights and the US Attorney General worked for public justice.  He is a corporate lawyer and his entire day is working for US global corporations and their legal issues around the world.  This is why corporate fraud and government corruption is rampant----our state and US Justice Departments do not do public justice.  A bone is thrown now and then to assuage the masses.

Below is for whom Obama and your neo-liberal Congress person works----it is for whom O'Malley in Maryland has dedicated all economic and development---the International Chamber of Commerce.  These are the corporations winning all Federal, State, and local contracts for work and they are the ones openly fleecing governments and individuals with no fear from neo-liberal or neo-con pols.


We must start at the state and local level to rebuild Rule of Law.  If Maryland becomes a Rule of Law state the Governor will demand the US Justice Department protect the citizens of Maryland.

DO YOU HEAR YOUR INCUMBENTS SHOUTING TO REINSTATE RULE OF LAW?  VOTE THEM OUT OF OFFICE IF NOT!


A word from our Secretary General Welcome to ICC, a unique global business organization.

ICC is – and has been throughout its long existence – a steadfast rallying point for those who believe, like our founders, that strengthening commercial ties among nations is not only good for business but good for global living standards and good for peace.

To that end, ICC provides a forum for businesses and other organizations to examine and better comprehend the nature and significance of the major shifts taking place in the world economy. We also offer an influential and respected channel for supplying business leadership to help governments manage those shifts in a collaborative manner for the benefit of the world economy as a whole.

While policy advocacy is a major part of ICC’s work, everything else we do is also devoted to promoting international trade and investment. Indeed, much of our work is of a very practical nature, focussed on making it easier for business to operate internationally. Our world-renowned commercial arbitration service is a form of impartial and dependable private justice that gives more security to commercial partners doing business across frontiers.

Drawing on the expertise and experience of its worldwide membership, ICC has also over time developed a large array of voluntary rules, guidelines, and codes – - sometimes referred to as ‘trade tools’ –- which facilitate cross-border transactions and help spread best practice among companies. A notable example is ICC’s famous Incoterms® rules –- first elaborated in 1936 –- which are accepted as the global standard for the interpretation of the most common terms used in contracts for the international sale of goods.


ICC strives to ensure that the emerging new world, with new poles of power and leadership, stays faithful to the precept that international trade and investment and the market economy system are key factors in raising and spreading wealth.

I remain convinced that the core values that led to the creation of ICC over 90 years ago are as relevant today as they were then. Those values will continue to provide a compass for our efforts on behalf of business to help shape the new world that is emerging.




John Danilovich

Secretary General
International Chamber of Commerce



0 Comments

July 28th, 2014

7/28/2014

0 Comments

 
THERE GOES ANOTHER PUBLIC ASSET-----PUBLIC PARKING.  RATHER THAN SERVE THE PUBLIC WITH AFFORDABLE PRICES BALTIMORE HANDS PARKING TO PREDATORY CORPORATIONS SO THEY CAN SOAK THE CITIZENS.



I was listening to people speak of how much money Johns Hopkins has and I ask myself-----does Hopkins really have that money or does most of it belong to the taxpayer and public?  The answer of course is that Hopkins is a publicly-owned entity with a small private college attached.  The reason Hopkins has the appearance of money is all of the fraud and corruption the last few decades that in the Baltimore and Maryland region moved to Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins.  They are the local Visigoths who raided the US Treasury and US citizen's pockets.  Simply reinstating Rule of Law moves much of that money back.  Remember, the Ivy League schools and Wall Street did to the US what Gorbachev and Yelsin did to Russians-----PERESTROIKA moved all of the Russian people's wealth to connected families then called the Oligarchs.  All of those decades of hard work and investment by the Russian people was simply auctioned off and privatized.  This is what Wall Street and the Ivy League schools are doing in the US and it is why they have endowments in the billions of dollars with off-shore investments all over the world.  They are not universities----they are corporations that fleeced government coffers and people's pockets.  Baltimore City Hall has become so predatory on behalf of Johns Hopkins that they are sending out inflated water bills and passing laws to allow secure of people's homes simply because they owe a few hundred dollars in taxes and their cars for simply owing a few parking tickets.  Preying on the working class to take every last home owned is the goal.  These policies are now expanding to the middle-class who are struggling with this deliberate stagnation and high unemployment.

WHEN NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS ALLOW POLICY THAT HAS ALL PUBLIC REVENUE GO TO CORPORATE TAX BREAKS AND SUBSIDY AND ALLOW MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION----THEY ARE TAKING YOU TO A THIRD WORLD STATUS.  THIS IS MARYLAND TODAY.

The latest move towards PERESTOIKA comes with Baltimore City Parking.  The city agency was handed to global corporations in a public private partnership a few decades ago and is now ranked as one of the agencies with the most fraud and corruption.  THE BALTIMORE PARKING AUTHORITY is simply a corporation that pays no taxes and allows the taxpayers to pay all operations and maintenance as with all public private partnerships. There is not one community in city center that is not metered or permitted so if you want to do business in these areas you have to park in one of these city lots which as privatized have become increasingly expensive.  Around the Inner Harbor and Enterprise Zone areas you can pay $25 to $40 a day to come and enjoy the waterfront.  When parking facilities are public-----the idea is to give people a convenient and affordable place to park that brings the city revenue to fill its coffers.  See the difference?


MAYOR RAWLINGS BLAKE PLANS TO SELL 4 PARKING DECKS IN DOWNTOWN FOR $40 MILLION SAY THE HEADLINES.

There is almost no publicly owned space in downtown Baltimore and these properties are in high value development zones so $40 million is a steal.  So, instead of that money coming into our government coffers it will now go to private global corporate profit and you can bet that $8-10 a day parking will soar.  Less affordable parking in downtown Baltimore.  At the same time the downtown area businesses are getting no consumer traffic and are struggling to stay in business----don't worry, City Hall will give more public money to keep you in business.  It couldn't be that no one wants to pay so much to come down town and the threats of parking employees standing at the wait to ticket you the minute that meter expires?

PEOPLE ARE NOT COMING DOWNTOWN BECAUSE THE ENTIRE ENVIRONMENT IS PREDATORY.

Oh, it's those roaming bands of youth they say.  NO, IT'S THE PREDATORY PUBLIC POLICY THAT FINES, FEES, AND TAXES THE PUBLIC TO DEATH BECAUSE ALL PUBLIC REVENUE IS BEING redirected to global corporations.



Mayor Rawlings-Blake Wants To Sell Garages For Revenue


July 27, 2014 8:04 AM BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake plans to announce a proposal to sell four city-owned parking garages to generate cash for urgent priorities and infrastructure.

The mayor’s office says Rawlings-Blake will announce her plans Monday to introduce new legislation to sell the parking garages to generate $40 million to $60 million. The proceeds would be used for urgent priorities, such as eliminating blight, without adding to the city’s debt.

Also on Monday, Rawlings-Blake and members of the City Council will help open the city’s first new recreation center built in 10 years. The Morrell Park Community Center features a gymnasium, fitness room and outdoor green space.

It’s the first recreation center to be built from the ground since a 2010 taskforce recommended a transformation of the city’s aging recreation centers.

(Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


___________________________________________


Now, for what will $40 million pay?  Well, it would take $40 million to partially pay for the $100 million in Exelon Corporation tax break that was given for no reason at all------a pay-to-play.  Then, there is the few hundred million each year of taxpayer money subsidizing the Hilton that was never needed and will never turn a profit especially since we are heading towards a bond market crash and recession for years.  So, Rawlings-Blake is handing public assets for dirt cheap to pay for bad policy and fraud and corruption.  It's revenue  neutral to empty government coffers with corporate tax breaks and subsidy while handing all that is public to these same entities.  Let's look at the history of the Baltimore Parking Authority:

Meet the Parking Authority------BOOTED FOR FAILING TO PAY 3 PARKING TICKETS----FORGET YOU ARE HAVING TO GO TO COURT TO CONTEST MANY OF THOSE TICKETS OR SIMPLY GETTING THEM TOO FAST TO PAY.


Neo-liberals will try hard to make it sound as if these partnerships are with a local or regional corporation but as you see below all of the ones tied to Baltimore Parking Authority are national and global corporations.  Why do we want our local economy tied with corporations that take the profits out of the city and state?  This is why our government coffers are starved and it is deliberate global market policy.  If a French corporation comes to the US ---then a US corporation goes to France----both undermining labor and justice.  Partnered with the city they pay no taxes.


LAZ Parking’s success was founded on childhood friendships that grew into a nationwide customer oriented parking service.

Republic Parking System is a privately owned professional parking management company based in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The company operates over 690 parking facilities in 87 US cities.[1]


PMS
PMS - Parking Management Services SA Votre spécialiste dans la conception, réalisation et gestion de parkings !
  • Markets Served Atlanta • Charlotte • Chattanooga • Dallas/Fort Worth • Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood • Houston Indianapolis • Jacksonville • Kansas City • Miami New Orleans • New York • Orlando/Walt Disney World • Richmond • Scottsdale • Tampa

Inside City Hall: Parking garage operators get no-bid extensions A range of management fees charged to the Parking Authority.

Mark Reutter June 29, 2012 at 4:12 pm

In a little-noticed item approved without comment on Wednesday, the Board of Estimates signed off on no-bid extensions of management contracts to run some of the city’s main parking garages.

The deal, requested by the Parking Authority for Baltimore City, obliges the quasi-public agency to pay $3.57 million in management fees to four operators, led by the ubiquitous PMS Parking group headed by Amsale Geletu, a certified woman-owned business.

PMS, Landmark Parking, LAZ Parking Mid-Atlantic and Republic Parking Systems were awarded the management contracts some 15 months ago.

The contracts were set to expire tomorrow (June 30), but the parking agency blew the deadline for writing up new agreements. Hence, the old contracts will stay in effect until December 31, 2013.

The Penn Station Garage boasts the highest management fee per space under a contract approved by the Board of Estimates. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

All this was explained in the unique nomenclature of the Board of Estimates agenda: “. . . efforts [to write the new agreements] have been delayed due to the Parking Authority experiencing significant disruption in the personnel charged with oversight and administration of this and other management agreements, and the procurement of new management agreements.”

As a result, “This amendment to the original agreement provides additional funding to pay for anticipated operating expenses and compensates the organization during the extended term upon the original compensation structure.”

Costs Vary Among Garages


The breakdowns of the individual parking contracts provide some interesting reading. Take the cost of security over the 18-month extension period.

Republic Parking will be paid $211,000 for providing security at the Lexington Market parking garage. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

It ranges from a low of $4,000 for the Fleet and Eden Garage in Fells Point to a high of $211,000 for the Market Center Garage serving Lexington Market.

The charges for maintenance also vary widely.

PMS will maintain and repair the 376-space Franklin Street Garage for $275,888 under the extended agreement.

Landmark, on the other hand, is authorized to bill the city 2½ times that amount ($670,000) for the somewhat larger (525 space) Penn Station Garage.

Even with its high security costs, Market Center is not the costliest municipal garage under private management.

That honor goes to the Penn Station Garage used chiefly by Amtrak and MARC customers. The management fee over the next 18 months amounts to $1,533 per parking space.

Quasi-Public

The Parking Authority is one of those quasi-public governmental entities – others include the Baltimore Development Corp. and Baltimore Hotel Corp., owner of Hilton Baltimore – whose stated mission is “to enhance Baltimore City’s position in planning, development, management and operations of its parking institution.”

Its budget is not part of the annual city budget approved by the City Council. Its five-member board consists of four people appointed by the mayor and one by the City Council president. The direct link to the mayor is through Director of Finance Harry E. Black, who sits on the board.

In addition to administering 17 municipal garages and 23 surface lots, the Parking Authority operates the residential parking permit program.
_______________________________

Here is a breakdown of the fees to be charged for the extended contracts:

Caroline St. Garage, 325 spaces, operator PMS, management fee: $350,027, or $1,077 per space.

Little Italy Garage, 399 spaces, operator PMS, management fee: $387,363, or $971 per space.

St. Paul Place Garage, 500 spaces, operator PMS and LAZ Parking Mid-Atlantic, management fee: $533,668, or $1,067 per space.

Franklin St. Garage, 376 spaces, operators PMS and LAZ Parking Mid-Atlantic, management fee: $331,888, or $883 per space.

Market Center Garage, 606 spaces, operator Republic Parking Systems, management fee: $651,791, or $1,076 per space.

Penn Station Garage, 525 spaces, operator Landmark Parking,  management fee: $804,933, or $1,533 per space.

Fleet and Eden Garage, 815 spaces, operator, Landmark Parking, management fee: $507,273, or $622 per space.

___________________________________________


contesting baltimore city parking tickets?

09/17/07 at 1:36pm   after leaving my apartment this morning i found a $52 dollar parking ticket on my car, for apparently "parking in an unmarked crosswalk".  this is totally bullshit, imo, as there is no signage, crosswalk, or handicap accessible curb where my car was parked.  i'm planning to write a letter to contest the ticket, and was wondering if anyone out there has done this ... and to what effect.  did it get your ticket dropped?  did you still have to go to court to contest the ticket after submitting the letter?

There was an article a few years ago that had the City of Baltimore doing national searches to find people owing the city parking tickets.  As you see below, a $25 fine can become thousands of dollars in fees and your car can be impounded and sold.  Now, people should simply pay a parking ticket but to have a system in place that creates such a financial burden on citizens for minor offenses is predatory.  Towing fees of $400 on cars booted for 3 outstanding parking tickets has the City Impound flush with cars and they are making profits from working class citizens not able to pay.  Meanwhile, a corporation leaves Baltimore owing millions of dollars in water bills......probably never paid.

Combine the high parking meter fees, the ever higher parking garage fees, and the parking employees being right there when your meter time ends-----and you have a reason for not going downtown in Baltimore.


Four parking tickets on state vehicles cost taxpayers $2,263 Tickets go unpaid, and penalties grow


By Scott Calvert, The Baltimore Sun 9:33 a.m. EDT, June 8, 2012

Five years ago, a Ford Windstar assigned to the state Department of Juvenile Services got a $42 parking ticket in downtown Baltimore. The ticket was not paid on time. And in the weeks, months and years that followed, the penalties grew and grew and grew.

A week after The Baltimore Sun inquired to state budget officials on April 20, the agency finally ponied up. The tab: $970.

It was one of four unpaid Baltimore City parking citations the agency belatedly paid. Due to the delays, tickets amounting to $178 wound up costing state taxpayers a cool $2,263.



___________________________________________

Baltimore City is so starved of money from all of the corporate tax breaks, tax evasion, and fraud that it simply must take away free parking for the disabled.  Dismantling the public sector support for the disabled and creating tiered funding with special needs at the lowest level-----  can you imagine denying the disabled the pleasure of being soaked with parking fines, fees, and taxes to support corporate profit!  We are doing it to stop the theft of placards they say-----can the police not run a license check to see if a car is registered for disability?  Easy Peasy.  People are being pushed to use these tactics because it is too expense for many people to park.  If your business is with City Hall ----you will be there for hours; phone resolutions are deliberately hard to get.-----no, Baltimore and Johns Hopkins uses public policy to push the disabled out of Baltimore.  DEMOCRATS DO NOT DO THAT----NEO-CONS DO!  Why are Baltimore pols running as Democrats when they are neo-conservatives?

Take public transit you say-----sorry, it has been so defunded and funds diverted from public transit that the quality equals that of Central American bus service.  If you are not downtown-----it takes you hours to travel the shortest distance.  Can you imagine being disabled trying to wait for a dysfunctional public transit.


DISABILITY ACT AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY------NOT IN MARYLAND THEY SAY!  WE ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS WORKING TO SEND ALL MONEY TO THE RICH AFTER ALL!



Mayor Rawlings-Blake Announces Changes to City Parking to Address Misuse of Disability


Tags Wednesday Jul 9th, 2014

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Mayor,

Baltimore City

250 City Hall - Baltimore Maryland 21202

(410) 396-3835 - Fax: (410) 576-9425

Better Schools. Safer Streets. Stronger Neighborhoods.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT

Caron A. Brace

(443) 853-0957

caron.brace@baltimorecity.gov

Project SPACE Improves Access for Drivers with Disabilities; Aims to Increase Available Parking, Stop Theft, Abuse of Disability Placards BALTIMORE, Md. (July 9, 2014)—Today, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was joined by the Parking Authority of Baltimore City, the Mayor's Commission on Disabilities, the Downtown Partnership, and members of the disability community to announce Project SPACE, an initiative that aims to eliminate the abuse of disability placards, create more accessible parking for people with disabilities, and increase the general availability of on-street parking Downtown.

Project SPACE will require all drivers who utilize on-street parking in the downtown business district to pay the parking meter—even if a disability placard or tag is displayed. The cost and time limitations for on-street parking will be the same regardless of whether the driver is displaying a disability placard/tags.

"As we near the 24th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act, we want to offer greater freedom of access for those with disabilities and their families," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. "Baltimore should be accessible for everyone who wishes to enjoy the many attractions that are part of what makes our city a great place to live, work, and play. In addition to combatting the abuse of disability placards, Project SPACE, will ultimately create more parking spaces for everyone."

As part of Project SPACE, approximately 200 on-street parking spaces with highly accessible, ADA compliant single-space meters have been reserved for vehicles displaying a disability placard or tags. Additionally, all EZ Park meters throughout the Central Business District have been retrofitted to meet new ADA standards, making them even more accessible for people with disabilities. To meet state requirements, the time limit for all on-street parking spaces within areas affected by Project SPACE will increase to four hours.

Project SPACE is part of the solution to a major, ongoing parking problem in Baltimore City. Current policy allows individuals displaying a disability placard or license plates to park in metered on-street parking spaces free of charge. This often results in illegal use by motorists parking for long periods of time, and promotes theft of disability placards—which are now the number one item stolen out of vehicles. By removing the financial incentive to abuse a disability placard and requiring all drivers to pay for parking, Project SPACE aims to prevent placard theft and increase the number of available parking spaces for all drivers.

"We have performed a number of parking studies that have shown that, in certain city blocks, vehicles displaying disability placards often take up 100 percent of on-street spaces and remain parked there all day," said Peter Little, executive director of the Parking Authority of Baltimore City. "Stricter enforcement will create more parking turnover and increase the number of available parking spaces as abusers seek less expensive parking options off street."

While Project SPACE is launching in the Central Business District—an area defined as the streets bounded by Franklin Street on the north, President Street on the east, Key Highway on the south, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard on the west—the program will eventually expand to Fells Point, Harbor East, Federal Hill, Mount Vernon, and beyond.

"We work to promote equal rights and opportunities for people with disabilities, including making sure people with disabilities have adequate access to accessible parking options in Baltimore City," said Dr. Nollie Wood, Jr., executive director of the Mayor's Commission on Disabilities. "The Mayor's Commission on Disabilities supports Project SPACE, because it helps accomplish our overall goal. We're looking for equal opportunity—not cheaper services."

For more information on Project SPACE, please visit www.MoreSpace4All.com. Project SPACE is also on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MoreSpace4All and on Twitter and Instagram at @MoreSpace4All.

About the Parking Authority of Baltimore City Parking Authority of Baltimore City (PABC) is a "quasi" governmental agency of Baltimore City and a registered 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to find, or create, and implement parking solutions for Baltimore City and to be the resource on all things "parking" in Baltimore. PABC oversees the management of 17 parking garages, numerous lots, over 800 EZ Park Meters, over 1,500 reserved residential handicap parking spaces, and 46 residential permit parking areas.

About the Mayor's Commission on Disabilities The Mayor's Commission on Disabilities was created by City of Baltimore Ordinance #93-237 to promote equal rights and opportunities for people with disabilities. The Commission assists the City in assessing the accessibility of City facilities, programs, and services for citizens with disabilities; providing information and education programs to city government, businesses, and industries concerning issues relevant to citizens with disabilities; and complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).





____________________________________________________


Speed cameras as predator as the entire system is a failure ticketing massive numbers of people for no reason----sound familiar.  It took constant media shaming and wide-spread citizen outcry to stop the fraud and theft of public money.  So, you never know when you come to Baltimore if you are going to be fleeced by parking meters or speed cameras and then save a lot of time to fight it. 

PAY THE FINE THEY SAY----WE HAVE CORPORATE FRAUD, TAX EVASION, AND TAX BREAKS TO PAY FOR.


Add to that public policy that deliberately keeps unemployment in Baltimore high and you have no working economy.  Remember, the global corporations like Johns Hopkins do not want a thriving domestic economy----all the money is being made overseas.  It is deliberate policy meant to keep domestic citizens impoverished while all the revenue generated maximizes profits.  If you are not impoverished now---you and/or your children or grandchildren will be.  Think how these policies will get worse over time.

WE SIMPLY NEED A PUBLIC SECTOR PROVIDING OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY.  PUBLIC ASSETS DO NOT COST THE TAXPAYER----THEY BRING REVENUE TO GOVERNMENT COFFERS.




Maryland Speed Camera Fraud

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Tony McConkey

It is a violation of the public trust to continue to collect revenue from speed cameras that are inaccurate.  Baltimore City and other local governments should immediately issues refunds when a citation is false, and government has a duty to be proactive and to verify all cameras are working correctly.




Citation Payment Information
  • If your vehicle is currently booted or immobilized do NOT pay here. Instead, please call the Boot Release Line at 1-877-810-7907 to speak to an operator 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. (Call this number only for booted or immobilized cars.) If you pay on this website for a booted or immobilized vehicle, your car’s release will be delayed and it may be towed
  • Citations for most parking, red light, and speed camera violations are available for payment on this website the next business day. (Hand-written citations may take more than 1 month.)
  • Payments may not appear on this website for 3 business days. Payments take 1 to 3 business days to post, and this website reflects only posted payments. Unposted payments are not reflected on this website, which also may not reflect the $25 registration flag fee. Please call 410-396-4080 Monday–Friday (except holidays) 8:00am–4:30pm to verify your payment or confirm the amount due.
  • If you have 3 or more unpaid tickets more than 30 days old, your car may be immobilized or impounded.
  • Red Light and Speed Camera Citations with a violation date on or before December 31, 2012 are available at www.public.cite-web.com(External Link) (External Link). Enter your citation’s violation code and PIN number.
  • Red Light and Speed Camera Citations with a violation date on or after January 1, 2013 are available at www.ip360BaltCity.com (External Link). Enter your citation’s violation code and PIN number.
  • The CIty of Baltimore no longer faxes VR119 release forms to the Department of Motor Vehicles. All requests will be mailed within 2 to 3 business days.
Baltimore City provides online access to the public information maintained in its records. While the city has confidence in the accuracy of these records, Baltimore City makes no warranties, expressed or implied, regarding the information.

_____________________________________________
SEE WHAT O'MALLEY AND MARYLAND ASSEMBLY AND RAWLINGS-BLAKE AND BALTIMORE CITY HALL ARE UP TO! 

THIS IS WHY MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE PARKING AUTHORITY IS SO PREDATORY AND INCREASINGLY PROFITEERING----THE MORE MONEY GENERATED THE MORE MONEY MOVED TO WALL STREET THROUGH BONDS PURCHASE.  TAKES THAT MONEY RIGHT OUT OF GENERAL FUNDS TO BE USED BY EVERYONE AND DIRECTS IT TO INVESTMENT FIRMS AND DEVELOPERS.

This is what I mean about hiding Maryland debt. Maryland looks like it has less debt because of these credit leverages.  Don't think only neo-liberals are doing this----this is actually a Republican policy that has gone neo-con/neo-liberal as global corporations are getting all the money.   There is not a public revenue maker in Maryland that is not leveraged to credit bonds and here we have our parking agencies tied to Moody's.  This speaks of the Maryland Parking Authority but Baltimore Parking Authority is doing the same.  When every revenue source in a state is mortgage with credit bonds as is Maryland, when these economics crashes happen defaults occur and taxpayers lose hundreds of millions of dollars----which is the plan.  There deals not only feed Wall Street----the private corporations partnered with public parking are stealing right and left and profiteering on the backs of Maryland citizens......and this is super-sized in Baltimore.


Please think about what these neo-liberals and neo-cons are building with this money------restaurants, retail stores, financial businesses.  None of this builds a strong, healthy economy.  It is what exists in third world countries....tourism economy.  Think how many small businesses could be started with the money tied up in these bonds.  Remember, a bond market crash is coming very soon.  Even the Maryland and Baltimore Parking Authority is mortgaged.

Related Issuers
Maryland Transportation Authority


  Rating Action: Moody's affirms the A2 on Maryland Transportation Authority's Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport Parking Revenue Refunding Bonds Series 2012A and B; The outlook is stable Global Credit Research - 25 Mar 2014 Approximately $182.02 million of debt outstanding affected New York, March 25, 2014 -- Moody's Investors Service has affirmed the A2 rating on the Maryland Transportation Authority's (MDTA) Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) Parking Revenue Refunding Bonds Series 2012A and B. The outlook is stable.



RATINGS RATIONALE

The A2 rating on the parking revenue bonds reflects the strong coverage provided by a pledge of the net parking revenues of all parking facilities operated by the Maryland Aviation Administration (MAA), notwithstanding downturns in passenger enplanements at BWI in the last couple of years. While the pledge of only parking revenues presents a relatively narrow revenue stream, the parking facilities are essential to the airport operations, given the lack of convenient alternatives to reach BWI and the long established customer trends for parking at the airport. The A2 rating also reflects the strong demand for passenger travel in a large, affluent service area, and strong debt service coverage levels.



The parking revenue bonds were issued by the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) on behalf of the MAA which operates BWI. The MDTA has entered into leases with the MAA, which obligates the MAA to remit parking revenues for the repayment of the debt.




STRENGTHS

* Service area contains some of the wealthiest counties in the US as well as a premium tourist destination in Washington, D.C.

*BWI remains a strong origination & destination (O&D) market which drives parking revenues; Southwest Airlines is the largest carrier at the airport with 71.4% of enplanements as of FY 2013

*Total enplanements have been on a mostly positive trajectory since FY 2010

* Airport operates efficiently, with airline costs per enplanement lower than regional competitors Reagan National Airport and Washington-Dulles International Airport (Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, A1/Stable). Low cost per enplanement is helped by the airport's absence of general aviation debt.

*Debt service coverage ratios (DSCR) have remained stable and are estimated to be maintained at similar levels in the next year

*There is no additional debt expected to be supported by parking revenues.



CHALLENGES

*Market strength could be challenged by possible cuts in federal government spending given the concentration of federal jobs in the immediate region.

* Significant regional competition from other Washington area airports.

* Highly concentrated airline market share, with the combined Southwest/AirTran airline accounting for over 70% of enplanements in FY 2013

*Off-airport parking lots could pose a competitive threat to transaction growth at certain MAA parking facilities, such as the express and long-term parking lots.

* Reliance on dedicated and more restricted parking revenue streams which tend to decline more steeply than airport enplanements and lag in recovery

*Declining O&D passenger base as a result of Southwest increasing use of BWI as a connector negatively affects highly sensitive and narrow dedicated streams of parking revenues



Outlook

The stable outlook is based on expectations that enplanement and O&D passenger base will remain around current levels, supporting DSCRs at similar levels. The outlook also anticipates the successful renewal of the parking agreement for another 5-year term.



What could change the rating--UP

The rating is well placed in its category given the narrow nature of the revenue flow to cover debt service payments. Nonetheless, a marked improvement in revenues due to a sustainable positive change in the fundamental strength of the O&D enplanement base at BWI Marshall could exert positive ratings pressure.



What could change the rating--DOWN

Strong DSCR is key to the current rating level. Hence, a weakening of revenues over more than one year period that reduces financial margins could place some negative pressure on the rating.




The principal methodology used in this rating was Generic Project Finance Methodology published in December 2010. Please see the Credit Policy page on www.moodys.com for a copy of this methodology.



REGULATORY DISCLOSURES



For ratings issued on a program, series or category/class of debt, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to each rating of a subsequently issued bond or note of the same series or category/class of debt or pursuant to a program for which the ratings are derived exclusively from existing ratings in accordance with Moody's rating practices. For ratings issued on a support provider, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the rating action on the support provider and in relation to each particular rating action for securities that derive their credit ratings from the support provider's credit rating. For provisional ratings, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the provisional rating assigned, and in relation to a definitive rating that may be assigned subsequent to the final issuance of the debt, in each case where the transaction structure and terms have not changed prior to the assignment of the definitive rating in a manner that would have affected the rating. For further information please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page for the respective issuer on www.moodys.com.



Regulatory disclosures contained in this press release apply to the credit rating and, if applicable, the related rating outlook or rating review.



Please see www.moodys.com for any updates on changes to the lead rating analyst and to the Moody's legal entity that has issued the rating.

Please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for additional regulatory disclosures for each credit rating.

Jennifer Meihuy Chang
Analyst
Public Finance Group
Moody's Investors Service, Inc.
250 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10007
U.S.A.
JOURNALISTS: 212-553-0376
SUBSCRIBERS: 212-553-1653


Chee Mee Hu
MD - Project Finance
Public Finance Group
JOURNALISTS: 212-553-0376
SUBSCRIBERS: 212-553-1653


Releasing Office:
Moody's Investors Service, Inc.
250 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10007
U.S.A.
JOURNALISTS: 212-553-0376
SUBSCRIBERS: 212-553-1653

0 Comments

July 18th, 2014

7/18/2014

0 Comments

 
from subprime mortgage fraud to municipal bond fraudFRO
FROM SUBPRIME MORTGAGE FRAUD TO MUNICIPAL BOND FRAUD-----NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS ARE ALL ABOUT MOVING MONEY TO THE TOP ANY WAY POSSIBLE

Let's compare again the 2008 subprime mortgage crash and the coming bond market crash to see it is neo-liberals working with neo-cons deliberately manufacturing these crashes with the goal of moving ever more public assets to the top.  Clinton's administrative team with Robert Rubin at Citigroup created the subprime mortgage plan with Greenspan and Tim Geithner and the Federal Reserve's Bernanke with Obama created this bond market crash.  Both required the neo-liberals in Congress to pass the laws allowing the conditions.

As we know the foreclosures on homes are still going strong and Maryland leads the pack.  Remember, almost none of the parking ticket of a settlement for subprime loan fraud made it to the victims of fraud---it is being sent back to the banks paying the settlement in the form of development subsidy.  So the transfer of homeownership has never stopped since we elected a super-majority of neo-liberals.  A ridiculous attempt at refinancing with a program called HARP delayed dispensing money for years and is now advertizing to help through the same mortgage lenders having committed the frauds.  Most people have of course lost their homes through yet again a fraudulent foreclosure process.  Can you imagine handing HARP to the same institutions defrauding trillions from the FHA? 

THESE CORPORATE POLS COULD CARE LESS WHAT YOU AND I THINK----THEY THINK THEY HAVE ELECTIONS CAPTURED AND WE CANNOT MAKE CHANGE!  THEY ARE WRONG!



'So, have QE and the ballooning debt been a fantastic success or a Questionably Effective policy designed to recapitalize banks and the financial elite at the expense of most others, including pension funds, retirement accounts, savers, and bond funds'?

QE is simply a policy to allow the FED to leverage debt to buy the toxic subprime loans from Wall Streets accounts making them look as though they have recapitalized.  Those trillions that the FED bought are the most toxic of subprime mortgage loans.  The second goal was lowering the interest rate for selling homes because after all Wall Street had tens of millions of foreclosed homes coming to them and they needed to sell them as cheaply as possible to maximize bank profits.  So while neo-liberals in Congress bailed out the banks---they left Main Street in mass foreclosure all designed to move these homes to Wall Street where they were bundled and resold to the same investment firms creating the mortgage frauds.  QE lowered interest rates to zero and the only ones benefitting were those banks peddling foreclosure bundles and the foreigners laundering their looted wealth from their country to US real estate.  That was the rising sales you heard on TV news.  We see it in Baltimore as developers are buying huge tracts of communities for next to nothing ----these communities being the ones devastated by the subprime loan fraud and foreclosures.  Consolidated ownership of property is good for no one.

The FED has a mission of economic stability and low unemployment and it is fraud and malfeasance when the policies they push do the opposite.  They pretended unemployment went down when it is now at 36%----they pretended they were keeping inflation low when it is at 5% ---and they certainly will not be able to claim economic stability when the market crashes in 2015 from the bond implosion. 

ALL INSTITUTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH GOVERNMENT ARE OPENLY WORKING AGAINST THE MISSION OF PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND ONLY A FEW ARE BEING MADE RICH FROM THIS MALFEASANCE.

For those thinking their pensions have made gains to replace losses from 2008-----those gains are about to disappear and then some.


QE: Quantitative Easing or Questionably Effective

-- Posted Tuesday, 8 July 2014
By GE Christenson

We all know the S&P 500 Index has been on a 5+ year rally to all-time highs – thanks to ultra-low interest rates and the levitating wonder of “printing money” via QE – Quantitative Easing.  Examine the following chart of the S&P for the past 20 years.

If you were a member of the top 5 – 10% and had a large investment in the stock market, you increased your nominal net worth. However, if you were in the bottom 90%, then the wonders of QE did not “trickle down” to you and your family, except as higher prices.

Pension and retirement funds benefitted to the extent of their stock investments but they were hurt by generational low interest rates in their bond portfolios.  Simply put, the stock market rally benefitted a narrow band of society – mostly the political and financial elite and upper middle class.

But how does the massive rally in the S&P look when priced in barrels of crude oil?  Examine the following chart of weekly S&P divided by weekly Crude Oil prices – both smoothed with a 52 week moving average.


That rally in the S&P, when priced in barrels of crude oil, does not look nearly as impressive.  Remember – a small percentage of people benefit from higher stock prices, but everyone pays when oil prices rise.  The price of crude oil affects food prices, gasoline prices, shipping costs, home heating costs, mining and manufacturing costs, and so many more. 

When we look at the S&P in terms of crude oil, we see:

1)    The ratio is DOWN over 75% from its peak.

2)    The ratio has been essentially unchanged since 2006.

3)    The price of crude has risen for the last 14 years - much more rapidly than the S&P, along with a massive increase in debt and the money supply.

4)    A few people benefitted from the nominal rise in the S&P and most people were hurt by the rising costs of energy, gasoline, manufacturing, food, and so on.

5)    The overall US economy seems to be sputtering, unless you believe what financial television is “selling.”

So, have QE and the ballooning debt been a fantastic success or a Questionably Effective policy designed to recapitalize banks and the financial elite at the expense of most others, including pension funds, retirement accounts, savers, and bond funds?

QE looks like it produced a toxic cloud of dangerous mal-investment, debt and currency bubbles, higher consumer prices, and a weakened economy. 

___________________________

The FED was busy taking trillions of subprime mortage loans off banks accounts leaving the FED leveraged to the max right before this coming bond crash.  What happened when the insurance corporation AIG was tethered to this same fraud?  Taxpayers paid the debt and indeed the FED's debt will be handed to taxpayers with this coming bond crash.

The other stash for toxic loans was Freddie and Fannie and rather than making banks write off those fraudulent loans to clear the debt on these public/private entities-----Obama and neo-liberals are embracing the debt as public debt and taxpayers are paying off yet another trillion in fraudulent loans there.

Friday, September 14, 2012
 
QE Infinity: Fed Buying More Toxic Assets From Banks Will NOT Help Main Street Dees Illustration

Eric Blair
Activist Post

Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve announced an open-ended bailout for the banks yesterday by a new mechanism called QE Infinity where they plan to purchase $40 billion of toxic mortgage-backed securities per month "until further notice".

Shrouded in confusing language like "unlimited stimulus" or "quantitative easing", this unprecedented move and rule change by the Fed was said to be warranted because employment remains weak even though they still maintain the false notion that "economic activity has continued to expand at a moderate pace in recent months."

As stated in the FMOC press release:
If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability. Of course this move "to foster maximum employment and price stability" does nothing to directly help job creation, and will continue to hurt main street by inflating the price of everything purchased by dollars. Yet it will clearly reward the investor class who already own most of the dollar-based assets.

The theory is that by removing toxic assets from the bank's books they have more liquidity to offer more credit, or to purchase more government debt. Somehow this is supposed to trickle down and help improve unemployment, which real numbers show to be in the 20% range when all factors are considered.

After a combined $2.3 trillion from
QE1 ($1.7T) and QE2 ($600B), plus over $16 trillion is secret bailouts to recapitalize banks with absolutely no measurable improvement in the economy, how could any thinking person believe this policy will be beneficial?


Since mortgage-based assets total a conservative $600 TRILLION, QE Infinity is nothing more than an endless giveaway to the criminal banks at the expense of struggling taxpayers. Wall Street will obviously celebrate the move and stock prices will go up, along with food and energy prices.

It is so blatantly a policy that will steal from the poor to give to the rich.  It also makes one wonder how can the government cry poor when it comes to paying for food stamps, healthcare, education, and other benefits for the needy when they have endless trillions to prop up the banksters?

Significantly, this announcement comes on the heels of a census report that shows median incomes have fallen to levels of the
late 1960s and early '70s. Of course, the mainstream version is they've only fallen to 1989 levels, which is hardly any better.

ShadowStats.com
The census report showed that the middle class is struggling with a median family income of $50,054. In 2010, Michael Snyder decisively proved that it is flat impossible for a family of four to survive on this income in America, and prices for essentials have only increased over the last two years primarily because of the Fed's reckless money printing.

This policy is an absolute disgrace and represents the final looting of the American people. There will simply be nothing left to the value of the dollar, and all of the important assets will be funneled straight up to the elite banksters.

You think you are slaves now?  Just wait.

______________________________

JUST WAIT says the article above.  Below you see how Obama and neo-liberals in Congress passed the laws creating the conditions for this bond bubble knowing a crash would hit Federal, state, and local governments the hardest.  As I question Maryland politicians about these bond leverage deals that place the taxpayer in charge of debt for decades and telling them the bond market is getting ready to crash----they tell me----OH, THAT WON'T EFFECT A PLAIN VANILLA BOND DEAL LIKE THIS!  Plain vanilla bond deal?  When Obama and Congress created terms for bonds that made the world want to buy them the bond bubble soared.  Then, the FED QE made them soar.  Remember, when the subprime loan crash came we found all of Wall Street investors in these loans had Credit Default Swaps-----insurance against losses ----with AIG being the corporation served up in sacrifice for the fraud.  These toxic policies were insured for 100% on the dollar and Obama and Geithner made sure that 100% was paid by taxpayer bailout.

Below you see the same thing happening.  The boom market now in insurance is Bond Insurance.  We see this corporations looking to be the AIG of this bond fraud as it insures bond deals against losses at 100%.  We all know the crash is coming so why are these insurance deals happening?  Taxpayers will come in to bailout this insurance corporation when the bond crash occurs. 

As you see Moody's and the other rating corporations are still in the game rating these bonds and the insurance no doubt AAA as it does Maryland and its financial picture. 


THIS ENTIRE BUSINESS DEVELOPED IN RESPONSE TO THE POLICIES IMPLEMENTED BY OBAMA, CONGRESS, AND THE FED.  IT IS THERE SIMPLY TO ALLOW THESE BANKS TO CREATE BOOM AND BUST WITH NO LOSSES FOR THE PEOPLE DOING IT.


Answers to Questions about the Novation of CIFG Assurance North America, Inc. Municipal Bond Insurance Policies to Assured Guaranty Corp.
 
December 12, 2011

In January 2009, CIFG Assurance North America, Inc. (CIFG) and Assured Guaranty Corp. (AGC) entered into a reinsurance transaction whereby AGC provides reinsurance to CIFG with respect to certain U.S. public finance and infrastructure bond insurance policies (the "covered policies").  CIFG and AGC also agreed that they would use commercially reasonable efforts to novate the covered policies to AGC.  CIFG has begun sending requests to the issuers of insured obligations (or to the applicable trustee of the bondholders) seeking consents for the novation of the covered policies. 

The novation is being implemented in two phases.  In the first phase, consents are being solicited for bonds insured in the primary market.  Bonds insured in CIFG’s secondary market custodial receipt program will be solicited in the second phase.
To the extent regulatory filings or approvals are required in connection with the novation of any policy, requests for consent will only be sent after any applicable waiting periods have elapsed or any required approvals have been obtained.

What are the benefits of novation?

Novation gives bondholders the direct protection of AGC’s claims-paying resources.  Once a municipal bond insurance policy has been novated,
AGC will request, and expects to obtain, an AGC insured rating from S&P, Moody’s or both depending on which originally provided a CIFG insured rating for the related bonds.  Although AGC already provides 100% reinsurance for the covered policies and administers the policies on behalf of CIFG, CIFG remains the insurer until the policies are novated, and the bondholder remains subject to credit risk of CIFG.

As a bondholder, do I need to take any action for the bond insurance policies to be novated?

In general, bondholders are not being asked to take any action at this time.  If there is a trustee for an issue insured by CIFG at origination, the trustee has been asked to execute a consent to the novation.  If there is no trustee (as is true for many municipal general obligations that utilize a paying agent), then the issuer has been asked to execute such consent.  If an insurance policy was written by CIFG after the bonds began trading in the secondary market, the custodian bank holding the custodial receipt that associates the policy with the insured bonds will be asked to execute the consent. Bondholders may be contacted directly by the applicable trustee, issuer VIEW LIST OF COVERED POLICIESor custodian bank as part of the consent process.

The offer to novate a particular municipal bond insurance policy will be open through the date specified in the offer unless such date is extended or the solicitation is earlier terminated at the sole discretion of CIFG and AGC.   Bondholders should contact the trustee, issuer or custodian to inquire about the status of the request and whether any action has been taken.  Bondholders are also encouraged to send their contact information, together with the name of the issuer, CUSIP number, original par, series and other identifying information concerning the insured bonds, to CIFG at novationteam@cifg.com in order to facilitate the novation process.

How will I know if the insurance policy has been novated? 

Novated policies will be identified in a list of covered policies maintained on this page of the Assured Guaranty website, which may be reached at www.assuredguaranty.com/novation.  Additionally, once S&P and Moody’s have issued new insured ratings for a given issue, those ratings should be reflected on data services such as Bloomberg.

VIEW LIST OF COVERED POLICIES
What happens to the insurance policy when novation takes place?

All of the terms and conditions of the policy will remain unchanged, except that AGC will be the insurer in full substitution for CIFG and, because of that substitution, AGC will have all of the rights and obligations of CIFG under the policy and related documents and CIFG will be fully released of its obligations under the terms of the policy. The consent form signed by AGC and the issuer, trustee or custodian, as the case may be, and a notice of effective date issued by AGC following receipt of the signed consent form will become part of the policy.

Will all the municipal bond insurance policies be novated at the same time?

No.  Except as described below, the effective date for each policy’s novation is the date on which CIFG receives an executed consent form for that policy.

If CIFG issued a debt service reserve fund surety bond or a swap insurance policy in connection with my CIFG-insured bonds, will that be novated, too?

Separate consent requests are being sent to issuers, trustees or swap counterparties, as appropriate, for each debt service reserve fund surety bond and swap insurance policy.  In cases where a debt service reserve fund surety bond or a swap insurance policy was issued in connection with a bond insurance policy or policies, CIFG must receive the executed consent forms for each bond insurance policy, debt service reserve fund surety bond and swap insurance policy, as applicable, before the novation of such policies and surety bond shall become effective.  (Where there is no debt service reserve fund surety bond or swap insurance policy, multiple bond insurance policies issued in connection with a single bond transaction may be novated independently.)

________________________________________________

Do you see anything below that leads you to believe the FED is acting in the public interest?  It is Obama and Congress that appoints these FED chairs.  DO YOU HEAR YOUR POLS SHOUTING THE FED IS ACTING CRIMINALLY?

If you do not hear your pols shouting about this rogue FED policy they are neo-liberals working for wealth and profit ----NOT DEMOCRATS FOR GOODNESS SAKE.  GET RID OF THEM!


Mission
The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States. It was founded by Congress in 1913 to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. Over the years, its role in banking and the economy has expanded. Today, the Federal Reserve's duties fall into four general areas:

  • conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates
  • supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers
  • maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets
  • providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation's payments system

Is the Federal Reserve accountable to anyone?
 
The Federal Reserve is accountable to the public and the U.S. Congress. The Fed has long viewed transparency as a fundamental principle of central banking that supports accountability. In the area of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve reports
twice annually on its plans for monetary policy. In addition, the Chairman and other Federal Reserve officials often testify before the Congress. To further foster transparency and accountability in monetary policy, the Federal Open Market Committee publishes a statement immediately following every FOMC meeting that describes the Committee's views regarding the economic outlook, and provides a rationale for its policy decision. Full minutes for each meeting are published three weeks after each FOMC meeting. Full verbatim transcripts of the FOMC meetings are made available with a five-year lag. Further, the Federal Reserve Chairman holds press conferences after selected FOMC meetings to discuss the monetary policy outlook.

The Federal Reserve is transparent and accountable in its other functions as well. The Board of Governors prepares an
Annual Report summarizing activities of the Board and all Reserve Banks; the annual report is delivered to the Congress. To ensure financial accountability, the financial statements of the Federal Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors are audited annually by an independent outside auditor. In addition, the Government Accountability Office, as well as the Board's Office of Inspector General, frequently audit many Federal Reserve activities. Weekly, the Board of Governors publishes the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. During the recent financial crisis, the Federal Reserve provided information about its lending programs on its public website and in a special monthly report to Congress.







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July 14th, 2014

7/14/2014

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I listened to someone tell me that Maryland Assembly passed laws to fight widespread wage theft and I had to remind them that Maryland passes laws but they do not enforce laws.  It's like saying policy makes health care stronger or public education stronger while defunding and deregulating these institutions.  Please stop listening to what neo-liberals and neo-cons say------and look what they do.  Remember, they work under 'tell them what they want to hear and then do what you want' politics of autocracy.

Let's take a look at unemployment in the US to remind ourselves----we must have citizens earning enough money to be able to consume to fuel the economy.  We must have policy that has Federal, state, and local governments using public money to hire small and regional domestic businesses to do work to rebuild a domestic economy.  Global corporations expanding overseas only hire overseas and make their profits overseas. 

THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH UNEMPLOYMENT. 

REMEMBER, UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE US AND MARYLAND IS 36% BECAUSE GLOBAL CORPORATIONS CONTROL OUR ECONOMY AND USE HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT TO KEEP US WORKERS DESPERATE AND TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS.

Below you see the latest scheme by neo-liberal pols working for wealth and profit-----having the public become the Human Resources Department for corporations by having taxpayers fund all job training that should be done by corporations.  THESE WORKERS MUST BE JOB-READY ON DAY ONE.  All of the education funding that helped the working/middle class go to 4 year universities now go to subsidize corporate profit in job training programs.  I listen to neo-liberals telling me the poor need computer skills to do a job as if poor children aren't the top users of computer gaming-----needing lots of computer knowledge.  They simply need access to computers.  There is no skills deficit-----we have US college grads with STEM degrees among the unemployed.  Neo-liberals and neo-cons are simply using this as excuses to spend public money building structures that bring foreign students to the US to train to work overseas.

The problem today with the policy of a New Deal infrastructure funding bill is that neo-liberals are ready to send all that Federal funding to global construction corporations who will be allowed to bring labor from the nations these corporations are headquartered.  There will be little US employment from a infrastructure bill created by neo-liberals.  This is what Trans Pacific Trade Pact TPP is all about!

IF YOUR POL IS NOT SHOUTING THAT REBUILDING A DOMESTIC ECONOMY AND GETTING RID OF GLOBAL CORPORATIONS IN YOUR STATE-------THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.


In Maryland that is why elections have been captured so as to silence an candidate with a platform to do that----


Wednesday, Feb 5, 2014, 11:33 am


Who’s Really To Blame for Unemployment?
BY Michelle Chen  Working In These Times


Though some protesters at an 'Unemployment Olympics' event in Tompkins Square Park, N.Y. blamed joblessness on 'the boss,' a new report suggests that the economic climate is more at fault.

Guided by the mythology of the “American dream”—the idea that, given the opportunity, the deserving will excel and rise above their peers—politicians often attribute unemployment to a mystical “skills gap.” If people can’t find a job, the logic goes, they clearly weren’t fit to be hired. As a consequence, many legislators tout specialized training programs or education reforms as possible solutions to America’s seemingly intractable jobs crisis. But a new study shows that blaming the “skills gap” for unemployment makes about as much sense as blaming a mass famine on “excess hunger.” 

A recent analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute shows that elevated unemployment is due to a general lack of demand in the job market, fueled by overarching economic decline. In other words, this is not a problem that can merely be addressed by retraining workers or revamping the education system.

In the report, economist Heidi Shierholz outlines this economic imbalance by comparing unemployment at different levels of education. Her results reveal that workers are suffering across the board: 

Workers with a college degree or more still have unemployment rates that are more than one-and-a-half times as high as they were before the recession began. In other words, demand for workers at all levels of education is significantly weaker now than it was before the recession started. There is no evidence of workers at any level of education facing tight labor markets relative to 2007.

Moreover, the report continues, there are no specific job sectors that appear to be especially “tight.” So it’s not that the economy especially favors, for example, radiologists or software engineers; bosses seem to be shutting the door on workers of all sorts:

T]he unemployment rate in 2012 in all occupations is higher than it was before the recession. In every occupational category demand for workers is lower than it was five years ago. The signature of a skills mismatch—workers in some occupations experiencing tight labor markets relative to 2007—is plainly missing.

Indeed, when comparing the job-opening-to-job-seeker ratio across different categories, EPI found that “unemployed workers dramatically outnumber job openings in all sectors. There are between 1.4 and 10.5 times as many unemployed workers as job openings in every industry. ... In no industry does the number of job openings even come close to the number of people looking for work.”

They found similar evidence of stagnation in the number of hours that people are working and in wage rates—both of which also suggest that there has been no significant jump in demand for more labor in specific job areas.

And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen research debunking the “skill gap” rhetoric. Last year, various analyses of the so-called STEM fields (high-paying professions geared toward science, technology, engineering and math) showed that these much-hyped occupations, which policymakers and the media have tended to revere as potential saviors for U.S. industry, are not exactly lacking qualified U.S. applicants. Rather than hire those skilled workers, however, many managers are opting to fill their openings with "guestworkers," who are essentially brought in on employment visas as a reliable supply of temporary labor linked to specific firms. According to EPI, these guestworkers are also generally paid less attractive wages than their peers in comparable positions. 

In addition, a recent study focused on Wisconsin workers came to similar findings about supply and demand in the workforce. After crunching the 2012 numbers on jobs that require various levels of education, urbanologist Marc Levine concluded in that report, “Even if every unemployed person were perfectly matched to existing jobs, [more than] two-thirds of all jobless workers would still be out of work.” That’s a gap that no amount of extra training will fill.

Schierholz does note that in a dynamic, churning economy, there will always be some “mismatch” between job-seekers and job openings; individuals typically get turned down for positions for which they lack the right skills or experience. But these specific incompatibilities are not enough to explain the dramatic rise in unemployment in the past few years. And the issue before lawmakers now, she says, is how to curb those plummeting jobs numbers.

Rather than focus on grooming workers for specific sectors as a jobs program, EPI therefore recommends another $600 billion stimulus from Washington to help restore state budgets after the deep cuts that severely undermined opportunities and income among public servants during the recession. Another solution for workers would be a New Deal-style launch of infrastructural construction projects, which could immediately create job openings and pump aggregate economic activity. Extending unemployment benefits could also help re-energize the slumped economy, EPI says, by keeping those without a steady income from falling further into poverty.

However, thanks to the current legislature's general reluctance to take measures that smack of expanding welfare or enact proactive policy interventions to create government-supported jobs, Schierholz isn’t optimistic that Congress will actually put these stimulus reforms into action. 

"We actually could do this. The economics is pretty straightforward,” she tells In These Times. Unfortunately, she adds, “Generally, a big fiscal expansion is just not in the cards. So we are instead going to be languishing in this sluggish recovery for a while. It's going to be four or five years before we get back to something that looks like health in the labor market."

So when viewed in historical context, what is commonly deemed the “skills gap” in Washington looks more like a gap in knowledge about how the economy actually works. If legislators' idea is to break out of America's downward spiral, they shouldn't blame workers for not having what it takes to "deserve" to be employed. Instead, policymakers ought to acknowledge the fundamentals of matching people with jobs: it's not just about their usefulness to the economy, but whether the economy is healthy enough to make use of them.


____________________________________________

When labor is marginalized by global corporate power it compromises positions that will in the end kill the unions. The American people will not support unions if the leaders are pushing the policies of global corporations that take the US to the level of developing countries-----as Trans Pacific Trade Pact does.  Each election I see the AFL-CIO and other major unions backing the very neo-liberal candidates breaking down the US Constitution and handing control of the economy to global corporations.  They are backing the worst of economic and development projects all under the guise of 'creating jobs'.  If I have to listen one more time to union leaders say-----'but they promised jobs'. 

WE NEED LABOR UNIONS TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.  STAND FIRM AGAINST BAD PUBLIC POLICY AND RUN REAL LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

The threat of loss of union rights being made by neo-liberals will pale to the American people losing faith in union leadership.  The Democratic Party is a tent of labor and justice.  If labor turns on justice they will lose as well. 

STOP ALLOWING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND THEIR POLS DIVIDE AND CONQUER.  WE NEED JOBS BUT NOT ANY JOB.  WE NEED TO BE BUILDING AN ECONOMY THAT WILL CREATE A HEALTHY FUTURE.


Gambling and fossil fuels----fracking and natural gas exporting all to create jobs??????  REALLY?

FRACKING AND NATURAL GAS IS NOT CLEAN FUEL------EXPORTING RAW ENERGY RAISES THE COSTS IN THE US AND DOES NOT SUPPORT BUILDING ENERGY INDEPENDENCE.  IT IS  BAD POLICY.

When labor union leaders become the mouthpiece for all neo-liberal and neo-con policy-----they are worthless to the American people and they will lose support.  In Europe it is labor unions that are successfully protecting the citizens of Europe as best they can.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NEED STRONG UNIONS BUT WE NEED GOOD UNION LEADERSHIP!

Web Only / Features » February 4, 2014

Angering Environmentalists, AFL-CIO Pushes Fossil-Fuel Investment

Labor’s Richard Trumka has gone on record praising the Keystone pipeline and natural gas export terminals.

BY Cole Stangler Email Print Trumka's comments come at a sensitive time, as trade unions and leading environmental groups have sought to build political partnerships with each other in recent years.

The nation’s leading environmental groups are digging their heels in the sand by rejecting President Obama’s “all-of-the above” domestic energy strategy—which calls for pursuing renewable energy sources like wind and solar, but simultaneously expanding oil and gas production.

But it appears the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, won’t be taking environmentalists’ side in this fight, despite moves toward labor-environmentalist cooperation in recent years. On a recent conference call with reporters, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka endorsed two initiatives reviled by green groups: the Keystone XL pipeline and new natural gas export terminals. 

“There’s no environmental reason that [the pipeline] can’t be done safely while at the same time creating jobs,” said Trumka.

In response to a question from In These Times, Trumka also spoke in favor of boosting exports of natural gas.

“Increasing the energy supply in the country is an important thing for us to be looking at,” Trumka said. “All facets of it ought to be up on the table and ought to be talked about. If we have the ability to export natural gas without increasing the price or disadvantaging American industry in the process, then we should carefully consider that and adopt policies to allow it to happen and help, because God only knows we do need help with our trade balance.”

The call came amidst a series of three speeches by the AFL-CIO leader pushing for more investment in energy and transportation infrastructure. Trumka did not specifically praise Keystone and natural gas exports during the first speech, at the UN Investor Summit on Climate Risk on January 15, and it is unclear whether he will in the remaining two. But the labor leader’s comments on the conference call were enough to peeve environmentalists.

The anti-KXL camp has long argued that construction of the pipeline will facilitate the extraction of Alberta’s tar sands oil, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet. Many also oppose Keystone XL on the grounds that its route crosses the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest underground sources of fresh water. “We invite President Trumka to come to Nebraska and visit with farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods are directly put at risk with the Keystone XL pipeline,” says Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Nebraska, which has organized local opposition against the pipeline. “To say the pipeline will not harm our water is ignoring real-life tragedies witnessed by all of us with the BP explosion, the Enbridge burst pipe into the Kalamazoo River and tar sands flowing down the street in Mayflower, Arkansas.”

Brendan Smith, co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability, a group that works with labor unions and environmental groups to fight climate change, took issue with Trumka’s argument that Keystone would create jobs.  “There is plenty of work that needs to done in this country, and we can create far more jobs fixing infrastructure and transitioning to wind, solar and other renewable energy sources,” says Smith. “Why build a pipeline that will significantly increase carbon emissions and will hurt our economy when there is a more robust and sustainable jobs agenda on the table?”

Trumka’s measured support for the KXL and natural gas export terminals is likely a nod to the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), whose relations with the parent labor federation have been, at times, fraught with tension. Many of the BCTD-affiliated unions enthusiastically support the pipeline: After the State Department released its final environmental analysis of the KXL, the head of the Laborers International Union of North America called for the president to approve the project while blasting “extremists in the environmental movement.”

Liquefied natural gas exports, meanwhile, are shaping up to be the next site of blue-green conflict. While environmentalists condemn plans to build export terminals nationwide, the BCTD and some of its affiliates have supported them. This appears to be the first time that Trumka has publicly sided with the BCTD on the issue.

Recently, the BCTD has gone head-to-head with environmentalists in Maryland over a controversial plan by energy giant Dominion Resources to convert a liquefied natural gas import terminal at Cove Point in Lusby, Md. into an export terminal. BCTD argues that the project supports thousands of well-paid jobs. Last November, BCTD head Sean McGarvey signed an “open letter” crafted by Dominion that appeared as a full-page ad in both The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post and attacked the “misinformation being thrown about by those who would undo the project.”

Opponents such as the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), an environmental group that works in Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia, disagree. They say most of the jobs created by Cove Point and other proposed liquefied gas export terminals across the country will be temporary, limited to the construction process. And while the gas industry and the White House tout natural gas as a clean alternative to oil and coal, the environmental impacts are just as severe, argues CCAN Director Mike Tidwell. “When it comes to U.S. natural gas and climate change,” Tidwell says, “the worst possible thing you can do with that gas is frack it, pipe it, liquefy it and send it to Asia to light it on fire. The life cycle, the greenhouse gas emissions of that process makes that gas almost certainly as bad as coal, if not worse, in terms of the impact on the climate. We would be better off if India burned [its] own coal than [took] our gas from Appalachia.”

Like Smith, Tidwell believes that job creation and an environmentally friendly agenda are not mutually exclusive. “Nobody’s saying that there should be no jobs,” Tidwell says. “I think it’s the fossil fuel industry that convinces labor that either you have dirty, fossil fuel jobs or you have no jobs. They’re the ones that create that dichotomy, and I can understand why our friends in the labor movement feel like they gotta hang onto every last job they have because they’re under assault from the Republican Party, they’re under assault from the same corporations that are telling them fossil fuel jobs are good.”

Trumka’s comments come at a sensitive time, as trade unions and leading environmental groups have sought to build political partnerships with each other in recent years. After Obama’s November 2012 re-election, the Sierra Club and the CWA helped found the Democracy Initiative, which successfully pushed for a change in Senate’s filibuster rules. The move is designed to limit GOP obstructionism on modest liberal initiatives. In September 2013, at its most recent convention, the AFL-CIO passed a resolution to build “enduring labor-community partnerships,” which led to speculation that progressive groups like the Sierra Club could earn a spot on the federation’s executive council. 

On February 10, Trumka will face a test of how his call for energy investment affects these ties. He is scheduled to deliver a pro-infrastructure investment pitch at the annual conference of the Blue-Green Alliance, a group composed of environmentally minded unions, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO-affiliated Communications Workers of America (CWA) and United Steelworkers (USW), as well as environmental groups such as the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Sierra Club.

The Blue-Green Alliance did not respond to requests for comment.

After that, Trumka will peddle his message of labor-energy industry cooperation to the business community. The AFL-CIO president is scheduled to speak on February 27 at Harvard Business School as part of a two-day-long event called “America on the Move: Transportation and Infrastructure for the 21st Century.” Trumka will appear in the closing plenary, “Call to Action,” alongside Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, the keynote speaker, and Tom Donahue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

He may get a warmer reception there. America’s Natural Gas Alliance, an industry group that represents gas exploration and production companies, says it appreciates the labor leader’s call. “We share Mr. Trumka’s support for expanding infrastructure and exporting natural gas,” says Dan Whitten, a spokesperson for the organization. “We know that exporting natural gas can make a substantial difference in reducing our trade imbalance. And to the extent that it adds jobs, we like that too.”

Meanwhile, in an email to In These Times, Dean Hubbard, director of the Sierra Club Labor Program, was careful not to criticize Trumka’s recent remarks.

“We share much more in common with the labor movement than the few things that we disagree on,” Hubbard writes. “We are standing together to create millions of new clean energy jobs, protecting workers and communities affected by the transition from dirty fuels, jointly working toward fair trade, and—as allies in the Democracy Initiative—fighting back against the big corporations trying to sell out workers and the planet. There is no doubt about it: Friends do not always agree on everything.  But we are partners in the progressive movement focused on building on our common ground to secure a safer planet, a stronger economy and a better future for all Americans.”

_____________________________________________
Maryland neo-liberals have as a central tenet the privatization of all that is public----the public private partnership.  This is a direct attack on what is the strongest union left and it is deliberate.  They are deliberately dismantling the public sector to hand control of public policy and oversight to the very global corporations killing democracy.  It is why we have no voice in public policy or in our communities.

If labor unions and justice organizations are supporting neo-liberals as they do in Maryland----that is the problem.  We cannot support the breakdown of our public sector and still say we are labor and justice.  Stop allowing neo-liberals to corrupt institutions that should be working for the citizens of Maryland.  This happens because too much power falls to the few -----it is up to ALL CITIZENS to come out to help labor and justice organizations so they can fulfill their missions.  Do not allow them to be blackmailed by threat to their very existence as happens in Maryland.


IF YOU STAND SILENTLY AS ONE GROUP LOSES ITS RIGHTS AND JUSTICE-----EVERYONE WILL.  AN INJUSTICE TO ONE WILL BECOME INJUSTICE FOR ALL.  THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW!


There is no public savings in these deals----it simply moves wealth to corporations and impoverishes the citizens.  Add the dismantling of oversight and you have rampant private contractor fraud and government corruption.

THIS IS HOW THIRD WORLD SOCIETIES OPERATE!


Friday, Jun 6, 2014, 5:57 pm

Privatizing Government Services Doesn’t Only Hurt Public Workers

BY David Moberg Email Print

A coalition of workers rally against privatization in Washington, D.C.

If you want to understand how privatization of public services typically works, Grand Rapids, Michigan is as good a place as any to start.

The state operates a nursing home for veterans in the town. Until 2011, it directly employed 170 nursing assistants, but also relied on 100 assistants in the same facility provided by a private contractor. The state paid its direct employees $15 to $20 an hour and provided them with health insurance and pensions. Meanwhile, the contractor started pay for its nursing assistants at $8.50 an hour—still billing the state $14.99—and provided no benefits for employees. This led to high worker turnover, reduced quality of care, and heavy employee reliance on food stamps and other public aid. 

Yet despite the evidence from this useful—albeit unplanned—experiment, which showed that any savings the state made through privatization came at the expense of workers and their clients, the new conservative Republican state government decided in 2011 to complete the privatization of the provision of nursing aides to the home. 

The experience with privatization at the Grand Rapids nursing home is in many ways typical among the rapidly growing ranks of public agencies in which the staff of private contractors replace government employees. And according to a new report, “Race to the Bottom: How Outsourcing Public Services Rewards Corporations and Punishes the Middle Class,” privatization policies around the country have greatly contributed to the nation’s growing economic inequality and to a decline in the quality of public services.

The report, released on June 3 by In the Public Interest (ITPI), a resource center on privatization, concludes that in most cases, privatization policies lead directly to cutbacks in government investment in skill development and to reductions in workers’ pay and benefits. In turn, workers have less income to invest in their households, their children and their neighborhoods—leaving individuals and their communities poorly served in the present and ill prepared for the future. 

Regardless of level of government, the story of privatization remains much the same. Elected leaders, often under legislative or political pressure from voters, try to reduce spending or taxes by relying on contractors for services instead. This way, politicians can attempt to avoid responsibility for the pay cuts and worker eliminations that almost inevitably result from privatization.

Government privatizers turn over huge swaths of public service work to private contractors—jobs such as corrections officers, nursing aides, teachers, school support personnel, clerks, waste haulers, food service workers and many others. Nobody knows precisely how much government work is now subcontracted, but New York University professor Paul Light estimates that there are about three times as many federal contract workers as civil service employees, with millions more at the state level.

Privatizers frequently claim that they charge governments low rates because they are especially efficient. In many cases, however, public employees are at least as efficient as private contract ones. Instead, if contractors’ operational cost is lower, the savings stem from the comparatively low salary their employees receive. For example, the median private corrections worker in the United States earns $29,000 a year compared with $38,000 to $39,000 for, respectively, the median state or local officer working in comparable positions. Furthermore, a a Demos study last year estimated that about two million federal contract or other publicly funded workers earned less than $12 an hour, more than the number of low-wage workers at Walmart and McDonald’s combined. Even if advocates of privatization admit that the savings through contracting result from lower pay, not greater efficiency, they typically argue that governments pay above-market wages. Contracting out saves money for taxpayers by eliminating that premium, they say.

But when governments properly account for all of their costs, sub-contractors are often more expensive than public employees. For example, the nonprofit watchdog Project on Government Oversight found that using contractors cost the federal government more than civil service employment in 33 of 35 occupations, resulting in billions of dollars total.

Those costs stem from a variety of sources. Governments must frequently hire an additional layer of supervisors to make sure contractors meet legal and other requirements. In addition, poorly paid contract employees often collect public assistance from supplemental nutrition programs, Medicaid and other aid for the needy, whose costs should be attributed to the contract.

Contracting out public work also rolls back critical progress toward equality on the basis of gender, race and income. Whatever their shortcomings, public employers in recent decades have opened up more opportunities and paid fairer wages to both African Americans and women than the private sector. For several decades, the ITPI report says, direct government employment of public service workers has provided a “ladder of opportunity” for many workers. Public jobs have opened up opportunity, especially where unions have bargained for contracts and influenced public policy. They have played an especially important role for women and African Americans, who still suffer disadvantages in the job market and are most hurt by cuts in public service pay and benefits.

For example, women comprise 57 percent of all government workers. And African Americans are 30 percent more likely than all other Americans to work in the public sector. Compared with black workers in the private sector, black public employees earn 25 percent more.

Cutting public service pay, therefore, compounds the inequities of income in America, replacing the ladder of opportunity upwards with a “downward spiral.”
And though this downward shift may most negatively impact African Americans and women, “it hurts all workers,” says economics professor Daphne Greenwood of the Colorado Center for Policy Studies.

Economists argue over the degree to which broad forces such as technology development or globalization account for rising inequality in the United States, says Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But privatization, he says, is one major cause of increased inequality that “smart policy” could easily reverse.

As some first steps toward that smart policy, In the Public Interest recommends that governments require contractors to show that their cost savings come from innovation and efficiency, not wage and benefit cuts. Contractors should be required to provide a living wage, health insurance and other benefits, ITPI also suggests. Though the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act is designed to guarantee that federal contract workers in service work earn close to the prevailing wage in comparable jobs, both its coverage and enforcement are inadequate. Governments should collect and share detailed information on private contractors and their performance, ITPI says, in addition to preparing social and economic impact analyses in advance of any contract.

Mary Sparrow, a former custodian at the Milwaukee County Courthouse in Wisconsin, might have benefitted from such revisions. She was laid off in 2009 in the depth of the Great Recession after a private contractor, MidAmerican Building Services, won a contract to clean the building. The company told her she could keep the job—but not the pay. They offered her $8 an hour, instead of the $14.29 she had been making, and none of her former benefits. She and her husband have scraped by since, she said at a press conference at the release of the ITPI report, her voice cracking with emotion—buying health insurance with unemployment insurance payments, exhausting life savings for their children’s college to cover myriad expenses, contending with health worsened by stress, and watching former co-workers relying on food banks.

“Only the contractors come out ahead, not the middle class, the front-line workers,” Sparrow told the assembled crowd. “Milwaukee County or any county that privatizes will not see the promised cost savings. Privatizing has a devastating effect on our communities, not only on what we earn but what we spend, even on basics like housing and medication. This has been awful for us, and I hope any city, any state, will think twice before privatizing.”


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All across America immigrant groups were organized to come out for the Senate immigration bill not realizing it was a market-based bill with a goal of preparing for Trans Pacific Trade Pact and the flooding of US economy with global corporations and their nation's labor force.  It has nothing to do with justice for Hispanics here in the US.  In fact it will make conditions worse for immigrants already here in America.  The Path to Citizenship leads nowhere for 90% of immigrants.  It was all a ploy by neo-liberals to use Hispanics here in the US to push for the Trans Pacific Trade Pact policies.  The national leaders pushing this immigration bill knew this but are tied to neo-liberals.  Here in Maryland, O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly knew this as they brought bus-loaded of immigrants to Annapolis to shout for the Senate immigration bill.

Neo-liberals and neo-cons work for wealth and profit which includes exploiting workers---they will never produce policy that promotes labor rights.  If they do it will not be enforced.


All Americans should be fighting this because they goal is to bring all US wages down to third world levels----no only working class----but middle-class.  Remember, in third world countries even doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs are at poverty!


Features » April 1, 2014

The Immigration Movement’s Left Turn Advocates are moving away from the “pathway-to-citizenship” compromise—and are demanding a moratorium on deportations.

BY Michelle Chen  Working In These Times

Deportations are expected to reach the 2 million mark in early April, and activists are campaigning fiercely at the gates of detention centers, border checkpoints and congressional offices to show the White House they will not let the Obama administration’s reach that milestone without a fight.

Who will be the Obama administration’s two-millionth deportee? The question haunts neighborhoods, schools and workplaces from Phoenix to Philadelphia.

And as the Obama administration continues its en masse removal of undocumented immigrants, that unlucky distinction could go to any of the roughly 11 million undocumented people who call the U.S. home—a carwash worker nabbed for a broken taillight; a field laborer who has overstayed her work visa; or a youth donning a cap and gown, deliberately crossing the path of the border patrol in a show of civil disobedience.

Deportations are expected to reach the 2 million mark in early April, and activists are campaigning fiercely at the gates of detention centers, border checkpoints and congressional offices to show the White House they will not let the Obama administration’s reach that milestone without a fight.

Last month in Alabama, immigrant rights advocates organized one such action by forming a human chain outside the Etowah County Detention Center, chanting “not one more”—the rallying cry of a wave of anti-deportation actions that have swept the nation over the past year, gaining political currency as a social media campaign, a slogan at street demonstrations, and more recently, a political salvo in Washington, where more conciliatory policy demands from inside the Beltway have sputtered.  

One protester at the Etowah rally, Gwendolyn Ferreti Manjarrez, declared, “I am tired of living with the fear that my family or any family can be torn apart at the seams for living our everyday life.”

Such pleas reflect exhaustion and exasperation with Washington, which has maintained an immigration-reform gridlock since the Senate reform bill all but died in Congress last year.

Faced with deafening silence in Congress and constant waffling in the White House, a growing number of advocates have joined the chorus calling for a moratorium on deportations. Even prominent centrist Latino organizations like the National Council of La Raza—NCLR lobbied hard for “compromise” legislation last year—have condemned Obama as “deporter in chief.”

Demands for a moratorium on deportations are not unprecedented: Advocates are proposing an extension of the White House's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program—a temporary executive reprieve for undocumented young people issued in 2012—to undocumented adults. Supports say their proposal would allow families to stay together in the run-up to future reform. The undocumented community and its allies argue that if Obama could exercise his discretion on enforcement for a sympathetic category of undocumented immigrants—primarily youth pursuing a college education—he could do the same for their undocumented parents and neighbors. 

In January, the Arizona-based group Dream Action Coalition, an advocacy group for the Dream Act legislation on which DACA was modeled, blasted Obama for punishing families for Congress’ failure to pass reform. Presenting the reform movement as a multigenerational struggle, the group stated in an “Open Letter to the Immigrant Rights Movement”: “We can’t wait while we see our families being taken into detention centers for months and even years while our children are being traumatized. …  Let’s together hold President Obama accountable for every deported parent.”

Obama has acknowledged the crisis and in recent weeks signaled he planned to ease deportations, but stopped short of fully halting detentions and removals. The president instead ordered the Department of Justice to review deportation policy “to see how it can conduct enforcement more humanely within the confines of the law.” Following a mid-March ­meeting with pro-immigrant advocates, he reportedly vowed to take executive action by summer if the Republican House members continued to stonewall on reform. Still, amid stiff Republican opposition, Obama promised to soften his approach without indicating whether he would order a full-on DACA-like deferral of deportations. 

Even Senators Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, two leading Democrats who crafted the failed compromise bill, now endorse a deportation freeze as a stopgap measure. Schumer has also threatened to use a parliamentary maneuver known as a “discharge petition” to force a vote on a reform bill on the House floor, similar to the Senate proposal. But due to widespread House GOP opposition, this tactical measure would likely fail under Republican opposition.

But while Congress dithers, grassroots activists say the current enforcement regime doesn’t need to be made more “humane”—it needs to end, full stop.

“We need to make sure that there is affirmative action,” says Erika Andiola, an Arizona-based undocumented activist with the Not One More campaign. Andiola's advocacy is a matter of survival: She has campaigned publicly to defend her mother from deportation, and for the past few years, she has watched her state roll out some of the harshest anti-immigrant policies in the country. Indeed, the fight against deportations has foregrounded the struggles of besieged communities that have seen coworkers and family members swept up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the past six years.

Grassroots activists are staking out a place at the negotiating table by establishing their own “blue ribbon commission” to draft a progressive set of policy recommendations, informed by their legal experiences fighting congressional lethargy and the federal enforcement dragnet. Andiola notes that she and fellow activists began calling for a deportation freeze months ago, long before many mainstream groups. “We don't want people to negotiate for us,” she adds. “We want to be able to be the ones putting the cards on the table, since we're the ones that have our families in detention and many times our families have been in deportation proceedings.”

Far from Washington, direct actions are escalating. A wave of hunger strikes has begun to spread, both inside and outside of detention centers. In early March, hundreds of immigrants at a Tacoma, Washington detention center began refusing meals and menial jobs assigned to detainees.

Shortly afterward, detainees went on hunger strike at a Conroe, Texas facility, accusing the management company, GEO, of inhumane, overcrowded conditions. Exasperated by the ongoing legal limbo, they also demanded due process of law, including “true and transparent information” on how their cases were being reviewed and processed. (TruthOut later reported that some participants had allegedly been placed in isolation as punishment.) Grassroots pro-immigrant groups, including the National Day Labor Organizing Network and Puente Arizona, have joined faith, labor and community organizations in various cities to coordinate solidarity hunger strikes.

Some have escalated protests by confronting ICE directly at the border. Since last fall, dozens of undocumented activists with the Bring them Home campaign have staged several unauthorized border crossings, voluntarily entering federal custody to protest deportations and dramatize the often hidden violence of family separation.

Activists are also using the web to mobilize people: Not One More has led petitions for the release of individual detainees, while Presente.org's Obama Legacy Project catalogues the administration's record of mass incarcerations and enforcement crackdowns.

Beyond the harrowing deportation numbers, activists want to stop the enforcement programs that have enabled ICE to partner with local police to apprehend immigrants. Secure Communities or SCOMM, the flagship joint enforcement initiative, has been sharply criticized for giving police departments wide  latitude to apprehend immigrants—often just for minor suspected infractions—fingerprint them, and share that information with Homeland Security, which then screens them through a central database to check their immigration status, and eventually funnel them into federal detention. In the impacted communities, ongoing federal crackdowns feed into an overarching climate of discrimination, fraught with racial profiling by police and xenophobic sentiment roiling in racially divided neighborhoods and workplaces.

Although ICE announced back in 2011 that the administration would prioritize the deportation of serious criminals, more than 30,000 immigrants still languish in detention on a given day (thanks in part to a “bed quota” that legally mandates that detention centers fill to a certain capacity).

According to national data, many detainees are being held for misdemeanors and other non-violent offenses, such as traffic violations or marijuana possession. An analysis of ICE data by Syracuse University researchers, shows that of the roughly 350,000 detention orders issued during fiscal year 2012 through early 2013, two-thirds involved no serious criminal convictions.

Reflecting growing frustration with draconian federal enforcement measures and the stagnation of federal reform efforts, some local lawmakers have acted affirmatively on their own to protect immigrants in the absence of legislative progress. In contrast to states that have ramped up their enforcement policies, San Francisco, California and Connecticut have passed legislation to block local police from cooperating with ICE enforcement, except in cases involving an immigrant with a serious prior conviction. 

Growing resistance to the Obama administration’s deportation regime contrasts sharply with last year’s relatively cautious debate  around “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation. The Democrats' agenda centered on incremental legalization, with an emphasis on “desirable” immigrants—high-demand workers in agriculture and STEM fields, as well as childhood arrivals—and harsher border security and enforcement measures. (There was little discussion of the social implications of harsher enforcement tactics.) Some activists rejected the Senate bill outright, opening a sharp rift within the immigrant rights movement between the Beltway organizations that supported a compromise in order to achieve a “pathway to citizenship,” and more radical groups such as Puente Arizona and Families for Freedom, which have centered their advocacy around resistance to the draconian immigration enforcement.

But now it seems that within the reform movement, the divergence on the importance of citizenship has been eclipsed by the convergence on calling for administrative action on deportation. Not One More is planning a nationwide day of action on April 5—roughly coinciding with the date when the two-millionth deportation is set to take place—with demonstrations planned in more than 40 cities

Migrant rights advocate Prerna Lal, who is formerly undocumented herself, says via email that she found the current political terrain for immigration reform “encouraging,” with the wave of direct actions opening space for “the disenfranchised and directly-impacted [to take] bold actions to declare themselves as ‘undocumented and unafraid’ leaders in their own communities.” In the broader push for congressional action, she added, “It is critical to remember that legislation such as Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation or the DREAM Act is often merely a response to placate these actions.”

 Until lawmakers go back to the table to hammer out a reform bill, the best advocates can hope for is a temporary reprieve from the White House. Any kind of deferred action, for adults or youth, is just that—a deferral. But it buys time for undocumented individuals to keep working to shift the political climate, away from the obsession with border security and toward a reform approach that reflects a broader culture shift as immigrant communities become more deeply woven into a transborder, globalized social landscape.

Maybe no one understands this vision for an evolving nation better than the  more than 30,000 people languishing in detention each day. Oscar Quintero, a detainee at Etowah who protested from inside the detention center in solidarity with the rally outside,  recorded a brief statement that was later broadcast online by Detention Watch Network:

This is basically a concentration camp for immigrants. This is what it is, a human warehouse. They treat us like chickens. They are treating us like cattle. The reality is that as Latinos, if we do nothing, if we don’t unite, and we don’t make others listen to us, these abuses will continue, and families will continue to be separated.

For a man separated from his community by concrete walls and a labyrinth of legal barriers, Quintero’s voice managed to carry over the hurdles of politics and resonate with his supporters outside. On the eve of the two-millionth deportation, his words undertook the border crossing that countless others remain as determined as ever to make.



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There is a tremendous silence in Maryland as regards TPP and Maryland is ground zero for implementing it.  They are not waiting for Congress to pass it----the Maryland Assembly and Governor O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore are installing it.

Maryland is one state that has spent the last few decades building the very structures that mirror Trans Pacific Trade Pact and neo-liberals are handing all of our economy over to global corporations and policy that works for them.  So, if Maryland pols signed the letter mentioned in this article-----

WHERE IS THEIR VOICE IN THIS STATE?  DO YOU HEAR YOUR POLS EDUCATING THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND AGAINST TPP?  THERE IS SILENCE.

This is how you know who needs to be replaced in private non-profits----in labor unions------in justice organizations----and especially media.  All leaders know what is being pushed in Maryland and we need to have people in labor and justice organizations and non-profits that educate the citizens.


TPP: A Thoroughly Predatory Pact

by Ron Forthofer / July 12th, 2014 Dissident Voice

U.S. transnational corporations are working behind the scenes to change the rules governing them. You may say ‘big deal, this doesn’t affect me’. However if you use the internet, view movies, take pharmaceuticals, want a clean and safe environment, believe in democracy, etc., you likely will be negatively impacted.

Media’s Failure to Inform

Negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), based on the fatally flawed NAFTA model, currently involve twelve nations in the Pacific region and have been underway since 2010. Mainstream media’s coverage about these negotiations has been essentially nonexistent. When mentioned, the media reports that the negotiations are about trade instead of being about easing rules governing transnational corporations.

Why the Lack of Transparency?

This May, Senator Elizabeth Warren said: “From what I hear, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, telecom, big polluters and outsourcers are all salivating at the chance to rig the deal in the upcoming trade talks. So the question is, Why are the trade talks secret? You’ll love this answer. Boy, the things you learn on Capitol Hill,” Warren said. “I actually have had supporters of the deal say to me ‘They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.’”


Undue Corporate Influence on U.S. Negotiating Positions

In 2012 Senator Ron Wyden, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness, whose office is responsible for conducting oversight over the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and trade negotiations, said: “Yet, the majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations—like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America—are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.”

In a May 2012 letter, thirty law professors from multiple countries involved with the TPP negotiations made the same point about corporate representation. They said:

The only private individuals in the US who have ongoing access to the US proposals on intellectual property matters are on an Industry Trade Advisory Committee (ITAC) which is dominated by brand name pharmaceutical manufacturers and the Hollywood entertainment industry.


There is no representation on this committee for consumers, libraries, students, health advocacy or patient groups, or others users of intellectual property, and minimal representation of other affected businesses, such as generic drug manufacturers or internet service providers. We would never create US law or regulation through such a biased and closed process.

Investor-State Dispute Settlements Threaten Sovereignty

In June 2012 a draft of the TPP’s Investment Chapter was leaked. According to Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch: “Via closed-door negotiations, U.S. officials are rewriting swaths of U.S. law that have nothing to do with trade, and in a move that will infuriate left and right alike, have agreed to submit the U.S. government to the jurisdiction of foreign tribunals that can order unlimited payments of our tax dollars to foreign corporations that don’t want to comply with the same laws our domestic firms do. U.S. trade officials are secretly limiting Internet freedoms, restricting financial regulation, extending medicine patents and giving corporations a whole host of other powers.”


State legislators are greatly concerned about the threat to states’ ability to maintain their sovereignty and to protect rules protecting their citizens.
For example, Maine State Representative Sharon Treat, one of the drafters of a July 2012 letter from 130 members of state legislatures from all 50 states, said: “The U.S. government should not be negotiating trade deals that undercut responsible state and federal laws enacted to protect public health and the environment, preserve the stability of our financial system, or make sure working conditions are safe and healthy.”

In addition, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) strongly opposes this investor-state dispute resolution process. Its position is:

NCSL will not support Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) or Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with investment chapters that provide greater substantive or procedural rights to foreign companies than U.S. companies enjoy under the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, NCSL will not support any BIT or FTA that provides for investor/state dispute resolution. NCSL firmly believes that when a state adopts a non-discriminatory law or regulation intended to serve a public purpose, it shall not constitute a violation of an investment agreement or treaty, even if the change in the legal environment thwarts the foreign investors’ previous expectations.

NCSL believes that BIT and FTA implementing legislation must include provisions that deny any private action in U.S. courts or before international dispute resolution panels to enforce international trade or investment agreements. Implementing legislation must also include provisions
stating that neither the decisions of international dispute resolution panels nor international trade and investment agreements themselves are binding on the states as a matter of U.S. law.

More Financial Deregulation

Given the recent financial crisis, it’s alarming that financial deregulation will likely be pushed in the TPP. A letter from 100 economists to the TPP negotiators expressed concern and stated:

We, the undersigned economists, write to you regarding the capital transfers provisions in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). We are concerned that if recent U.S. treaties are used as the model for the TPPA, the agreement will unduly limit the authority of participating parties to prevent and mitigate financial crises.

They went on to point out the importance of capital controls. “While capital controls and other capital management techniques are no panacea for financial instability, there is an emerging consensus that they are an important part of the macro-economic toolkit. Indeed, all G-20 leaders endorsed the following statement at the 2011 Cannes Summit:

Capital flow management measures may constitute part of a broader approach to protect economies from shocks. In circumstances of high and volatile capital flows, capital flow management measures can complement and be employed alongside, rather than substitute for, appropriate monetary, exchange rate, foreign reserve management and prudential policies.

Fast Tracking of the Agreement

President Obama has sought trade promotion authority (‘fast track’) to get TPP through Congress. Fast track usurps Congress’s constitutional authority over trade issues. Congress would have a very limited time to debate the deal and would not be allowed to make any changes. Fortunately, Congress has not yet abrogated its responsibility over trade issues. It is important to keep pressure on Congress to deny Obama this authority.

Represent Public Interest, not Transnational Corporations

Let your representative and senators know that you want them to oppose both fast track and the TPP. If they fail to do this, they are sending a clear message to voters.




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July 10th, 2014

7/10/2014

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IT IS WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT MAKE UP THE BULK OF FAMILIES FACING THE DISMANTLING OF OUR DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC PROGRAMS AND SERVICES.  IT IS NEO-LIBERAL POLITICIANS WORKING WITH NEO-CONS DOING IT!

I want to continue one more day on private non-profits and commissions and health care in Maryland.  Remember, large sectors of Marylanders are not accessing health care----having a longevity 30 years less than affluent communities shows this.  Having the worse VA system in the nation shows this. The clinic care system built to keep Marylanders out of hospitals offer almost no access to basic medical procedures.

IT IS A DISASTER AND IT IS BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVING NO MORALITY OR ETHICS ARE CREATING THESE POLICIES ONLY AIMED AT MAKING A FEW EVER MORE RICH.

The average citizen working for these organizations are not bad people----they just want jobs.  Each time you create a private non-profit or commission for health care you have eliminated the public sector employees that would do that job.  You eliminate the public's ability to see what is happening and the accountability tasked to our government to serve and protect. 

DO YOU HEAR YOUR POLITICIANS SHOUTING THIS?  IF NOT, THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND NOT YOU AND I!


Yesterday we saw the commissions filled with the health executives writing the law and regulating themselves.  Let's look at the front lines where the health care is delivered----or, in Maryland, not delivered.  This is where the fraud and corruption fills the system.  Again, it is not the average staff doing this---they are being told to do this.  I spoke at length about the dismantling of the VA to private non-profits and showed they were receiving the money and doing nothing.  Medicaid and Medicare is handled just the same.  Remember, in Maryland Medicaid and Medicare is handled the same as private insurance so none of the requirements of coverage or accountability have occurred for a few decades.  Billions of dollars are lost as fewer Medicare patients enter the hospital but Medicare bills per patient climb.....THAT IS FRAUD CAUSING THOSE BILLS TO CLIMB.


Below you see the private non-profit that took over yet another duty of public health and it has been at it for 15 years---the very years that gave Baltimore the 30 year longevity difference.  If you look today health access has never been worse so we know this organization is not doing its job!  Remember, the people affected are not only black and brown or unemployed and impoverished or working poor.  Middle-class families with expenses that take money that would go for health care are included in these stats. 

DO NOT ALLOW PREJUDICE OF CLASS OR RACE SKEW YOUR THOUGHTS ON HEALTH ACCESS----THIS AFFECTS EVERYONE.


Our Organization Enroll In Benefits

HealthCare Access Maryland (HCAM)

is a nonprofit agency that plays a critical role in strengthening Maryland’s health care delivery system. Working with both government and private-sector support, HCAM helps residents enroll in public health care coverage, navigate the complex health care system and connect to educational and other resources.

HCAM was established in 1997 as Baltimore HealthCare Access to initially assist with the Medicaid transition to managed care. What began as a small organization with 40 employees, a $3 million budget and two core grants has grown steadily.

  • Funding has grown to $23 million and the agency has earned more than 30 major grants, including a $7.9 million grant from the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange (MHBE) as part of the State’s efforts to implement health care reform in Maryland and help uninsured residents gain access to affordable health care.
  • The number of programs offered has grown from the original two to 19, allowing HCAM’s 200 employees to help connect over 125,000 clients each year to health insurance and care and to vital community resources through a variety of programs serving the uninsured, under-insured and vulnerable populations of the state.
As a 501(C)3 not-for-profit organization, HCAM is overseen by a committed board of directors and supported by public and private sector grants, as well as corporate and individual donations. This unique funding allows us to provide a variety of specialized services for the residents of Maryland in four areas of expertise:

  • Eligibility and enrollment
  • Navigation of the health care system
  • Care coordination
  • Education and advocacy
HCAM’s expertise in these areas led the agency to broaden its reach and help provide services to people throughout the state. To signify this expanded focus, the organization changed its name in 2011 from Baltimore HealthCare Access to HealthCare Access Maryland.

The agency’s ability to help people live healthier lives has been recognized by others in our field. The agency is the proud recipient of Maryland Nonprofits’ Seal of Excellence, a designation that recognizes HCAM’s reputation for delivering high-quality programs and services in a fiscally responsible way.

Although HCAM specializes in health care access, we continue to serve the needs of our clients beyond just helping them obtain an insurance card. We serve children, pregnant women, parents, childless adults and youth in foster care, as well as those with addiction issues, immigrants, individuals recently released from jail and the homeless.

HCAM’s work to implement health care reform in Maryland

Throughout its 15-year history, HCAM has become a critical player in strengthening Maryland’s health care delivery system, earning a spot as a public health leader in the state and working with policymakers, nonprofit organizations and elected officials on innovative approaches to improving the health of all Marylanders.

In the Spring of 2013, HealthCare Access Maryland (HCAM) received a $7.9 million grant from the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange (MHBE) as part of the State’s consumer assistance program to implement the Affordable Care Act and help uninsured residents learn about, apply for and enroll in health insurance. HCAM was selected as the State’s Central Region Connector, serving Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County.

As the Central Region Connector, HCAM will organize services across the region and has partnered with 17 organizations to provide outreach, education and eligibility determinations and to facilitate enrollment of the nearly 217,000 uninsured residents in the region into Medicaid, the Maryland Children’s Health Program (MCHP) and subsidized and non-subsidized qualified health plans.


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Baltimore is ground zero for Medicaid and Medicare spending and as we know the money is not getting to the people.  Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland Medical Center are handling many of these groups so that is where you start your search.  Since Johns Hopkins has captured all public policy and creates all the private non-profits that are then funded to work in these low-income communities----that is who is charged with overseeing this distribution only THERE IS NO OVERSIGHT!  THERE IS THE PROBLEM.  If we had a public health department filled with employees whose job it is dispensing money and providing oversight and reporting to the citizens of Baltimore----this would not be happening.

If you have followed me these few years you know I do not like Sharfstein and Barbot.  They were appointed to dismantle all public health and build more of these private non-profits and

THEY HAVE BEEN VERY BUSY!  NO WONDER SHARFSTEIN COULDN'T ROLL OUT THE STATE HEALTH EXCHANGE----HE'S TOO BUSY MAKING SURE MARYLAND HAS NO PUBLIC HEALTH.  Slander you say----no, all you have to do is look at who is doing the work of public health and you see nothing but private non-profits.  The people supposedly served all complaining they cannot access care.
  The money is flowing but not where its supposed to------

DID YOU KNOW THAT JOHNS HOPKINS BUILT A GLOBAL CORPORATE EMPIRE THESE FEW DECADES THAT MEDICARE AND MEDICAID FRAUD WAS THE WORSE-----just saying there's likely a link!


This should anger everyone as this looted Medicare Trust is now being addressed by limiting more access to most people....you and I!



Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Healthy Baltimore 2015 Last month, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issued the second annual County Health Rankings. As it did last year, Baltimore City ranked last in the state. 

One statistic in particular stuck out: 14,887. That’s the number of years of potential life lost before the age of 75.  Put simply, far too many Baltimore City residents are dying before their time.
Statistics like these give great urgency to the work we do to improve the health of our city, our neighborhoods and our residents.  It also makes clear that traditional medical or public health approaches aren’t working and it’s time to try something different.
That conversation starts today with the release of Healthy Baltimore 2015.
This comprehensive health policy agenda highlights 10 priority areas that account for the greatest morbidity and mortality in Baltimore.  These areas were chosen because there are evidence-based interventions proven to make a difference.  The plan looks at the relevance of where we live, work and play on health outcomes, as oftentimes they play as significant a role in making us sick as they do in keeping us healthy.
The city has set ambitious, yet reachable, improvement goals for the following priority areas:
1. Promote access to quality health care for all. 
2. Be tobacco free. 
3. Redesign Communities to Prevent Obesity.
4. Promote Heart Health.
5. Stop the spread of HIV and other STIs. 
6. Recognize and Treat Mental Health Disorders. 
7. Reduce Drug Use and Alcohol Abuse.
8. Encourage early detection of cancer.
9. Promote Healthy Children and Adolescents.   
10. Create Health Promoting Neighborhoods. 


For more information on the specific indicators we will use to measure progress in these areas, please view the full Healthy Baltimore 2015 report.
As you can see, there is much work to be done. Healthy Baltimore 2015 makes clear that we all play a role in improving the health of our city.
Over the course of the next several weeks to months, we will work with partners throughout the city to flesh out a 3-pronged approach to moving the needle for each of the leading indicators, including policy development; prevention, quality, and access; and community engagement.  Later this spring, senior leaders within the department will visit communities around the city to share this plan and the updated neighborhood health profiles.  We hope communities will put this information to use in designing new strategies and interventions for tackling the top priorities they identify for creating health promoting environments.
Let me be clear: the health department alone cannot successfully execute Healthy Baltimore 2015.  We welcome all motivated neighborhood leaders, individual citizens, aca­demic institutions, community-based organizations, business owners and the media to join us in this effort as partners in health. 
Partners can contribute to the success of Healthy Baltimore 2015 in many ways. These varying levels of engagement include, but are not limited to:
  • Communication – displaying or distributing health information materials within each of the ten priority areas.
  • Facilitation – actively participating in interventions such as incorporating wellness at work programs into the business day.
  • Integration – actively considering the potential health impacts of pending business or policy decisions.
To become a partner, please email me at health.commissioner@baltimorecity.gov. Together, we can reshape the landscape to make Baltimore City a place where all residents realize their full health potential.  Posted by Oxiris Barbot, M.D. at 8:37 AM

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Using Maryland for the divide between wealthier counties and poor counties we need to be clear-----while the poorest were excluded from accessing health in Maryland these last decades it is now coming higher up the economic scale....The Affordable Care Act is designed to make preventative care the only care 80% of Americans can afford and percentage is rising soon to 90%.  We will see with these forced re-negotiations of corporate and public sector health benefits that the middle-class will now be the ones forced out of care because they cannot afford co-pays and deductibles or once they pay the health insurance premiums they have no money for the health care itself.  THAT IS THE GOAL....

IT'S LIKE AUTO INSURANCE....YOU PAY AND PAY FOR COVERAGE AND IF YOU USE IT, THEY HIKE YOUR RATES OR CANCEL YOUR POLICY.

That is what is coming.  Below you see the other factor that will keep most people out of basic medical care----the need for a primary care doctor to access specialists and their care.  Activists have tried for decades to have medical school training be made free.  Get rid of the medical grads high tuition debt and you get lots of people in doctoring less motivated to earn $500,000 or more.  THIS ONE POLICY HAS CREATED THIS SHORTAGE AND AGAIN---IT IS DONE DELIBERATELY.  If corporations and the rich are paying no taxes and receive all revenue that is collected as corporate subsidy----where does all that free money for medical schools come from?  No, say corporations its better to simply exclude most people from health care access to maximize corporate profits.

FREE MEDICAL SCHOOL PAID FOR BY SIMPLY RECOVERING TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN HEALTH INDUSTRY FRAUD AND STOPPING IT IN THE FUTURE FLOODS THE MARKET WITH PRIMARY CARE DOCTORS.


But then say health corporations we cannot pretend to need to bring third world doctors to the US that are used to high levels of fraud and corruption and not bothering with the Hippocratic Oath and HIPAA regulations and who have no rights as citizens so as to be exploited by these growing US  global health systems!

What is being said here is nothing new----we have been shouting it for decades----they simply are pretending they are working on this solution as they dismantle all the avenues to address this.

Primary care access a key to health disparities among counties ■ An annual ranking of counties based on health status found that gaps between the healthiest and unhealthiest regions of states are wide — and getting wider.

By Jennifer Lubell — Posted April 1, 2013 AMED NEWS.com

Washington If you're a resident of Howard County, Md., chances are fairly high that you have insurance, enjoy good health and have relatively easy access to a primary care physician. Take a short car ride to Baltimore, however, and the situation for residents is much more grim.

In Howard County, ranked as Maryland's healthiest in the most recent County Health Rankings and Roadmaps survey, only 9% of residents are uninsured, and just 8% are considered in poor health. There's one primary care physician for every 577 patients. In Baltimore City, the unhealthiest county in the state, the uninsured rate is nearly twice as high, and there's only one primary care doctor for every 985 patients — a combination that means a significant access-to-care problem.

The comparison underscores a key finding in the 2013 survey: Gaps between the healthiest and unhealthiest counties in individual states are large and continue to grow. The survey highlighted the fact that residents in the healthiest counties are 1.4 times more likely to have access to a primary care physician than those in the least healthy counties. Unhealthy areas also had higher rates when it came to a host of other negative indicators of overall health, including child poverty, teen pregnancy and premature death.

This is the fourth year that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health have surveyed the health of every county in the U.S., ranking them on a state-by-state basis to gauge the factors determining the health of residents. All survey measures use figures or percentages that take population into account so that a county such as Howard, with a population of less than 300,000, can be compared with Baltimore City's population of more than 600,000.

The rankings are set up so that every state has a healthiest and unhealthiest county despite the overall health of the state. But health outcomes can vary widely within a state, said Patrick Remington, MD, MPH, professor and associate dean at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, during a teleconference to discuss the 2013 rankings. Louisiana and Mississippi are two states that often rank last in the nation on overall health. But when researchers dig into each state, they find as much variability among individual counties in Louisiana and Mississippi as they do in Vermont, a state that ranks relatively high nationally on patient health outcomes, he said.

Competition drives improvement Dr. Remington said promoting the results of county rankings has made a difference, “sparking action all over the country as people from all sectors join forces to create new possibilities in health — county by county.”

One of those areas is New Orleans, which has been trying to rebuild its infrastructure after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said Karen B. DeSalvo, MD, New Orleans health commissioner and senior health policy adviser to the city's mayor. Orleans Parish typically has ranked in the 60-62 range in a state that has 64 counties, Dr. DeSalvo said. “So we've been at the bottom of the pack in one of the more unhealthy states in the country. What we're excited about this year is we've jumped up to number 48, so that's a big leap.”

In addition to overhauling its education system and making improvements to parks and playgrounds, the city has spent seven years on an initiative to develop its primary care infrastructure.

“We had essentially no neighborhood-based primary care before Katrina. People were reliant upon hospital-based services, especially those who were uninsured and underinsured,” Dr. DeSalvo said.

Since then, the city has responded by working with 25 organizations, ranging from small clinics to large hospital systems, to build access to primary care and outpatient mental care, with a particular focus on patient-centered medical homes and health information technology. The initiative has received financial support from philanthropic sources as well as some federal demonstration program funding to expand access to primary care rapidly. “This is a true public-private partnership,” she said.

Dr. DeSalvo said the renewed focus on building strong primary and preventive care at the neighborhood level probably has reduced unnecessary hospitalizations and led to improvements in screening rates for such conditions as diabetes and breast cancer.

Improving patient-reported measures and clinical outcomes is one of the strategic goals recently adopted by the American Medical Association. The AMA is focusing on promoting quality and safety, reducing unwarranted variation in care, and fostering appropriate use of limited health care resources.

Other factors leading to poor health The fact that fewer physicians and dentists practice in certain communities obviously contributes to poorer health in those areas, said Bridget B. Catlin, PhD. She's a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and director of the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps survey. But, as she and other health care observers pointed out, lack of access is just one of many problems that go hand in hand with poor health among residents. In addition to measuring clinical care outcomes, the survey analyzes health behaviors, social and economic statistics, morbidity, and such physical environment elements as air and water quality.

“Other key factors that influence the health of a community are education, employment, income, and whether people smoke or have access to healthy foods and places to exercise. Some of these factors probably also influence physicians' decisions about where to practice,” Catlin said. “In particular, there is a widespread need for health care providers in rural areas.”

At least in Maryland, the health gap between the highest- and lowest-ranking counties largely comes down to socioeconomic conditions, said Brian Avin, MD, a neurologist and the president of MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society. Howard County, a suburb of Washington, is one of the most affluent areas of the nation, “so whatever social factors you want to create, Howard is going to be the highest and Baltimore City is going to be the lowest,” he said. There's much more poverty and unemployment in Baltimore, as well as more people on Medicaid or going without insurance, generating more uncompensated care cases. “Obesity, smoking, any individual feature you're going to look at is going to be worse when you're not getting basic care.”

Howard County also has been trying to get all of its population insured, whereas no such strategic initiative exists in Baltimore City, Dr. Avin said.
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Baltimore has a policy of replacing school athletic courts and community center athletic courts with 'greening' development moving all of this to private non-profits like YMCA located too far for most to reach.  I literally had to fight for an athletic court for an elementary school of 300 students----Johns Hopkins Homewood wanted to make it a park. Parks and playgrounds across the city have been neglected as the city dismantled its Parks department and handed the funding to a private non-profit.  So school grounds have grass up to your knees, broken glass all because the city does not collect revenue from corporations and the rich and any that is collected go to projects connected to the same.   Baltimore City schools often have no recess and most schools have no athletic teams.  The tiered funding leaving these low-income schools run as businesses make it impossible to address these disparities so NOTHING is being done to actually address health issues ------they simply say they are doing so.

Private wellness non-profits are going into poor neighborhoods telling people to eat better and scolding when people explain that living in poverty places survival over preparing a good meal or even having a living space that allows it.  So, we are seeing these national private non-profits coming in to talk the talk of better health to communities now being kept from accessing any health care but preventative care.


There are some good programs-----Food stamps being used at Farmers Markets is a good thing.  If you are creating an environment of deeper and wider poverty as neo-liberals and neo-cons are doing today----none of this will end in data having better results and THEY KNOW THIS.

EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL SIMPLY ALLOWS EVERYONE TO GET ALL THE CARE THEY NEED AND THAT IS THE BEST PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE AND YOU PAY FOR IT BY ENDING HEALTH INDUSTRY FRAUD AND PROFITEERING.


Below you see the vestige of a city no caring for families and with that goes health.  Day care is where children receive healthy exposure and access is critical to a family working and having low-incomes.  So, if you do not provide a system of day care-----and you are closing and defunding parks and playgrounds-----YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT WELLNESS.
None of this information is new and Johns Hopkins is behind the redirecting of money and the lack of oversight and accountability and is the one charged now with the most responsibility in these Maryland health care reforms....THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR REAL CHANGE.


Below you see middle-class families saying OMG!!!!!  and it is all centered on the corporations/ rich taking all the revenue through fraud and corruption in the City of Baltimore and this expands across the State of Maryland.

Day care shortage frustrates parents in Baltimore.  Costs can top tuition at University of Maryland, College Park

The Children's Choice Learning Center, housed in the… (Karen Jackson, BALTIMORE…)July 14, 2013|By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun

In five months, the downtown Baltimore day care attended by Celine Plachez's youngest son is slated to close, yet she's not looking for a backup. She can't stomach it.

She searched before he was born, calling about a dozen places, some of which said they wouldn't have an opening in the foreseeable future. Others were so expensive, they cost more than tuition at the University of Maryland, College Park. And a handful were just plain unacceptable in terms of quality.

So she's devoting her energy to finding a way to keep open the Children's Choice Learning Center, housed in the Social Security Administration building on North Greene Street.

"Call me crazy — I refuse to look. I want to fight," said Plachez, a scientist who lives in Federal Hill. "We can make it happen. It's not impossible, it's not unrealistic."

Plachez's response to the center's planned closure highlights a frustrating reality: At a time when the city is trying to attract and retain families — and more women work than ever before — there's a lack of high-quality, affordable, regulated child care in Baltimore.

The shortage is particularly pronounced for children younger than 2, like Plachez's son, who require a higher, 3-1 ratio of children to staff under state law, making their care cost-prohibitive for many facilities.

For some who live or work in the city, the situation has significant consequences.

Rachel Winer Sticklin of Canton is postponing having a second child until the first is out of day care because her family can't afford to pay for two at once.

Judy O'Brien of Otterbein started looking for a spot two years before her newborn needs it, knowing she faced long waiting lists at many places.

And Jana Gauvey of Federal Hill brings her kids to Baltimore County, where she works in marketing, for their care.

"There weren't that many options close to our home," Gauvey said.

Others, particularly those with low incomes, are putting their kids in informal, unregulated city settings — often in the homes of neighbors operating babysitting businesses — in the hope that the financial savings won't equate to inadequate care.

Not enough spaces

Roughly 13,300 Baltimore children younger than 2 have mothers who work, and many of them need some kind of child care, from relatives, hired sitters or centers, according to a Baltimore Sun analysis of state data. Licensed facilities can accommodate at most 20 percent of them.

The surrounding counties face a similar issue, though only Anne Arundel County's case is as severe. In Howard County, for example, licensed facilities can handle up to 35 percent of the children under 2 who might need care; in Baltimore County up to 27 percent can be accommodated.

The quality of care is also thought to be less variable in the counties. A greater percentage of children enter kindergarten fully prepared in the counties than in Baltimore.

"In most cities, there is always a shortage of infant and toddler care, mainly because it's expensive to do it right," and Baltimore is no exception, said David W. Andrews, dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. "The ratios of adults to children [here] just don't make it a very profitable scenario unless you're able to charge upward of 17, 18, 19 thousand per kid."

There are also a "number of consequences associated with" doing it wrong, Andrews said.

Studies increasingly show that the early years are crucial to a person's development. Ninety percent of brain growth happens before age 5, and the first three years of life are particularly important. Young children and infants are primed for learning, educators said, and their environment has a lasting impact.

Studies show that while parents have a strong influence on young children, day care effects can linger. Children in the highest-quality programs — where kids feel comfortable, stimulated and cared for by a stable staff — do the best years later in terms of social and academic development, and even health and economic prospects. Those who receive poor care are more likely to wind up in the criminal justice system, act out or drop out of school.

Yet early childhood education in the United States receives the least public investment of any schooling, leaving parents to bear much of the financial burden.

The average cost of full-time infant care at a Baltimore center, as opposed to a home-based site, is about $11,560, according to data from the Maryland Family Network, a private nonprofit that advocates for children and families.

That figure, which factors in the highest- and lowest-quality care options, is 40 percent higher than the average cost of tuition and fees at a state university — $8,220 in 2012. And it's roughly 30 percent of the median household income in the city before taxes.

"It's a real struggle for most parents," said Steve Rohde, the network's deputy director of child care resource and referral services.

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This article shows the mechanism that creates all this disparity and dysfunction.  A Baltimore global corporation headquartered in the Enterprise Zones that allow corporations to pay no taxes starve Baltimore's coffers for a few decades causing all of the crumbling of infrastructure and closing of facilities geared towards keeping citizens healthy.  All money is directed to boosting profits for this global corporation that adds almost nothing to the economy of Baltimore. 

IT IS A HUGE SUCKING MACHINE AND CORPORATE SUBSIDY IS ITS BEST ACHIEVEMENT.

So, here we have our Baltimore media giving this global corporation recognition for 'donating' a playground so it can write the costs of donation from any taxes that might be left to pay again starving government coffers.  Rather than consistently paying taxes so general funds can be distributed equitably across the city-----we have corporation simply selecting where they want their tax deduction to go.


THIS IS JOHNS HOPKINS DRIVING THESE POLICIES AND HOPKINS IS NEO-CONSERVATIVE WORKING FOR GLOBAL CORPORATE WEALTH WITH POLITICIANS RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS CREATING ALL THESE POLICIES.

The point is this-----the structures in place that have the public sector dismantled and complete control of policy given to corporations will never end with health policy that does what they say it will do.  They will simply create private non-profits that for the most part pretend to be doing something.  Remember, more and more people are falling into this abyss so we need the middle-class to WAKE UP and care about where these policies lead.

The taxes this corporation should have paid for a decade or so would have built dozens of playgrounds across the city.

If city employees were being paid to build this playground they could afford to live more healthily!

press release

June 10, 2014, 7:13 p.m. EDT

Baltimore-Based Global Education Company Builds New Playground for Local School

BALTIMORE, June 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Laureate Education, Inc., the world's largest higher education network, today built and donated a playground at The Historic Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School in Baltimore. Nearly 300 of Laureate's most senior executives from around the world came to Baltimore to build the playground. Laureate, formerly known as Sylvan Learning Systems, relocated its global headquarters to Baltimore in 1996, the first company to do so in more than twenty years. Laureate was the first company in the Harbor East neighborhood, a key part of Baltimore's federally designated empowerment zone. In the 18 years since moving to Baltimore, the company has grown from employing 300 people at the headquarters to more than 2,700.

More than 100 local volunteers joined Laureate executives and students to build the playground, in partnership with KaBOOM!. The playground will be accessible to nearby residents.

"It's a great honor to give back to the community that has given me -- and Laureate Education -- so much," said Douglas L. Becker, Laureate's founder, chief executive officer, and a Baltimore native. "We are committed to doing work that is here for good in every community in which we operate."

"The Historic Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School really is the center of this community and this new playground will help foster that sense of community that we cherish," said the school's principal, Dr. Harold A. Barber.

"Congratulations to Baltimore's own Doug Becker and Laureate Education on their 15th anniversary," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. "I'm so grateful that this Baltimore-based global company continues to invest in the local community in ways that benefit the people of this great city. The students of the historic Samuel-Coleridge Taylor Elementary School and members of the neighboring community will truly enjoy the new playground more than you will ever know. Thank you."
















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July 08th, 2014

7/8/2014

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CORPORATIONS ARE USING PRIVATE NON-PROFITS TO CONTROL PUBLIC POLICY.  THEY CAPTURE AN ISSUE AND PROMOTE POLICY THAT WORKS TO THE ADVANTAGE OF CORPORATIONS.  IN MARYLAND THE PUBLIC SECTOR HAS BEEN DISMANTLED AND IS REPLACED BY THESE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS.  IT IS WHY THERE IS NO PUBLIC VOICE OR CONTROL OF POLICY IN MARYLAND.  A DEMOCRAT WOULD NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN....NE0-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS ARE DOING THIS!


I have spoken about Maryland's capture of politics centered in the movement away from a strong public sector which has been replaced by private non-profits controlled by corporations that simply place someone as head of the organization that makes sure public policy goes the way the corporations want.  In Maryland we have AGAB serving that goal.  Johns Hopkins creates and controls most non-profits in Baltimore and in doing so captures all public policy.  What we see less of in Maryland and Baltimore are real citizens coming out and organizing and controlling their own non-profits.  My non-profit, Citizens Oversight Maryland speaks freely because there is no corporate connection.  If you see a non-profit that is silent on all of the issues I address here-----they are being controlled by a corporation.  We have great groups doing good work in Baltimore but very few of them will shout against the power structures -----Johns Hopkins and Baltimore Development or identify the fact that all of Baltimore's politicians work for these institutions and not the citizens of Baltimore.  I told you about the anti-fracking environmental group that ran when I asked them to educate about Trans Pacific Trade Pact and the fact that it allows all environmental laws to be ignored.  Now, if an environmental non-profit is not talking about this----it is headed by a corporation.  This is why TPP is not even mentioned in Maryland.....corporations control all of our private non-profits.

PLEASE WAKE UP AND ENGAGE IN POLITICS FOLKS!  THE MIDDLE CLASS CANNOT WATCH AS THE POOR ARE BRUTALIZED BECAUSE WE KNOW THE GOAL OF NEO-LIBERALISM IS TO GET RID OF ALL MIDDLE-CLASS.  YOU OR YOUR CHILDREN/GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE THE POOR.  YOU CANNOT BE SILENT FOR FEAR OF YOUR JOB BECAUSE LOSING DEMOCRACY AND YOUR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS IS MORE IMPORTANT.


Maryland and especially Baltimore is now running just a global corporations do overseas----Non-governmental organizations NGOs control our state and local governments as a 'quasi-governmental agency' and corporations 'donate' rather than pay taxes to private non-profits that then do what that 'donor' wants.  No doubt national non-profits have always been this way but now they are controlling all policy at state and local levels as well.  This is the capture we are feeling in Maryland.  The neo-liberals and neo-cons work to establish these private non-profits and then make sure that these groups are the ones heard in policy discussion.  This is why many community associations in Baltimore are silent to politicians pushing neo-conservative/neo-liberal policies that are killing the residents living in these communities.  They instead are the ones backing these same pols dismantling our democratic structures.  The heads of these organizations sound to be supporting the community when in fact they are working to push corporate policy.

As you see below you must have politicians in office that want the public engaged in public policy.  They build the structures to make sure to stimulate participation.  In Maryland all policy is written behind closed doors and the public is pulled from public meetings if they try to speak on the most important issues.  Go to Baltimore City Hall and you look at pols that are simply sitting there----they are no more connected to the people speaking than a man on the moon.  They are simply meeting a charter requirement to have hearings.

IT IS THE DISMANTLING OF ALL OF THE PUBLIC STRUCTURES OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT THAT HAS PRODUCED THE LACK OF PARTICIPATION AND IT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY THESE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS.



The Citizens Most Vocal in Local Government

View detailed demographic data from a national survey about the most and least likely people to speak up. by Mike Maciag | July 2014 Flickr/Kelby Carr


In his first few months in office, Park City, Utah, Mayor Jack Thomas has heard from quite a few constituents. His office phone rings off the hook. Going out for lunch takes about twice as long as before, too, as he constantly fields concerns from residents who walk up. “If you want a quiet moment,” he jokes, “you’ve got to leave town.”

The small resort community is home to some of the nation’s more vocal residents. In a recent survey, 28 percent of city residents reported contacting elected officials to express their opinions and 37 percent said they had attended a local public meeting over a 12-month period.

Nationwide, though, citizen participation in local government remains abysmally low. The National Research Center (NRC), a firm that conducts citizen surveys for more than 200 communities, compiled data for Governing shedding light on the types of residents who are most active. Overall, only 19 percent of Americans recently surveyed contacted their local elected officials over a 12-month period, while about a quarter reported attending a public meeting.

In many city halls, extremists on either side of an issue dominate public hearings. Those who do show up at the sparsely attended meetings are often the same cast of characters week after week. But some public officials have found ways to reach a much wider segment of residents.

Park City’s Mayor Thomas said he’ll go door-to-door along the town’s main corridor to gauge resident sentiment about everything from new development projects to air quality and garbage pickup. “If you want to have a government that’s rooted in the community, you better start that way,” Thomas said. “It’s all about trust.”

NRC survey data identifies types of residents who are the most active or, in some cases, the least vocal. Individuals living in a community for more than 10 years, for example, are about three times more likely to attend public meetings and contact elected officials than new residents. Among racial groups, Asians tend to have the lowest participation rates. Low-income residents also aren’t as active as those earning six-figure incomes.

In general, residents often aren’t compelled to weigh in on an issue unless it negatively affects them, said Cheryl Hilvert of the International City/County Management Association. It’s for this reason that much of the citizen engagement in communities is confined to typical hot-button issues, such as planning and zoning meetings.

Many residents don’t think they have time to participate. Others, particularly newer residents with lower participation rates, may not know where or how to get involved, Hilvert said.

Survey data further suggests that younger residents aren’t inclined to speak up. Those under the age of 35 attend meetings and contact elected officials at far lower rates than those over 35. Hilvert suspects their busy lifestyles may have something to do with it, especially if they have children.

Connecting with these groups of residents requires stepping outside of city hall and meeting residents on their own turf. Park City officials say they’ve held meetings in school lunch rooms, performing arts centers and with local homeowners’ associations.

“To truly engage the community,” Hilvert said, “managers have to think broader about it than in the past.”

Some localities employ unconventional approaches to raise the level of citizen engagement. When the city of Rancho Cordova, Calif., debated permitting more residents to raise chickens on their properties last year, it launched an online Open Town Hall. More than 500 residents visited the interactive forum to make or review public statements. “It is noisy and smelly enough with pigeons, turkeys, feral cats, and untended dogs without adding chickens to the mix,” wrote one resident. The city drafted an ordinance reflecting citizen input, then emailed it to forum subscribers.

Outreach efforts through local media or civic organizations help further community involvement. Some residents also form Facebook groups or online petitions to promote their causes.

The city of Chanhassen, Minn., relied heavily on social media to connect with citizens when it confronted an issue that’s about as contentious as any local government can face: a proposal to build a new Walmart. The city posted regular updates on its Facebook page and uploaded all documents online. Laurie Hokkanen, the city’s assistant city manager, said residents continued hearing rumors even after the city rejected the company’s rezoning proposal. As a result, staff kept lines of communication open.

“A vote by the city council does not end the issue for residents who are invested in it,” Hokkanen said. “It’s important to tell people you appreciate their input.”

Citizen Survey Data Across much of the country, citizens rarely voice their opinion to local governments. The National Research Center provided survey results from local jurisdictions throughout the country participating in the National Citizen Survey, collected between 2012 and earlier this year.

Two questions on the survey assessed how vocal citizens were in government. Survey respondents were asked if they had done the following in the last 12 months:

1) "Contacted [locality name] elected officials (in-person, phone, email or web) to express your opinion?"

  • Yes: 19 percent
  • No: 81 percent
2) "Attended a local public meeting?"

  • Two times a week or more: 1 percent
  • Two to four times a month: 1 percent
  • Once a month or less: 22 percent
  • Not at all: 76 percent
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We all know the quasi nature of Baltimore Development and the University of Maryland Medical Center but let's look at AGAB and how corporations 'donate' for tax write-offs and then simply write the public policy tied to that non-profit.

If you could look at what this organization does------and the details are very private-----you will see that corporations and the rich simply choose a category to contribute and then are allowed to write what that 'donation' will create.  So, greening as a category can channel money to paying for corporate parks that simply subsidize the costs of a corporation's headquarters.  Why pay to landscape your property when you can get a tax write-off as 'donation' to greening and have the city contribute a chunk for example.   A corporation wanting to 'donate' to eduction would direct that money to a national education non-profit controlled by corporations to go into schools and tell parents, teachers, and students just what 'wellness' will look like in the schools.  In Baltimore parents asking for recess for their children may not be discussed in these 'wellness' groups in many schools.

This entire system allows corporations not paying taxes in Baltimore and Maryland to instead 'donate' money and then control the public policy in whatever area they choose.  This is how the citizens of Maryland have lost their voices in their own communities.  When I first moved to Baltimore I had the nerve as a citizen to try to organize for an athletic field on a vacant lot in my community and the response-----JOHNS HOPKINS HOMEWOOD DEVELOPMENT WILL DECIDE WHAT WILL GO THERE----ARE YOU CRAZY?  As a resident of a community you must go to that development corporation for community grants to do anything and that allows that development corporation to decide what they want-----


AND ALL OF THIS IS THE CORPORATION THAT IS JOHNS HOPKINS AND BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT.



This is what happens when the public sector is dismantled-----all money is funneled through private non-profits that have no transparency and whose membership becomes ever more exclusive.

GET RID OF THE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS ALLOWING THIS DISMANTLING OF OUR PUBLIC SECTOR----REMEMBER, IF YOU THINK GOVERNMENT HAS TOO MUCH CONTROL----CORPORATE CONTROL IS MUCH WORSE AS REGARDS DEMOCRATIC FREEDOMS.

About The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (ABAG)

ABAG's mission is to maximize the impact of philanthropic giving on community life through a growing network of diverse, informed and effective grantmakers.

The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers is the region’s premier resource on philanthropy, dedicated to informing grantmakers and improving our community. ABAG was founded in 1983 to provide a forum in which colleagues could address common problems, approaches and interests.

Our members include more than 145 private and community foundations, donor advised funds, and corporations with strategic grantmaking programs - representing the vast majority of institutional giving in our area.

ABAG is …

  • The Resource on Grantmaking
ABAG provides critical information and services to the philanthropic and nonprofit communities.

  • The Network for Givers
ABAG convenes grantmakers and others to address issues and create lasting solutions.

  • The Voice for Philanthropy
ABAG represents the philanthropic sector to key audiences, including the media, legislators, and national organizations, raising public awareness and understanding about the role and impact of philanthropy on our society.


_________________________________________

Maryand Health Care for All and Baltimore Education Coalition are two examples of many.  Maryland Health Care for All is a Johns Hopkins non-profit created to make sure the Affordable Care Act was the health reform that moved forward in Maryland and not REAL health care for all like Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.  People see that the ACA is not about access----it is about building structures that will deregulate and consolidate the health industry killing oversight and accountability and denying most people most access to care.  Maryland has already disconnected from Medicare by receiving exemptions from the Federal government.  All of this makes Maryland have one of the worst health environments in the nation.  The poor have a life span  30 years less than affluent, people are fearful when going to the hospital because of poor quality and staff work in some of the most difficult conditions.  Now, the state health reform is creating a tiered health system that has most people only able to connect to clinic care.  We see this breakdown in health care in Maryland best if we look at the dismantled Veteran's Administration with Baltimore having the worst in the nation.  All of the doctors in this system were moved out and into private health systems that now cater to the world's rich------HEALTH TOURISM.  THIS IS JOHNS HOPKINS SPECIALTY NOW.



Below you see two Hopkins grads placed in charge of controlling the health care policy.  Bill and Hillary tried to do to health care what Obama has done with ACA at the same time they created the conditions for global banks---so this group in 1999 had the goal of moving health policy in that direction.  This is why Maryland sought the exemption from Medicare----to create the private health systems that are tied to the Maryland state health exchange.  Medicare and Medicaid fraud is rampant in Maryland because the oversight and accountability of the public sector was long ago dismantled.

The leaders advocating for the Affordable Care Act knew the goal was maximizing corporate profits and building global health corporations and not REAL health care for all.  The groups joining this coalition often did not.  They assumed they were actually working for health care for all.  This is an example of corporate capture of a policy.  Maryland spent this time from 1999 dismantling the public programs Medicare and Medicaid---and the Veteran's Administration and creating a tiered level of coverage that denied basic access by allowing health institutions to create the most profitable definition of care. 

While neo-liberals claimed to be building the most cost-effective health delivery system------patient outcomes in Maryland worsened and longevity declined.  So much for health care for all.  Johns Hopkins was able to build a global corporate empire with all that Medicare and Medicaid----not to mention Federal, state, and local grants and public funding. 

A GLOBAL HEALTH EMPIRE BUILT ON PUBLIC MONEY----THAT IS A SUCCESSFUL PRIVATE NON-PROFIT.

The people attached to Maryland Health Care for All really seeking this goal now need to join Expanded and Improved Medicare for All in Maryland to actually get health care for all.
  We need to replace the most private and profit-driven health system in the nation that is Maryland health exchange with this public structure that keeps Medicare strong.


The Founder of the Initiative is Peter Beilenson, MD, MPH, and the President is Vincent DeMarco, MA, JD.

The Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative Education Fund (“MCHI”) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit advocacy organization that was created in 1999 with a mission to educate all Marylanders about sound ways to achieve quality, affordable health care for all. In order to create a comprehensive, economically sound health care for all plan, MCHI organized the state’s largest coalition and solicited input from coalition members and thousands of Maryland citizens in town hall meetings.  National experts at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Maryland Law School then worked to incorporate this community input into MCHI’s Health Care for All! Plan.  In 2002, MCHI released its first plan and conducted a statewide campaign to educate people about how the plan would guarantee health care security for all Marylanders.  A revised version of the plan was released in 2008 by the same set of experts that created the original following another round of public stakeholder meetings. The updated plan includes similar components as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) and is being used to guide analysis and planning for state and local implementation of the federal health reform law.

Over 1,200 faith, labor, business, health, and community organizations have joined the Health Care for All! Coalition to support enactment of MCHI’s plan.  This is the largest coalition ever created in Maryland and certainly one of the largest health care consumer coalitions in the country.

The Coalition successfully advocated for a number of laws that will increase access to care and prescription drugs.  In addition, MCHI continues to work with key state leaders to educate members of our broad coalition about how they can access health care programs now in existence.  In the years ahead, MCHI will continue to educate and activate its powerful coalition to increase health care access in Maryland.

___________________________________________


Baltimore Education Coalition is the Michelle Rhee of privatization groups again created by Johns Hopkins this time with the goal of capturing education policy and making sure reforms go the way of corporate control-----just as did Maryland Health Care for All.  In both cases the leaders knew the goal but the people joining often think they are really working towards the goal of health care for all or quality public education.  It is not until all of the bad policy the BEC unrolls that many people in these coalitions find they did not get what they bargained for.  Good people wanting to work for good public policy captured by joining private non-profits that exist to make sure that does not happen.

This is why activism in Baltimore and Maryland is so low----people trying to organize have to fight these corporate non-profits ! 

Please stop allowing corporate non-profits to control all public policy in Maryland.  Know what the policies these groups are advocating and know that they actually have a goal that works for the people and not only for maximizing corporate profit.

This is a prime example of why getting rid of neo-liberals and neo-cons is so important.  It is not only how they vote in City Hall or the Maryland Assembly.  It is the environment they allow to exist in public community organizations ------where is the public discussion-----is it open and inclusive?  Neither Maryland Health Care for All nor Baltimore Education Coalition would allow Cindy Walsh to come in to educate and/or speak against these policies.
  If they do not allow open dialog----they are hiding something and that is that what they are doing is not in the public interest!


Baltimore Education Coalition

We are public schools – traditional and charter. We are after-school programs and neighborhood associations. We are education policy organizations, religious institutions, broad-based organizations, and schools. We are policy analysts, teachers, students, parents, community members, grandparents, and Baltimoreans working together to organize, mobilize, and energize the City of Baltimore to achieve our mission that all Baltimore students receive an excellent education. We focus on the issues that impact our students and families the most. Together, we have stopped over $100 million dollars in proposed funding cuts to city schools. In the face of potential harmful cuts to School Based Health Centers the BEC responded and advocated to successfully keep this important resource in the budget. We have also worked together to address the deplorable facility conditions in Baltimore City including winning the bottle tax in Baltimore City to support the successful campaign to pass state legislation to provide an unprecedented financing plan providing up to $1 billion to rebuild or renovate schools in Baltimore City. This effort was successful due to the dedication and perseverance of the more than 3,000 parents, students, teachers, administrators, and community leaders who came to Annapolis and City Hall to make their voices heard for Baltimore City’s 85,000 students and their communities.



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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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