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August 26th, 2014

8/26/2014

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TO REBUILD OUR ECONOMY AND DEMOCRACY WE NEED TO REINSTATE RULE OF LAW AND REBUILD OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY.  DO NOT BELIEVE THE SMALL GOVERNMENT MANTRA. 

Trillions of dollars are still being lost every year from our Federal, state, and local government coffers from fraud and corruption.  It is simply being redirected from public programs and into the pockets of connected corporations.  Obama has been as committed to dismantling all government oversight and accountability and placed Wall Street people in our public agencies to do that redirecting of public funds.  It's like having an invading army looting your Treasury.

When a neo-liberal calls for Open Government they do not mean public transparency----they mean selling the public's data to whatever corporation can use it.

Neo-cons don't even try to disguise that they do not recognize our rights as citizens to privacy and equal protection from this fleecing of our government coffers and personal wealth.  Maryland has pretty much dismantled all of public justice.

Let's take a few days to see the scope of this looting.  It is not only one corporate industry....the financial industry drives it but there is literally a free for all.


Feds Transparency Website Can’t Account for $619 Billion


By: Rachel Blevins Aug 7, 2014

In the midst of the Obama administration’s attempt to implement the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, a recent government audit shows that $619 billion is missing from 302 federal programs.

The Transparency Act was passed by Congress last year to “expand the amount of federal spending data available to the public.”

USASpending.gov was originally created as a way to make government spending more transparent. However, a report from the Government Accountability Office revealed that only 2% to 7% of the recorded spending data in 2012 is “fully consistent with agencies’ records.”

The report stated that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should implement more oversight of the spending data from federal agencies, and that until it does, “any effort to use the data will be hampered by uncertainties about accuracy.”

Jamal Brown, a spokesman for the OMB, made a statement insisting that the OMB is “committed to federal spending transparency and working with agencies to improve the completeness and accuracy of data submissions.”


According to USA Today, The Department of Health and Human Services was one of the 302 federal agencies, which failed to report money it had spent. This agency “failed to report nearly $544 billion, mostly in direct assistance programs like Medicare.”

The Department of the Interior neglected to report $5.3 billion it had spent, due to the fact that it claimed its accounting systems “were not compatible with the data formats required by USASpending.gov.”

USA Today also reported that for more than 22% of federal awards, “the spending website literally doesn’t know where the money went.”

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, Senator Tom Carper, acknowledged the problem saying, “We live in a world in which information drives decisions, and given the budget constraints that our government faces, we need reliable information on how and where our money is being spent.“


____________________________________________________


The health data once protected under HIPPA is now an open market.  States are selling public health data they now consider a new revenue source.  Johns Hopkins has a huge computer network that does nothing but receive and process data from around the state and from NSA networks.  All the money made from this data is pocketed as profit.  We see all kinds of efforts at protecting data----at the same time we have credit cards using fingerprints for easy access....liking simply signing is too hard.  Hackers access this data and now identity theft will include people's fingerprints. 

DIDN'T COMMIT THAT CRIME------WE HAVE YOUR FINGERPRINTS THAT SAY YOU DID!  JUST THINK HOW THAT CAN BE USED BY AN AUTOCRATIC LEADERSHIP.

I won't go into the national fingerprinting goal of Republicans for decades to say that is what this will do---I want to look at how people's money is being made more vulnerable and we are being forced at some point to use these technologies.
It was said this year that Wall Street and the NSA stated hackers like Snowden and Anonymous are making it impossible for NSA systems to keep data secure and our businesses systems are tens of thousands time more vulnerable to people around the world wanting to steal our money.  They do not secure these systems they build---they simply build and sell them. 

There is no thought given to societal implications.


Discover testing fingerprint payments

November 26, 2012|By Becky Yerak | Tribune staff reporter

Discover Financial Services Inc. employees will be able to pay by finger at their Riverwoods headquarters' cafeteria and convenience stores as they become the first to test a new payment system.

Discover, which is working with French biometrics firm Natural Security on the project and which plans to get the pilot underway in the next three months, has previously used hundreds of its employees to test new technologies including various "contactless" payments, in which credit cards are simply tap. It plans to test the fingerprint payment system with 300 to 350 employees.

Discover employees who want to participate will register at an on-site kiosk, which will read an index fingerprint and assign a number to it. Each employee will also receive a key fob with a chip that includes information about their individual credit-card account as well as their fingerprint.
 
To complete a purchase, the user will place his or her finger on a fingerprint reader near checkout, with the key fob kept nearby, such as in a pocket or purse, for the transaction to go through. One security benefit to the process is that it guarantees that the fob or credit card and its owner are at the same place at the same time. It could also be faster and more convenient as people won't have to fumble around with their credit cards.
 
The credit-card company's test comes a few years after U.S. grocer Jewel abandoned its program with Pay by Touch, which got about $300 million in debt and equity financing from investors. 

In 2006, Pay by Touch said about 10,000 Chicagoans had signed up for its fingerprint-payment program. A year later, some creditors tried forcing the owner of Pay by Touch into involuntary bankruptcy as its finances went into disarray. By 2008, the Pay by Touch machines were removed  from Jewel stores.
 
Troy Bernard, Discover's global head of emerging payments, said his company is working on several payment technologies that could come to fruition both in the short- and long-term.
 
"Biometrics falls into long-term solutions," Bernard said, acknowledging potential concerns about both biometrics as well as the barrier to entry of making someone register for something.


___________________________________________

You see below Wall Street is selling this as a means to cut down on identity theft but as this article states----it will be just as vulnerable with much more of your identity to steal.  So, you have a credit card stolen----you close the account.  You have a biometric credit card stolen and they have you for life.

Monkeetech announces iris-based credit card fraud prevention ...www.biometricupdate.com/201306/...based-credit-card-fraud...   Cached

Monkeetech has announced the development of a new (patent-pending) iris scan biometric credit card fraud prevention system, called EyeWatch.


Your Biometric Identity Proof Positive


By Jake Stroup Identity Theft Expert

One way that shows a lot of promise in trying to combat identity theft is implementing biometric identification. You can see this on television crime shows like CSI, NCIS, etc. Biometrics include fingerprints, facial recognition, voice patterns, retinal scans, DNA, the list goes on.

Although it has been a scapegoat for many identity thefts, in many ways technology has provided some of the most solid defenses against the rising tide of identity theft. RFID tags, data encryption and innovations along those lines have gone a long way to helping us secure our personal information. The Federal government is even considering using biometric ID cards to combat illegal immigration. In fact, it's easy to make the argument that the problem isn't in the technology but in our lack of interest in protecting personal information.


Victims of identity theft report that it can take three to five years, or even longer to fix an identity theft problem. Keep in mind, you can get a new credit card in two weeks, once you have all the information to the bank or credit issuing authority. But who's going to the issue you a new set of fingerprints if they get stolen?

The idea of somebody stealing your biometric information isn't as farfetched as you might hope. It has already been shown how simple it would be to plant false DNA evidence. This article even goes so far as to say, "Any biology undergraduate can perform this."

In the end we will probably see the same problems arise, and some think the problem may get even worse. This is because the way biometrics work isn't really any different from credit cards.

What's The Difference? It's easy to think of credit in terms of the plastic cards in our pocket, since we can touch them, and that makes it more real. But this isn't the case. Today, credit is really nothing more than a long string of numbers stored in a computer somewhere. When you swipe your card at the local Wal-Mart, the information stored on your card is converted into a number as well and sent to your bank. If the numbers match up you get to walk home with a bag full of goodies.

  Biometric identification works in a similar manner, but you're using your fingerprint instead of a card. It will still be turned into a string of numbers and run through a computer network. In the end does it really matter where the string of numbers comes from when an identity thief gets hold of it?


Despite the predictions of some experts, a database is still just a database. A hacker can still steal data from a computer or network, it doesn't matter if that data is a credit card number, or a digital voice print.

As far as security is concerned, many experts agree that maintaining "token" forms of identification are probably superior. Token identification is a card, password, PIN etc. – something that can be canceled, or changed if it is lost, misplaced or stolen. On the other hand biometric identification can't be lost, misplaced, or loaned to a friend, but it can't be replaced if it's compromised, either. This, combined with certain privacy issues (tracking, profiling, consumer-related privacy issues etc.) are making experts give serious consideration to whether or not biometrics are a viable option on a large scale.

It's easy to understand why this brings a sense of security, since no two fingerprints are the same. On the surface it seems like a secure form of identification. But security doesn't come from knowing that you are you, security only comes from knowing the information associated with your name is accurate, no matter what database that information might be in. In other words, if an identity thief managed to convince a fingerprint scanner that they were you, they will probably not come back to court if they manage to get released on bail/bond. In that situation, proving who you are won't help.

Biometrics have a few quirks of their own, though. For example, some states have started implementing a "no–smiles" policy for driver's licenses. This is because those states are now using facial recognition software to stem the flow of driver's license fraud. But the software might get confused if the subject smiles.

Furthermore, advocates like to say it's impossible to duplicate (for example) a fingerprint, but that's already been proven wrong. In fact, it's easy to do with a simple laser printer, and a little bit of spit.

But the biggest consideration is that a biometric identity system is only going to be as good as the information that's put into it in the first place. In other words, your fingerprint won't tell anyone who you are, all it can really do is keep you from using somebody else's identity once you are in that system. In fact, identity theft expert John Sileo said, "If we implement biometrics without doing our due diligence on protecting the identity,
we are doomed to repeat history — and our thumbprint will become just another Social Security Number."


And that would be a grim future indeed.

____________________________________________

The American people need to look at the Bush/Obama years as the USSR Perestroika where all the common public wealth was divided between a few connected families.  That is what is happening now.  We had our Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler who worked hard to see Maryland citizens got as little money from massive subprime mortgage fraud as possible making the small payments made into charitable contributions and tax write-offs just as the article below says.  That has happened to all settlement money.  Most of the money goes back to the government which then hands it to corporate subsidy.

I think Gansler was actually surprised when he received 5% of Democratic votes for Maryland governor as if people don't know.  He did almost beat Anthony Brown with 12% of the Democratic vote.  For some reason people just don't like this systemic fraud and corruption.


REMEMBER, WHEN A GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW AND DUE PROCESS---IT SUSPENDS STATUTE OF LIMITATION.



'We have seen this pattern - creating the appearance of punishing wrongdoing while actually leaving the bank basically unscathed and unchanged in its practices - over and over again from the Obama administration in the last few years'.


Friday, 22 August 2014 05:29


Bank of America's $16.6 Billion Mortgage Fraud Agreement Is Another Public Relations Stunt


MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT


BuzzFlash at Truthout has written many commentaries on how the Obama administration has been - and continues to be - quite lenient with Wall Street when it comes to financial malfeasance. In particular, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have assiduously avoided, for the most part, any serious institutional or personal criminal responsibility for massive fraud committed by banks too big to fail and other mega-financial institutions. 


The settlement this week between the DOJ and Bank of America for its role in the financial fraud that busted the economy in 2008 (including its acquisition of the scam company it acquired, Countrywide Financial) is yet another example of a large fine that looks like punishment, but amounts to much, much less than meets the eye. Indeed, that is the assessment of an August 21 article in the "Dealmaker" section of The New York Times (NYT): 

"The real financial cost to the bank could be considerably lower," said Laurie Goodman, a specialist in housing at the Urban Institute. "This is helping consumers, but it may not be costing the bank."

The actual pain to the bank could also be significantly reduced by tax deductions. Tax analysts, for instance, estimate that Bank of America could derive $1.6 billion of tax savings on the $4.63 billion of payments to the states and some federal agencies under the settlement. Shares of Bank of America jumped 4 percent on Thursday, suggesting investors believe that the bank could take the settlement in stride.

"The American public is expecting the Justice Department to hold the banks accountable for its misdeeds in the mortgage meltdown," said Phineas Baxandall, an analyst with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy organization. "But these tax write-offs shift the burden back onto taxpayers and send the wrong message by treating parts of the settlement as an ordinary business expense."

Given that we are talking about a dominant Wall Street bank and financial behemoth, the takeaway sentence from The New York Times is: "Shares of Bank of America jumped 4 percent on Thursday, suggesting investors believe that the bank could take the settlement in stride." When a bank's stock goes up after what initially appears to be a huge fine, you know that it is nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

We have seen this pattern - creating the appearance of punishing wrongdoing while actually leaving the bank basically unscathed and unchanged in its practices - over and over again from the Obama administration in the last few years.


It is true that at least one part of the Bank of America settlement could benefit mortgage holders desperately in need of readjusting the terms of their home loans. That is good:

The consumer relief is expected to help tens of thousands of homeowners across the country. Most notably, the deal could result in Bank of America forgiving billions of dollars in mortgage principal. Unlike the other settlements, a person briefed on the matter said, the Bank of America plan could involve cutting the principal on loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a move that will primarily help low- and moderate-income borrowers.

However, as The New York Times points out, this relief is coming much too late for the large number of people who lost their homes to foreclosure in the six years since 2008. It would have assisted tens of thousands more individuals and families if the DOJ had forced Bank of America years ago to be more flexible with underwater mortgage holders. 

The Times notes that the restructuring of loans will have little impact on the finances of Bank of America:

At issue is how much of the cost of the $7 billion in "soft dollars," or help for borrowers, the bank will bear under the settlement. Some of the relief the bank will provide involves cutting the principal of a loan to make it easier for the borrower to pay. The dollar amount of that reduction gets credited toward what it needs to fulfill the settlement. But Bank of America wrote down many of its troubled mortgages years ago. And investment firms, not Bank of America, may now own some of the loans that get written down, potentially shielding the bank from a financial hit. 

Taking a closer look at the Bank of America fine, The New York Times finds that at least half of the $16.8 billion dollars is in the form of soft money or tax breaks. There are also additional financial offsets.

In what has become a traditional part of any DOJ settlement with a bank too big to fail, unnamed DOJ sources are promising to pursue charges against individual executives. Of course, the indictments never appear, but the statements make for good politics with a citizenry that wants to see some personal accountability for fraudulent bank practices.

It is clear now, with a little over two years left in the Obama presidency, that one of his key legacies will be casting little more than a wink and a nod at Wall Street's violations of the law, including a failure to prosecute any high-ranking officials for the illegal and deceptive practices that led to the near-collapse of the United States economy.

_______________________________________
As we watch Wall Street go from billions to trillions of dollars in wealth much from fraud-----the American people are being soaked with fees, fines, and taxes to make up for the government revenue stolen.  Students are deliberately left unemployed//underemployed and mid-life adults are left with no retirement because of the crash and stagnation.  Obama has placed the Department of Education in the hands of Wall Street to treat citizens most in need as if a predator.  Old student loans for a few thousands of dollars grows with thousands of fees and fines in just a few years????


Retirees' Social Security checks garnished for student loans Many had forgotten of old loans

Author: By Patrick M. Sheridan Published On: Aug 24 2014 11:33:31 AM CDT   Updated On: Aug 24 2014 06:30:52 PM CDT



What's surprised Cohen lately is the increasing number of gray-haired people walking in his doors with a problem: A portion of their meager Social Security benefits are being taken by the government to pay for old student loans they had mostly forgotten about.

It's a growing national trend. Last year, 156,000 Americans had their Social Security checks garnished because of student loans they had defaulted on. It's tripled in number from 47,500 in 2006, before the Great Recession. That's according to analysis done by the U.S. Treasury for CNNMoney.


Like Cohen, other groups have noticed the increase too. A leading nonprofit group that works with students on repaying loans, American Student Assistance, has worked this past year with over 1,000 Americans who have had their social security payments garnished to repay outstanding student loans. That's a sharp increase from 200 people in the previous year.

For retirees, any cuts to their Social Security benefits really hurts.

"Social Security means survival. It means food, shelter, medication," said Cohen, a Connecticut attorney, who works with people on debt collection harassment and student loan repayments.

What's worse is that even if the unpaid student loan was small, the amount they owe now is usually a lot larger because of compounding interest rates.

Retired Americans can start collecting Social Security benefits at 62. However, the folks that Cohen has worked with are in their 70's and 80's.

The amount taken from these checks isn't small. The average Social Security monthly check is $1200, the typical amount taken is $180.


Very few student loans can be refinanced and many people have outstanding loans with interest rates locked at over 7%, even though rates have fallen in recent years to below 3%.

Repayment terms on student loans are extremely rigid. They are rarely forgiven even in bankruptcy and people can have their wages garnished if they default.

The issue caught the attention of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who introduced a bill earlier this year to allow millions of people like Anderson to refinance their student loans. However, the bill was blocked in June.

Social workers are also seeing an increase in the number of people with mental and health issues having their Social Security disability checks garnished.

"I had a Korean War veteran in his 80's who had taken out a student loan for his son and then began having health problems. The government took money from his Social Security disability checks - money that he needed to buy medications," said Deanne Loonin, a director at the National Consumer Law Center, which works to provide economic security to low income and disadvantaged people, including the elderly.

According to the government data, the total amount garnished from social security checks last year came to $150 million.

  • Copyright 2014 by CNN NewSource. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
    ___________________________________________



While seniors have their SS seized, the IRS has been allowed to be dismantled and defunded so it is now being fleeced just as Medicare and Medicaid Trusts are.  They make it sound like average people are the avoiders but most of this is corporate tax fraud.


Neo-liberals and neo-cons are simply allowing all public wealth to be gutted and stolen.  We see it to a large extent in Baltimore with Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins leading the culture of corruption in the city.

This creates a culture of non-compliance.  Nations like Greece and Italy have never been able to develop structurally because of the massive tax evasion gutting government revenue.  That is what is happening here.....
strangling all sources of revenue to justify AUSTERITY
.  For people that want less IRS you need to know---the working and middle class will take more and more of the burden of revenue no matter the talk of reduced taxes.

ALL OF MARYLAND'S POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS

IRS Funding Cut Days Before Report Shows $330 Billion In Uncollected Taxes Posted: 04/11/2011 6:03 pm EDT Updated: 06/11/2011 5:12 am EDT Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- As part of the budget deal hashed out on Friday evening, lawmakers agreed that no additional federal funds would be used to hire new IRS agents.

Then on Monday, the Government Accountability Office publicly released a study showing that, as of the end of fiscal year 2010, roughly $330 billion in federal taxes had never been paid -- an amount that, if collected, would represent nearly nine times the amount of savings as the budget itself.

The dual developments aren’t shocking. Despite evidence that a single dollar spent on enforcing the tax code could result in up to ten dollars in revenue, politicians, naturally, are reluctant to align themselves with tax collectors. And yet, the sacrificing of funds for IRS agents in the continuing resolution deal underscores a particular problem that seems bound to confront fiscally conscious lawmakers.

“Cutting back on IRS enforcement could easily cost the treasury much more in revenue than it saves,” said Chuck Marr, Director of Federal Tax Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The GAO report, which looks specifically at the issue of passport holders who have failed to pay their full share of taxes, underscores Marr’s point. Titled “Federal Tax Collection: Potential for Using Passport Issuance to Increase Collection of Unpaid Taxes,” the study labels poor enforcement of tax laws and the tax code as a “high-risk” hole in government policy. In fiscal year 2008, passports were issued to about 16 million individuals. Of those, more than 224,000 owed more than $5.8 billion in unpaid federal taxes.

A good chunk of the evasion, the GAO concluded, was committed by individuals with “substantial personal assets” including multi-million-dollar homes and “luxury cars.” One passport recipient bought a house for $2 million and another property for $1.5 million despite owing $1 million in federal taxes.

“If you look, you can find records of most capital gains income,” said Rob Shapiro, former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce. “People deposit it in their bank accounts or the institutions may issue reports if it is capital gains on stock transactions. So it is not hard to pick it up if you have the manpower to look for it. And again, given that the salary of an IRS agent is at least as high as the average salary in America, the fact that there is a ten-to-one ratio for the returns on auditing tells you that [tax evasion] is coming from the high-income brackets.”

Regardless of who the worst evaders are, the GAO concludes that “IRS enforcement of federal tax laws is vital,” not just to pinpoint the offenders but to promote “broader compliance.” And what do the study’s authors cite as a compelling reason to beef up IRS functions? A “federal deficit” that “continue[s] to mount.”

Indeed, several close observers of the budget debate have wondered exactly how lawmakers can shudder at going after tax evasion while simultaneously preaching fiscal responsibility on the stump. Marr, for one, noted that Congress has already disbanded a tax reporting provision in the president’s health care reform law that would have resulted in stronger compliance. That was scuttled for politically obvious reasons: the paperwork it placed on small businesses was deemed well beyond burdensome. But the decision to deny funding for more IRS agents doesn’t have such an easy-to-distill an explanation.

“Hiring more IRS agents would have allowed the Obama administration to enforce its agenda, insofar as its agenda is to make sure that people don't cheat on their taxes,” wrote Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic.

Obama has made buffing up the IRS a relative hush-hush plank of his tax reform agenda. Upon entering office he advocated for more funds for the agency, and as part of his 2012 budget, he proposed a 9.4 percent increase so that it could hire roughly 5100 new employees. The proposal, which pivoted off of previous studies that reached similar conclusions as the GAO's, was met with somewhat frenzied pushback from conservative circles -- the specter of black-suited tax collectors roaming the streets undoubtedly on the mind. And almost immediately, the suggested increase in IRS funds became a target of cut-happy legislators.


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August 08th, 2014

8/8/2014

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'The TPP will re-regulate the pharmaceutical and medical device industry patent protections, eroding the affordability of life saving medicines.  Generic drugs will become less available. EVERGREENING drug patents will extend patents ensuring a never ending upward cost spiral sacrificing affordability for the many to the profit making on medicines exorbitantly priced for the few.  Surgical Techniques, laboratory tests and medical treatments can be patented restricting availability to people in need'.

There has also been concern about the problem of patent ‘ever greening’ — that the TPP will impose low patent standards ‘likely to lead to a proliferation of secondary patents being granted … preventing fair competition for long periods’. This would be an undesirable outcome, creating excessive opportunities for the extension of monopoly protections.

In Maryland it was Johns Hopkins that wrote the policies of Trans Pacific Trade Pact in health care and the structures being implemented by neo-liberals and neo-cons in the Maryland Assembly with Governor O'Malley.  It is the Hopkins private non-profit Maryland Health Care for All that pushed Affordable Care Act to deregulate and consolidate the health industry preparing for TPP.  Below you see Hopkins' associate Beilenson building the structure that will capture most Marylanders not able to access health care and it is the model of third world clinic care.  Above you see the term 'evergreening' meaning privatization and profiteering in TPP trade policies that create the conditions of dismantling public health.  Below you see Johns Hopkins and their use of the term as the name of the so-called private non-profits that will manage the masses not able to access health care in Maryland.
   The very institutions guilty of making the US health system the worst in the world are now writing policy to take the US health system third world.


At Evergreen Health we put your health first.


Evergreen Health is a new health insurance company in Maryland created to give you a better health care experience.

We were founded by local doctors who imagined a health care system that puts a patient’s health first – not corporate profits. Evergreen Health offers quality, affordable health insurance plans  for individuals and families in Maryland.  We also offer group plans for employees of your business who work in Maryland.


______________________________________________

The reason Beilenson thinks Evergreen is well-positioned is that if Affordable Care Act is implemented more and more people will be forced into these non-profit plans.  Evergreen will be the health structure people are forced to as Medicare, Medicaid, and people's corporate plans disappear.  As with evergreening in TPP-----it will move the American people to a third world platform of health care.  Beilenson is Johns Hopkins and Johns Hopkins is third world health care.  Baltimore doesn't have citizens dying 30 years too early because of good policy!

OH WELL------IT'S ONLY THE POOR!  WELL, IN THIRD WORLD NATIONS DOCTORS, LAWYERS, AND INDIAN CHIEFS ARE POOR.


Why do we need a private non-profit co-op to bring prices down when Medicare and Medicaid does just that?
  As Beilenson knows------he is there to replace these Federal programs and will not have to meet any Federal guidelines of care-----they are staged to downgrade a public health structure in Medicare that has served wonderfully for decades.  All we need to keep Medicare is to stop the health industry fraud by institutions like Johns Hopkins.

OH, LET'S CREATE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS TO TAKE OVER PUBLIC HEALTH PROGRAMS LIKE MEDICARE AND MEDICAID THAT ALREADY WORK TO KEEP PRICES DOWN----
  if 1/2 of entitlement spending wasn't lost to corporate fraud.


In the land of neo-liberalism/neo-cons,  ending all Federal agencies that come with public protections is a must in order to allow global corporations to do anything they want in the US and to American citizens.

Evergreen faces challenges in delivering health insurance

Small businesses may be the future of health insurance co-op in MarylandOctober 29, 2013|By Meredith Cohn, The Baltimore Sun

Four weeks since it began selling health insurance on the state's new marketplace for the uninsured, Evergreen Health Cooperative Inc. has signed up only five people.

That's a long way from the nonprofit health insurance provider's first-year goal of 15,000 people, so Evergreen is already shifting focus.

Technical problems making it difficult for people to register for the state exchange culminated last week for Evergreen when its plans disappeared from the exchange offerings. The plans were restored after a short time.

Statewide, more than 3,100 people have signed up for health coverage on the exchange, according to the latest numbers released by the Maryland Health Connection. There are about 800,000 uninsured Marylanders.

Evergreen isn't waiting for the exchange to start working properly. For now, the co-op has switched focus from individuals buying its insurance on the exchange to small businesses buying plans directly from Evergreen, said Dr. Peter Beilenson, the former city health commissioner who started it. (The state's small-business exchange has been delayed until Jan. 1.)

"We obviously were predicating most of our business on the exchange market, which is not bearing fruit right now," Beilenson said. "That was a problem for us in two ways: financially in terms of generating enough members and for our mission. We did this for the middle class who would qualify for subsidies."

But the co-op was new and nimble enough to switch "almost overnight to small businesses," he said. "We think it will provide us with enough members to get through until the exchange is running smoothly."

Evergreen's small group rates were approved Oct. 25, so no group has enrolled yet, but the prices are below average and attracting attention from businesses and brokers, Beilenson said. The co-op will depend on enrollment to survive — members' premiums will pay to run the co-op and cover startup costs. Any profits would be returned to the plans.

The co-op's small-group rates are at the lower end of the spectrum, with an average premium of about $368 per insured, according to data from the Maryland Insurance Administration.

The lower rates may reflect Evergreen's model. The co-op employs its own doctors, who work in one of four centers for a salary rather than fee-for-service. The idea is to focus on prevention while managing multiple chronic conditions and staving off costly emergency visits and hospital stays.

Evergreen also offers a traditional plan using a network of doctors.

It's cost that matters most to small businesses, and a competitive premium will serve Evergreen well, said Karen Davis, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University's department of health policy and management. There is a "fair amount of evidence" that shows Evergreen's patient-centered model cuts costs, she said.

But insurance tends to be dominated by large insurance companies, so it remains unclear whether Evergreen and co-ops in other states can slice off enough business.

"The major challenge is size and scale," Davis said. "But the advantage Evergreen has is that its model of care is more effective. … I think they're in a better position than most of the co-ops."

Nationwide, 24 co-ops received federal funding as part of the Affordable Care Act. Evergreen got $65 million in federal loans, but all but about $13 million will go to a required reserve fund

Others wanted to start co-ops in Maryland, seeing the potential to compete with traditional insurance companies and bring down prices. One was MedChi, the state medical society, which planned to start a co-op largely on the Eastern Shore but was stymied when Congress cut startup funding.

"We're very supportive of the idea of co-ops and think they can work really well," said Gene Ransom, MedChi's CEO. "I don't think they have an easy task ahead. We are rooting for Evergreen because more competition is good for the marketplace."

Beilenson said Evergreen has made other adjustments to survive. It has hired some staff from the insurance industry to serve as a balance with those employees who know more about public health. It has raised $5 million in startup money from private foundations and another $1 million from other private sources for marketing, including a new TV ad (federal law prohibits explicit marketing with government money).

"I think we're well-positioned," Beilenson said. "We think we know what we're doing. And we think we have a really good product."
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One of the elements in Affordable Care Act is the connection of generic drugs to Medicare.  Obama and neo-liberals in Congress told the American people that because massive health industry fraud of our Medicare Trust occurred over these few decades they would have to reduce our health benefits to cover the money stolen.  In the case of health care this means Medicare and Medicaid enrollees limited to what medications they can access.  Common drugs will no longer be available to 80% of Americans because of this ACA clause pushing people to generic drugs only.  IT SAVES MONEY AND LOWERS THE NATIONAL DEBT!  As the statement at the top shows this ACA policy corresponds to the TPP health policies making generic drugs less common and harder to get.  Neo-liberals and neo-cons are sending people to generics at the same time they are pushing TPP limiting access to generics.  It's the same policy as pushing NAFTA and global markets knowing it will cause massive unemployment and poverty at the same time ending Welfare as a safety net-----creating the deepest poverty in US history.  These are all Republican policies written for wealth and profit being installed by Clinton neo-liberals.  Republican voters who are shouting against lost US Constitutional rights and dismantling of Rule of Law------lost access to health care need to remember these are all Republican policies.  Don't vote Republican to fix this-----rebuild the Democratic Party at the national, state, and local level.


Below you see from what the Affordable Care Act is modeled......third world clinic care.  Baltimore has had this system in place for a few decades but the model is being expanded because of the huge number of citizens falling into poverty.  Only 1/2 of taxpayer money sent for social services are spent on the people meant to be served.....the rest has been funneled to Johns Hopkins and/or University of Maryland as profit.  This is why the poor in Baltimore have life spans equal to third world countries.  Neo-liberalism = third world poverty so 90% of Americans will be pushed into this system.   Below you see a neo-liberal solution to our exploding health care costs fueled by health industry fraud and profiteering------third world clinic care and using college students to replace the public sector health care and social services employees.  Health care outcomes in the US are at second and third world levels because of the dismantling of public health systems.  College students are not prepared to be the backbone of public/social services-----they need practical experience of working with public professionals.  Making volunteers and students the backbone of public health is a third world structure. 


The US is now on par with countries like Hungary and Slovenia because Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism dismantles all first world structures the protect and serve the public and all taxpayer money is looted in corporate fraud and subsidy.  Simply rebuilding these oversight and accountability structures returns the US to first world status.


DEMAND EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL IN YOUR STATE TO KEEP OUR FEDERAL MEDICARE PROGRAM STRONG AND EVERYONE COVERED!  PUBLIC HEALTH IS WHAT KEEPS COSTS DOWN.  WE SIMPLY NEED TO REBUILD OVERSIGHT TO ELIMINATE 1/2 OF HEALTH SPENDING AS FRAUD.


Doctor and Patient What We Can Learn From Third-World Health Care

By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D. July 26, 2012 12:01 amJuly 26, 2012 11:16 pm  New York Times


The young doctor had just returned from a month working in a country in Africa, familiar to the rest of us only through pictures of its impoverished population and news reports of recurring natural disasters and political upheavals. “You must feel exhausted but great,” a senior colleague commented. “You went in there and you really helped those people.”

Doctor and PatientDr. Pauline Chen on medical care.

But my younger colleague felt neither exhausted nor relieved to be back home, she confided when the older doctor had left the room. She had cared for dozens of patients with abscesses and broken bones, tumors and arrow wounds, relying on nothing more than a single rickety X-ray machine, a handful of battered surgical instruments and the aid of one well-connected local nurse.

“We could get so much done with so little over there,” she said. “It’s like we’re not doing something right over here.”


Put another way, the American health care system has become the great international paradox, spending more but getting less.

With all the most advanced technology and equipment, spending far more on health care than any other nation — a whopping $2.6 trillion annually, or over 17 percent of our gross domestic product — the United States consistently underperforms on some of the most important health indicators. Our infant mortality rates, for example, are worse than those in countries like Hungary, Cuba and Slovenia. Our life expectancy rates are not much better; in global rankings, we sit within spitting distance of Cuba, Chile and Libya.

This quality conundrum dogs us, even as our best and brightest have tried to imagine a more cost-efficient system. Some have pursued the carrot-and-stick route, linking quality measures to reimbursement. Others have attempted to reduce quality to its most basic parts, creating checklists and to-do lists. And still others have rearranged networks of hospitals, clinics, physician practices and payments, conjuring up a breathtaking array of combinations, permutations and bundles of care in order to create more cost-efficient systems.

But, according to an essay published this summer in The Stanford Social Innovation Review, we might have saved ourselves the huge effort, the expenses and the disappointments of only marginally successful initiatives, if we had first looked to countries traditionally viewed as needing our aid and learned from their successes in facing challenges similar to our own.

In the essay, Rebecca D. Onie, a founder and the chief executive of Health Leads, a domestic health care organization; Dr. Paul Farmer, a founder of Partners in Health, a Boston-based medical nonprofit group; and Dr. Heidi Behforouz, medical and executive director of the Prevention and Access to Care and Treatment project, a community-based health care initiative in the United States that is part of Partners in Health, argue eloquently for “reverse innovation.” They contend that for decades, several nongovernmental and nonprofit medical organizations have delivered high-quality care in some of the most challenging circumstances possible. Applying the solutions these medical organizations have already discovered could allow us to bypass or at least foreshorten what has become an interminable trial-and-error search for the answers to our country’s health care woes.

Their own organizations offer several models of success. For nearly three decades, Partners in Health, for example, has delivered consistently high-quality care to more than 2.5 million people in a dozen countries like Haiti, Rwanda and Peru, places with widespread poverty, scarce numbers of providers and no health care infrastructure. But they have managed to achieve, among other successes, the highest rate of cure of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the world and better rates of adherence to treatment regimens and follow-up than in much of the United States.

The key to their success is an unabashed disregard for some of our most cherished assumptions about what constitutes good care. Instead of providing antibiotics, CT scans and high-tech interventions, Partners in Health considers basic necessities like food and housing as critical components of the group’s medical work. Instead of asking patients to travel miles to the only clinic and see only the doctor or nurse, they train cadres of community health workers who can monitor, administer and advise in the heart of local villages and in people’s homes.

Applied to organizations in the United States, this approach has proved startlingly effective, as the Prevention and Access to Care and Treatment, or PACT, program has demonstrated. PACT targets some of the poorest and sickest patients with H.I.V. and other chronic illnesses in the greater Boston area. Just like Partners in Health, PACT relies extensively on community health workers who are trained in tasks like helping patients take their medications and make it to clinic appointments as well as reviewing their pantries and teaching them to prepare healthy meals. Applying these broad definitions of care, PACT has significantly decreased the number of emergency room visits and life-threatening opportunistic infections, cut hospitalization rates by 60 percent and yielded a 16 percent savings for Medicaid.

Health Leads has stretched these definitions even further, giving the terms “provider” and “care” a millennial twist. Each year, Health Leads trains a selected group of technology-savvy and tenacious college students to staff “resource desks” in primary care and prenatal clinics in cities like New York, Baltimore, Boston and Chicago. With these Health Leads volunteers in place, doctors can, for example, “prescribe” housing assistance for a family whose child’s severe asthma has been exacerbated by a cockroach infestation, healthy foods and nutrition resources for a man suffering from obesity, or transportation to a drugstore for an elderly woman who needs diabetes medications. At the resource desk, a Health Leads volunteer then “fills” these prescriptions by finding the best solutions for the problems at hand, whether that means tracking down the appropriate agency, navigating complicated online application processes or providing support as the patient makes the calls. In clinics where a single social worker may be responsible for as many as 25,000 patients, Health Leads volunteers have more than doubled the services provided.

The successes of PACT and Health Leads are no secret. But what does remain mysterious as our health care system threatens to implode is why more of us haven’t done the same and rushed to apply the lessons learned and proved elsewhere.

“We keep trying to reinvent the wheel,” Ms. Onie observed. “The humbling reality is that we are trying to recreate innovations that have been robustly developed in the developing world.”

In other words, we have yet to deploy what could prove to be the most powerful weapon in the fight to contain costs and improve the quality of health care: our own humility.

$200- 400 BILLION DOLLARS EVERY YEAR ARE LOST TO MEDICARE AND MEDICAID TO HEALTH INDUSTRY FRAUD.  THAT IS WHERE THE HUMILITY NEEDS TO BE FELT!


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People must understand the neo-liberal jargon---- when they say they work for the middle-class they see the middle-class in the US as people earning $250,000 as a family.  They see Medicare and making it last longer for those 10% of people.  Needless to say the working and current middle-class are the only ones having paid payroll taxes into this Medicare Trust so the very people that should be getting full benefit are the ones being pushed out with the ACA.  That 'donut hole' will do no one any good if you cannot access or afford the kinds of PHARMA you need.  I already have friends having bad health effects because of being forced to use a generic that does not work for a chronic condition. 

THIS IS SERIOUS FOLKS.  THE SAME PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL PUBLIC HEALTH WORLD-WIDE WITH TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT ARE WRITING THESE HEALTH POLICIES.

Remember, the answer is not to vote Republican because the Affordable Care Act is Republican policy.  The solution is getting rid of neo-liberals in the Democratic Party.
  Do you hear your labor and justice leaders shouting out against neo-liberals?

In Maryland, Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur all supported these policies----while Cindy Walsh did not.

THE KING AND QUEEN OF NEO-LIBERALISM, BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON TAKING THE US FROM FIRST WORLD STATUS TO THIRD WORLD STATUS.


Which tier will your family fall?  In the US almost 70% of Americans are at poverty line meaning they will fall into the lowest 2 tiers.
  Don't forget that TPP will keep generic drug availability at a minimum and when they do come available they will be very outdated.  That's what the masses get say the neo-liberals and neo-cons.   Someone has to replace the trillions of dollars in health industry fraud from our Medicare and Medicaid programs....

ACA 5-Tier Drug List

For Individual PPO and Small Group HMO, POS, and PPO plans (including Marketplace/QHP plans) with ACA-compliant coverage becoming effective on or after January 1, 2014

About tiers

Most covered prescription drugs will be categorized into one of five tiers. The cost of drugs varies widely, even though several different medications may be used to treat the same condition. What you pay for the prescription depends upon what tier the drug is listed in. Health First offers many benefit plans that can vary in coverage for each tier. Details about your specific benefit for each tier are included in the Health First Summary of Benefits.

•Tier 1 — Preferred Generic Drugs •

Tier 2 — Non-Preferred Generic Drugs •

Tier 3 — Preferred Brand Name Drugs and some generics

•Tier 4 — Non-Preferred Brand Name Drugs and some generics (limited to a 30-day supply)

•Tier 5 — Specialty Drugs (limited to a 30-day supply, must obtain from Health First Family Pharmacy)


Generic drugs are prescription drugs that are identified by their chemical name. When the patent has expired on a brand name drug, the FDA permits new manufacturers to create an equivalent of the brand name drug and make it available to the public. Generally, more than one manufacturer will create generic versions, although often the same pharmaceutical firm that produces the brand name drug also makes the generic version. This prompts competitive pricing of the generic version and usually results in a less expensive drug. The Drug List is subject to change In order to continue to offer a safe and cost effective selection of prescription drugs, Health First periodically makes changes to the Drug List. These changes may include removing medications, adding restrictions, and/or covering a drug at a higher tier. The following list represents some of the most common scenarios in which changes to drug coverage will occur: •Throughout the year, new medications are approved by the FDA. It is the policy of Health First that new drugs will be excluded for 6 months from the date of FDA approval, during which time the Health First Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee can review the drug for safety and efficacy. •The Drug List may change when a medication is withdrawn from the market due to safety reasons or if it becomes available over-the-counter (OTC). At the time that a medication on the Health First Drug List becomes available OTC, it may be excluded from coverage from that point forward. •When a brand-name prescription drug loses its patent and the equivalent generic form is added to the Drug List, the brand-name drug may be moved to the highest non-specialty drug tier, which is generally Tier 4 or removed from the formulary.

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July 28th, 2014

7/28/2014

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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 23rd, 2014

7/23/2014

0 Comments

 
THE REASON MARYLAND IS SILENT AS THE REST OF THE NATION BRINGS OUT MILLIONS IN PROTEST OF NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CONS POLICIES IS THAT ERHLICH/O'MALLEY HAS WORKED HARD TO PRIVATIZE MARYLAND'S PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES.  IT IS HERE THAT HOLDING POWER ACCOUNTABLE BEGINS AND THAT IS WHY NEO-LIBERALS FROM CLINTON TO OBAMA ARE WORKING AS HARD AS THEY CAN TO MAKE THEM INTO CORPORATIONS.

We saw yesterday that it is University of Maryland's Chancellor Kirwan seeing the need to deregulate universities.  Maryland has allowed for-profit career colleges defraud for a few decades now because of deregulation of private career education so now we need to see the same in our public universities.  Kirwan says we are making money using taxpayer money to patent research but we need to super-size the profits from the products we are now sending to the corporate structures attached to our campuses----YOU KNOW---THE 'BIOTECH FACILITIES'.  Kirwan and Mikulski are not only talking about getting rid of a silly regulation that is out of date----they are intending to deregulate how universities can operate as businesses.  All those requirements for receiving taxpayer money for research that make the public partners in this research need to go.  We have proprietary patents now with that taxpayer funded research and it is heading for the open market for profit! 

Below you see what Kirwan and Mikulski are working towards.  Corporations are dismantling their research facilities because universities ARE THEIR RESEARCH FACILITIES.  University students are now paying tuition to work in a corporate research project for free supported by NIH and NCA research money.  IT'S ALL ABOUT CREATING JOBS!  Actually, college grads are as likely now to remain unemployed now as at the time of the 2008 crash because global corporations and neo-liberals are keeping the US economy stagnant.  So, these students are more likely to work as VISTAs then to get a job in the field for which they received a degree.  Meanwhile, the foreign students coming in to get degrees------doing OK especially if they go back home to work for the US corporation overseas.  FREE LABOR PAID FOR BY TAXPAYERS----NOW THAT MAXIMIZES CORPORATE PROFITS SAY NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.  See why taxes and tuition are soaring on the working and midde-class?  It costs lots to subsidize every corporate activity.

CORPORATIONS NO LONGER NEED RESEARCH FACILITIES------UNIVERSITIES DO THE RESEARCH AND ANYTHING THAT IS SUCCESSFUL COMES TO THE GLOBAL CORPORATIONS THROUGH STARTUPS BUYOUTS.  THE PEOPLE THEY HIRED TO DO THE WORK IN PRIVATE RESEARCH LABS ARE NOW STUDENTS PAYING TUITION.

The process of patenting university research while having corporations 'partnered' with these universities is a mockery as if people cannot see that this is why student tuition is soaring and all of taxpayer money is funding this 'university' research leaving no money for student financial aid and grants. Directors of these 'university' research facilities being paid like corporate executives.

LET'S GO BACK TO PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES AS PUBLIC EDUCATION!


Below you see what deregulation Kirwan and Mikulski are working towards......making universities driven by profit-----



Colleges Urged to Count Patents in Tenure Reviews

April 29, 2014
  Inside Higher Ed


Universities should begin making patents and other industrial and commercial research count toward promotion and tenure, in an effort to stimulate such research nationwide, argues a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. "There is a fundamental disconnect between technology transfer activities and incentives for faculty members in terms of merit raises, tenure and career advancement," Richard B. Marchase, co-author and vice president for research and economic development at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in a news release. "Beyond the monetary benefit of licensing, which is small in most cases, there is presently little to no benefit to a faculty member's merit raises, tenure and career advancement."

The paper builds on a 2012 report from the National Research Council and other groups saying that business and industry have "largely dismantled large corporate research laboratories that drove American industrial leadership," and which argues that research universities must "fill the gap."
In the new paper, called "Changing the Academic Culture: Valuing Patents and Commercialization Toward Tenure and Career Advancement," the authors argue that filling the research gap will entail changing the university "rewards culture" to value not only large research grants but also professors' patents and other commercial activities. Co-author Eric Kaler, president of the University of Minnesota, notes that this kind of work should not replace but "add to" traditional means of assessing scholarly activity. The paper's lead author is Paul R. Sanberg, senior vice president for research and innovation at the University of South Florida and president of the National Academy of Inventors. An abstract is available here.


_________________________________________________

Keep in mind the same global corporations for whom University of Maryland's Chancellor Kirwan and neo-liberals work are the same entities keeping the US economy stagnant-----and it is deliberate.  Remember, the bond market is going to crash causing a greater recession is so there is no intent to employ these grads----but they do free work and pay to do it with ever-higher tuition.  THIS IS A SWEET DEAL FOR CORPORATE PROFITS SAY NEO-LIBERALS IN MARYLAND!

The media shout that all of this a great education policy.  That more students are being sent to college and graduating with skills that corporations need.  OH REALLY? 

THEY NEED THEM TO WORK FOR FREE WHILE PAYING FOR COLLEGE AND THEN FORGET ABOUT IT AFTER GRADUATION.

The structure neo-liberals and neo-cons are building have the job pipeline coming from the Ivy League schools-----business leaders now come from these schools and any startups that may come from the public universities are simply bought by those corporations in the portfolio of Ivy League schools.  Working and middle-class grads are largely being funneled into poverty jobs or the military.


University of Maryland Baltimore County and Grabinsky were front page news as UMBC is the face of this free labor as corporate university.  While Maryland says its unemployment is 6.1% we all know that is only the number of people receiving unemployment checks.  Maryland's unemployment is 36% and growing with this economic model.  Remember, these are Republican policies of placing corporate profit first so voting Republican will not help----Democrats simply need to shake the corporate neo-liberals out of the Democratic Party!


FOLKS----THIS IS A NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMIC MODEL THEY CALL THE 21ST CENTURY ECONOMY!

All we need is to rebuild state economies having domestic businesses driving the economy and all of this will disappear.


The Deliberate Low-Wage, High-Insecurity Economic Model submitted by pmcovay3 ScienceIndex.com  Dec 2012

In contrast to the general biases of orthodox economists, the jobs crisis in America is not inevitable or natural-and more important, does not contribute to more economic efficiency through lower wages or more productivity. It is the result of deliberate political policy choices the nation has made at least since the early 1980s, when productivity was rising on a secular basis at a slow rate. Also, the policy choices were made before the rise of very low-wage emerging markets like China’s. In sum, there has been a low-wage, high-unemployment policy regime in the rich world, and especially in the United States, for a generation.


Students Call for Reform of Economics Education


May 6, 2014  Inside Higher Ed

Economics students in 19 countries have issued a joint call -- published in The Guardian -- to change the way economics is taught. The students' analysis (similar to that of some professors in the United States and elsewhere) is that economics has become too uniform in its approaches and too removed from real life. "[I]t's time to reconsider the way economics is taught. We are dissatisfied with the dramatic narrowing of the curriculum that has taken place over the past couple of decades," the letter says. "This lack of intellectual diversity does not only restrain education and research. It limits our ability to contend with the multidimensional challenges of the 21st century – from financial stability to food security and climate change. The real world should be brought back into the classroom, as well as debate and a pluralism of theories and methods. This will help renew the discipline and ultimately create a space in which solutions to society's problems can be generated."



All academics and analysts now look at employment figures as below----the employment to population ratio.  We all know some adults of working age may choose not to work but that percentage is not too high.  So, if 58% of the population is working------42% are not.  36% unemployment is about right.  As this article points out----with wages at an all time low people are now forced to have two incomes in a family.  The employment data media and government provides is simply meant to conceal this deliberately high unemployment.

Do you know who is not fooled by the failure of neo-liberalism------ECONOMICS STUDENTS!

The article above shows that university students are fed up with universities that only offer neo-liberal economic models in economic degree programs.  As this article states----WHY STUDY A FAILED ECONOMIC MODEL?  It is the duty of public universities to hold power accountable and give the public real data and we see this is not happening because of this corporate capture.

That is what university heads like Kirwan are doing.....they are appointed to force global corporate policies that no one wants and it is the governor that appoints these people to public universities.

Unemployment Data Manipulation The Economic Recovery is a Lie!
  By Seth Mason
Friday, November 1st, 2013  Wealth Daily

I've argued time and time again that, due to the severity of job losses during the Great Recession, there cannot be a true economic recovery until the labor market has recovered.

Unfortunately, hiring was weak in September, continuing a slowing trend that began in the spring.

To make matters worse, the majority of jobs created last month were menial in nature (nearly 2/3 of them were truck drivers, bureaucrats, salespeople, and temps). These trends have been ongoing throughout this economic depression.

The number of new jobs wasn't enough to keep up with population growth.

And yet the unemployment rate fell.

So, all is well... right?

Clearly, the "headline" 7.2% unemployment rate doesn't tell the whole story about the sad state of the American labor force.

You have to take any data from the Fed with a grain of salt, anyway, as the Obama administration has a vested interest in presenting the best-looking unemployment picture possible, just as all administrations have.

The employment-to-population ratio actually provides a much more accurate gauge of the health of the American job market — and wouldn't you know, it's been showing unhealthy readings since the economy crashed five years ago...

The proportion of Americans in the workforce has barely budged since falling from 63% to 58% during the Great Recession, as you can see on the following chart:



A Precipitous Decline

The last time the employment-to-population ratio was 58% — in the early 1980s — a relatively small proportion of American households sent more than one income earner into the workforce.

Now, in a nation of mostly one-breadwinner households, the 58% employment-to-population ratio was reasonable.

Today, however, due to a decline in real personal income (thanks for the inflation, Federal Reserve), most households send multiple income earners into the workforce.

In fact, it's not uncommon these days for households to have more than two income earners.

Under this paradigm, an employment-to-population ratio stuck at 58% like it's 1982 (when "homemaker" was still a common job title) is very unhealthy.


  Also worth noting is that a large percentage of the 58% of Americans who do work are working lower-quality jobs than they were before the economy crashed.

Although the population of the United States has increased by approximately 20 million since 2008, there are 5 million fewer “breadwinner” jobs in this country than there were before this economic depression.

"Breadwinner jobs" are those positions with a base salary of $35,000 or more that enable one to live independently, however meagerly. 

So the real health of the labor force is even worse than the unsettling 58% labor force participation rate!

Here we are, more than five years since the fall of Lehman, and the job market is still awful... and it's started to backslide again.



Niagara Falls

The Fed's Niagara Falls-scale liquidity pumping measures (I say "liquidity pumping" as opposed to "printing" because QE is only one of the Fed's tricks) clearly haven't had much impact on unemployment — or the federal government's $787 billion spending binge, also known as the grand "stimulus," for that matter.

Remember the laughable estimates of unemployment with and without the "Recovery Plan"?

According to the White House's October 2009 estimate (the dark blue line on the chart above), the Fed/federal government's plan should have taken us back to pre-recession unemployment levels by now...

Yet the unemployment rate sits at an unacceptable 7.2%.

And keep in mind the 7.2% headline unemployment rate belies the true awful state of the job market.

Considering the pitiful 58% employment-to-population ratio and the 5 million fewer breadwinner jobs since 2008, it would be an understatement to say that Washington's stimulus measures have failed to reduce unemployment. (That's assuming they were created for that purpose. More about that in a future article.)

We should expect more of the same from our esteemed central planners.

The Fed, which has officially delayed "tapering," will continue to pump indefinitely.

Uncle Sam will continue to borrow and spend like mad, whether he's wearing a DEM or GOP hat.

As a result, the "mother of all bubbles," as Nouriel Roubini has called it, will continue to expand...

And we'll continue party like it's 2006, only with higher unemployment.

We'll keep ignoring the fact that 2008 is just a couple of years away.

Happy crash 2.0!

Until next time,

Seth Mason for Wealth Daily
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Having a policy that brings more foreign students into the US with the goal of green cards and employment in high-skilled jobs does nothing for the American people, the high unemployment, or creating quality education and higher achievement in our US students.  It is purely a profit-making scheme that continues to consolidate the wealth at the top.

Maryland pols are all neo-liberals so whether Milkulsi and Cardin working in the Senate on legislation to build corporate universities and send trillions of dollars to expand overseas as corporations-----or the Governor of Maryland O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly appointing these corporate university heads and building the corporate structures in our universities-----

THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLY REBUILD THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN MARYLAND BY RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE.



Currency February 21, 2014

Should Universities Profit From Student Research?
By John Bringardner  The New Yorker





In 2011, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Cornell University and Israel’s Technion would jointly open a new school on Roosevelt Island to help boost New York’s tech sector. The first buildings of the new campus won’t open until 2017, but classes are already under way in borrowed space on the third floor of Google’s New York office. And, on Monday, Cornell Tech, as the school is called, plans to announce that it has enrolled its first batch of post-doctoral researchers in a one-year “Runway” program, designed to launch them into business ventures based on their specialties: urban planning, e-commerce, health care. In an unusual twist, the school will invest in the companies founded through the program, but also allow students to keep ownership of the intellectual property they create on campus; typically, universities profit by keeping the rights to such property.



Cornell Tech isn’t the only institution to invest in student startups. Stanford announced last year that it would invest in companies founded by its students. M.I.T. also takes an equity stake in companies developed on campus. But Stanford and M.I.T. both require those companies to pay royalties on any technologies the students patent while in school.
Rather than negotiate complex patent-licensing rights with their researchers, Cornell Tech will treat the value of each post-doc position it awards—about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars—as an angel investment in any business spun out of the program; in exchange, Cornell Tech expects to get an average of a five-per-cent stake in each business. The Runway program echoes the accelerators and incubators popular among venture capitalists—three- or four-month programs in which entrepreneurs get resources to build new startups in exchange for a stake in their companies.

Universities didn’t always have the right to the spoils of the research they sponsored. The government spent heavily on research and development at U.S. universities during the Cold War, but new technologies developed with federal cash became government property. By 1980, the federal government had amassed twenty-eight thousand patents but licensed fewer than five per cent to companies that could turn them into products. That year, Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to keep and profit from the patents their students and researchers developed on campus using federal funds. The Economist called it “perhaps the most inspired piece of legislation in America over the past half-century.”

Soon, offices focussed on “technology transfer” opened up in schools around the country, staffed with lawyers who poked around campus research labs and flipped through student notebooks to suss out patentable research that they could license to corporations. A new chemical combination might become a blockbuster drug; a technological breakthrough could lead to smaller, faster semiconductors.

In 2012, American universities earned $2.6 billion from patent royalties, according to the Association of University Technology Managers. The tech-transfer model is entrenched in medical schools and in biotech development. But its usefulness in the software world has been less clear. The success of a software startup often depends less on any particular innovation than on how several pieces of technology fit together and appeal to users. A company’s value usually becomes apparent years after it has developed and refined its business model, not at the moment it files a patent application. Plus, the very concept of a software patent hangs in the balance: in December, the Supreme Court agreed to review a case that could eliminate them altogether.

Cornell Tech’s approach—taking an equity stake in each company instead of licensing rights to a handful of patents—may be a more straightforward way for the school to profit from spin-offs. “Universities look to place a value on technology at its inception, finding a fair rate for splitting royalties between the school and the inventor, but that’s not the way digital startups work,” Cornell Tech’s Dean, Daniel Huttenlocher, said. “I think intellectual-property protection, especially in software and digital tech, is a very small piece of commercialization, one that becomes too big a part of the conversation when universities are involved.”

The Runway program is designed to turn deep academic research into a marketable product; its first post-docs have already spent years in the lab, sometimes running into dead ends and starting over in a way that pure academic research allows but investors don’t. “A principal mission of Cornell University is the pursuit of knowledge for the benefit and use of society,” the school’s existing intellectual-property policy reads. Whether society benefits most when knowledge is turned into an I.P.O. is an open question.

“The entire Bay Area is enamored with these notions of innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, mega-success,” the historian and Stanford professor David Kennedy told Ken Auletta in 2012, in a report from Stanford. “It’s in the air we breathe out here. It’s an atmosphere that can be toxic to the mission of the university as a place of refuge, contemplation, and investigation for its own sake.” And when students showed up for their first classes at the temporary campus, in January, 2013, Isaac Kramnick, a professor of government at Cornell in Ithaca, told the Times, “The university has been at the forefront of big science since the 1940s and 1950s. Now it’s entering an era in which it seems to be interested in for-profit science, and that does require some thinking as to what the fundamental purpose of a university is.” (“Such potential for conflicts is quite manageable with the appropriate procedures in place, enabling this very effective interaction between students, faculty, and companies,” Huttenlocher told me.)

Yet universities are forging ahead with more business-oriented models. Over the past decade, angel investors, the main source of capital for startups, have made high-risk bets, providing money for startups to get off the ground in exchange for the right to a piece of the company’s equity if it succeeds. Most never do. Venture capitalists call their strategy “spray and pray,” sinking money into lots of different startups in the hope that at least one will be the next Facebook. It’s a gamble, but it could be a better way for universities to take advantage of the work their students are doing. The amount of revenue schools generate from patent licensing is small compared with over-all university budgets. Alumni philanthropy brings in far more money. “What would happen if schools gave up rights to their students’ intellectual property?” Adam Shwartz, the director of Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, which runs the Runway program, asked. “Their patent revenue goes to zero, but down the line the successful alumni give back far more money. Here we have the first controlled experiment of this nature.”

Rendering of Cornell Tech by Kilograph.
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Below you see how bad the success rate of this model is for the student /school so a corporation directs the research it wants to fund----gets free labor and a taxpayer funded research facility----and VOILA all the failures are paid for by you and me.  No need for corporate R and D.  In lieu of corporate taxes these investment firms just send there money to these university projects and we are told this is the best mechanism for funding universities.

All work on campus is now product-driven-----professors are judged on patenting rather than academics or teaching.  Tenure is tied to being this corporate executive.  Students are engaged only in what will pay off and not with a broad education limiting their futures.  As this article shows it is the student that loses and graduates with the tuition debt and limited focus degrees.


What is sad is that the student's future success with whatever they create requires handing a percentage of future earnings to these university/venture capitalist and the few that do create successful businesses simply hand them to these global investment firms.  This is all simply universities as corporate facilities.

THE ENTIRE ACADEMIC MODEL HAS BEEN RUINED AND THE US IS AGAIN ON THE BOTTOM ACADEMICALLY IN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS.  THIS IS WHAT MIKULSKI AND KIRWAN ARE SITTING DOWN TO BOLSTER.

DEAR ENTREPRENEURS: Here's How Bad Your Odds Of Success Are
  • Henry Blodget  Business Insider

  • May 28, 2013, 11:03 AM

As a wise investor puts it: "Many turtles hatch. Few make it to the sea."


Everyone knows that starting companies — and investing in startups — is a risky way to earn a living. But few people appreciate just how risky it is.

Thanks to a recent tweet from Paul Graham, the founder of "startup school" Y Combinator, we now have a better idea.

Graham says that 37 of the 511 companies that have gone through the Y Combinator program over the past 5 years have either sold for, or are now worth, more than $40 million.

Most entrepreneurs would probably view creating a company worth more than $40 million as a success (unless the company raised more capital than that). And, on its face, the "37 companies" number seems relatively impressive.

In fact, however, the number tells a scary and depressing story.

This number suggests that a startling 93% of the companies that get accepted by Y Combinator eventually fail.

(Not all companies that sell for less than $40 million are "failures," obviously. Assuming a company hasn't raised much capital, a sale between $5 million and $40 million could be considered a success. But a high percentage of Y Combinator companies likely end up being worth zero. And for companies that are hand-picked by very smart investors, the 93%-below-$40 million rate is still surprisingly low). 

A company accepted by Y Combinator, therefore, has less than a 1-in-10 chance of being a big success.

More alarmingly, the companies accepted by Y Combinator are only a tiny fraction of the companies that apply.

Some have estimated that Y Combinator's acceptance rate is 3-5%.

If we use the 5% rate, we can estimate that Y Combinator has received about 10,000 applications for the ~500 companies it has chosen over the years.

Assuming Y Combinator has even a modest ability to pick winners, therefore, the odds that a company applying to Y Combinator will be a success are significantly lower than the odds of success of the companies accepted into the program.

If only 37 of the companies that have applied to Y Combinator over the years have succeeded, this is a staggeringly low 0.4% success rate.

Put differently, only one in every 200 companies that applies to Y Combinator will succeed.

The reality is that Y Combinator probably misses a few winners, so the actual odds are probably slightly higher.

But in case any entrepreneur or angel investor is deluding themselves into thinking that startups are an easy way to cash in, they might want to think again.









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July 17th, 2014

7/17/2014

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THESE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS TO WATCH FOR AND THINK ABOUT THESE NEXT MONTHS AS THE BOND MARKET PREPARES TO COLLAPSE.  I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW THAT AS WITH THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE LOAN COLLAPSE YOUR POLS NOT ONLY KNOW IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN----THEY ARE CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR THE CRASH.  THAT IS BECAUSE THEY WORK FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND PROFIT.  GET RID OF THEM!



Keep in mind the entire financial system of frauds is based on tricking people, or allowing others to trick people into taking on more debt than they can handle knowing the end result will be a collapse in market that leaves people/government unable to pay the debt. With the subprime mortgage fraud the banks targeted low-income homeowners not only to gain control of real estate in urban areas but to target the Federal Housing Authority and its taxpayer payments of fees and loans.  This coming municipal/sovereign debt fraud collapse targets again government coffers and taxpayers as corrupt neo-liberal politicians load the states and cities with debt knowing this crash in 2015 is a sure thing.  Public officials take an oath to serve and protect the Constitution and citizens and none of this meets this oath.  They are aiding and abetting a crime by knowingly placing the public in harms way.  Remember, we can build Baltimore schools by simply ending the billion in fraud and corruption each year so there is plenty of taxpayer money for these infrastructure projects.  It is the leverage needed to implode the state and city economy.

AGAIN, WE CAN REVERSE THIS----WE SIMPLY NEED TO ELECT POLS THAT REBUILD RULE OF LAW AND OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY.  EASY PEASY.


I want to make sure people understand that all of this was known years ago---below you see in 2011 financial analysts were advising to prepare for the collapse.  During that time think how many credit bond and leveraging deals have been made in Maryland and Baltimore---including the big $1 billion deal to rebuild public schools.  I was shouting and writing to show the public knew this was malfeasance so we are under no obligation when the crash comes to hand everything to investment firms as they plan.  We must have Rule of Law to provide that protection.  This is why these elections are critical these next few election cycles and it is why Maryland was willing to allow systemic election violations for Governor to make sure the right person was in place to protect the fraud when this collapse comes.


Keep in mind the FED controls when this crash occurs to the extend of ending QE and allowing the manufactured  inflation be replaced by real inflation numbers . This will create the environment for mass exodus from the bond market and she has no way to stop this as it has maxed and is now unable to be contained.  She may delay it, but it will come and it appears likely 2015 will be the longest she can delay.  Inflation which is now thought to be 5% or so will jump to some of the highest levels in US history and it is all because of FED policy and Congress and Obama passing laws that made municipal bond markets artificially attractive.  They sold our bond market to the world just as they sold toxic subprime mortgage loans to the world.  They earned trillions and the American people lost everything as will happen this time around.


This article refers to the last time the FED considered ending QE in 2011.... as we know Bernanke decided to extend the death sentence and allow Yellen to handle the collapsing economy.
 

SHE WILL HAVE NO CHOICE AS THE FED IS MAXED IN DEBT AND INFLATION IS NOT CONTAINABLE. IT'S ONE BIG PONZI SCHEME.

O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly sold citizens out statewide and Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Hall sold citizens out locally as they did during the subprime mortgage loan fraud.

The Coming Bond Market Crash: The Three Moves Every Investor Must Make
  • By Martin Hutchinson, Global Investing Specialist, Money Morning  ·   July 1, 2011 



Since last November, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been buying U.S. Treasury bonds at a rate of about $75 billion a month. That's part of Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's "QE2" program, under which the central bank was to buy $600 billion of the government bonds.

But QE2 ended yesterday (Thursday), meaning the Fed will no longer be a big buyer of Treasury bonds.

So starting today (Friday), the U.S. Treasury needs to sell twice as many Treasury bonds to end investors as it had been.

But the problem is, who's going to buy them?

Not China, which is diversifying its trillions in assets to get as far away from the U.S. dollar as fast as it can.

Not Japan, which is trying to rebound from its March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster - and is focusing all its spending on reconstruction.

And - as we've seen -neither is the Bernanke-led Fed.

I'm telling you right now: We are headed for an epic bond market crash. If you don't know about it, or don't care, you could get clobbered.


But if you do know, and are willing to take steps now, you can easily protect yourself - and even turn a nice profit in the process.

Let me explain ...

A Timetable for the Coming Crash I'm an old bond-market hand myself - my experience dates back to my days at the British merchant bank Hill Samuel in the 1970s - so I see all the signs of what's to come.

Having the two biggest external customers of U.S. debt largely out of the market is a huge problem. Unfortunately, those aren't the only challenges the market faces. The challenges just get bigger from there - which is why I'm predicting a bond market crash.

Latest Comment^ It is 2013, QE3 is out so maybe his timing is off but with all the printed mon…

Steadily rising inflation is one of the challenges. Inflation is a huge threat to the bond markets, and is almost certain to create a whipping turbulence that will ultimately infect the stocks markets, too.

Many pundits will tell you that if investor demand for bonds declines, and investor fear of inflation increases, bond-market yields could increase in an orderly fashion.

But I can tell you that the bond markets don't work like that. Price declines affect existing bonds as well as new ones, so the value of every investor's bond holdings declines. And with many of those investors heavily leveraged - especially at the major international banks - the sight of year-end bonuses disappearing down the Swanee River as bonds are "marked to market" will cause a panic. That's especially true when end-of-quarter or end-of-year reporting periods loom.

That's why we can expect a bond market crash at some point. If you ask me to make a prediction, I'd say that September or December were the most likely months for such a crash.

A Boxed-In Bernanke One sad - even scary - fact about what I'm predicting is that Fed Chairman Bernanke won't be able to do much about it ... though he'll certain try.

Consumer price inflation is now running at 3.6% year-on-year while producer price inflation is running at 7.2%. In that kind of environment, a 10-year Treasury bond yielding 3% is no longer economically attractive. Since monetary conditions worldwide remain very loose, inflation in the U.S. and worldwide will trend up, not down.

The bottom line: At some point, the "value proposition" offered to Treasury bond investors will become impossibly unattractive. When that happens, expect a rush to the exits.

If Bernanke attempts "QE3" - a third round of "quantitative easing" - he will have a problem. If other investors head for the exits, Bernanke may find that the U.S. central bank is as jammed up as the European Central Bank (ECB) currently is with Greek debt: Both will end up as the suckers that are taking all the rubbish off of everyone else's books.

There's a limit to how much Treasury paper even Bernanke thinks he can buy. And if everyone else is selling, that "limit" won't be high enough to save the bond market.


With Bernanke buying at a rapid rate, the inflationary forces will be even stronger,
so every Bureau of Labor Statistics report on monthly price indices will be marked by a massive swoon in the Treasury bond market.

Eventually, there has to be a new head of the Fed - a Paul A. Volcker 2.0 who is truly committed to conquering inflation. Alas, it won't be Volcker himself since, at 84, he is probably too old.

But it might be John B. Taylor, who invented the "Taylor Rule" for Fed policy. The Taylor Rule is actually a pretty soggy guide on running a monetary system. But it has been flashing bright red signals about the current Fed's monetary policy since 2008.

However, since a Fed chairman who is actually serious about fighting inflation would be a huge burden for current U.S. President Barack Obama to bear - and could badly hamper his chances for re-election, any such appointment is unlikely before November 2012.

How to Profit From the Bond Market Crash


Given that reality, it's likely that Bernanke will attack any bond market crash that occurs ahead of the presidential election just by printing more money; there won't be any serious attempt to rectify the fundamental problem, meaning inflation will continue to accelerate.

For you as an investor, this insight leads to two conclusions that you can put to work to your advantage. The scenario I've outlined for you will be:

Very good for gold and other hard assets. Challenging for Treasury bonds; prices will remain weak no matter how vigorously Bernanke attempts to support them.

So what should you do with this knowledge? I have three recommendations.

First and foremost, if Bernanke were not around, I would expect gold prices to fall following a bond market crash. But since he's still at the helm at the Fed, I expect him to do "QE3" in the event of a crash. And that means gold - not Treasury bonds - would become an investor "safe haven."

You can expect gold prices to zoom up, peaking at a much higher level around the time Bernanke is finally replaced. Silver will also follow this trend. So make sure you have substantial holdings of either physical gold and silver or the exchange-traded funds (ETFs) SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) and iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV).

Second, if you want to profit more directly from the collapse in Treasury bond prices, you could buy a "put" option on Treasury bond futures (TLT) on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE). The futures were recently trading around 94, and the January 2013 80 put (CBOE: TLT1319M80-E) was priced around $4.50, which seems an attractive combination of low price and high leverage.

Finally, if you don't already own a house, you should buy one - and do so with a fixed-rate mortgage. A U.S. Treasury bond market crash will send mortgage rates through the roof, so today's rates of about 4.8% will represent very cheap money, indeed. Even if house prices decline by 10%, a 2% rise in mortgage rates would increase the monthly payment (even accounting for a 10% smaller mortgage), by a net 11.8% (the payment on a $100,000 mortgage at 4.8% is $524.67; that on a $90,000 mortgage at 6.8% is $586.73).

Needless to say, the same benefits apply to rental properties financed by fixed-rate mortgages: With lower home ownership and rising inflation, rents are tending to rise significantly.

There's a storm coming in the Treasury bond market. But by recognizing its approach, we can turn the bond market crash to our advantage.


_________________________________________________

HMMMMMM.....reduce reserve funds and raise public debt.....all to augment the billions of dollars lost to the Maryland economy to fraud each year.

The debt takes the form of state leverage for projects and services----they have even leveraged the public pension funds all with no indication that 2015 will bring a major recession/depression.  DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING YOUR NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS WILL SAY!


All that leverage supposedly balanced the state budget and O'Malley pretended to be saving public sector jobs and pensions all while knowing this economic crash will lead to huge layoffs and end public sector pensions.
  Labor union leaders know this dynamic and still go with the neo-liberals doing it!
  As we all know each year since this 2010 article the public debt and leverage has increased.  Again, Republicans in other states are doing the same thing so do not listen to Maryland Republicans playing this card---they would do the same.

Maryland Governor’s Budget Cuts Reserve Payments, Boosts Debt

by Patrick Temple-West JAN 20, 2010 8:44pm ET Bond Buyer


WASHINGTON — Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley yesterday released a proposal for the state’s fiscal 2011 budget that would reduce reserve fund contributions and increase public debt by 7.1% over fiscal 2010.




Below you see what is only the tip of the iceberg with tax credits that commit a level of tax forgiveness for decades that starves our government coffers.  O'Malley cut higher education aid and public transportation funding to pay for just a few of these corporate subsidies all in the name of jobs.  Well, when the bond market crash comes and the jobs are gone because of the recession global corporations will still be receiving tax breaks as they do business/make profits overseas. 

WHO CARES ABOUT LEVERAGE AND STATE DEBT WHEN THE IDEA IS TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.

We'll just cut more services, programs, sell public assets, and let global corporations handle the business of government that now has no revenue.

I'm not going to format since one can just look down very quickly to see all of the development is done with tax credits. They all are supposed to create jobs and help low-income people all of which will be killed by the coming economic crash from the credit leverage in these very policies.  Attracting global corporations to Maryland is the answer to jobs and a strong economy say neo-liberals-----only it does the opposite.  Most of these tax breaks will go to large corporations.

$2 million in tax credits for creating 10 poverty jobs......hmmmmmm.

Maryland Department of Business & Economic Development

economic development and the creation of jobs. MVF targets emerging technology-based businesses including biotechnology, information technology, telecommunications, software development and advanced materials.• Challenge Investment Program – $650,000 to ten start-up firms.• Enterprise Investment Fund – $2.2 million – three new firms and follow-on funding to five companies.Federal IncentivesCommunity Development Block Grant Program – Economic DevelopmentThis program assists local governments in implementing commercial and industrial economic development projects. Approved program funds are disbursed to eligible local jurisdictions as conditional grants and used for public improvements for business start-up or expansion or business loans. Projects must create jobs with the majority targeted to individuals from low to moderate income or eliminate blight conditions that impede commercial and industrial development. Fund uses include acquiring fixed assets, infrastructure and feasibility studies. • CDBG-ED funds of $2.2 million supported seven closed projects to create or retain 185 full-time jobs. Three projects worth $1.3 million were approved, representing 129 new or retained jobs.Maryland Economic Adjustment FundMEAF assists small businesses with upgrading manufacturing operations, developing commercial applications for technology, or entering new economic markets. Eligible businesses include manufacturers, wholesalers, service companies and skilled trades. Funds can be used for working capital, machinery and equipment, building renovations, real estate acquisition and site improvements. •Four Maryland Economic Adjustment Fund projects totaling $703,000 were approved and five transactions totaling $726,500 were closed.Tax Credit ProgramsOne Maryland Tax Credit Program Businesses can qualify for up to $5.5 million in income tax credits under the program when they invest in an economic development project in a “qualified distressed county.” Qualified Distressed Counties currently include: Baltimore City, Allegany, Dorchester, Garrett, Caroline, Somerset and Worcester. The business must create at least 25 new full-time positions at the project within 24 months of the date the project is placed in service. The business must be engaged in an eligible activity and incur eligible project or start-up costs. • FY2009 – 3 final certificates of eligibility issued for businesses that created 219 new jobs.Job Creation Tax CreditEncourages businesses to relocate to or expand in a Maryland Priority Funding Area by providing income tax credits based on new jobs created. Subject to various restrictions and conditions including location, wage levels and number of jobs created the credit may be for 2.5% up to $1,000 per job or 5% of annual wage up to $1,500 per job. • FY2009 – 7 final certificates of eligibility issued for businesses that created 307 new jobs.Enterprise Zone ProgramBusinesses located in a maryland enterprise Zone may receive income and real property tax credits in return for creating jobs. Local governments apply to the Department to designate Enterprise Zones. The ten-year real property tax credit reduces taxes on property improvements for ten years. The income tax credit for creating new jobs is$1,000 per new worker; for hiring economically disadvantage employees, up to $6,000 per new employee (over three years).• As of June 2009, there were 29 Enterprise Zones and two focus areas. • FY2010– 753 businesses will receive property tax credits totaling $26.3 million.– State share to reimburse localities will be $13.1 million, assuming the State’s full obligation is met.– Credits are based on real property investments totaling $1.945 billion.AGENCY MISSION & ACTIVITIES (contintued)

_____________________________________________

Here you see for whom neo-liberals and neo-cons in Maryland work---as they say we do not need to bring money home to pay taxes and  build infrastructure---we have plenty of business overseas thanks to O'Malley's 8 years of sending all of Maryland's revenue to building global structures for development.  We are exporting education and health care businesses none of which grows jobs in Maryland.

This is why neo-liberals are not concerned about the coming economic crash----it will not hurt these global corporations and it will provide excuses to hand more public operations/assets to these global corporations
.  Dulaney and neo-liberals are trying as hard as they can to repatriate global tax requirements in schemes to build infrastructure.  Remember, if they paid taxes we would have the money for infrastructure.  Domestic businesses pay taxes so the answer is GET RID OF GLOBAL CORPORATE CONTROL OF YOUR ECONOMY!  Dulaney is a Clinton investment banker who knows banks owe tens of trillions of dollars in fraud but does not seem to want to offer that solution.  Buying Treasury bonds when the bond market is preparing to collapse?  REALLY MR DULANEY?

Raise your hand if you know the answer is to get rid of global corporations from the Maryland economy rather than pretending to need to beg them for their taxes!!!!!  EVERYONE.  Raise your hand if you understand that tax breaks in exchange for bond purchases just when the bond market is ready to collapse will simply allow corporations to enter a bond market at the bottom for tremendous profits just as happened in 2008 with the stock market crash.  THAT'S WHAT THESE POLICIES ARE ALL ABOUT!


Everyone knows as well that the main avenue for recovering those tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud is HIGHER CORPORATE TAXES but as this article shows neo-liberals and neo-cons only intend to lower corporate taxes....you know, its all about job creation.


Md. Companies Have Billions in Assets Overseas Business Top News — 28 March 2014 By Fola Akinnibi
Capital News Service

6 WASHINGTON – The president’s budget, released in early March, called for the creation of a national fund to finance repair of the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges and other infrastructure — an idea also proposed by a freshman Maryland congressman.

Rep. John Delaney, D-Potomac, wants to fund infrastructure repair by bringing home billions of dollars in foreign earnings from U.S.-based corporations.  The congressman said he has been long concerned about decaying infrastructure.

Delaney’s Partnership to Build America Act would create a new way to pay for these repairs. Corporations would provide the money by buying bonds in The American Infrastructure Fund.


In exchange, they would be allowed to bring back money locked up overseas without paying the full 35 percent corporate tax rate.

Delaney’s bill could come as a relief to corporations with large foreign operations that have deferred paying U.S. corporate taxes on their overseas earnings indefinitely. For example, 10 Maryland-based multinational corporations, including Columbia-based MICROS Systems Inc. and Baltimore-based Under Armour Inc., are holding a combined $3.5 billion overseas, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

While it would mean a major tax savings, none of the 10 publicly held Maryland companies contacted would comment on the proposed legislation.


One expert said there’s little incentive to bring the funds back with so much business opportunity overseas. Instead, it makes sense for U.S. companies to let the overseas funds stay put and postpone a U.S. tax bill.

“It’s better to defer,” said Michael Faulkender, a finance professor at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business.

Further, the Delaney proposal is out of sync with many plans to overhaul the U.S. tax code, he said. “Every proposal on the table is for the corporate tax rate to go down, not up.”

Rich Badmington, W.R. Grace & Co.’s vice president of global communications, said most of the Columbia chemical company’s revenue comes from international operations. The company plans to continue investing in those operations.

“We are able to do that without bringing cash back to the U.S. because we are continuing to invest,” Badmington said. “(Research and development) is a function that requires continuing investment and we have quite a lot of that outside the U.S.”

President Barack Obama’s latest budget plan called for the creation of a government-owned entity to finance infrastructure projects. Delaney said the president’s support for something similar to his bill was “great,” and said it shows how much momentum the bill has.

“We’re very optimistic about it, we have strong bipartisan support,” Delaney said.

The bill has 57 co-sponsors in the House and 12 in the Senate, including Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., head of the Senate Finance Committee’s Taxation and IRS Oversight subcommittee. Hearings have not been scheduled for the bill.


Under the tax code, corporations can avoid paying taxes on foreign earnings as long as the money is being permanently reinvested overseas. When the corporations decide to bring these funds back home, a process called “repatriation,” the money then is subject to U.S. taxes.

Originally, the tax exemption was meant to help U.S. corporations compete overseas, said Mitchell Kane, a tax professor at New York University’s School of Law. Companies claimed paying taxes in two countries would put them at a disadvantage and the government responded with the exemption, he said.

The plan was to have the companies pay foreign taxes, which in many cases are lower than the U.S. tax rate, and then pay U.S. taxes when the money was repatriated. After this process, the company would receive a credit for any foreign taxes paid, Kane said.

Allowing such an exemption has created an incentive for companies to keep their money overseas and defer the U.S. corporate tax, said Jane Gravelle, an economist with the Congressional Research Service. But parking money offshore isn’t a long-term solution for companies, she added.

“They may think they can hold their breath forever and borrow money,” Gravelle said. “How long are they going to be able to do that? Shareholders eventually want dividends.”


This exemption could result in $265.7 billion in lost revenue for the federal government through 2017, according to a 2013 report by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.

For now, however, companies aren’t likely to repatriate without a major tax discount.

W.R. Grace has more than $1.1 billion held overseas and would have to pay $149.7 million in taxes if it was repatriated, according to SEC filings. That money will remain overseas, except in instances where repatriation would result in minimal or no U.S. taxes, the company said in its most recent SEC filing.

MICROS Systems, a Maryland-based computer hardware and software producer,
has about 61 percent of its cash and cash equivalents, $385.8 million, held internationally with no plans to repatriate, according to the company’s most recent filings with the SEC.

Maryland-based apparel company Under Armour has $95.2 million, or 27 percent, of its cash and cash equivalents held overseas with no plans to bring it back.

Spokespersons from MICROS and Under Armour could not be reached for comment.

Other companies have begun to repatriate their foreign funds, which Kane said could help cover corporate expenses. McCormick & Company, a spice, herbs and flavoring manufacturer, repatriated $70 million in 2012, according to the company’s most recent SEC filings. Even still, most of the company’s cash is held in foreign subsidiaries, the filings said.

A spokesperson for McCormick and Co. could not be reached for comment.

Some of the largest U.S. corporations make about half of their money internationally, Delaney said. The bill is just a way to get some of it back.

“It creates a way for some of that money to come back, which is good for our economy,” Delaney said. “And it creates this large-scale infrastructure fund, which is good for our country.”


Instead of government funding, the American Infrastructure Fund would raise cash through a $50 billion bond offering.
Companies would buy the bonds at a 1 percent fixed interest rate and a 50-year term, in exchange for a chance to repatriate a certain portion of overseas earnings tax-free for every dollar spent on bonds.

A bond to repatriation ratio would be determined by an auction and could result in companies paying an effective 12 percent tax rate, Delaney said. Money raised in the bond sale could then be leveraged and loaned to state and local governments for projects.

The auction process will benefit both the infrastructure fund and the corporations, which will be able to find a price that is right for them, Delaney said.

“We’ve talked to them and they’re very supportive of it,” he said.

The American Business Conference, Associated Equipment Distributors and Terex Corporation are among those supporting the bill.

Tech giants and pharmaceutical corporations have lobbied for a repatriation holiday since the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act allowed them to repatriate at a discounted rate. Because of the intellectually-based capital that these companies thrive on, it is sometimes easier for them to keep assets overseas.

For example, Apple has $124.4 billion held overseas, according to the company’s most recent SEC filing.

The 2004 bill reduced repatriation taxes to 5.25 percent if corporations promised to invest the money at home. The one-year holiday is widely regarded as a failure because it spurred an increase in repatriation, but not an increase in jobs or investments, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

“The argument was that it would be a stimulus” to the U.S. economy, Gravelle said. “Most people who studied this found out it was being used to repurchase shares.”

Share repurchases are a common way to boost stock prices.

Corporations used the money to pay stockholders dividends and pay off debts, which doesn’t make for a good stimulus, she continued.  Instead, the holiday created a “moral hazard” and companies have parked money overseas, waiting for the next holiday, Gravelle said.

Delaney’s bill has short-term benefits but doesn’t address the larger problems with the tax code, Faulkender said. Corporations will want to move more and more operations overseas if they can find discounts on U.S. taxes, he added.

“If you signal that firms are going to realize a lower tax rate, even after repatriation, on their foreign operations than on their domestic operations, you’re going to incentivize even more offshoring,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s good for the U.S. economy.”


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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.


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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.



_____________________________________________

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 13th, 2014

7/13/2014

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JUST AN FYI AS THE MARYLAND BOARD OF ELECTIONS CERTIFIED THIS GOVERNOR'S RACE ON JULY 10, 2014.  THIS MEANS ITS TIME FOR CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND TO GO TO COURT.  THIS EFFORT IS NOT ONLY TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM SO IT WORKS AS RULE OF LAW REQUIRES---IT IS ABOUT THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND KNOWING HOW THINGS SHOULD WORK AND ASK YOURSELF----WHY IS MY INCUMBENT NOT SHOUTING THIS? 

IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS.




Neo-liberals in Maryland have such control of the state and local Democratic committees that they openly violate election laws to make sure that any candidate with a platform against neo-liberal policies is excluded from election events and media coverage----a blackout of labor and justice candidates. For others across the US -----this may be happening in your neck of the woods.

THIS IS ILLEGAL AND WE MUST TAKE THIS TO COURT. EVEN IF THE COURT IS CORRUPT WE MUST DOCUMENT THIS BREAKDOWN OF RULE OF LAW AND EDUCATE THE PUBLIC ABOUT HOW THINGS SHOULD WORK!

Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland has filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Maryland/Baltimore claiming systemic election violations changed the results of the election for Governor of Maryland in the Democratic Primary and need to be invalidated. If not for these election violations Cindy Walsh would have won the election without a doubt! The next step is for the court to issue summons' to these defendants in an expedited process as required by Maryland law in challenges to elections for Governor. Failure to do so will deny me my US Constitutional rights to due process and rights to participate freely in elections. Remember, I should be campaigning for the general election right now as the Republican candidate is doing.

I am self-representing as Maryland has no public justice protecting citizens against government malfeasance. I feel confident the complaint is written correctly and I know the claims are valid and easily proven. Lawyers may LOL at my lack of legalese-----be kind!!!!




CIVIL CLAIM IN THE CIRCUIT COURT  OF MARYLAND IN BALTIMORE



Cindy Walsh vs
Bobbie S. Mack , Chairman Maryland Board of Elections; Doug Gansler, Maryland State Attorney General; and Democratic Primary candidates for Governor of Maryland,  Anthony Brown, Doug Gansler, and Heather Mizeur.


Parties to this complaint


1.  Cindy Walsh
2522 N Calvert Street     Civil Action#____________
Baltimore, Maryland 21218

Plaintiff

 
 VS.


 
2.  Bobbie Mack, Chairman Maryland Board of Elections
151 West Street, Suite 200
Annapolis, MD 21401

Defendant


3.  Doug Gansler, Maryland Attorney General and candidate
200 St. Paul Place
Baltimore, MD 21202


Defendant

 

4.  Anthony Brown- candidate
100 State Circle 
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Defendant

 

5.  Heather Mizeur- candidate
House Office Building, Room 429
6 Bladen St., Annapolis, MD 21401


Defendant

 

Jurisdiction

6.  Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland is filing in Maryland Circuit Court of Baltimore because plaintiff is a resident of Baltimore and the election irregularities identified in the Federal Court case include businesses located and operating in Baltimore.  The plaintiff claims Maryland agencies tasked with oversight and enforcement, the Maryland Board of Elections and Maryland Attorney General’s Office, failed to oversee Maryland elections and enforce Maryland and Federal election laws. 

TITLE 6 Subtitle 1 Section 6-102 (a); Section 6-103 (a) (b) (1); TITLE 6 Subtitle 2 Section 6-201 (a) 


Statement of Facts and Claims

 7.  The US Constitution and Maryland Constitution guarantees the rights of citizens to free and fair elections.  This includes the rights of citizens to run for elected office and the rights of citizens to go to the polls educated on the issues and candidates in an election race so they may cast an intelligent vote.  The FCC and IRS regulate businesses under their venue and have laws that protect elections and how businesses may participate in elections.  These laws state that if a business decides to participate in elections it must do no damage to one candidate or oppose a candidate and it must educate voters on the issues and candidates in an election race excluding no candidate because of platform.  These laws protect Federal, State, and local elections.  This case does not address a third party candidate; it addresses a candidate in a Democratic Primary and has the protection of major party status.  Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland was systematically excluded from election coverage by Maryland media and election events by major 501c3 organizations and this exclusion was complete in the City of Baltimore.  The plaintiff will prove these widespread election irregularities without a doubt changed the results of the Democratic Primary election for Governor of Maryland and denied the citizens of Maryland the information on a campaign platform that in all probability included issues valuable to their decision to vote and for whom to vote.  This case claims that Bobbie Mack of the Maryland Board of Elections and Doug Gansler of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office willfully and deliberately failed in their duties of oversight and enforcement of Maryland and Federal Election Law and refused to respond to plaintiff’s requests for relief from said election irregularities.  Rather, they allowed them to continue creating the conditions now necessitating the invalidation of the election results in the Democratic Primary for Governor of Maryland.  This case claims as well that Democratic Primary candidates Anthony Brown, Doug Gansler, and Heather Mizeur and their campaign committees knowingly violated election law and ignored and participated in election venues that violated election law.


MARYLAND STATUTES AND CODES


8.  Cindy Walsh claims election irregularities; requests to invalidate an election result can be taken to Maryland Circuit Court.


Title 12 Subtitle 2.    Judicial Review of Elections Section 2-102 (a) (b) (1) (2) (3); Subtitle 2. 12-202 (a) (1) (2) (b) (2); 12-203 (a) (1) (2) (3) (b); 12-204 (a) 1) (2) (b) (1) (2) (c) (1) (2) (d) 


9.
  Cindy Walsh claims Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler has the power to investigate election violations through the State Prosecutor’s Office and as an elected politician has taken an oath of office requiring the upholding of Federal and State Constitutional law including election law.  Doug Gansler failed to respond to requests from plaintiff to investigate claims of election irregularities and participated in election irregularities so great as to change the result of the Democratic Primary for Governor of Maryland.

 Chapter 612, Acts of 1976; Code Criminal Procedure Article, secs. 14-101 through 14-114; Sec. 6 (originally Article I, sec. 6, renumbered by Chapter 681, Acts of 1977, ratified Nov. 7, 1978).

 
10.
  Cindy Walsh claims the Maryland Board of Elections Chairman Bobbie Mack is tasked with ensuring that elections are free and fair and to respond to candidate’s complaints identifying election irregularities and as an appointed state official has taken an oath of office requiring the upholding of Federal and State Constitutional law including election law.  Bobbie Mack failed to respond to complaints of election irregularities and this candidate's request for relief from those irregularities.
These irregularities were so great as to change the result of the Democratic Primary for Governor of Maryland.

Title 2 Subtitle 1 Section 2-102 - (a) (b) (1) (2) (3)

 

11.  Cindy Walsh claims Anthony Brown, Doug Gansler, and Heather Mizeur willfully, knowingly, and with malice violated FCC and IRS election laws and as elected politicians having taken an oath of office requiring the upholding of Federal and State Constitutional law including election law, have violated that oath of office.



ARTICLE I SEC. 6; SEC. 9.



  Demand for relief

Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland asks the court for the following:

12.  Invalidate the 2O14 Democratic Primary due to election irregularities so widespread as to without a doubt changed the result of the Democratic Primary for Governor of Maryland.

13.  Find the Maryland Board of Elections and Maryland Attorney General’s Office guilty of failing to perform the duties of their office and of obstruction of justice placing these agencies under court supervision for a probationary period of several election cycles until the citizens of Maryland are assured free and fair elections.

14.  Find the Democratic Primary candidates for Governor of Maryland, Anthony Brown, Doug Gansler, and Heather Mizeur guilty of failing to honor their oath of office by upholding all Federal and State Constitutional laws especially election law and actively violating these election laws.

15.  Provide the Democratic Primary candidate Cindy Walsh an election venue after being denied one in this Democratic Primary for Governor of Maryland.  Disqualifying Anthony Brown, Doug Gansler, and Heather Mizeur for knowingly committing election irregularities and knowingly participating in election venues violating election law would place Cindy Walsh the next highest in votes and therefore the winner of this Democratic Primary.  If the court deems the entire primary invalid then allow Cindy Walsh a spot in the 2014 general election for Governor of Maryland running as a Green Party candidate.  This would require the court for one time to suspend general election filing date requirement date of February 2014 and suspending the law that precludes a candidate losing a primary from running in a general election.  If this is the solution, then the court would need to protect Cindy Walsh from the same kind of media and 501c3 organization censure through the general election this time because of being a third party candidate.

16.  Refund the costs of running this election including candidate filing fees for the candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor and costs of electioneering, refund court costs, with financial damages to the plaintiff for an amount of $500,000.  The plaintiff asks the court to assure the Maryland Assembly pay this award or be sent to jail for contempt of court.   Cindy Walsh is self-representing and is her own lawyer.  Defendants and their lawyers can use the following contact information: Cindy Walsh   2522 N. Calvert St. Baltimore, Maryland 21218; 443-825-7031; Cwals99@yahoo.com  



Signature/date of plaintiff and plaintiff’s lawyer 

______________________________                                                                                          _____________________________


MARYLAND ELECTION LAW:

Title 12 Subtitle 2.    Judicial Review of Elections

12-202.  Judicial challenges

a)  In general--- If no other timely and adequate remedy is provided by this article, a registered voter may seek judicial relief from any act or omission relating to an election, whether or not the election has been held, on the grounds that the act or omission:

1)  is inconsistent with this article or other law applicable to the elections process; and
2)  may change or has changed the outcome of the election.

b)  Place and time of filing.---- A registered voter may seek judicial relief under this section in the appropriate circuit court within the earlier of:

1)  10 days after the act or omission or the date the act or omission became known to the petitioner; or

2)  7 days after the election results are certified, unless the election was a gubernatorial primary or special primary election, in which case 3 days after the election results are certified.  (An Code 1957, art. 33, 12-202; 2002, ch.291, 2, 4)


12-203. Procedure

a) In general.----   A proceeding under this subtitle shall be conducted in accordance with the Maryland Rules, except that:

1)  the proceeding shall be heard and decided without a jury and as expeditiously as the circumstances require;

2) on the request of a party or sua sponte, the chief administrative judge of the circuit court may assign the case to a three-judge panel of circuit court judges; and

3)  an appeal shall be taken directly to the Court of Appeals within 5 days of the date of the decision of the circuit court.

b)  Expedited appeal.  ----  The Court of Appeals shall give priority to hear and decide an appeal brought under subsection (a) (3) of this section as expeditiously as the circumstances require. (An Code 1957, art.33, 12-303; 2002, ch 291, 2, 4)





12-204.  Judgement.

a)  In general.  ------- The court may provide a remedy as provided in subsection (b) or (c) if this section if the court determines that the alleged act or omission materially affected the rights of interested parties or the purity of the elections process and:

1) may have changed the outcome of an election already held; or

2) may change the outcome of a pending election.

b)  Act or omission that changed election outcome.  ----If the court makes an affirmative determination that an act or omission was committed that changed the outcome of an election already held, the court shall:
1)  declare void the election for the office or question involved and order that the election be held again at a date set by the court; or

2)  order any other relief that will provide an adequate remedy.

c)  Act or omission that may change outcome of pending election.  -----  If the court makes an affirmative determination that an act or omission has been committed that may change the outcome of a pending election, the court may:

1)  order any relief it considers appropriate under the circumstances; and

2)  if the court determines that it is the only relief that will provide a remedy,, direct that the elections for the office or question involved be postponed and rescheduled on a date set by the court.

d)  Clear and convincing evidence.  -----  A determination of the court under subsection (a) of this section shall be based on clear and convincing evidence.  (An Code 1957, art. 33, 12-204; 2002, ch. 291, 2, 4)


*************************************************************

Maryland Attorney General’s Office

Chapter 612, Acts of 1976; Code Criminal Procedure Article, secs. 14-101 through 14-114; Sec. 6 (originally Article I, sec. 6, renumbered by Chapter 681, Acts of 1977, ratified Nov. 7, 1978).
The Office of State Prosecutor was established by Constitutional amendment and legislation in 1976 (Chapter 612, Acts of 1976, ratified Nov. 1976). The State Prosecutor’s Office began operation January, 1977.

The State Prosecutor may investigate on his own initiative, or at the request of the Governor, the Attorney General, the General Assembly, the State Ethics Commission, or a State’s Attorney, certain criminal offenses. These include: 1) State election law violations; 2) State public ethics law violations; 3) State bribery law violations involving public officials or employees; 4) misconduct in office by public officials or employees; and 5) extortion, perjury, or obstruction of justice related to any of the above.

 MARYLAND STATUTES AND CODES


Maryland Board of Elections
Title 2 Subtitle 1 Section 2-102 - Powers and duties. Listen § 2-102. Powers and duties.

(a) In general-The State Board shall manage and supervise elections in the State and ensure compliance with the requirements of this article and any applicable federal law by all persons involved in the elections process.

(b) Specific powers and duties.- In exercising its authority under this article and in order to ensure compliance with this article and with any requirements of federal law, the State Board shall:

(1) Supervise the conduct of elections in the State;

(2) Direct, support, monitor, and evaluate the activities of each local board;

(3) Have a staff sufficient to perform its functions;

[An. Code 1957, art. 33, § 2-102; 2002, ch. 291, §§ 2, 4; 2003, ch. 379, § 2; 2004, ch. 25; 2006, ch. 61, § 1.]


 

18 U.S. Code § 1001  (a) (2) (3) False statements of fact

 

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;

shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years

 

·         Defamation per se

 

 

Damages Awarded for Defamation in Maryland Among the damages for defamation in Maryland include:

  • actual damages
  • punitive damages
  • other damages awarded by the court
 

Punitive Damages in Maryland: Reconciling Federal Law, State Law, and the Pattern Jury Instructions

·        


·         Stephen J. Shapiro

·        
University of Baltimore - School of Law

Fall 2007

University of Baltimore Law Forum, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 27-53, Fall 2007

·        
Abstract:     

·         Starting in the early 1990's, both the United States Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals of Maryland addressed the issue of jury discretion in awarding punitive damages. The two courts addressed the perceived problem in two different ways. The United States Supreme Court focused their attention mainly on the excessive amount of such awards. It held that the Due Process Clause regulates both the procedures used in awarding punitive damages and the amounts of such awards. The Court required that juries be given sufficient instructions to enable them to make awards based on the purpose of punitive damages, and required state trial judges and appellate courts to reduce the amount of such awards if they were “grossly excessive.” The Court provided state judges with guideposts for determining the appropriate amount of punitive damage awards and required that the amounts be proportionate to the amount of compensatory damages.

The Court of Appeals of Maryland focused its attention instead on the proof required for a jury to make a punitive damages award in the first place. It held that punitive damage awards could only be made if the defendant's conduct rose to the level of actual malice (evil motive or intent to do harm, or knowing that its actions would be harmful) and not just implied malice (gross negligence, recklessness, or should have known of the harm). In addition, the Court of Appeals of Maryland held that juries should be instructed that they must find that actual malice had been proved by “clear and convincing evidence,” and not just a preponderance of the evidence.

This article will suggest several changes to Maryland law and the Maryland Civil Pattern Jury Instructions, so that the instructions more accurately reflect Maryland law, and that Maryland law complies with the Due Process Clause. The proposed changes include:
• providing a clearer standard in the instructions for when punitive damages should be awarded;
• clarifying that the “clear and convincing” standard applies only to the finding of “actual malice” and not to the broader question of whether and in what amount to award punitive damages;
• changing the law, the procedure and the jury instructions relating to whether and when a jury may consider evidence of the defendant's financial condition in calculating the amount of a punitive damage award; and
• providing more guidance to juries as to the appropriate amount of punitive damage awards.


·         Number of Pages in PDF File: 28

·         Keywords: punitive damages, jury discretion, Supreme Court, Court of Appeals of Maryland, Maryland Civil Pattern Jury Instructions, compensatory damages, Due Process Clause

·         JEL Classification: K13, K49

·         Accepted Paper Series



·         Download This Paper

·         Date posted: June 24, 2009  

·         Suggested Citation

·         Shapiro, Stephen J., Punitive Damages in Maryland: Reconciling Federal Law, State Law, and the Pattern Jury Instructions (Fall 2007). University of Baltimore Law Forum, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 27-53, Fall 2007. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1425083

Punitive damages in Rockville, Maryland usually cannot exceed 10 times the amount of actual damages suffered by the plaintiff. However, this is just a guideline, and not a strict rule. Courts in Maryland have found larger punitive damage awards to be perfectly valid, and smaller ones to be invalid. This will be highly dependent on the facts of each case.

___________________________________________


THIS IS A DRAFT OF THE COMPLAINT GOING TO FEDERAL COURT


CIVIL CLAIM IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND

 

Cindy Walsh

2522 N Calvert Street                                   Civil Action #  __________________
Baltimore, Maryland 21218

Plaintiff

 

                   VS.

 

1.      University of Maryland---College Park

  Wallace D. Loh
 President
1101 Main Administration Building
 College Park, MD 20742-6105

 
Defendant

 
2.      University of Maryland Carey Law School     

Phoebe A. Haddon
Dean
500 W. Baltimore Street   Suite 260
Baltimore, MD 21201-1786


Defendant


3.      University of Baltimore

Robert L. Bogomolny
President
1420 N. Charles St.
Baltimore, MD 21201

 
Defendant


4.      Morgan State University

David Wilson
President
1700 East Cold Spring Lane
Baltimore MD 21251

 
Defendant

 
5.      Coppin State University

Mortimer Neufville
President
2500 West North Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21216-3698

 
Defendant



6.      Maryland Public Television

Larry D. Unger
President and Chief Executive Officer
11767 Owings Mills Boulevard
Owings Mills, Maryland 21117

 
Defendant

 

7.      WYPR Public Media 

Anthony Brandon
President & General Manager
2216 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218

 
Defendant

 

8.      WEAA Public Media 88.9 FM

Morgan State University--David Wilson-President
1700 E. Coldspring Lane
Baltimore, MD 21251

 
Defendant


9.      Baltimore Education Coalition

Yasmene Mumby/ Jimmy Stuart Co-Chairs
Cathedral of the Incarnation
4 East University Parkway
Baltimore, Maryland 21218

Defendant

 
10.  BUILD

Baltimore- Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development

Co-Chairs
Rev. Andrew Foster Connors, Pastor of Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church
Rev. Glenna Huber, Pastor of Church of the Holy Nativity

2439 Maryland Ave
Baltimore, MD 21218


Defendant



 11.     Church of the Great Commission

Rev. Joshua Kevin White is Host Pastor.
Collective Empowerment Group, Inc.
President, Rev. Anthony G. Maclin  Board of Directors
5055 Allentown Road
Camp Springs, MD.  20746


 
Defendant
 


12.  Maryland Democratic Party

Yvette Lewis, Chair
33 West Street, Suite 200
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

 
Defendant



13.    The Gazette's Corporate Office

Douglas Tallman,  Editor
Vanessa Harrington,  Editor
9030 Comprint Court
Gaithersburg, MD 20877


Defendant



14.  Maryland Reporter.com

Len Lazarick
6392 Shadowshape Place
Columbia, MD 21045

Defendant



15.  WBFF TV

Steve Moretz Operations Manager
2000 W. 41st Street
Baltimore, MD 21211


Defendant



16.  Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church

Reverend Lester A. McCorn, Senior Pastor
Lady Charlene M. McCorn, First Lady
1128 Pennsylvania Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland 21201


Defendant



17.   Maryland Municipal League  


Scott A. Hancock,  Executive Director

1212 West Street  
Annapolis, Maryland 21401


Defendant



18.   WBAL TV Channel 11

Dan Joerres  -- President & General Manager
3800 Hooper Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21211

Defendant

 

19.  WJZ TV Channel 13

Gail Bending -- News Director
3725 Malden Ave
Baltimore, MD 21211-1322

Defendant

 

20.  WMAR TV Channel 3

Kelly Groft --- News Director
6400 York Rd
Baltimore, MD 21212-2117

Defendant

 

21.  Baltimore Sun

Trif Alatzas -- Senior vice president, executive editor
501 N. Calvert Street
Baltimore, MD 21278

Defendant



22.  WOLB  AM Radio- Radio One Baltimore

Howard Mazer -  General Manager
1705 Whitehead Road
Baltimore, MD 21207


Defendant






________________________________________

THIS IS A DRAFT OF THE FEDERAL COURT LAWSUIT TO BE FILED BY CINDY WALSH

 

 

Background to Federal Court lawsuit regarding election irregularities in the Democratic Primary for the Governor of Maryland

Censure in media and 501c3 events of my candidacy and platform damaged my campaign and denied the voters the right to freedom and intelligent casting of a vote.  This was a huge factor in election results and directly changed the course of this primary election.  Anthony Brown with 12% of registered democratic voters left 72% of those voters deciding not to participate.  Cindy Walsh with 1% of registered democratic voters could have easily won the 15% more of voters needed to win this election if not for the systemic election violations that left my campaign out of primary election events and media. 





Legal basis of complaint:

Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland is filing suit in Federal Court because of violations to Federal Election laws carried in FCC and IRS organization requirements.


Below you see the FCC requirements for media coverage of elections.  It clearly states that media cannot ‘willfully’ disallow reasonable access to time given to other candidates in a race.  There is no expectation of equal time, but there is an expectation of reasonable access to those media vehicles and an expectation of accurate depictions of an election race to include a full list of candidates in a race :

Federal election laws are not only for Federal Elections ----they cover any candidate for public office.


Four Exemptions
In 1959, Congress amended the Communications Act after the FCC ruled that Chicago broadcasters had to give "equal time" to mayoral candidate Lar Daly; the incumbent mayor was then Richard Daley. In response, Congress created four exemptions to the equal time rule:

(1) regularly scheduled newscasts
(2) news interviews shows
(3) documentaries (unless the documentary is about a candidate)
(4) on-the-spot news events


Federal Communications Commission Rules (Title 47 Code of Federal Regulations)
Statutes and Rules on Candidate Appearances & Advertising

Relevant Sections of the Communications Act of 1934
Section 315 [47 U.S.C. §315] Facilities for candidates for public office.


(a)    If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station: Provided, That such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast under the provision of this section.  No obligation is hereby imposed under this subsection upon any licensee to allow the use of its station by any such candidate.  Appearance by a legally qualified candidate on any –

(1)    bona fide newscast,

(2)    bona fide news interview,

(3)    bona fide news documentary (if the appearance of the candidate is incidental to the presentation of the subject or subjects covered by the news documentary), or

(4)    on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events (including but not limited to political conventions and activities incidental thereto), shall not be deemed to be use of a broadcasting station within the meaning of this subsection.



FCC Section 315 [47 U.S.C. §315] (1) (2) (3)  (4)  Nothing in the foregoing sentence shall be construed as relieving broadcasters, in connection with the presentation of newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries, and on-the-spot coverage of news events, from the obligation imposed upon them under this Act to operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance.
 

Below we see the FCC statute for 501c3 media entities participating in elections.  Again, it is clear that these media outlets will not oppose-----which complete exclusion as opposition-----any one candidate.  This was systemic in all 501c3 media in Maryland.


Section 399 [47 U.S.C. §399] Support of political candidates prohibited.

No noncommercial educational broadcasting station may support or oppose any candidate for public office.

Section 73.1940 [47 CFR §73.1940] Legally qualified candidates for public office.

(a) A legally qualified candidate for public office is any person who:

(1) has publicly announced his or her intention to run for nomination or office;

(2) is qualified under the applicable local, State or Federal law to hold the office for which he or she is a candidate; and

(3) has met the qualifications set forth in either paragraph (b), (c), (d), or (e) of this section.

(b) A person seeking election to any public office including that of President or Vice President of the United States, or nomination for any public office except that of President or Vice President, by means of a primary, general or special election, shall be considered a legally qualified candidate if, in addition to meeting the criteria set forth in paragraph (a) of this section, that person:

(1) has qualified for a place on the ballot; or

(2) has publicly committed himself or herself to seeking election by the write-in method and is eligible under applicable law to be voted for by sticker, by writing in his or her name on the ballot or by other method, and makes a substantial showing that he or she is a bona fide candidate for nomination or office.


(e) A person seeking nomination for the office of President or Vice President of the United States shall, for the purposes of the Communications Act and the rules thereunder, be considered a legally qualified candidate only in those States or territories (or the District of Columbia) in which, in addition to meeting the requirements set forth in paragraph (a) of this section:

(1) He or she, or proposed delegates on his or her behalf, have qualified for the primary or Presidential preference ballot in that State, territory or the District of Columbia; or

(2) He or she has made a substantial showing of a bona fide candidacy for such nomination in that State, territory or the District of Columbia; except, that any such person meeting the requirements set forth in paragraphs (a)(1) and (2) of this section in at least 10 States (or 9 and the District of Columbia) shall be considered a legally qualified candidate for nomination in all States, territories and the District of Columbia for purposes of this Act.

(f) The term "substantial showing" of a bona fide candidacy as used in paragraphs (b), (d) and (e) of this section means evidence that the person claiming to be a candidate has engaged to a substantial degree in activities commonly associated with political campaigning. Such activities normally would include making campaign speeches, distributing campaign literature, issuing press releases, maintaining a campaign committee, and establishing campaign headquarters (even though the headquarters in some instances might be the residence of the candidate or his or her campaign manager). Not all of the listed activities are necessarily required in each case to demonstrate a substantial showing, and there may be activities not listed herein which would contribute to such a showing.

[43 FR 32795, July 28, 1978, as amended at 43 FR 45856, Oct. 4, 1978; 43 FR 55769, Nov. 29, 1978; 45 FR 26066, Apr. 17, 1980; 45 FR 28141, Apr. 28, 1980; 57 FR 208, Jan. 3, 1992; 57 FR 27708, June 22, 1992]


Section 73.1941 [47 CFR §73.1941] Equal Opportunities.

(a) General requirements. Except as other-wise indicated in § 73.1944, no station licensee is required to permit the use of its facilities by any legally qualified candidate for public office, but if any licensee shall permit any such candidate to use its facilities, it shall afford equal opportunities to all other candidates for that office to use such facilities. Such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast by any such candidate. Appearance by a legally qualified candidate on any:

(1) Bona fide newscast;

(2) Bona fide news interview;

(3) Bona fide news documentary (if the appearance of the candidate is incidental to the presentation of the subject or subjects covered by the news documentary); or

(4) On-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events (including, but not limited to political conventions and activities incidental thereto) shall not be deemed to be use of broadcasting station. (section 315(a) of the Communications Act.)

(b) Uses. As used in this section and § 73.1942, the term "use" means a candidate appearance (including by voice or picture) that is not exempt under paragraphs 73.1941 (a)(1) through (a)(4) of this section.

(c) Timing of request. A request for equal opportunities must be submitted to the licensee within 1 week of the day on which the first prior use giving rise to the right of equal opportunities occurred: Provided, however, That where the person was not a candidate at the time of such first prior use, he or she shall submit his or her request within 1 week of the first subsequent use after he or she has become a legally qualified candidate for the office in question.

(d) Burden of proof. A candidate requesting equal opportunities of the licensee or complaining of noncompliance to the Commission shall have the burden of proving that he or she and his or her opponent are legally qualified candidates for the same public office.

(e) Discrimination between candidates. In making time available to candidates for public office, no licensee shall make any discrimination between candidates in practices, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with the service rendered pursuant to this part, or make or give any preference to any candidate for public office or subject any such candidate to any prejudice or disadvantage; nor shall any licensee make any contract or other agreement which shall have the effect of permitting any legally qualified candidate for any public office to broadcast to the exclusion of other legally qualified candidates for the same public office.


 

FCC Section 315 [47 U.S.C. §315] (1) (2) (3)  (4)  Nothing in the foregoing sentence shall be construed as relieving broadcasters, in connection with the presentation of newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries, and on-the-spot coverage of news events, from the obligation imposed upon them under this Act to operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance.





18 U.S. Code § 1001  (a) (2) (3) False statements of fact

 (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;

shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years

 

·         Defamation per se


[57 FR 208, Jan. 3, 1992; 59 FR 14568, March 29, 1994]

 

Damages Awarded for Defamation in Maryland Among the damages for defamation in Maryland include:

  • actual damages
  • punitive damages
  • other damages awarded by the court
 

Punitive Damages in Maryland: Reconciling Federal Law, State Law, and the Pattern Jury Instructions

·        


·         Stephen J. Shapiro

·        
University of Baltimore - School of Law

Fall 2007

University of Baltimore Law Forum, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 27-53, Fall 2007

·        
Abstract:     

·         Starting in the early 1990's, both the United States Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals of Maryland addressed the issue of jury discretion in awarding punitive damages. The two courts addressed the perceived problem in two different ways. The United States Supreme Court focused their attention mainly on the excessive amount of such awards. It held that the Due Process Clause regulates both the procedures used in awarding punitive damages and the amounts of such awards. The Court required that juries be given sufficient instructions to enable them to make awards based on the purpose of punitive damages, and required state trial judges and appellate courts to reduce the amount of such awards if they were “grossly excessive.” The Court provided state judges with guideposts for determining the appropriate amount of punitive damage awards and required that the amounts be proportionate to the amount of compensatory damages.

The Court of Appeals of Maryland focused its attention instead on the proof required for a jury to make a punitive damages award in the first place. It held that punitive damage awards could only be made if the defendant's conduct rose to the level of actual malice (evil motive or intent to do harm, or knowing that its actions would be harmful) and not just implied malice (gross negligence, recklessness, or should have known of the harm). In addition, the Court of Appeals of Maryland held that juries should be instructed that they must find that actual malice had been proved by “clear and convincing evidence,” and not just a preponderance of the evidence.

This article will suggest several changes to Maryland law and the Maryland Civil Pattern Jury Instructions, so that the instructions more accurately reflect Maryland law, and that Maryland law complies with the Due Process Clause. The proposed changes include:
• providing a clearer standard in the instructions for when punitive damages should be awarded;
• clarifying that the “clear and convincing” standard applies only to the finding of “actual malice” and not to the broader question of whether and in what amount to award punitive damages;
• changing the law, the procedure and the jury instructions relating to whether and when a jury may consider evidence of the defendant's financial condition in calculating the amount of a punitive damage award; and
• providing more guidance to juries as to the appropriate amount of punitive damage awards.

·         Number of Pages in PDF File: 28

·         Keywords: punitive damages, jury discretion, Supreme Court, Court of Appeals of Maryland, Maryland Civil Pattern Jury Instructions, compensatory damages, Due Process Clause

·         JEL Classification: K13, K49

·         Accepted Paper Series



·         Download This Paper

·         Date posted: June 24, 2009  

·         Suggested Citation

·         Shapiro, Stephen J., Punitive Damages in Maryland: Reconciling Federal Law, State Law, and the Pattern Jury Instructions (Fall 2007). University of Baltimore Law Forum, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 27-53, Fall 2007. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1425083

Punitive damages in Rockville, Maryland usually cannot exceed 10 times the amount of actual damages suffered by the plaintiff. However, this is just a guideline, and not a strict rule. Courts in Maryland have found larger punitive damage awards to be perfectly valid, and smaller ones to be invalid. This will be highly dependent on the facts of each case.
0 Comments

July 10th, 2014

7/10/2014

0 Comments

 
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.


__________________________________________

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

_________________________________________

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.

____________________________________________
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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July 04th, 2014

7/4/2014

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As I listen to republican voters in Maryland shout out against Race to the Top and Common Core I have to remind them that both are republican education policies written mostly in the Bush/Cheney Administration by US corporations.  These are corporate policies and neo-conservatives are behind them.  Neo-liberals are pushing the implementation of these corporate policies.  THE PROBLEM IS CORPORATE POLS.


'but as Timothy Noah of the New Republic points out—in this case about Maryland’s Prince George County—“When 10 percent of a school district’s teachers are foreign migrants, that isn’t cultural exchange. It’s sweatshop labor—and a depressing indicator of how low a priority public education has become.”'

That sounds pretty different than what Anthony Brown and O'Malley say out on the campaign trail.  Indeed, I have spent years outing the lies regarding education achievement in Maryland as pure propaganda used to pretend these education privatization policies are providing quality.  THESE EDUCATION REFORMS LOWER QUALITY AND ACCESS THEY DO NOT RAISE THEM!  The intent is to eliminate access to strong humanities and democratic education for 90% of the US population......the entire middle/working class and poor.  That means Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland, coming from a middle-class family would not have the multiple degrees I have and the career opportunities that I have had.

Below you see how spin occurs.  Education Week places Maryland as tops on a few issues and O'Malley and neo-liberals milk those rankings for all their worth.  Look at the overall record and Maryland is ranked at the bottom for most measures in education policy and achievement.  That is because neo-liberals do not care about achievement and quality for 90% of Marylanders.  They are working only for those they deem the 'best' students......and that is 10% of Maryland citizens. 

WALL STREET'S MEDIA 'MARKETPLACE MONEY' LAUGHED THAT MOST US STUDENTS ATTENDING PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE POOR BECAUSE THE MIDDLE-CLASS HAS BEEN LOOTED OF ITS WEALTH BY MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD.
  INDEED, THE ATTACK CONTINUES AND IF YOU THINK YOUR UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS STATUS IS SAFE YOU DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THE COMING ECONOMIC CRASH!

What we see is a funding level for K-12
that appears at higher levels than in the past.  Look at the distribution-----most of that funding is going to the schools having students that are scoring the best on tests----they are identified in elementary school as the 'best' students and receive a bulk of that education funding.  Again, these students are only 10% of the population so 90% of students are receiving far less.  In Baltimore, neo-liberals and neo-cons have built a system that is far more repressive in that the tiered funding is tied to decentralizing the city's school system into 'schools as businesses' and has created individual schools most of which receive so little funding as to barely pay for toilet paper and a few that receive enough to create the best of programs within the schools.  Add to that the practice of charter schools receiving private donations and the entire public school system and equal opportunity and access is thrown out the door.  Remember, over 70% of Americans are at or near poverty and growing fast so 90% of people will be exposed to this education funding scheme.  Mike Miller of the Maryland Assembly says that state funding of public schools will stop altogether so that 90% will be thrown into the hands of private corporations for support----national charter chains.


Maryland has a second problem with funding in that with no oversight and accountability we do not know that money actually ends up where it is supposed to go.

Take a look at these charts----I am not going to post them in this blog.....just note that what looks to be good is not good for 90% of Marylanders and it is reflected with actual achievement stats which again are skewed by elected officials and the media.  Achievement in Maryland was low to begin with because of poor standards of funding and resourcing schools....it is now only slightly better and that may simply be a statistical error.

State-By-State Report Card Unearths Inequities In School Funding
Education Week

“Is school funding fair"?


A report by that name was released this week. And it answered its own question with a resounding ‘no’ … The authors find that school funding was flat between 2010 and 2011, with about half the states making cuts and 14 spending less in 2011 than in 2007, even without adjusting for inflation … Most states did not allot more money for high-poverty districts, where report authors contend that students have higher needs … All but three states spent a smaller percentage of their GDP on education in 2011.”

Table 2. Fairness Measure #1: Funding Level

Maryland ranked 8th in funding level

Maryland$11,41711
$13,1109
$1,694
$13,4858
$375$12,971

Table 3. Fairness Measure #2: Funding Distribution

Maryland ranked at the bottom for distribution

Maryland89%D
94%D
99%C
93%D
$13,656 $13,167 $12,695 $12,240
90%F

I am not bragging but I would have fallen into this high achieving category and as a student having the skills to achieve early on----I did not need the resources other children needed because I was able to find what I needed and I excelled.  That is what high-achieving students do. 

THEY DO NOT NEED THE BULK OF SPENDING.

It is those children not having the benefit of learning skills that need the funding to allow them the opportunity to achieve in later grades.  So, this funding leaves the children needing that development most without the funding and resources to reach this goal.


Let's not forget that this dynamic moved more children from poverty to graduating with high achievement in the 1950s - 1970s than in any period in history----IT WORKS AND THERE IS NO REASON TO STOP THIS FUNDING EQUITY.

Note as well that Maryland has placed so much emphasis on reading and math to the exclusion of all other courses that children are graduating today with little or no background in humanities and liberal arts----which is what neo-liberals and neo-cons want----children in Baltimore in schools deemed low performance are sitting in front of Rupert Murdoch online lessons for goodness sake.  In Baltimore this is driven by Johns Hopkins.

THIS IGNORES ALL OF THE EQUAL PROTECTION LAWS REGARDING ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITY IN EDUCATION.

Consequently, students are graduating not knowing anything about history, civics, social studies, and culture and I dare say that the methods of instruction are so bad in Maryland that even the constant emphasis on math and reading are achieving little.  Again, it is Johns Hopkin infusing the Baltimore education system with methods that do not work and that looks to be the goal.

This is what happens when a state is captured by neo-liberal and neo-con politicians-----the policy is all about corporate profit and benefit and not people's rights and what is best for them.  This is not a black, brown, or white issue.  It is not even a class issue because middle-class is facing the same discrimination.  It is a complete dismantling of a public education system for 90
% of Americans that allows for the movement of students into higher achievement and ability to access the best schools.

Funding Student Needs: Per Pupil Weights

How are schools funded under Student Based Budgeting (SBB)?

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS14201 SCHOOL LANE, UPPER MARLBORO, MD 20772



High Performance.

Students in grades 3 to 8 receiving the “High Academic Performance” weight have scored advanced in both Reading and Math tests, while students in high school receive the weight if they have passed all HSA exams by the 10th grade.

Low Performance.Students in grades 3 to 8 receiving the “Low Academic Performance” weight have scored basic in both Reading and Math tests, while students in high school receive the weight if they have failed all HSA exams.

________________________________________

As Maryland citizens know our schools were allowed to crumble as the heyday of market boom and bust brought plenty of money to government coffers but all that money went to expand corporations like Johns Hopkins----now a global corporation and its Baltimore headquarters----and to rebuild downtown into global corporate meccas.  So, there is no excuse for crumbling school infrastructure except that neo-liberals and neo-cons do not value public education.  Remember, this happened from the Reagan/Clinton years forward----neo-liberalism took hold of the Democratic Party.

We have the bulk of public schools not receiving the funding they need and these schools are being rebuilt with a funding scheme designed specifically to hand huge profits to Wall Street along with the deed to the school building itself as the coming economic crash will cause the state and city to default on these building funds.

THE ENTIRE FUNDING SCHEME SURROUNDING PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DESIGNED TO HAND OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM TO PRIVATE CORPORATIONS WITH A DISMANTLING OF THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION 90% OF PEOPLE RECEIVE.  THERE GOES OUR SCHOOL BUILDINGS!


This is another reason for public banks -----another issue Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland supports!  Boy, no wonder corporate Maryland censured my campaign!

People were brought out to support this scheme not knowing the implications-----
and this happens because there is NO CONVERSATIONS ABOUT PUBLIC POLICY IN MARYLAND!

School districts pay dearly for bonds…ANOTHER reason for publicly-owned banks!

by Administrator Trey Bundy and Shane Shifflett, California Watch • http://www.sfgate.com • January 31, 2013

The Napa Valley Unified School District had a quandary: The district needed a new high school in American Canyon, but taxpayers appeared unwilling to take the financial hit required to build it.

So in 2009, the district took out an unusual loan: $22 million with no payments due for 21 years. By 2049, when the debt is paid, it will have cost taxpayers $154 million - seven times the amount borrowed.

...This form of borrowing has created billions of dollars in debt for taxpayers and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for financial advisers and underwriters. Voters are usually unaware of the bonds' high interest. At least one state, Michigan, has banned their use.


_________________________________________

Each year we listen to O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly tout their funding levels in Maryland and each year they fail to provide close to what is required according to legislation...the Thornton formula.  Each year they pretend to have met or exceeded a goal and that does not even bring them to what they should be doing. 
The Maryland Education Coalition works hard to demand these Thornton requirements are met, but the problem with lobbying is that a group becomes afraid to alienate pols----this makes citizens beggars for policy and not drivers of policy. The reason an education coalition has become a beggar of policy is that the entire Maryland Assembly are neo-liberals and neo-cons---not a democrat to be found. Yet every election labor and justice back the same incumbents killing their membership.  Now, how can politicians act as though they make education in Maryland a priority when all of the education advocacy groups are pushing just to get funding up to where it should have been a decade ago?  The media selects stats and makes it appear that pols are doing something when they are not.
Remember, Maryland has a record amount of money going to corporate subsidy and tax breaks......there is no shortage of revenue.....



'We are currently $700 million per year behind the original Thornton formula for state aid to public schools, and our bill is designed to prevent the State from falling further behind the funding levels necessary to achieve these goals'. 


Maryland Education CoalitionMEC Newsletter
April 1, 2013 


The 430th Maryland General Assembly Legislative Session is drawing towards an end.  This is our second newsletter, and we will publish a Session wrap-up edition in April. Please feel free to email David Beard at dbeard@acy.org if you have any questions, thoughts, or concerns.    MEC Priorities 


We worked hard on MEC’s main policy initiative for the 2013 session – to make the State actually protect public school funding. House Bill 1474 and Senate Bill 958 would directly advance our mission and our current priorities
Directly countering a very serious threat to learning – the eroding power of school funding under the current inflation  cap on State aid;  Protecting the Geographic Cost of Education Index (GCEI) so that children in higher-cost jurisdictions have fair funding.  Setting a goal for State capital aid that updates the target– set by the Kopp Commission nine years ago - to reflect current construction costs.  In the Thornton Commission process, the State very carefully considered the cost of providing an adequate education and closing achievement gaps.  We are currently $700 million per year behind the original Thornton formula for state aid to public schools, and our bill is designed to prevent the State from falling further behind the funding levels necessary to achieve these goals.  Considering the past five years of structural deficits, it was an accomplishment to win the support of well-positioned sponsors: Sen. Madaleno of the Budget and Taxation Committee and Del. Luedtke of the Ways and Means Committee, but we missed the filing deadline.  The Ways and Means Committee heard HB 1474 on March 19th.  The local school boards, the State teachers’ union, and the Budget and Tax Policy Institute provided strong support and testimony.  Baltimore City English teacher Iris Kirsch told her compelling story of how less funding in the classroom is affecting students.  To date, however, the bill has not been brought to a vote.  


_______________________________________

This is a message from a teacher to a parent in Chicago----we know this is happening in Maryland.  Teachers are so pressed to have students appear to be improving under an education regime that is the worst of possible approaches to educating students----that they will naturally look for any means possible to raise scores.  This is what pushes the best teachers out of the teaching profession and it pushes education right into the same corruption that has our corporations and government---

FORCING TEACHERS TO REACH GOALS THAT ARE UNATTAINABLE IN THE CURRENT CLIMATE WILL CREATE A CORRUPT EDUCATION SYSTEM.  WHEN THE GOAL IS SIMPLY SKEWED DATA---THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM.



CPS test cheating – focus on “bubble” kids From a parent who received this message from a teacher:

This kind of thing is happening all over, and it’s awful. This idea of concentrating on kids “on the bubble” is terrible educational practice (or malpractice…)

Begin forwarded message:

From: (teacher wishes to remain anonymous)
Date: February 12, 2014 at 9:39:42 AM CST
To: ******
Subject: NWEA

Today we had a grade level meeting about the NWEA scores for the fourth grade students at my school. We teachers were all given printouts of our students’ most recent scores: RIT bands, percentiles, the whole shebang.

Then we were instructed to highlight the students in our classes who had scored between the 37th and 50th percentile. These students, the admin informed us, are the most important students in the class; they are the ones most likely to reach the 51st percentile when students take the NWEA again in May.

Making the 51st percentile is VERY important to CPS, and thus to principals, literacy coordinators, test specialists and teachers-who-don’t-want-to-lose-their-jobs.

It might not be important to individual students, their parents or anyone else, but it is life or death in Chicago Public Schools.

We nodded, wide-eyed.  These students, our guide continued, should be your primary focus.  Make sure they get whatever they need to bring them up to that percentile. Sign them up for any and all academic programs, meet with them daily in small groups, give them extra homework, have them work with available tutors…whatever it takes.

What about the kids at the very bottom, one teacher wondered, the kids under the 20th percentile…shouldn’t they be offered more support too?  The admin squirmed a bit. Well, they don’t really have any chance of hitting the goal, so for right now, no.  There was silence.

Left unsaid was what might, could, will happen to any school that does NOT have enough students meet that magic number. No one really needs to say it. We all saw the 50 schools that got closed down last year.  We see the charters multiplying around us.  We’ve also seen the steady stream of displaced teachers come through our school doors as substitutes.  We know that we could be next.

- See more at: http://pureparents.org/?p=21149#sthash.KYq3Vl6C.dpuf

_______________________________________
I use reports from other cities and states because there is no education activism in Maryland....there is only collected voices by private non-profits aligned with the education privatization groups.  In Baltimore, that is the Baltimore Education Coalition----BEC, a Johns Hopkins organization of charter school, Teach for America, and Michelle Rhee supporters.  They, like this article below are the ones who bring bus loads of citizens from Baltimore to support policy that works against the interest of the communities where the policy is being implemented.  Charter and Teach for America advocates seem less worried about the tiered funding and closing of schools then they are about the right to have charters used in Baltimore as development tools.  If you think using  schools as development tools is OK since you are in the midst of needing better schools----please look at the longer term implication of these policies----they do not stop with moving the poor out of neighborhoods----these policies will effect your schools as well!

All across the country we know the stats on charters are largely fictional and skewed.  Yet, we are subjected to these reports because we have pols simply moving these privatization policies forward with no regard to citizens and the quality of education children will receive.

PLEASE STOP RE-ELECTING THESE VERY INCUMBENTS EACH ELECTION CYCLE.  IF THEY ARE NOT SHOUTING THESE EDUCATION POLICIES ARE BAD FOR EVERYONE-----THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS OR NEO-CONS AND NEED TO GO.


In Baltimore, the stats on charters are not online and when you call Baltimore School Board they pretend they do not have a problem.  All of this is illegal and has nothing to do with public education.



PSAT for 4-8-14: Let Springfield know the truth about charter schools Today, charter school advocates will be taking out their checkbooks to fund Springfield trips for folks to lobby for less oversight of and more money for charter schools.

Mayor Emanuel says that the truth about charter schools’ mediocre performance compared with regular schools is “yesterday’s debate.”

Not really. The truth always matters, and the truth about charter schools is only beginning to get front page coverage.

So, while Bill Gates’ and the Walton’s minions are trudging down to Springfield to echo the Mayor’s efforts to brush off the truth about charters, please call, fax, or e-mail your state representative and senator with the truth.

Here’s what I faxed to every member of the Illinois House:

Look at charter school evidence, not expensive PR


Yesterday, Chicago’s two major newspapers made it very clear that charter schools can be very problematic and DO NOT provide better academic results.

But today you will be approached by busloads of well-financed charter school advocates trying to spin the facts while they ask you to ignore the truth and pave the way for more money and  “freedom” for charters.

Here’s the truth about charter schools:

The Chicago Tribune reported on the drastic, regressive discipline policy of one of the largest of these charter franchises, the Noble Network of Charter Schools. Even as the Chicago Public Schools is working toward more effective, positive discipline policies that keep students in school and learning, Noble is suspending and expelling students at a vastly greater rate than the district, and making their families pay significant dollars in the process.

The Sun-Times reported that Chicago’s charter school achievement rates are no better than that of the district overall, and far worse than the more comparable district magnet schools which have similar non-selective lottery enrollment systems. This confirms years of research which has been largely ignored as corporate reformers demand an ever-expanding “marketplace” for privately-run charter schools.

PURE ASKS YOU TO :

  • Pay attention to the research, not the rhetoric about charter schools.
  • Support HB3937, (HCA1) which extends the moratorium on virtual charter schools.
  • Support HB4591, which would require charter schools to return pro-rated funds for the kids they “counsel out.
  • Support HB5328, LSCs and other accountability for charter schools.
  • Support HB5887, which puts reasonable financial accountability on virtual charter schools.
  • Support HB6005, a major charter school accountability act.
Thank you!

- See more at: http://pureparents.org/?p=21237#sthash.6dWJajMn.dpuf

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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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