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August 14th, 2014

8/14/2014

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


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


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

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

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



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


State Police, or Police State? --Nathan

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

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


_____________________________________________

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

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


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

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


Belong to the most formidable International NETWORK for Security Professionals

ISIO Demographics

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


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

* Bank Security

* Border Security

* Building Security

* Business and Commercial Security

* Cargo Security

* City Security

* Control Station Security

* Event Security

* Homeland Security

* Hospital Security

* Hotel, Casino & Landmark Security

* Military and Defense Security

* Industrial Security

* Law Enforcement Security

* Oil and Refinery Security

* Port Security

* Prison Security

* Rail/Tunnel and Subway Security

* Retail and Store Security

* School Security


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

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

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

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

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



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

Thursday, February 15, 2007

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

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

[....]

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


__________________________________________

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

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


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


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

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


Just How Corrupt is SAIC?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
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August 06th, 2014

8/6/2014

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We need to remember it was Reagan/Clinton that started the privatization of all that is public----neo-liberalism.  Clinton did as much damage to the state of our democracy than any President and that comes from the fact that he ran as a Democrat as he was embracing a Republican policy of global and free markets.  The Democratic Platform protects labor and justice and free and global markets kill labor and justice.  Reagan was a Republican pushing Republican policies for wealth and profit.....so, it is Clinton who created this political deceit for Democratic voters of telling them what they want to hear and then do what you want.  It was George Bush who then did that to the Republican voters by adopting neo-liberal policies of corporate welfare/cronyism/corruption.  This is what the Tea Party fights on the Republican side

and it is what labor and justice should be fighting on the Democratic side.


I want to revisit health care policy and look at what deregulation and dismantling the public sector oversight and accountability of health care is looking like.  Clinton was the culprit in starting the move of public universities as corporate research facilities.  Patenting products using taxpayer money takes the public university from public interest and holding power accountable to creating data that supports that university-patented product.

RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU KNOW THIS IS BAD PUBLIC POLICY?  IT LITERALLY KILLS PEOPLE.
  THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL/NEO-CON FOR YOU-----ANYTHING FOR PROFIT!

The Clintons have a major shareholder stake and spent their time in office pushing Monsanto all over the world.......industrialized patented food.  Below you see one of the products that resulted-----for Monsanto it was EQUAL sugar substitute.  There is no problem creating new food products----the problem is that none of these biotech food products goes through the clinical trial research that finds how these new products not only effect people, but in the case of food----the food chain.

The point I take from the article below is that we are finding over and over that much of the obesity and diabetes in society today is created by these products released with little to no research.  This is important because the same neo-liberals who worked to dismantle regulations and oversight of health research are the ones passing Affordable Care Act which seeks to move the working and middle-class out of full health coverage and into preventative health only.  They scorn those low-income people who are obese and suffering from diabetes as careless!  Actually all Americans are victims of these biotech advancements and our health will show it!


ALL OF MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS CREATING THESE POLICIES.


Just as Clinton ended Welfare as he pushed NAFTA and global markets knowing millions of Americans would be impoverished and unemployed-----creating the deepest poverty in US history---we are having a health crisis in America at the same time Obama and today's neo-liberals are working to end access to the health care for those Americans subjected to food that should have never passed FDA approval.
  Note that this professor was a Perdue University academic.......the ability to get money and do research that proves corporate accountability in harm is drying up and Trans Pacific Trade Pact allows corporations to sue for these kinds of studies as hurting profits.
  So, the intent is to harass and eliminate any attempts to hold corporations accountable at universities across the US.

These are Republican policies of small government with free markets so don't vote Republican to rebuild public protections!


The Center for Public Integrity


Meet Susan Swithers, a Purdue University professor who conducts studies about the health effects of artificial sweeteners.

As The Center for Public Integrity reporter Chris Young writes today, trade groups representing diet- and low-calorie food companies will go to great lengths — and often use questionable public relations tactics — to protect its interests by blasting the work of academics such as Swithers.

Read our investigation here:


Critic of artificial sweeteners pilloried by industry-backed scientists


Critic of artificial sweeteners pilloried by industry-backed scienConflicts abound among industry's defenders, even on national TV
Susan Swithers is no stranger to food industry criticism.

In fact, the Purdue University professor anticipates a swift public relations blitz from trade groups representing diet- and low-calorie food companies every time she publishes a study about the health effects of artificial sweeteners.

“They reflexively put out a press release that spins it as, ‘Here’s what’s wrong with the study,’” says Swithers, a professor of behavioral neuroscience who has been researching artificial sweeteners for the past decade. “I’m sure I’m on somebody’s Google Alert at this point.”

Still, even Swithers was surprised by the way in which the diet food industry attacked a paper she published last summer that raised health concerns about popular sugar substitutes used in snack foods and diet drinks. In her widely publicized work, published as an opinion article in the journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, Swithers reviewed recent studies on artificial sweeteners and concluded that people who frequently consume sugar substitutes “may … be at increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”

Seizing on the “opinion” tag, the food and beverage industry responded quickly. The American Beverage Association, for example, dismissed the paper’s findings, arguing that it was “not a scientific study.”

But perhaps the strongest, most wide-ranging attacks came from the Calorie Control Council, a lesser-known industry group with an innocuous-sounding name, a long history and a penchant for stealthy public relations tactics. The organization, which is run by an account executive with a global management and public relations firm, represents the low- and reduced-calorie food and beverage industry. But it functions more like an industry front group than a trade association.

In criticizing Swithers, the Council relied on industry-funded scientists, bloggers and dietitians — it even wrote a letter to the professor’s university demanding that the school stop promoting “biased science.”

“The intimidation tactics, going to somebody’s employer, it just seems to go beyond the realm of what’s reasonable,” says Swithers, who disputes the “opinion” critiques by noting that her paper was peer-reviewed and based on her assessment of recent scientific studies conducted about artificial sweeteners. “But I guess that’s par for the course in their world.”

Indeed, tracking the Calorie Control Council’s efforts to discredit Swithers’ paper on artificial sweeteners provides a lesson in how the food and beverage industry will go to great lengths — and often use questionable tactics — to protect its interests. With a brand new artificial sweetener about to hit the market, and with the science still unclear about the safety of sugar substitutes, industry’s efforts to discredit science unfavorable to their interests are unlikely to end anytime soon.

“This isn’t personal,” Swithers acknowledges. “This is about somebody’s bottom line."

_____________________________________________
I'm highlighting today common products that are now connected to one major disease vector----diabetes.  Children are now getting early-stage diabetes and it is less about family genetics and pre-disposition and more about the dismantling of public protections in our Federal agencies for food and drugs.  Over and again you will see that women are being hit the hardest in this failure to adequately test because when shortcuts are allowed to maximize profits it is women and children that are dropped in clinical testing.

Lipitor is a great product....we would not want to lose the benefits it provides.  The point is that all of these side effects may have been mitigated by simple reformulation.  That is what clinical trial data forces product designers to do.  Is ten years of clinical trials and reformulation worth creating a product people can trust?  IN A FIRST WORLD DEMOCRACY THAT IS A GREAT BIG YES.

NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS SAY-----TAKE YOUR CHANCES---WE'RE IN IT FOR THE PROFIT!



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If you or a loved one was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes after using Lipitor, you may be able to sue the drug’s manufacturer and recover compensation for your injuries. If you have questions about your legal rights or would like more information on filing a lawsuit, complete our free case review form today. The attorneys at Morgan & Morgan are offering this online consultation with no cost and no obligation.

Why Are Lawsuits Being Filed?

Typically, lawsuits involving pharmaceuticals allege that a drug is unreasonably dangerous and/or that the manufacturer failed to provide adequate warnings for side effects associated with the drug. Women filing lawsuits against Pfizer allege:

  • Patients and doctors were not adequately warned about the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes with use of Lipitor
  • Pfizer promoted Lipitor as safe and effective, despite knowing that it could elevate blood sugar levels and/or cause Type 2 diabetes
  • Lipitor’s label never carried a warning that it could cause changes in blood sugar levels and/or Type 2 diabetes until the FDA requested a label change in February 2012
  • Even after the label change, Lipitor’s label still does not adequately warn patients about the risk of Type 2 diabetes
  • Patients who developed diabetes due to Lipitor use now have to undergo regular testing of their blood glucose levels, adhere to a strict diets and take medication for the remainder of their lives and are at an increased risk for kidney disease, blindness, heart disease and other complications of diabetes
These lawsuits are seeking to reimburse patients for physical and emotional suffering, and the cost of past and future medical care.

Is This a Class Action?

This is not a class action lawsuit. Our attorneys are helping women who have used Lipitor and developed Type 2 diabetes file individual lawsuits to recover compensation for their specific injuries.

To help conserve judicial resources and ensure a consistent and efficient resolution to the growing litigation, a multidistrict litigation (MDL) has been formed to handle these lawsuits. This means that all federally-filed lawsuits, as well as any future cases filed in federal courts, will be transferred to the U.S. District Court District of South Carolina to be overseen by the Honorable Judge Richard M. Gergel. Judge Gergel will manage the lawsuits and oversee the pretrial and discovery process, which includes taking witness testimony and reviewing relevant documents. While one judge is overseeing the litigation, each plaintiff will retain his or her own lawsuit, attorney and right to an individual award.

How is Lipitor Causing Diabetes?

Several studies have uncovered a link between Lipitor and Type 2 diabetes, a life-long condition that causes a patient to develop high blood sugar levels. To understand the potential link between Lipitor and Type 2 diabetes, it is important to understand the science behind the disease.

In the body, food is broken down into sugar (glucose), which travels through the bloodstream. In a normal patient, the pancreas will release insulin in response to a meal to reduce blood sugar levels and allow glucose to enter the body’s cells, providing them with the energy needed to function. Patients with Type 2 diabetes, however, cannot produce enough insulin or cannot use the insulin well enough. As a result, glucose cannot enter the body’s cells and instead builds up in the blood, causing a spike in blood sugar levels. High levels of sugar in the blood can result in a number of serious health problems, including organ damage and heart attack.


Researchers suspect that Lipitor can inhibit the function of the pancreatic cells responsible for storing and releasing insulin, and may also decrease the body’s sensitivity to the hormone.


Studies on Lipitor

Highlight Diabetes Risk for Women, Statin Users

Patients on a high-dose Lipitor regimen may have an increased risk of developing diabetes A number of studies have linked use of Lipitor and cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins to diabetes. In 2013, researchers in Canada found that patients taking Lipitor had a 22 percent increased risk of developing diabetes compared to those taking Pravachol, another drug used to lower cholesterol. Two years earlier, a study based on data from three large clinical trials also suggested that patients on a high-dose Lipitor regimen may have an increased risk of developing diabetes, especially if they have other risk factors for the disease. The trial included nearly 4,000 adults who did not have diabetes, but had a history of stroke. It is believed that women, including those with a healthy body mass index (BMI), are at the highest risk of developing diabetes from statin use.

FDA Warning Highlights Increased Diabetes Risk

In February 2012, the FDA released a statement on Lipitor and statins. The agency warned that patients taking these drugs may have an increased risk of developing high blood sugar levels and type 2 diabetes, and announced that changes will be made to the drugs’ labeling to reflect this concern. According to an FDA spokesperson, prescribing doctors should assess patients’ blood sugar levels after they have started treatment with Lipitor or another statin.

The FDA warning also commented on the potential risk for liver injury, memory loss and muscle damage; however, the current litigation surrounding Lipitor pertains only to the manufacturer’s alleged failure to warn about the type 2 diabetes risk.

At Morgan & Morgan, our attorneys have been assigned leadership roles in some of the largest defective drug litigations across the country and have recovered millions on behalf of injured patients. We believe that the maker of Lipitor put profits before patient safety and are committed to helping patients recover the compensation they deserve. For more information on how we may be able to help, do not hesitate to contact us today. There is no cost or obligation.


____________________________________________


Below you see the kind of advocate for eliminating the FDA and public protections because of the costs and limits to profit.  Remember, public universities are the ones that do these clinical trials and taxpayer money funds them.  Ten year clinical trials are expensive but the product rarely harmed the public.  If this is too costly for private industry they should not be in the PHARMA business.  What Clinton, Bush, and Obama are doing with universities as research corporations is placing what this article below suggests on steroids.  Universities like Johns Hopkins has a BioTech building attached just to rifle these biotech products through with patents ------with absolutely no value to humanity for the most part.  Most of these 'innovations' are simply are reshuffling of compound configuration and this rifling is what is causing class action lawsuits to soar.  The solution say neo-liberals and neo-cons-----take away the ability of the public to sue for health damages.

Neo-liberals and neo-cons say----TAKE YOUR CHANCES-----IF YOU ARE INJURED YOU ARE A LOSER/VICTIM.


BASIC RESEARCH ON THE CHEMISTRY OF THESE 'INNOVATIONS' IS WHAT PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES DO.  ONCE WE KNOW THE SCIENCE THEN WE GO TO MARKET AND 'INNOVATE'.

The excuse of harming people by delaying new product is bogus.  So few people are in need of these new products and exceptions are made for those needing these products as a last resort. 


Paying for Permissionless Innovation
  • by Adam Gurri
  • August 4, 2014


Here at The Ümlaut we’re big fans of permissionless innovation—the concept and Adam Thierer’s excellent book. The biggest, most consequential enemy of permissionless innovation in the US is undoubtedly the FDA. Its long, expensive approval process delays access to life-saving drugs and other innovations for years, dramatically increases the price of such things once they reach the market, and skews the investment incentives for the health industry.
Many economists would like to see the FDA radically reformed, some would like to abolish it entirely. In the spirit of the sort of political compromises that Milton Friedman was famous for proposing, I’d like to suggest an intermediate solution: a permissionless premium. Here’s how it would work: there would be some specified amount (either an absolute amount per unit or a percentage of the revenue) that patients would have to pay in order to get a given drug or access to a medical device before it was FDA approved. The patient should be made well aware that the risks are at this point unknown (not that they’re thoroughly understood just after FDA approval anyway). The revenue would bolster the FDA’s budget, thus in theory helping to investigate the risks associated with the drug and drugs like it in the future.

Moreover, this would allow pharmaceutical companies to start getting revenue before FDA approval, lowering the burden of their overhead. As things currently stand, they spend billions on drug development and by the time the FDA process is complete they have a very short window before their patent expires. As Alex Tabarrok documents well, the result is that pharma companies have almost no incentive to develop drugs that treat diseases that are anything other that very broadly experienced. The pharma dream in this scenario is not to find an effective treatment for rare but aggressive cancers, but to find the next Lipitor.

However, if they could develop experimental new drugs for rare diseases that could be bring in revenue immediately, that might just change the cost-benefit analysis sufficiently to see some real progress on that front. The premium will act as a Pigovian tax rather than an outright ban on the consumption of such still largely untested drugs, and will help fund both pharmaceutical companies and the FDA’s efforts to increase our stock of medical knowledge. It seems, from a number of perspectives, to be a win-win.



_____________________________________________________________________

The hype for the ACA was having insurance would create better health results.  As we know, requiring people to buy insurance and then having people unable to afford co-pays and deductibles to access that care are two different things.  Neo-liberals never expected access to health care----they are pushing everyone to preventative health.  Counseling on better eating habits and blood tests will control diabetes.  Except, that is not true.  The environmental exposures as we saw in the articles above will not be mitigated by preventative care.  The huge numbers of people aging into these policies already having diabetes will not be helped because most people can only afford Bronze and/or Medicaid coverage.

The US was already  at the bottom in the developed world for health outcomes.....the ACA will take the US to third world status.....



'A widely cited experiment in Oregon offered an early look at what happens when people suddenly get Medicaid coverage. Researchers found that physical health, like obesity and the prevalence of diabetes, did not change much'.




Affordable Care Act to provide preventive health care coverage to millions with diabetes

  • July 22, 2010
The Obama Administration has announced implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which will require new insurance plans to provide preventive care without cost-sharing to millions of Americans.

With expanded access to preventive services, individuals may obtain the information they need to make health care decisions that are right for them.



Plan LevelInsurance

                            Company Pays                                
Bronze        60% of health care costs

                                You Pay   
                    40% of health care costs


Silver              Company pays
                    70% of health care costs


                              You pay

                       30% of health care costs


___________________________________________

Access to preventative health care will do nothing with widespread health disease and infection vectors brought from deregulation and global markets.  We are already back to the age of The Jungle-----US food is as contaminated as before US advanced to the first world society.  Now we are being assaulted by biotech industry food and health care products that create pre-conditions.  All of the promotion of access to insurance is simply hype.

We must remove corporate structures from our public universities and rebuild our public health system being dismantled with deregulation and neo-liberalism.  We must demand Expanded and Improved Medicare for All to allow all citizens access to basic medical procedures and treatments. 

WE PAID TAXES FOR DECADES TO HAVE THE COVERAGE WE NEED ------THESE TAXES ARE PAYROLL TAXES INTO MEDICARE TRUSTS AND INCOME TAXES THAT FUND NIH AND NCA RESEARCH.  YOU PAID FOR YOUR ACCESS TO QUALITY CARE.  CORPORATE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION EMPTIED GOVERNMENT COFFERS.



NYT Covers Food Safety Deregulation the US Beef Export Crisis
  • Bad Cow Disease
    By Paul Krugman
    The New York Times, June 13, 2008
    Straight to the Source

"Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it's labeled chicken."

That little ditty famously summarized the message of "The Jungle," Upton Sinclair's 1906 exposé of conditions in America's meat-packing industry. Sinclair's muckraking helped Theodore Roosevelt pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act - and for most of the next century, Americans trusted government inspectors to keep their food safe.

Lately, however, there always seems to be at least one food-safety crisis in the headlines - tainted spinach, poisonous peanut butter and, currently, the attack of the killer tomatoes. The declining credibility of U.S. food regulation has even led to a foreign-policy crisis: there have been mass demonstrations in South Korea protesting the pro-American prime minister's decision to allow imports of U.S. beef, banned after mad cow disease was detected in 2003.

How did America find itself back in The Jungle?

It started with ideology. Hard-core American conservatives have long idealized the Gilded Age, regarding everything that followed - not just the New Deal, but even the Progressive Era - as a great diversion from the true path of capitalism.

Thus, when Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate, was asked about his ultimate goal, he replied that he wanted a restoration of the way America was "up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that."

The late Milton Friedman agreed, calling for the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration. It was unnecessary, he argued: private companies would avoid taking risks with public health to safeguard their reputations and to avoid damaging class-action lawsuits. (Friedman, unlike almost every other conservative I can think of, viewed lawyers as the guardians of free-market capitalism.)

Such hard-core opponents of regulation were once part of the political fringe, but with the rise of modern movement conservatism they moved into the corridors of power. They never had enough votes to abolish the F.D.A. or eliminate meat inspections, but they could and did set about making the agencies charged with ensuring food safety ineffective.

They did this in part by simply denying these agencies enough resources to do the job.
For example, the work of the F.D.A. has become vastly more complex over time thanks to the combination of scientific advances and globalization. Yet the agency has a substantially smaller work force now than it did in 1994, the year Republicans took over Congress.

Perhaps even more important, however, was the systematic appointment of foxes to guard henhouses.

Thus, when mad cow disease was detected in the U.S. in 2003, the Department of Agriculture was headed by Ann M. Veneman, a former food-industry lobbyist...

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July 24th, 2014

7/24/2014

0 Comments

 
Just a few more days on education policy------let's continue to look at higher education and Maryland is ground zero for the dismantling of our public education system at all levels.

Yesterday I showed that Economic students are demanding universities stop teaching only neo-liberal economics-----they said the field had become so narrow as to block all other thought.  Think how that translates to Common Core in our K-12.  They intend to do the same thing in our grade schools as they have done in universities.......narrowed the curricula to corporate policy.  'Competition' replaces personal best......'Getting the edge' becomes bullying........'Taking out the competition' becomes rape.  The level of aggression in our schools and universities is growing because of this corporate mentality.  Attacks on women are soaring even at universities because Chancellor Kirwan does not see himself as a public servant upholding public justice and Rule of Law-----


WE WILL SELECT WHOMEVER WE WANT TO BE HEARD IN ELECTION FORUMS AND THERE WILL BE NO DISCUSSION ON ANY UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND CAMPUS THAT IS ANTI-NEO-LIBERALISM!

We heard recently that UMUC----the online college structure that O'Malley spent hundreds of millions if not a billion dollars to create is failing miserably.  No one wants online education yet neo-liberals funded by Bill Gates and Wall Street are going to push this until we have no choice they say.  O'Malley even went overseas to push our active military to use their GI Bill education benefits on these online degree programs----IT IS A DISGRACE.  As you will see below there is absolutely no research that shows these online education programs are providing any quality or creating higher achievement.  The data is not there.  The only reason they are creating these online venues for 90% of Americans is that it is cheap and only prepares for a job.

FORGET THE WELL-BALANCED EDUCATION THAT IS BROAD AND ALLOWS GRADUATES TO APPLY THEMSELVES TO MANY FIELDS.

First UMUC was going to be made a non-profit so the public could not see how it operates.....now University of Maryland is keeping a failed structure alive but wants to deregulate.  Bill Gates requires online instruction and neo-liberals are going to give it to him!
  The amount of education funding wasted on these global corporate policies mirrors O'Malley's tying the public to Hilton and Hyatt hotels in order to keep them from losing money.  Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are lost every year in all categories of industry in what is clearly public malfeasance and fraud against the citizens of Maryland.  Why do we need a UMUC Asia/Europe?

Meanwhile financial aid and grants are being cut and that aid given is being tied to these cheaper structures as WE THE PEOPLE see our strong public education dismantled by neo-liberals. 

DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN TO CHANGE THIS----THIS IS REPUBLICAN POLICY-----NEO-CONS ARE JUST AS BAD.



UMUC’s Mission in Asia


The mission of University of Maryland University College (UMUC) in Asia is to offer academic programs to United States military communities throughout Asia and the Pacific. While serving overseas, students can take a single course or many courses leading to a certificate, an Associate of Arts degree, a Bachelor of Arts degree, or a Bachelor of Science degree. Since University of Maryland University College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, students can take courses with the intention of transferring their credits to other colleges or universities in the United States. Students may also continue their studies with UMUC online. Additional information is available at www.umuc.edu.

Although the educational setting is overseas, UMUC’s programs in Asia are in all respects comparable to those offered at public institutions of higher learning in the United States. Courses are taught by faculty whose credentials meet standards set by appropriate University of Maryland University College academic departments in Adelphi, Maryland. All UMUC courses taught in Asia carry University of Maryland University College resident credit. UMUC is committed to maintaining standards of academic excellence. The past 50-plus years demonstrate that those standards can be maintained in overseas settings.



UMUC Europe offers thousands of courses for students interested in associate's and bachelor's degrees and undergraduate certificates. UMUC also offers graduate-level certificates and several master's degrees in Europe. With UMUC's 150 locations worldwide, and extensive online offerings, students can begin and finish a degree with us regardless of where they are located.


I bet the citizens of Maryland did not even know UMUC was a global corporation.  Meanwhile fewer Maryland citizens are going to 4 year universities.


I don't hold any credence to these online workplace comment programs because they work like American Idol.  It is good to see a consistent referral to 'people needing to be treated with respect'. ' Low pay with no opportunity to grow'.  THIS IS NOT AN ENVIRONMENT WE WOULD WANT IN A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY.  THAT IS WHAT A CORPORATE STRUCTURE LOOKS LIKE.  That is because it IS  a corporate structure.  Under neo-liberals labor is treated as badly as if a Republican were in office yet every election Maryland labor unions get behind these neo-liberal pols.  We need the citizens of Maryland taking back the Democratic Party to reverse this failed neo-liberal/neo-con policy!



“Failing company, horrible management” Academic Advisor (Current Employee) Pros – Great vacation/time off. Get to become a state employee after 3 years.

Cons – Moral is so low! Micromanaged beyond belief, constant layoffs, not worth you time.

Advice to Senior Management – Treat us like the educated adults that we are. Learn to value your employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Add Employer Response
  1. Apr 8, 2014
    • Culture & Values
    • Work/Life Balance
    • Senior Management
    • Comp & Benefits
    • Career Opportunities
     

    “Not good. Too many secrets and financial problems” Administrative Assistant (Current Employee) Largo, MD I have been working at UMUC full-time for more than 8 years


    Pros: Convenient location and great benefits Cons: Low pay and minimal advancement Advice to Senior Management: Treat the regular people like people No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company… More

                    

Below you see what the deregulation issues discussed by Mikulski and Kirwan will include----as you see again everyone in the system is in the dark as to what these discussions look like.  WE DON'T ALLOW CITIZENS IN MARYLAND KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING SAY NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.


UMUC considering plan to become independent nonprofit with ties to university system
Under proposal, it would no longer be a state entity; president seeks input from university community




By Nayana Davis, The Baltimore Sun

7:54 p.m. CDT, July 10, 2014

The University of Maryland University College, which has been struggling with declining enrollment, is considering severing some ties with the state university system to avoid burdensome regulations and work more closely with the private sector.

Under the proposal, the university would become an independent nonprofit organization that retains an affiliation with the state system. The school's president, Javier Miyares, said during a Thursday town hall meeting in Largo that the idea came from a task force of experts organized by the university as a response to a shrinking student body.

UMUC, a mainly online institution, has struggled with a competitive online education market and a smaller military. Members of the military or their families make up about half of the college's students.



The main objective of the proposal is to more readily secure partnerships with the private sector, including working with companies to make courses more employer-friendly and building relationships to help students secure jobs. Miyares said such partnerships can be challenging to forge as a state agency.

"This way we would not be bound by all the regulations and statutes that apply to a public state agency," Miyares said.

University officials also hope the move would help it attract more students outside the United States, though it would retain the University of Maryland name. Based in Adelphi, UMUC offers courses to students in 24 countries.

The plan would allow the university to keep ties with the 12-institution University System of Maryland, but the details have not been worked out. "The validity and credibility you get by being part of the University of Maryland system is huge," Miyares said.

No immediate action will be taken on the task force recommendation, as the school begins a process of soliciting feedback from the college community. University officials said there are few concrete ideas on how the effort would be implemented at this stage; Miyares said he wanted to get input first.

UMUC has the support of the University System of Maryland to look into alternate business models.

"The university is facing some significant challenges," said William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the system. "They are appropriately addressing those challenges."

Kirwan said a more concrete proposal would need approval from the system's Board of Regents before implementation, and possibly the governor and General Assembly. The governor's office declined to comment on the plan.

But some higher education experts expressed concern about the university putting out such a proposal with few details.


Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said it's not uncommon for public universities to form private-sector relationships to outsource certain functions, but it's unclear what the change in status would mean for the university.

"Honestly, I don't know what to make of this," he said. "The decision to operate under a different set of rules is interesting. Whether the move is good, I don't know."

UMUC has been struggling with declining enrollment both stateside and overseas since fall of 2011. Although the rate of decline stateside has remained less than 10 percent in the past three years, overseas enrollment declined 20 percent for spring 2014.

The school has struggled to increase enrollment because of competition from traditional academic institutions that have started offering Web-based classes and popular massive open online courses known as MOOCs, university officials said.

A shrinking military, which is facing large-scale budget cuts, also is a factor in loss of enrollment.

University officials said that 90 percent of its budget comes from tuition and 10 percent from the state. Other colleges in the university system get about 30 percent of their budgets from the state.

"We don't know what the future is going to be like," Miyares said. "But if we don't adapt, we will go into a death spiral."

UMUC's struggles are "a reflection of how competitive online education has become," Kirwan said. "What we do need is to explore if operational flexibility is possible."


"UMUC has been quite unique in the university system," Nassirian said. "It had been mostly self-sufficient because it provides excess revenue back to the system, but that [online] business model has not fared well as of late."

Traditionally, changes in business models for colleges have occurred when a struggling nonprofit university becomes a for-profit venture after a large corporation acquires it. Nassirian gave the example of the Clinton, Iowa-based school Ashford University being purchased by Bridgepoint Education.

Miyares said the change could occur as early as next summer. Academic programs and staffing levels are not expected to be affected if the model changes, unless enrollment continues to drop.

The school laid off 70 staff members from departments at the Adelphi and Largo campuses earlier this year, and 58 the year prior. The university employs about 2,000 in the U.S.

"The whole goal is to get enrollment up," Miyares said. "If enrollment is fine, there should be no dramatic difference to the academic side. This is a pivotal moment in our history."

nadavis@baltsun.com



________________________________________________

The article above gives yet another spin----that UMUC and online colleges are being edged out by the popularity of MOOCs-----only MOOCs are not popular.  They are used less frequently then online UMUC.  We are being fed nothing but spin and this happens more and more because the public universities that would be the first to shout THAT IS NOT TRUE ----IT IS SPIN are now the ones handing us spin because they are corporations.  Maryland Assembly was the very first to pass laws that move the accreditation process towards making these online structures legitimate.  NO ONE THINKS THIS IS GOOD POLICY.  Needless to say when it comes to bad education policy it is Johns Hopkins pushing it in Maryland.  Indeed, Baltimore is cursed with a gorilla in the room that pushes the worst of policy all so they can make more profits.


This looks like a Gates Foundation study-------most employers in North Carolina have not heard of MOOCS but 3/4 of them think they are good. Meanwhile, there is no interest in the public for MOOCs outside of simple extracurricular help with existing university structures. Gates says he will buy these policy implementation yet! You know, because he is the 'good billionaire' as NPR always tells us.



All Hail MOOCs! Just Don’t Ask if They Actually Work | TIME.com

Why Do So Many Students Drop Out of MOOCs?www.brighthub.com/education/online-learning/articles/...



Study: MOOCs Viewed Positively Among Employers

April 2, 2014 Inside Higher Education

Most North Carolina employers haven't heard of massive open online courses, but about three-quarters of them view MOOCs as having a positive effect on hiring decisions, a survey conducted by Duke University and RTI International shows. The study, founded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also suggests 71 percent of employers could see themselves using MOOCs for professional development.

Think about how the real world views MOOCs but the article in the Maryland media makes you think they are supported.  It happens all the time because they can get away with it.  Online resources for education are good----everyone thinks online instruction adds to the classroom at any level.  The problem is that corporations have as a goal to replace the classroom with these online products ------aiming at the 90% of Americans becoming trapped by Vocational K-12.......
With all public education funding going to subsidize corporate research and Human Resources we have to make the cost of educating the 90% as cheap as possible say neo-liberals and neo-cons!  Calling MOOCS a democratizing tool in a nation with the strongest public education system in the world is a mockery.  STOP DEFUNDING AND DISMANTLING PUBLIC EDUCATION.


The University of Maryland is now taking a look at bestowing transfer credit to those who are able to demonstrate a specific level of knowledge after completing a MOOC.


- See more at: http://www.educationnews.org/online-schools/can-moocs-be-a-solution-to-the-us-student-debt-crisis/#sthash.uhO1mk7Y.dpuf


Are MOOCs really dead?

  • By Jake New, Editor, eCampus News
June 6th, 2014 Recent studies suggest that MOOCs are very much alive, but are not a threat to traditional higher education For some educators and journalists, the rasping final breaths of massive open online courses (MOOCs) began late last year.

They followed nearly two years of hype and excitement that even the most skeptical of instructors and reporters got swept up in. Many of those who denounced the courses did so in a similarly frantic fashion, writing proclamations and open letters condemning MOOCs, as though they were caught in a great academic war.

Then, suddenly, a blow was struck. And it came from one of MOOCs’ most famous creators.

“Sebastian Thrun, godfather of the massive open online course, has quietly spread a plastic tarp on the floor, nudged his most famous educational invention into the center, and is about to pull the trigger,” Rebecca Schuman wrote at Slate in November 2013.

It was a dramatic way of saying that Thrun had announced that his company, Udacity, would now focus its MOOCs more on vocational training rather than traditional liberal arts courses.

That Udacity was only one company of a growing number focused on MOOCs — and that many of these platforms, including its main competitor Coursera, still aimed to disrupt traditional higher education — did little to slow the wave of speculation.

It was the capper on a year of MOOC hand-wringing. If 2012 was the “year of the MOOC,” then 2013 was the “year of the MOOC backlash.” Those who trust Gartner’s “Hype Cycle” believed MOOCs were going through a common “trough of disillusionment,” that would soon be followed by a “slope of enlightenment.”

But by the start of 2014, many were already asking: “Are MOOCs dead?”

The answer is not as sensational as the question. MOOCs aren’t dead — not yet -- but they likely won’t be replacing any traditional means of higher education, either.




Here is the source of creating a massive online system of education for the 90% in Maryland-----Wall Street itself!  The quality of education drops each time they grow this online education industry.  Since it isn't working at the university level they are now talking of sending it to K-12 vocational.  Sitting children in front of computers for online classes the goal of education reform as vocational K-12----YOU BET


Johns Hopkins Offers Nine-Course Specialization in Data ...www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/coursera...   CachedThe series of nine MOOCs are now open for enrollment and free to anyone. ... 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205. ... Courses Careers Accreditation Web Policies ...

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.


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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.









0 Comments

July 22nd, 2014

7/22/2014

0 Comments

 
Now that universities are corporations we need to get rid of all that public protection stuff that will keep them from being profitable.  Forget all that silly stuff about educating Americans to be citizens and leaders......forget equal opportunity and access for the disabled......you cannot maximize profits that way.  Let's open our universities to the world's rich and let them attend simply because they can pay higher and higher tuition.  THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CON FOR YOU.....IT'S ALL ABOUT PROFIT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

As you can see it is Maryland behind this deregulation attempt just as it leads in corporatization of universities into global systems. 


LOOK----THERE'S MIKULSKI -----MISS NEO-LIBERAL HERSELF.  SHE HANDED A COOL TRILLION OF TAXPAYERS MONEY OVER TWO DECADES TO MAKE JOHNS HOPKINS A GLOBAL CORPORATION AFTER ALL.

Also at the lead is University of Maryland Chancellor Kirwan-----you know----the one Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland is taking to court for rigging the elections for governor by choosing which candidates were heard on public university campuses across the state-----all of which is illegal.  Sure, we solve this corruption by fewer regulations!


WE WILL SELECT ANY CANDIDATE WE CHOSE FOR THESE ELECTION FORUMS FOR GOVERNOR SAYS CHANCELLOR KIRWAN.


Oh, that's how you keep installing legislation no one wants ----you rig the system so we cannot get people in office that will reverse these policies!  THAT'S KIRWAN FOR YOU-----A TRUE GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL/NEOCON.  Public universities as the hotbed of democratic political debate?  That's no way to maximize corporate profits!

A New Deregulatory Push

February 13, 2014
By Michael Stratford  Inside Higher Education

WASHINGTON -- The last time the Higher Education Act came up for a vote in Congress in 2008, Senator Lamar Alexander trotted out a five-foot stack of cartons onto the Senate floor to show the enormity of existing regulations governing higher education.

Now that lawmakers are once again contemplating how to rewrite that massive piece of legislation -- which authorizes, among other things, the $150 billion-a-year federal student aid program -- Alexander is returning to his props.

Speaking to a group of community college leaders Wednesday, Alexander unfolded the full paper version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which was taller than he is, to underscore his distaste for the federal government’s bureaucratic reach onto college campuses. And last week he made the same demonstration before a group of private college presidents.

Alexander said Wednesday that his goal is to “simplify and deregulate” higher education in the upcoming renewal of the Higher Education Act -- a process he has said should “start from scratch.”

“What we’re trying to do is establish a continuous process for deregulation to overcome the continuous momentum for overregulation,” he said, noting that the “inertia” for creating new regulations comes from across the political spectrum.

“The conservative senators, from my party, they’re sometimes the worst,” he said, describing how he has to remind his colleagues that they are “the party of federalism, the 10th amendment” when they want to impose conservative ideas on how colleges should be run across the country.

All of their ideas “sound good, but you know what happens when you have to comply with it: it takes time and money away from your mission,” he told a group of community college trustees and presidents.

Alexander has formed, along with three other senators, a task force to recommend ways to reduce federal regulations on colleges and universities.  

That group of higher education leaders gathered behind closed doors at the offices of the American Council on Education on Wednesday to begin producing recommendations on how to deregulate the industry. The panel consists of college presidents from a range of sectors and higher education associations.

Reducing or eliminating regulations on colleges has long been a goal of the higher education lobby in Washington, though previous efforts have largely been unsuccessful.

William E. (Brit) Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland and co-chair of the task force, said he was encouraged by the Congressional interest in reducing regulations.

“What seems different this time is the very strong commitment of these four senators,” Kirwan said. “They are determined to address this issue and get our help in finding some meaningful reforms.”


Alexander and Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, attended Wednesday’s meeting, and two other lawmakers -- Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, a Democrat, and Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a Republican -- are also on board.

The panel will focus on identifying “the most egregious, excessive regulations," but will also make recommendations on the Education Department’s rule making process in general, Kirwan said.

“The hope is that we can make some suggestions that will enable us to meet our obligations and be accountable to the federal government but to do so in a way that is cost effective and not excessively bureaucratic,” he said.

Kirwan said that one example of the type of regulations that his task force would be targeting is a campus safety rule that requires colleges to collect crime information from local police jurisdictions when students study abroad or when athletes travel to an out-of-town hotel.

The task force hopes to produce a report on its recommendations within the next 12 months, Kirwan said. The group will also be coordinating with the National Research Council, which was directed by Congressional appropriators last month to conduct a $1 million study of the cost of regulations on higher education.

Kirwan, who also chairs the subcommittee at the NRC that will oversee the study, said that work would be focused on all federal regulations that affect higher education, while the Congressional task force would focus only on Education Department regulations.

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This is what Kirwan and his group of global corporate bosses think they are going to do with our universities and deregulating gets rid of all that public justice and civil rights stuff....you know----THE US CONSTITUTION AND OUR STATUS AS AN EQUAL PROTECTION DEMOCRACY.  Who in the world wants people like this deciding what is good.


That is what testing from K onward is about----the state determining how a child will be tracked and into what vocation from elementary school on. Remember, school privatization means the entity deciding will be corporations. This is already happening in Baltimore and it is nothing but autocratic.

O'Malley has made his career as Governor of Maryland building these tracking systems into our schools at every level......it is failing miserably although spin will make it sound a great success.


It is the for-profit colleges AND THAT DEREGULATION that distorted who and how students went to college last decade and it is infused with fraud and corruption so it is not our decades-old system of allowing families to decide where and what that child will pursue that failed----

IT IS THE SAME PEOPLE WRITING THESE PRIVATIZATION POLICIES THAT DISTORTED A GOOD SYSTEM.


This article is long but please glance through!


College material or not: who should decide?


By Valerie Strauss March 26 (The Washington Post)

College, of course, isn’t for everybody, but who should decide — and how and when — which students should go and shouldn’t? In this post, Kevin Welner and Carol Burris ask whether the decision should be made by policy makers and school officials or parents and students after young people have had equitable opportunities to learn in elementary and secondary school.

Welner is the director of the National Education Policy Center, located at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. He is the author of the 2008 book, “NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling.” Burris is the award-winning principal of South Side High School in New York. She was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State.


By Kevin Welner and Carol Burris

Robin should become a printer. That’s what Robin Calitri’s school counselor told his dad in 1965. Robin thought his counselor’s advice was just swell. He wasn’t a motivated high school student. But his dad, who was a professor of English Literature at Hofstra University, made it clear to the counselor that his son was going to college.

Robin later became the principal of Long Island’s South Side High School and was a finalist for the national principal of the year in 1999. He would tell that story about the counselor whenever he explained the harm done by tracking—the sorting of some students into classes that are not designed to prepare those children for post-secondary education.

If his dad had gone along with the counselor’s recommendation, his son would likely have ended up in a trade that was becoming obsolete. To his credit, Robin understood that this was precisely the situation faced by children in working-class and poor families. Research on tracking and choice confirms this; working-class and poor families, as well as parents without a college education, are more deferential to the advice of school authorities and less willing to push back on the system. Robin also understood that a young person’s future hangs in the balance when school authorities are making rules that will cut off college as an option.


Yes, we can all agree: college is not for everybody. But should school officials and top-down policy makers decide based, for example, on Common Core college readiness test scores, or should the decision be left to parents and students after schools have given them meaningful, enriching, equitable opportunities to learn?


While college is not for everybody, opportunities to be prepared for college definitely should be.
When college-educated parents have the capacity to secure the college advantage, they certainly seize it for their own children. It is not unusual, for example, to see upper middle class parents spend thousands on tutoring—including tutors for the SAT and the college essay. College-educated parents understand that a four-year diploma is key to securing financial success.

That’s just one reality that Mike Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Fordham Institute, refuses to confront in his article in Slate, with the man-bites-dog title, “Kid, I’m Sorry, but You’re Just Not College Material” Is exactly what we should be telling a lot of high school students.”

The “we” who are the deciders is left somewhat undefined, but it’s safe to assume that the use of “we” does not give power and capacity to the students themselves.

Before continuing, this is a good spot to pause and acknowledge when we are talking about other people’s children. The two of us, like Mr. Petrilli, represent families where post-secondary education is a given. Accordingly, we’re essentially debating what’s best for those “other” families. As we contemplate tinkering with their fate, it is wise to remember John Dewey’s axiom:

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.”

Perhaps we are unwise in working our tails off for our children to go to college. But unless and until we acknowledge this, we should be wary of sending other families down a different path.


The vocational education push isn’t coming from just Mr. Petrilli. As he notes, it’s also coming from a project headquartered at Harvard University (apparently with no irony intended) as well as from policymakers throughout the nation. The Education Commission of the States recently studied the “State of the State” addresses from the nation’s governors and found that “at least 13 governors and the D.C. mayor outlined proposals improving or expanding CTE [career and technical education, aka vocational education] options for students.”

Mr. Petrilli and the governors are correct to the extent that they are simply acknowledging that not all children will go to college and that those who do not should nonetheless have opportunities to thrive. It is also true that the decision to forgo or delay college should be made before graduation day.

From that point on, however, the “sort and select” advocates get almost everything wrong. Their fundamental two-part assumption is, first, that they can and should identify children who are beyond academic hope. Second, they believe that it is possible and beneficial to identify these children early, separate them from their academically oriented peers, and put them on a track that hopefully prepares them for post-secondary employment but does not prepare them for college.


Equitable schools reject such tracking policies because they believe in the American Dream and because they have learned from past mistakes.
History tells us that schools should not be in the business of foreclosing children’s options. At the start of the 20th century, schools faced an influx of immigrants, and policymakers responded by creating programs for those who were called the “great army of incapables.” Vocational tracks prepared immigrants to be factory workers, while the children of well-off parents were given a college preparatory education. This pattern of separating students into different classes was repeated during the era of racial desegregation as a way to maintain segregated classrooms—and then again in the 1970s when students with special needs were increasingly enrolled in mainstream schools.

History and research show that when schools sort in this way, it is the disadvantaged children who are directed toward lower-tier tracks. No matter what criteria are used—scores, recommendations or even choice—the same patterns of stratification occur. Accordingly, when lawmakers adopt these misguided policies, they open up opportunity gaps that inevitably lead to the achievement gaps that these same lawmakers then decry.

Mr. Petrilli concedes that he understands the danger. Describing the bad old days, he writes, “Those high school ‘tracks’ were immutable, and those who wound up in ‘voc-ed’ (or, at least as bad, the ‘general’ track) were those for whom secondary schooling, in society’s eyes, was mostly a custodial function.” Yet he turns back to voc-ed because, as he contends, the odds are otherwise too long for disadvantaged students.

Beginning with the statistic that only 10 percent of these disadvantaged students earn a four-year degree, Mr. Petrilli asserts that if we work really hard as a society maybe this number would rise to 30 percent, which for Mr. Petrilli is not good enough. Since recent data show that 33.5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 29 have at least a bachelor’s degree, that sounds like a pretty good outcome to us. By the way, that’s the highest percentage ever for Americans, and it doesn’t include those who earn two-year degrees as well as certificates in our community colleges and post-secondary technical schools.


The “You’re Not College Material” approach is the same one we use far too often in schools.  Too many kids hear--You’re not ‘honors’ material, or Challenging science and math isn’t for you. And every time that strategy is used, we see the same results—classes that are stratified by social class and race. It’s an approach that reinforces existing inequalities. To say in a supposedly neutral way that not all students will go to college is disingenuous without first acknowledging something else: that what’s really being said is that we should accept that college is for the already advantaged.

On some level, Mr. Petrilli grasps these concerns—when he acknowledges the past harms of tracking and that “when judgments were made on the basis of ZIP code or skin color, the old system was [deterministic, racist, and classist].” What he doesn’t acknowledge is that his new system would be the old system.

It’s interesting to us that the Petrilli article’s argument relies in part on the German system of tiered schooling, where college-bound students head to the Gymnasium while vocation-bound students head to the Hauptschule or Realschule. Yes, it’s true that students attending the German vocational schools do better than voc-ed students here, in part because of a more equitable job sector following graduation. But a team of German psychologists recently published an article in The Journal of Educational Psychology on the effects of the German vocational track on the development of student intelligence—and they found that students in the academic track experienced substantial IQ gains as compared to those voc-ed students. Not only did the learning gap grow, so did the very capacity to learn between German academic and vocational students. That outcome should give us pause.

Our quarrel is not with offering vocational opportunities in high schools. Rather, we favor a smart and fair approach that works for children and families who, at the right time and place, make the choice for a career after high school.
We might, for example, retool our two-year colleges so that they offer more programs in technology and other marketable areas, without making students jump through remedial hoops to stay. We might also follow the lead of Finland and prepare students with a strong and equitable academic education without tracking until age 16, and then allow them to make meaningful career and life choices. We may even look at promising models, such as California’s Linked Learning schools, which integrate career preparation while still preparing students for college. High schools have an obligation to do their best to prepare students for college and career; preparation for both has more overlap than often assumed.


We reject, however, No College for You! proposals that sort  14 year olds into vocational high schools. South Side High School, one of the best in the nation, would likely be a very different place if co-author Carol Burris’ predecessor, Robin Calitri, had obliged his counselor when he was told “Kid, you are not college material.”  That counselor did not have the right to make that decision—and neither does Mike Petrilli.



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Neo-liberals installed the education policy in South Korea after the Korean war that it is trying to install in the US today.  The difference is that the US has a history of public education and people as citizens with the rights to legislate and equal protection laws.  From Korea this policy traveled to China and Singapore and involves very autocratic and pedantic learning where parents in these countries have been fighting for decades to get rid of it.  NO ONE LIKES THESE NEO-LIBERAL EDUCATION POLICIES.  Look below and you see the AFT union leader Weingarten with Arne Duncan praising this neo-liberal model.  Weingarten allowed the AFT to support these Race to the Top and Common Core policies for the first years of Obama's terms but the public outcry and teachers grew too large for Weingarten to follow the neo-liberal lead and as you see in the article after this one-----the AFT is now fighting Obama's and Wall Street's education reform.

IT WAS THE PUBLIC OUTCRY THAT FORCED THIS UNION LEADER TO STOP FOLLOWING NEO-LIBERALS.  WE MUST HAVE THE PUBLIC PROTESTING LOUDLY AND STRONGLY TO SUPPORT TEACHERS IN KILLING THIS VERY BAD EDUCATION REFORM.  NEITHER REPUBLICANS NOR DEMOCRATS WANT THIS REFORM.  IT IS ONLY ABOUT MAKING EDUCATION INTO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.



I spoke at great length about the Finland model for education that has made Finland number 1 in education.  Finland embraced the American model of the 1950s and 1960s while the US was dismantling the best in the world public education to make this corporatized model they are pushing today. 

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE GOING BACK TO THE PUBLIC EDUCATION BUILT FOR DEMOCRACY AND AWAY FROM THIS AUTOCRATIC CORPORATE MODEL.




Which winning ideas could the U.S. steal from Singapore?


Singapore has one of the best education systems in the world, according to international assessments. President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan talk about its performance. United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten visited in 2012 and her counterpart at the National Education Association, Dennis Van Roekel, has praised its teacher training. And in 2012, Singapore was featured in the first-ever International Summit on the Teaching Profession as a country that many places – including America – could learn from.



In light of all this hype, I spent the past week in Singapore visiting schools to find out why they are so successful. But, not surprisingly, there’s no big secret or magic trick that the United States could simply copy tomorrow. Rather, my impressions were of a nation where education is respected, where educators and administrators think critically about their jobs and the qualities they want their students to develop and where self-reflection is ingrained. Those are qualities already found in many American schools, and that reformers are trying to spur in others.

But some of Singapore’s latest strategies go beyond or challenge some of the most popular ideas right now for improving American schools. At the same time, it’s important to remember the vast differences between the two countries that make it difficult to transfer ideas. Here are my main takeaways from my conversations with educators, students and education officials:

- Singapore is looking to revamp their standards. As most states in America continue the rollout of the Common Core State Standards, an internationally benchmarked guide laying out what students are supposed to learn in each grade in math and English, Singapore also has changes planned. But education officials there are more concerned about some less tangible skills, like collaboration and creativity, and coming up with ways to systematically introduce those into the curriculum. In theory, the end goals of Common Core and Singapore’s newest push are similar. They both aim to create individuals with critical thinking skills who can thrive in a modern economy. But as we try to copy Singapore’s methods, like their math sequencing, educators there are already moving on to new ideas.

- Lots of Singaporean students are stressed. The country is looking for ways to reduce this and trying to decrease the emphasis on grades and test scores. The Ministry of Education is trying to reduce the emphasis on the primary school exit exam, which all students have to take to determine which secondary school they will attend, for instance. But many people told me one of the biggest challenges will be changing the mindset of parents. Not all students in Singapore worry endlessly about exams, but several people said that for those that do, parents are a primary source of their anxiety.

- Singapore is small. As several people pointed out to me, if you drive for an hour in any direction, you arrive at the water. While some people told me the small size of the country has disadvantages for education – it severely limits options for field trips for instance – it also has its benefits. Most notably, the country’s size, along with the fact that the schools are run by a centralized authority, allows the Ministry of Education, the National Institute of Education – which trains every teacher in the country – and the schools to be in close communication about research and new strategies. New programs can be implemented quicker and the National Institute for Education can easily keep track of what is actually happening in classrooms to tweak its offerings when needed.

- The schools are big. Half a million students are enrolled in the island’s schools, but most schools have student populations of more than a thousand – even at the primary level. With that many students, classes of 35 to 40 are typical, but nothing seemed disorderly. The atmosphere in the classrooms that I visited switched between formal and relaxed. Students bowed to greet visitors and again to thank them for coming. They stood up to speak whenever called upon, and chatter while a teacher was talking was almost nonexistent. At the same time, though, laughter was common. Teachers would gently tease students and discussion was highly encouraged.

Not everything Singapore does would apply to our much larger, decentralized education system and not everything they do should be emulated. But there are some inspirations we could draw from the country, such as trying to get more high-performing students into the classroom as teachers or being more explicit in the character qualities we want students to develop – without obsessing over how to measure them.

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As a social democrat I do not want to break from the Democratic Party-----I want to take the Democratic Party back from corporate neo-liberals.  The important thing is that more and more people are understanding where this is going and know we can stop and reverse this no matter what political stance you take.  We need Republicans pushing against this as these policies are written by neo-conservative and neo-liberal think tanks.

'The way forward for teachers requires a complete break with the pro-corporate trade unions and Democratic Party.


.......calling for Duncan’s resignation, saying he had championed a “failed education agenda” consisting of policies that “undermine public schools and colleges, the teaching education professionals, and education unions.”




Seeking to regain credibility, US teachers unions criticize Obama’s education secretary
By Phyllis Scherrer
22 July 2014


After spending the last five-and-a-half years collaborating with the Obama administration’s attack on teachers’ jobs and conditions, the two teachers’ unions in the US recently passed resolutions seeking to distance themselves from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his anti-public education policies.

The National Education Association (NEA) passed a resolution at its national convention in Denver, Colorado, on July 4, calling for Duncan’s resignation, saying he had championed a “failed education agenda” consisting of policies that “undermine public schools and colleges, the teaching education professionals, and education unions.”

This was followed by a July 13 resolution at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conference in Los Angeles, California, which called on President Obama “to implement a secretary improvement plan” for Duncan, modeled on the punitive testing measures used to fire “failing” teachers. “If Secretary Duncan does not improve, and given that he has been treated fairly and his due process rights have been upheld, the secretary of education must resign,” the statement read.

The conventions were held just weeks after Duncan’s enthusiastic support for the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Vergara v. California case, which attacks tenure and another job protections won by teachers over decades of struggle. At the time Duncan hailed the right-wing forces behind the lawsuit, saying, “millions of young people in America” are “disadvantaged by laws, practices, and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students.”

The NEA and AFT resolutions, however, were nothing more than an exercise in damage control by the unions, aimed at reviving the credibility of both unions, which have been undermined by their collaboration with Duncan and the administration’s pro-corporate “school reform” agenda. The resolutions will have no affect whatsoever on the continued collaboration of the teachers’ unions with the Obama administration.

In fact, the day the NEA convention passed its resolution, officials from the rival AFT were at the White House meeting with Duncan to collaborate on the implementation of a new “teacher equity plan,” another teachers “evaluation” plan to rid poor school districts, with the assistance of the unions, of higher paid, more senior teachers.

Duncan dismissed the NEA resolution with the contempt it deserves, saying, had NEA officials not been at their convention, “I think they would have stood with us on this” today, too. He congratulated new NEA President-elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia and added, “We’ve had a very good working relationship with the NEA in the past.”

In addition to concealing their own role, by presenting Duncan as the author of this anti-teacher agenda, the unions are seeking to protect President Obama and the Democratic Party. The teachers unions promoted the lie that Obama would reverse the attacks of his Republican predecessor. In fact, the Democratic president has gone well beyond the attacks associated with Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001.

Under Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT) the administration allocated $4.35 billion to fund a “competition” designed by the Bill & Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, Boeing, Walton Family and other Foundations. School districts were forced to vie against each other for funds already severely reduced under Bush’s NCLB—federal funds that under the War on Poverty reforms of the 1960s were allotted directly to districts serving high percentages of students in poverty.

Under RTTT “winning” districts are those who agree to fire teachers and close or privatize schools based on poor standardized test scores, which are chiefly the result of poverty and decades of budget cutting, not bad teachers. Since the implementation of RTTT, public schools have been starved of funding, 330,000 teachers and other public school employees have lost their jobs, at least 4,000 public schools have been closed, and the number of students enrolled in charter schools has doubled.

Obama and the Democratic Party have embraced the anti-teacher nostrums long associated with the most right-wing sections of the Republican Party. This is underscored by the fact that former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and several other former Obama aides are spearheading a national public relations drive to support lawsuits in New York and other states, modeled on Vergara, to overturn teacher tenure, seniority and other job protections.

On the local level, Democratic mayors and school officials from Chicago, Philadelphia and New York to Detroit, New Orleans and Washington, DC, have spearheaded the attack on public education and expansion of for-profit charters.

The well-heeled executives who run the teachers’ unions--including AFT President Randi Weingarten and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel who received salaries of $543,150 and $306,286 respectively in the last year alone—are not opposed to the pro-corporate school “reform.” On the contrary, they are only looking to be partners in this process, as the AFT slogan, “School reform with us, not against us,” makes clear.

Both the NEA and the AFT were direct recipients of Gates’ money for the implementation of the so-called Common Core curriculum, which will be used to further attack teachers, while subordinating public education to the needs of profit-making technology and publishing companies. In 2012, the AFT accepted $4.4 million in order to “work on teacher development and Common Core Standards.” In July 2013 the NEA endorsed the Common Core and was awarded $6.3 million to assist with developing the Common Core Curriculum.

As teachers became wise to the character of Common Core, and every more disdainful of the AFT’s support of it, AFT officials tried to distance themselves from Gates last March by refusing to take any additional money from the Gates Innovation Foundation Fund, only one of several conduits of the billionaire’s money to the AFT.


Part of the grandstanding against Duncan is the increasing turf war between the AFT and NEA and their competition for dues money among a shrinking number of teachers. The AFT convention passed a dues increase by 45 cents per month this year and 55 cents per month next year, for a total monthly dues bill of $18.78 for each member by September 2015—largely to offset the loss of Gates money—and is increasingly seeking to get a foothold among low-paid charter teachers, as well as non-teaching members like nurses.

The NEA, the nation’s largest union, with just over three million members, including teachers, paraprofessionals and higher education instructors, has seen a significant drop in membership. Since the 2010-2011 school year, which coincides with the recession and the election of Obama, union membership for the NEA is down by 201,000 of its teacher members.

Under conditions in which more states are enacting Republican-backed “right-to-work” laws, which end automatic dues deduction from teachers’ paychecks, and sections of the Democratic Party are openly discussing dispensing with the services of the unions altogether, the AFT and NEA are doubling down to ensure state and local officials that they can be relied on to slash costs, destroy teachers’ conditions and suppress opposition to the closing of schools and the attack on education.

Over the last five years there have been growing struggles of teachers—in Wisconsin, Chicago, Portland, Oregon, St. Paul, Minnesota, and other cities—which have led to a direct clash between teachers on the one hand and the Democratic Party and their servants in the trade unions on the other.

Well aware of the growing anger of rank-and-file teachers, a section of trade union bureaucracy and its supporters in pseudo-left movements like the International Socialist Organization, whose supporters have gained union positions in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and other districts, are doing everything they can to refurbish the image of the teachers’ unions.

Their model of “social justice unionism” has proven to be a dead end as the betrayal of the 2012 teachers strike, by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis and Vice President Jesse Sharkey, a supporter of the ISO, showed. The CTU shut down the nine-day strike by 26,000 Chicago teachers before it could develop into a direct political confrontation with Mayor Rahm Emanuel—Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff—and the White House.

This betrayal gave Emanuel the green light to close 50 schools and lay off 3,500 teachers and school workers. As a reward, an AFT-affiliated union was given the franchise to “organize” low-paid teachers at the Chicago United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) charter schools run by one of Emanuel’s closest supporters.

Lewis and the CTU are now promoting the idea of running “independent” political campaigns in Chicago. Far from challenging the Democratic Party and advancing any independent political strategy for the working class, these campaigns fully accept the domination of society by the corporate and financial elite and are solely aimed at pressuring the Democrats to more effectively use the unions as partners in the dismantling of public education.


The way forward for teachers requires a complete break with the pro-corporate trade unions and Democratic Party and the fight to mobilize the working class as a whole against the profit system and to defend all of the democratic and social rights of the working class, including access to high quality public education.


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Below you see how other states still have democratic debates and open elections while in Maryland any politician that speaks against neo-liberals and neo-cons are censured.  We must fight for free and fair elections to make sure we can vote these neo-liberals out of office.

Remember, Common Core is not about quality education.....it is about controlling what is taught.  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are already standardized and we do not want our humanities and liberal arts standardized because that is what makes the US a plurality and democracy-----differing points of view.  So this is simply a policy meant to give global corporations control of what our children learn in classrooms.

We have the AFT, the CTU, and it looks like the UFT moving against these education reforms and now we need parents and communities fighting with them.  It does not matter your political stance----these policies hurt all Americans.


New York Now Leads the Way in the Movement Against Common Core- At The Polls | With A Brooklyn Accent
20 Jul 2014   | Common Core · New York Share NPE News Briefs

Something truly extraordinary has happened in the New York State Gubernatorial race-something with broad national implications.  A big money Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo, who thought he was going to make himself a front runner in the 2016 Presidential Race by ramming through legislation requiring teacher evaluations based on Common Core aligned tests, has generated so much opposition among teachers and parents that there are now three different Gubernatorial candidates who oppose Common Core- the Republican candidate, Rob Astorino, the Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins, and the new and quite formidable challenger in the Democratic Primary, Zephyr Teachout.

There are two reasons this situation is “game changer”

First, it shows how much opposition to Common Core is emerging  across the political spectrum.  For the last year, Common Core supporters in the media, the corporate world, and the US Department of Education have tried to portray Common Core opponents as extremists whose views should be rejected out of hand, but the what we have in New York is a mainstream Republican, a strong candidate on the left, and a liberal Democrat all saying that Common Core is untested, undemocratic and a threat to strong, locally controlled public schools.  And this position is going to be put forward strongly from now until election day. Even if Andrew Cuomo wins the Democratic primary, he will be facing two strong anti-Common Core voices in the general election.

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July 15th, 2014

7/15/2014

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I spend time talking about labor and unions in a State of Maryland that is not union-friendly because whether Republican or Democratic voter-----it is unions that will be able to counter the power of global corporations.  Republican Party used to be a supporter of unions and needs to come back to this.  I qualify my support with the fact that we need to rebuild our union leadership and models as they are currently often tying themselves to what neo-liberal politicians tell them to do.

PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO CONSIDER THESE LABOR ISSUES NO MATTER THE SUPPORT OF UNIONS.  CITIZENS CAN SUPPORT UNIONS WITHOUT BEING A UNION MEMBER AS THE WORKPLACE LAWS WON BY THE UNIONS OF LAST CENTURY BENEFIT ALL!

Check out this Facebook page:   the movement is growing!

US Uncut
June 30 ·


The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a corporate trade deal that places profits over everything and would affect half of humanity, but the mainstream media refuses to cover it at all.

Share to break corporate media's censorship.


I want to make clear, it is not only the working class and poor being driven deeper into poverty.  The middle-class employee is feeling it as well.  I spoke of public universities now filled with part-time adjuncts and we are watching as nursing staff and other medical employees with strong middle-class salaries feeling the cuts of Affordable Care Act reform.  Post Office employees were strongly middle-class as were MTA bus drivers and all are under attack from privatization.  Doctors know they are next as their profession becomes a cog in a profit-driven system.  The problem is global corporations having complete control of our US and state economies.  Ending that power is the solution to protecting all US workers AND IT CAN BE DONE! 

WE NEED EVERYONE ENGAGED IN POLITICS----RUN OR ADVOCATE!

It is a bad sign for democracy when US universities attack the very professors who for centuries were the ones charged with holding power accountable.  Taking away tenure and making professors predominately adjunct was meant to kill political activism on US university campuses.....and is why there is silence today.  I am glad to see the movement below.






Wednesday, Feb 19, 2014, 3:10 pm

UIC Faculty Rekindle Fight for Public Education With Historic Strike

BY Rebecca Burns

University of Illinois----Chicago



As a tenured professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC), Josh Radinsky never expected to participate in a strike—or to see so many of his colleagues ready to do the same. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like a ghost town today,” Radinsky marveled as he and a group of colleagues picketed outside an empty academic building yesterday morning.

Tuesday marked the start of an unprecedented two-day walkout staged by UIC United Faculty (UICUF), the union that represents more than 1,100 tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty members at the state university. Strikes by university professors are a rare occurrence: The first of its kind at UIC, the faculty strike is also one of only a handful at U.S. colleges and universities during the past five years. Since gaining recognition in 2012, though, UICUF has been locked in a stalemate with university administrators over its first contract. In December, faculty members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if progress wasn’t made at the negotiating table.

This week, the union made good on its threat: Faculty members walked out of their offices on Tuesday morning, fanning out into picket lines across campus. 

Though the sight of picketing professors may be novel, it’s become increasingly evident to many that the union and administration were coming to loggerheads. As Radinsky, who’s taught for 14 years in the university’s College of Education, says about the strike, “This needed to happen—I think it’s about time.” 

As it’s geared up for a strike, UICUF’s central contention has been that the university is not as cash-strapped as it claims to be. The union argues, based on reports of auditors and bond ratings, that UIC has more than $500 million in unrestricted reserves. And during the past five years, according to UICUF, even while the school has deferred faculty raises and withheld other benefits in the name of tough fiscal times, it has also increased the number of administrators by 10 percent.

Though the union says that some progress has been made during negotiations on non-economic issues such as academic freedom, the two sides are still sorely at odds about pay and benefits. Specifically, UICUF has put the penurious conditions of non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty at the center of its struggle: NTT faculty members currently make a minimum of $30,000 annually, and the union is demanding a $45,000 wage floor. Though the university offered $36,000 in its most recent counter-proposal, union negotiators say this does not constitute a good-faith negotiation.

“We don’t see that as an actual compromise,” says John Casey, a non-tenure-track lecturer who is a member of the union’s bargaining team. Casey teaches a freshman writing course and says his low wages impact his ability to give his students the attention they deserve. He says he’s had to take a string of outside jobs, including a recent one as a bicycle tour guide, to make ends meet while teaching at UIC.

For its part, UIC maintains the union’s proposals for tenure-track faculty would lead to a 23 percent hike in costs for the university; its proposals for non-tenure-track faculty would increase costs by 27 percent. “A work stoppage or strike is not in the best interest of the faculty, the University, or our students,” the university said in a statement issued last week on its website. “However, under Illinois law, educational employees in a bargaining unit without an applicable no-strike clause in a contract have a right to strike. Each professor or instructor has the right to strike, or to work.”

The UIC strike represents a new height of coordination between tenured and non-tenure-track faculty, who often bargain contracts separately and sometimes see their interests as divergent. As I’ve reported previously, UICUF has found a unique way to maintain solidarity between the two groups. In 2011, the university successfully blocked tenure-track and NTT faculty members from forming a single bargaining unit—a move union activists say was an attempt to “divide and conquer.” But the two groups have maintained the same core demands and the same bargaining team, operating as a unified group even though they must ultimately bargain two separate contracts.

Though the last major wave of faculty unionization took place in the 1970s, labor organizing in the academy is on the rise again. A surge of organizing among adjunct professors during the past year has won new, adjunct-only unions at several private universities, including Tufts University in Massachusetts. This resurgence is “a direct outgrowth of the large increase in the use of low-paid contingent faculty,” says William A. Herbert, a distinguished lecturer at CUNY and executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.

However, he notes that the labor action at UIC is fairly unique because of the “apparent [tenure-track and NTT] faculty unity and prioritization for improving the working conditions of contingent faculty.”

Casey, who was an adjunct activist even before UIC unionized, tells In These Times that he was initially uncertain whether working with tenured professors would be the best path to improvements in his own conditions.

“I was skeptical when we first started about how the relationship would work,” says Casey. “[But] our tenure-track faculty have been amazing allies.” Among the benefits of working in conjunction with tenured faculty, he says, is that the most vulnerable faculty members may be shielded from retaliation. “I mean, my boss was out here today on the picket line,” Casey notes. “That’s pretty remarkable.” (Department heads at UIC are not included in the union, but many have expressed support for the strike.)

Many labor activists are hailing today’s walkout as a historic development whose impact could extend beyond Chicago. For example, faculty members at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the flagship campus in the state system, are currently in the midst of their own union drive. And many of those professors have their eyes on UIC as a bellwether for the rest of the state.

Given the expanding ranks of NTT faculty at Urbana-Champaign, UICUF’s ability to secure a higher wage floor for equivalent positions at UIC “would be a huge boost for us here,” Susan Davis, a professor in the Department of Communication at Urbana-Champaign and a member of the pro-union Campus Faculty Association, tells In These Times via e-mail. 

Davis also points out UIC higher-ups could be taking a hard line in contract negotiations with UICUF in an attempt to stem the tide toward faculty unionization at other campuses.  “We think the administration is playing hardball with UICUF in part because they could set a dramatic precedent for the University of Illinois as a whole,” she continues.

Spokespeople for UICUF estimate more than 1,000 faculty members participated in the first day of the strike and that about half of all classes were cancelled. More than 200 people, including students, attended a midday rally on Tuesday. The group chanted, “Chop from the Top!” and “No Contract, No Peace!” while many marched with distinctly professorial picket signs, such as “I Teach, Therefore I Am (Exploited)” and “The Inductive Method: No Contract, No Work!” 

Campus service and maintenance workers represented by SEIU Local 73, who are in the midst of their own contentious contract negotiations and could strike in March, also came out to demonstrate solidarity.

“We’re hoping that this will show us a way towards a stronger contract,” says Michael Schmitt, a member of the union’s bargaining team, who says the $13 to $17 an hour wages in Campus Parking Services aren’t enough for him and his co-workers to make ends meet. Though other campus unions have clauses in their contracts that prohibit them from striking in solidarity with faculty, many still attended pickets during their free time on Tuesday.

Faculty strikes are distinct from those at other workplaces in that they don’t actually cut into the university’s bottom line—though they can disrupt day-to-day business on campus, students have already paid tuition for the classes being cancelled. Therefore, faculty strikes are most often a short-term, symbolic tactic aimed at gaining public attention and support, says Herbert.

UIC faculty members insist, however, that their two-day walkout is a warning to the university before bargaining sessions resume again on Friday. “We’re out here today to show urgency,” says Casey. “If we don’t see any progress ... we will go out on indefinite strike.”




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Wednesday, Apr 30, 2014, 8:10 pm

College Adjuncts Union Scores Victory at Maryland Institute College of Art

BY Bruce Vail Email Print MICA adjuncts celebrate after filing their petition to unionize.   (SEIU 500)

BALTIMORE—Part-time college faculty members at the historic Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) scored an impressive win on Tuesday when they voted overwhelmingly to bring a labor union on campus for the first time since MICA’s opening in 1826.


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When I speak of shareholder class this article does a good job showing what this means.  You and I may have pension funds but with boom and bust of bubbles lose most of what we gain every five years.  This is not really being a shareholder.  Neo-liberals and neo-cons work for the shareholder class and that is at most 5% of the US population.  Also, you can see how the people controlling these global corporations are increasingly becoming the same 1% and-----the banks.

So, labor has to fight across industry and not only for one corporation.  I shout out that we do not want labor unions taking the structure of global corporations as they expand overseas to organize and that is what we are seeing.  Demand your labor union works locally and remains controlled locally.  It is this International status of unions like the AFL-CIO and SEIU that has them paired to neo-liberal pols.


UPS, FedEx owned by most of the same monopoly banks


Highlights the need for industry-wide organizing, unionizing FedEx workers
By Dave Schneider and Dustin Ponder

Jacksonville, FL – Despite ‘competing’ as the world's two largest parcel delivery and shipping companies, UPS and FedEx are owned by many of the same banks. According to NASDAQ's ownership summary of both companies, 12 of the top 20 owners of UPS and FedEx are the same banks, investment groups and financial institutions.

Both multi-billion dollar corporations are under 'institutional ownership', which means that a majority of their shares are owned by financial institutions, banks and other large monopoly corporations. According to NASDAQ's ownership summary of UPS on April 11, nearly 71% of UPS shares are owned by institutions. FedEx, a smaller company than UPS, actually had greater institutional ownership, with 83.94% of the company's shares owned by institutions, according to NASDAQ.

However, most of the largest institutional owners of both UPS and FedEx have substantial interests in both companies. For instance, Vanguard Group Inc., a Pennsylvania-based investment bank that manages nearly $2 trillion in assets, is the single-largest owner of UPS and the third largest owner of FedEx. Vanguard Group is a massive financial institution that boasts the largest ownership in many other large, well-known corporations including Apple, Exxon Mobil and Microsoft.

Primecap Management Company, based in Pasadena, California, is the largest owner of FedEx, holding nearly 19 million shares of the shipping company, according to NASDAQ. However, Primecap is also the 16th largest owner of UPS stock, holding more than 6.3 million shares, also according to NASDAQ.

In all, 60% of the top 20 owners of both UPS and FedEx are the same banks, investment groups and financial institutions.

Institutional ownership is incredibly common among the largest 500 publicly traded companies.

Despite this fact, companies like UPS stress to workers the need to “compete” against rival workers in their industry, like those at FedEx. UPS's collective bargaining agreement includes an entire article on competition that states: “The Union recognizes that the Employer is in direct competition with…other firms engaging in the distribution of express letter, parcel express, parcel delivery, and freight, both air and surface.”

The company leverages this poison pill of competition to justify subcontracting union work and undermining union standards. It creates an adversarial relationship between workers of UPS and FedEx, when in reality the owners at the top are united in extracting the most profit possible from workers at both companies. When the owners of UPS and FedEx are one in the same, ‘competition’ means which management team can exploit their workers the most and extract the most profit for the banks that own the whole industry.

A prominent argument used by UPS claims that workers must accept concessionary contracts to remain ‘competitive.’ They argue that employing tried-and-true militant tactics, like striking as the Teamsters did successfully in 1997, will result in FedEx stealing UPS’s customers. Historically, the union movement addressed this by organizing entire industries, instead of single worksites or employers. This meant one industry, one union, and at times - one contract. At its best, this method of organizing and bargaining takes wages out of competition and sets industry-wide standards to prevent subcontracting and a race to the bottom through ‘competition.’ Tactically, if the 1% owners of both brands are united, then to combat them and win, workers across the entire industry must also unite.

The attempts of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to organize FedEx have been foiled by U.S. labor law, which misclassifies workers and stifles their ability to unionize. FedEx Ground drivers are misclassified as independent contractors and are legally barred from union representation, even though in practice, they are effectively workers directly employed by the company. FedEx Express drivers are also misclassified under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), as opposed to the National Labor Relations Act. The company claims their employees are ‘airline’ workers, and thus would need to unionize nationally all at once. The RLA also places many more restrictions on workers’ rights, including the ability to strike. It also forces the workers into binding arbitration, which often serve the interest of the boss instead of the workers.

The banks and financial institutions that own both UPS and FedEx are united in their push for lower wages, part-time poverty jobs, fewer benefits and weaker contracts. To effectively fight their race to the bottom, union workers at UPS must organize FedEx workers, regardless of the legal fictions created by politicians in Washington.

Dave Schneider and Dustin Ponder are both rank-and-file Teamsters and members of Part-Time Power at UPS, which is a national group for UPS part-timers.


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All across the nation nurses have been out protesting the most of any union.  They are on the front-lines of the Affordable Care Act and the Obama/neo-liberal cuts of almost $1 trillion from Medicare.  We all know those cuts were allowed to be designed by health corporations and hit the patient access and health industry labor.....nurses for one.  If health industry and education industry are going to be drivers of the 21st century economy then driving these groups to poverty is not a solution for a healthy economy or quality health service.  It's not meant to be say neo-liberals----it's all about the corporate profits!

Did you know there is actually growing unemployment for nursing after decades of being told there were shortages?  So much for this 'growth' industry.  It is a combination of staff layoffs and importing immigrant labor to work in the health field that has this strong middle-class employment under attack.

In Baltimore, it is Johns Hopkins who makes a living recruiting foreign health care workers to the US to replace US workers and they do it to exploit these immigrant workers.  I have a friend who works in Hopkins' research labs from the Middle East who says she is simply used to do the most mundane of lab work-----the assembly line of lab research and has no chance of anything better.  She will leave to return home after being assured a good life in America.  Meanwhile, Baltimore has 50% unemployment in the black community and 36% in the general community.  It is these policies that have to go and these situations permeate the health industry.

We thank the nurses unions for shouting out for patients rights and fighting for labor justice!


Private equity firms are being handed all public health especially in Maryland and not coincidentally fraud and corruption is soaring!

Using the excuse of  Medicare budget cuts was the plan for dismissing staff and creating a structure for maximizing profits.  Remember, the Medicare Trust is low because these same health institutions spent a few decades robbing it through fraud.

' at a time when more health care is shifting from in-patient to outpatient services'.

The Affordable Care Act is about denying most people the ability to access the most basic of medical procedures and private equity firms say----get used to it because people will be getting the only care they can afford at home.


Nurses walk out at Quincy Medical Center

By Robert Weisman and Jessica Bartlett  | Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent   April 12, 2013


QUINCY — Hundreds of nurses marched in a drizzly chill Thursday, carrying signs, waving union flags, and drumming on plastic bins in a 24-hour strike to dramatize their complaints about staffing levels they say compromise patient safety at Quincy Medical Center.

They called in big political guns, notably US Representative Stephen F. Lynch, the South Boston Democrat who is running for US Senate, at a noon rally. They even rolled out an inflatable Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of the underworld. The private equity firm that owns the hospital’s parent, Steward Health Care System, is named after the mythical creature.

“The dog came out of retirement,” said David Schildmeier, spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association, who said the hellhound’s only previous appearance was at a protest last year outside the New York headquarters of Cerberus Capital Management, which formed the Steward hospital and doctors group in 2010.

Inside the hospital, doctors and administrators said it was largely business as usual — except that they canceled elective surgeries for the day and brought in about 60 replacement nurses. They also hired trucks with billboards proclaiming the union was living in the past. Nurses stood in the street trying to block the trucks and attach their own signs to the vehicles.

“In today’s economy, nurses sitting by empty beds making $52 an hour is not feasible,” said Daniel Knell, who took over in 2011 as president of Quincy Medical Center.

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

Dr. Nissage Cadet (left) and hospital president Daniel Knell discussed the strike.

At the end of the day, nothing was resolved. Nurses were set to return to their jobs Friday morning without a contract. And there was no agreement between the two sides on the basic facts of what prompted the unusual one-day strike. While the nurses cited inadequate staffing, management insisted the union was pushing for higher wages and benefits.

The walkout took place against a backdrop of looming cuts in government funding for Medicare and Medicaid, the public insurance programs for older and low-income people.

“There is a lot of pressure being put on the hospitals,” Lynch told more than 200 nurses and their supporters. “The reimbursement rates are not there. They are being put under pressure to reduce costs, and they are looking at making nurses work longer hours with fewer nurses on staff. That’s not the way we need to be going.”

The strike got underway at 6 a.m., when unionized nurses walked out of the hospital to join nurses from Norwood Hospital, Morton Hospital in Taunton, and other Steward-owned and nonprofit hospitals who came to show their support.

“We need to bring it to the community to support the issues,” said Paula Ryan, a recovery room nurse at Quincy Medical who chairs the union local. “It’s been a long time coming. It’s been a struggle every day, nurses trying to provide the better care.”

Regulators from the state Department of Public Health showed up before dawn to make sure replacement nurses were certified and had been trained by hospital officials. A contingent of Quincy police officers — paid for by Steward — kept watch at the protest. “The financial impact for today alone is exceptional,” Knell said. He warned the hospital could be hurt further if patients chose to go to competing hospitals in Boston, Milton, or Weymouth because of what he said were false charges of safety problems.

“If the community doesn’t support the facility because of the rhetoric, it could do financial damage to us,” Knell said.

Nurses authorized the strike last month after their negotiators failed to reach agreement with Steward on a new contract. Their last contract expired before Steward acquired the bankrupt hospital in October 2011. Through an understanding between labor and management, they have been working under the terms of a separate Steward contract with union nurses at Steward-owned Carney Hospital in Dorchester.

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

A nurse from another Steward hospital waved a sign outside Quincy Medical Center to drum up support.

The union was notified in February that the hospital will close a 40-bed medical surgical floor and lay off 30 nurses who worked there along with 40 technicians, orderlies, and laborers, though the cuts have yet to take effect. Union officials contend that will aggravate already overcrowded conditions, but hospital officials insist there are often empty beds.

Steward and Cerberus executives are more interested in making money from their for-profit community hospitals than caring for patients, union members said. But hospital officials said the Quincy strike was part of a national union effort to inflate wages and keep staffing unnecessarily high at a time when more health care is shifting from in-patient to outpatient services.

“I consider nurses as our colleagues, and I value the work they do for patients,” said Dr. Nissage Cadet, chief of surgery at Quincy Medical Center. “But health care is changing, and that’s the right thing for patients. Steward came in and bailed out a hospital that was about to close in months. The quality of the institution has never been this good.”

On the picket line, however, nurses said conditions have gotten so bad that patients are being “boarded” in the emergency department for long periods while waiting to see a doctor. Department nurse Kathleen LeBretton said such episodes happen two to three times a week.

Hospital officials insisted they only board psychiatric patients in a section of the emergency room while they await transfer to other hospitals because Quincy Medical does not have psychiatric beds.

The nurses were supported by Dr. Robert Noonan, a private practice physician who sometimes works with Quincy Medical Center. “There was a patient last month who was a patient of mine in her 80s,” he said. “The closed surgical floor was full, and she was boarded in the emergency room for 18 hours.”

Hospital officials contended the nurses and their backers were making false claims in an effort to get more money.

“I’ve been a nurse myself,” Knell said. “And when I took my oath to take care of my patients, I meant it. I don’t know that I would ever walk away from the bedside of my patient for financial reasons.”


________________________________________________


These agreements are often small gains for the union members but what is most important is the citizens of the state and communities coming out to say enough is enough.  The workers cannot bear any more of the cuts designed to save money to be sent to corporate subsidy rather than people's paychecks.

For those not liking unions we need to remember everyone benefited from the policies built on union activism.  It is the only organized group which advocates for workers and I would suggest that what most people do not like about unions has more to do with bad union leaders and not the mission.  We need strong labor policy and law enforcement to reverse this wealth inequity and rebuild a healthy economy so everyone should be fighting for these issues.


We do need to see these unions fighting for the losses of the economic crash and fraud----we do not want to simply pretend we are starting again in the 1960s as union members lose these decades of accumulated wealth to corporate fraud and public malfeasance.  It is not public sector benefits and wages emptying government coffers---it is the corporate fraud and government corruption.

PROTECTING UNION MEMBER'S WEALTH IS AS IMPORTANT.   

Maryland is privatizing its Maryland Transportation Authority piece by piece and are now handing buses to VEOLA----busting wages,  benefits and unions themselves all under neo-liberal control of government.

Friday, Apr 11, 2014, 1:01 pm

With Solidarity in Spades, Vermont Bus Drivers’ 18-Day Strike Results in Big Win


BY Jonathan Leavitt

An outpouring of students, community members and allies from other unions turned out to support the strike. (All photographs by Jonathan Leavitt.)  

At 6am on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, 40 bus drivers and a dozen community members defied negative-10-degree weather to picket outside the Chittenden County Transportation Authority (CCTA) bus garage in Burlington, Vt. The action marked the beginning of nearly three-week-long transit strike over concessionary contract demands that would capture the imagination of much of Vermont and culminate in victory.

“Management misjudged us,” said CCTA driver Jim Fouts, speaking to In These Times from the impromptu victory rally on April 3. “We don’t drive together, we don’t have a lunch room to eat together,” said Fouts. But on the picket line, he says, “we turned into icicles together and we started to get to know one another.”



Traven Leyshon of the Vermont AFL-CIO leading Teamsters 597 members and supporters in chants on a negative 10 degree picket line. (Full disclosure: The author was part of the strike's solidarity committee and is a member of the Vermont Workers' Center, which supported the strike.)

After months of failed negotiations and working without a contract since June 30 of last year, drivers voted 54-0 on March 12th to reject CCTA management’s final contract offer. Drivers could not stomach monitoring disciplinary procedures that they saw as “abusive," such as being tailed by supervisors, reviewed via bus videotapes, and suspensions of as long as a month. The added demand that drivers work eight hours over the course of an exhausting 13.5-hour “split shift,” which could be extended through forced overtime to 15 hours, sparked concerns among bus drivers and community members that CCTA management’s demands risked “community safety.” 

A new generation of strikers St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Monday, a school day, and the temperature was negative 5 degrees, but at 7a.m., a steady stream of parents dropped off their students to march the picket line. Seventy-one Burlington High School (BHS) students walked the proverbial mile in another’s shoes, shoulder to shoulder with their bus drivers in a show of solidarity that harkens back to a much older, bolder labor movement. The students accompanied the bus drivers every foot of the circuitous 2.3-mile bus route from the Cherry Street picket line to the front office of the high school, where administrators greeted the students with applause and excused absences. The handmade signs students carried would paper the lobby for the duration of the strike.

“This is Vermont, and even record cold temperatures cannot keep us away from supporting the workers of our state,” says Sabine Rogers, a senior at BHS. “Students showed how much they support fair working conditions and how much they support the work that you bus drivers do each and every day.” 

“As we started to walk, we went from a fairly quiet group to chanting with a bullhorn and really getting into it,” says BHS senior Henry Prine. “One quiet student told me he doesn’t like loud noises or large crowd, but it was such an incredible experience. He fell in love with organizing in that moment.”



BHS Students on the picket line beside their CCTA drivers.

Prine detailed the prefigurative movement-building BHS students did before the strike. Through his student delegate position on the school board, Prine convinced the body to pass a resolution stating the school district would not hire scab bus drivers to cross picket lines. Prine says that as negotiations broke down and a strike appeared imminent, he began talking with other seniors ("and underclassmen too") about ways BHS students could take an even more powerful public stand. The students drafted a petition calling on CCTA management to meet the drivers’ demands, and Mayor Weinberger and the Burlington City Council to support the bus drivers.” According to Prine, the petition drew more than 500 signatures in one day’s time. “That’s more signatures than people get to keep the hockey program,” he says.

This petition would be presented to Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger in a March 10 City Council meeting by ten BHS student organizers. Weinberger and his City Council allies had earned a reputation as anti-labor for gutting Burlington’s Livable Wage Ordinance despite popular support for policies to reduce the growing disparity of wealth.

Rogers, motivated by her experience on the strike line, would build out a student carpool in solidarity with drivers, using some dusty ward maps to collectivize students’ overlapping routes to school. In the strike’s final week, students organized teachers to host bus drivers in their classes. Striking drivers presented labor history and origin story of their job action to 80 students in four classes in the three days leading up to the strike settlement.

Rogers believes the experience transformed a culture of alienation at her school. “The solidarity and community and sense of activism that has been such a big player in this whole past few weeks—I definitely see that continuing as part of the atmosphere at BHS,” she says. 

‘This is the movement of the people’  Nine days into the strike, the drivers would face a massively heavy lift. With the backing of Mayor Weinberger, eight of the 14 members of Burlington's City Council co-sponsored a resolution calling for the contract negotiations to enter “binding arbitration.”


According to a statement in responde to the resolution by the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Healthcare Professionals (a local of AFT Vermont), binding arbitration decreases the likelihood of a favorable outcome for workers and communities by placing “all decision-making in the hands of a third party, someone with no relationship to the workplace or community directly affected by his or her decision” and who is not accountable for the results.

To speak against binding arbitration, 150 drivers and supporters marched upon the City Council's March 26 meeting, chanting “We are the union, the mighty, mighty union!" After they filed into the chamber, City Council President Joan Shannon informed the crowd that the customary public comment period at the beginning of the meeting would be delayed by a special executive session. At that point, the entire driver solidarity march assembled outside the chamber door and unleashed perhaps the most boisterous rally City Hall has ever seen.



Bus drivers, other unions and community solidarity activists lead a speak-out in Burlington City Hall on March 26.

The hallway and steps leading to City Hall’s second floor and the Mayor’s office were suffused with swelling throng of students, members of United Electric (UE), the Vermont Workers’ Center, the Vermont State Employees Association, Vermont National Education Assocaition (Vermont NEA), the newly formed Vermont Homecare United (a local of ASFCME) and many bus drivers. Loud applause and chants of "What do we want? Fair Contract! When do we want it? Now!" resounded in hallway’s marble and into the City Council chamber in a scene many would compare to the 2011 occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol by pro-union protesters.

"Where is the freedom? Where is the chance?” bus driver Noor Ibrahim, an immigrant from Somalia, asked the impromptu rally. “I was told there is a chance here in this country. Where is the right of the poor people? [CCTA management] are misusing the money of the taxpayers. From now on we have this strike as experience, we don’t need to back down.”

Noor detailed how three years ago his wife was pregnant and “the doctor said the baby wasn’t moving.” He set up an appointment on his day off so he could support his wife, even filling out the vacation paperwork as an extra precaution. Less than 24 hours before the appointment, he said, CCTA’s management told him he would have to work. “When I asked them, they said ‘We don’t care about you, we don’t care about your family all we care about is the bus moving,’ " said Noor.

As drivers continued telling personal stories like these and the raucous rally spilled over into public comment, two of the eight resolution sponsors, Karen Paul and Tom Ayers, pulled their names off. Councilor Paul was evidently moved by the driver’s stories; she introduced a successful amendment to “remove the resolution from the agenda” entirely, adding, “I’ve learned a great deal tonight. If we go forward with the agenda, I’ll remove my name from the resolution.” By the council meeting’s denouement, the focus had shifted from binding arbitration to a discussion led by progressive councilors of whether or not to sanction CCTA management.

“This is the movement of the people,” Nigerian CCTA driver Ade Fajobi told In These Times. “The voice of everybody changed the votes of City Council.”

‘Every step you take on your picket line is our step’ On Saturday, March 29, the 12th day of the strike, an all-night, 18-hour negotiation session broke down, yet again, over CCTA management’s demand to increase drivers’ split-shifts 12.5 to 13.5 hours. “They basically tossed the same pile of dung back in our faces,” said Jim Fouts. In response, hundreds of supporters gathered at Burlington City Hall, beneath a 12-foot wide bright blue banner reading “Work With Dignity” and “Fair Contract Now.” A massive University of Vermont (UVM) feeder march and brass band joined, and Vermont residents lent their voices to the drivers’ cause.



A brass band joins the picket line on the second day of the strike.

“By using your right to strike, you're creating a stronger movement of workers,” said Amy Lester, a member of Vermont NEA and the vice-president of the Vermont Workers’ Center. “Your strength is our strength. Your courage is our courage. Your momentum is our momentum. Every step you take on your picket line is our step. We all have your back, keep fighting and don’t give up.” 

To loud applause, FaRied Munarsyah, a Workers’ Center member and 20-year CCTA rider, called for “temporary replacement managers.” Michelle Gałecki of UVM’s Student Climate Culture said, “Livable jobs and public transportation is a green issue, but it’s also a human rights issue.” 

“We have been swallowing this pain for the last ten years,” said Noor Ibrahim, from the steps of City Hall, with dozens of CCTA bus drivers behind him. “We cannot live in this hostile environment. We deserve respect.” 



Chief Steward Mike Walker, driver Noor Ibrahim, and many more drivers leading the March 29 march.

Just days later, after threatening picket line-crossing scab drivers, CCTA management would finally capitulate. CCTA agreed to a contract with language limiting monitoring and discipline, reducing "forced overtime" to 13.5 hours a day instead of 15, and maintaining drivers’ split shifts at the current 12.5 hours. Though drivers conceded an increase from 13 to 15 part-time drivers, the union was able to win language preventing CCTA from using retirement or termination to reduce the entire bargaining unit slowly to part-time status. On April 3, inside the local VFW’s Eddie Laplant ballroom, drivers voted 53-6 to adopt the new contract.

 A growing movement for work with dignity According to James Haslam, director of the Vermont Workers Center, "In the current context of the attack on public transit, the public sector and the labor movement nationally, this is a tremendous victory for work with dignity that benefits all working people in the long haul.”

Indeed, the solidarity unionism that blossomed in Vermont’s late-winter snow could be—like the Chicago Teachers Union, Portland Teachers Union or Boeing Machinists—another harbinger of rebirth for rank-and-file reform movements buttressed by community solidarity.


The successful 18-day job action “really shows what happens when a few people speak out and continue to speak out towards a common goal of having a strong union,” said driver Jim Fouts in the bus terminal, in the afterglow of the victory celebration. “When I first came here the union was weak, because it was a business-as-usual union. Then some activists started saying, ‘This is wrong. We can vote on things. This is supposed to be a democracy.’ And really it was a bottom up movement to change our union.” 

According to former drivers Chuck Norris-Brown and Scott Ranney, a reform caucus with the local solidified over breakfasts in local restaurants in the spring of 2009, around a petition circulated amongst drivers that helped win stewards elected by drivers, not merely appointed by Teamsters higher-ups. The caucus, nicknamed the Sunday Breakfast Club, soon began coordinating with Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a national, independent rank-and-file movement within the Teamsters. In 2011 contract negotiations, Breakfast Club members did the shopfloor organizing and the local outreach to community members and other unions to build public support. "A seed was sown which kept the Teamster Local to the grindstone, and almost all of the community action that resulted in major support for the recent drivers strike was based on earlier Sunday Breakfast Club contacts and strategies," says Ranney, who also believes the caucus empowered rank-and-file members and paved the way for the unanimous rejection of the concessionary contract.

Tearing up, Fouts describes how Local 597 followed the advice of a Labor Notes organizer Ellen David Freidman, to build power and beat back concessions: “ ‘Turn enemies into neutrals, you turn neutrals into activists and you turn activists into leaders,’ ” he quotes. “That’s what we did.”

"We won this fair contract because of our unity and the tremendous support from our community,” says Rob Slingerland, CCTA bus driver and spokesperson for the drivers.

Many drivers, even in the midst of the victory party, said they’d already begun reciprocating the solidarity unionism they experienced from other unions during their strikes. “We were talking about solidarity with other unions before we even went over our contract today,” says Slingerland. He says that drivers have already volunteered to join marches on the boss at Vermont's HowardCenter, a counseling and medical-services center where workers are in the process of unionizing with AFSCME. “We got the help and now we’ve got to give the help," he says. "Vermont is so small, but this movement is so big."

Slingerland described an “umbrella of fear,” his co-workers used to work under and how the victorious strike changed workplace power relations and gave drivers a sense of dignity. “A lot of drivers have discovered the power that they have within as a person,” said Slingerland, “you put that together as a group and you end where we are today, with a victory.”

AFSCME is a sponsor of In These Times. Sponsors have no role in editorial content.



Striking bus drivers lead the March 29th community solidarity march with hundreds of supporters. .

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July 03rd, 2014

7/3/2014

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THESE ARE NEO-CON AND NEO-LIBERAL POLICIES SO TO ESCAPE BAD POLICY---DO NOT SIMPLY VOTE THE OTHER PARTY-----CLEAN UP THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

Maryland's Governor Martin O'Malley announced that shortfalls in the 2014 state budget due to a complete stagnation of Maryland's economy and high unemployment  created by control of Maryland's economy by global corporations will focus on programs and services valuable to the citizens of Maryland but not affect the massive giveaway of revenue in the guise of corporate subsidy, tax breaks, or any effort to reign in billions of dollars in corporate fraud. 

O'Malley as a neo-liberal calls this FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY


So, $10 million will be taken from higher education and that includes grants, financial aid, and scholarships to Maryland citizens and employment to 4 public universities essential to middle-class/working class/poor families.

Below you see how a neo-liberals systematically eliminate all public sector employment by saying it is not firing anyone but eliminating positions not filled.  Maryland has had its entire oversight and accountability sectors eliminated in this way.  What I want to focus on today is higher education and the outsourcing of public university jobs to such an extent that the state spends money to support an education system that does not even operate in the US or benefit the citizens of Maryland.  O'Malley spent his 8 years developing the structures for overseas education and made marketing and recruiting foreign students a priority.  This is where our higher education money is spent and media states that never has there been fewer citizens of Maryland unable to attend Maryland universities.  It is not only high tuition----it is the elimination of financial aid, grants, and scholarships.  It hurts the economy in that people are not hired to these state positions to earn the money needed for consumption of goods and this creates a stagnant economy.  O'Malley does this because he works for global corporations that want all state and local revenue spent expanding their businesses overseas,  promoting exports, and bringing foreign students to Maryland to graduate and be sent back overseas to work for US global corporations in other nations.  This entire process leaves out the families in Maryland and their children's ability to attend the best public universities in the state.  Don't worry.....O'Malley and neo-liberals spent hundreds of millions building a separate system of higher education for the citizens of Maryland that cheapen and track all into vocational training programs.  This also increases the number of foreign graduates that are not citizens ready to take high level jobs thanks to Obama's executive order to allow the high-skilled green card worker quotas to rise.  So, Maryland citizens are not able to access the higher education venues that lead to the best jobs.  When people who are not citizens are given these jobs they have no workplace rights and are not free to report abuse or illegal activity within the corporations for which they work.  In these times of systemic corporate fraud and corruption----this is critical.

So, an election year budget that protected labor positions is followed by budget cuts eliminating jobs right after the primary for Governor of Maryland.  Union leaders knew this would happen-----it happens all the time.  Neo-cons would be worse.
  Neo-liberals only pretend to be progressive labor and justice!

Remember, I have for years been explaining that the state was giving a rosy economic picture that was not real and I stated why the economy was indeed stagnant and unemployment high.  Below you see Franchot being the spoiler but the Comptroller's Office is ground zero for corporate tax fraud and the wrongful designation of corporations as non-profits and therefor losses in the hundreds of millions in state tax revenue each year which would happen with a republican in office as well.


State approves O'Malley's $84 million in budget cuts Poor economy prompts spending reductions


By Erin Cox, The Baltimore Sun 1:19 p.m. EDT, July 2, 2014



The lackluster economy prompted Gov. Martin O'Malley to propose erasing $84 million in planned spending for next year.

Just a day after the new state budget took effect, O'Malley persuaded the Board of Public Works unanimously to approve a modest set of cuts to Maryland's $16.1 billion general fund.

About $10 million in cuts come from the state's higher-education institutions, although O'Malley aides said it would not affect tuition rates.

The cuts would not cause any layoffs but would trim 61 vacant jobs from the state's workforce of about 80,000 people, aides said. More than half of those jobs will come from higher education, including 36 vacant posts in the University of Maryland system.

Even though the official estimate of how far revenue lags behind state spending will not be ready until September, the administration chose to begin budget cuts now — before agencies started spending this year's cash. Together, the cuts represent less than half a percent of the state's general fund.

O'Malley said that the cuts "build upon a tradition, a culture of fiscal responsibility." He pointed out the belt-tightening was much smaller than cuts the state took during the recession.

Comptroller Peter A. Franchot voted for the cuts, but said that state leaders need to drop the "political spin" about the state's improving economy and "stop pretending that we made it through the thicket."

"Our citizens don't want to hear the spin anymore, and they're not falling for it," Franchot said.

A federal economic report released last week showed that the U.S. economy contracted more during the first quarter of 2014 than in any quarter during the previous five years. That followed another U.S. Department of Commerce report showing that Maryland's economy had stagnated in 2013.

The sluggish growth means state revenues have fallen lower than officials estimated earlier this year.

O'Malley defended the state's financial health by citing its AAA bond rating and comparing Maryland's relatively small budget shortfall to larger looming problems in other states on the Eastern seaboard, some of which have shortfalls in the hundreds of millions.

"We are coming through this recession faster than a lot of other states," O'Malley said. He added, "there's a lot that is going right, and of course, still, a lot of work to do. In that spirit, I agree with the comptroller that we should have an honest conversation."

In January, O'Malley proposed a $39 billion state budget that increased spending by 4.9 percent and took effect Tuesday, the final state spending plan of his eight years in office.

T. Eloise Foster, O'Malley's budget secretary, said Wednesday's cuts are designed to resolve the shortfall for the entire year. "My plan is not having to do this again," she said.

While O'Malley's staff declined to offer a list of all the $84 million in specific cuts, they said they include $56 million to various government agencies, with some asked to eliminate vacant jobs, forgo software upgrades or pare back other expenses.

In addition to the $10 million cut from higher education, another $10 million will be shaved from the state budget by spending federal cash already in state coffers. And budget experts said they expect $7 million of anticipated expenses to not materialize.

The cuts would not affect the struggling Maryland Health Benefit Exchange insurance website or a series of new economic development programs to expand cybersecurity and biotechnology sectors in Maryland.

All cuts must be approved by at least two members on the state's three-person Board of Public Works, on which O'Malley, Franchot and State Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp sit.

The cuts pale in comparison to the big spending reductions the board approved during the recession. In 2010, O'Malley went to the board three times for a total of $614 million in spending cuts from the general fund. In 2009, he asked for a total of $429 million in cuts over three requests. And in 2008, O'Malley requested a single $213 million spending cut.

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Below you see where all the money for higher education has gone during the neo-liberal O'Malley's terms in office-----building this network of global PhDs and it has nothing to do with the citizens of Maryland!  This is what the US Senate based their immigration reform bill ------the bringing of foreign students and grads to America and then allowing them to take these US corporate positions often the best positions.  We are not anti-immigrant nor do we want to exclude foreign students from our universities-----quite the opposite, this should be robust.  We are against the simultaneous defunding of higher education for the bulk of Maryland citizens and it is deliberate.

WE CAN FUND HIGHER EDUCATION FOR ALL THAT WANT TO ATTEND OUR MARYLAND UNIVERSITIES BY ENDING CORPORATE SUBSIDIES AND TAX BREAKS AND FOR GOODNESS SAKE MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD.

All this is happening because of global corporate control of the Maryland economy.  We do not need these global connections for a healthy economy------it does just the opposite----it stagnates the economy.

The Global Ph.D.
July 3, 2014 By Holly Else
for Times Higher Education



Internationalizing the doctoral training process could help to overcome negative perceptions about the employability of Ph.D. students outside academia, said participants at a recent conference.

Universities in several countries are beginning to think of new ways to cater for the rising number of overseas doctoral students, speakers at the European University Association’s annual meeting on doctoral education told delegates in Liverpool.

International doctoral students offer a “cost-effective” way for institutions to build international links. But problems surrounding complex visa rules, falling domestic student numbers and the cost of running international joint doctoral programs remain.


The number of domestic doctoral candidates at Australia’s University of Queensland started dwindling in 2008, according to the head of its graduate school, Alastair McEwan. To compensate, the university has enrolled international students, who now make up about 40 percent of the doctoral student body.

The shift is “most dramatic” in engineering, architecture and IT, where departments are “heavily reliant” on overseas students, he said. He added that the university is investing in this area because Ph.D. students “are absolutely critical” to research output and are “a very cost-effective way to promote international linkages.”

McEwan said that the benefits international doctoral candidates bring to the institution “cannot be overestimated”. Their presence offers students a “breadth of knowledge about other cultures.”

“That is an important transferable skill that should be part of a student’s employability development. Internationalization of the Ph.D., or international interactions, could help us overcome some of the negative perceptions about the employability of Ph.D. students outside academia,” he added.

But he said that having overseas students enrolled on doctoral programs was a one-dimensional method of internationalization. “The next stage is to start thinking about other ways,” he said, adding that the answer did not lie in Ph.D.s that are run jointly with overseas institutions.

“These come with a high overhead as they are very hard to manage.... I’m not convinced that this is the most efficient or effective way to manage things in the long run,” he added.


American institutions are also seeing a rise in the number of overseas doctoral candidates in science, technology and engineering subjects. The vice provost and dean of Cornell University, Barbara Knuth, said: “We should be concerned in the U.S. in terms of [what] our doctoral pool will be for economic development purposes.”

She said that the nation’s immigration policies are “complex and quite limiting.”

“Doctoral students are eager to come to the U.S. to study, but we are not very good at encouraging them to stay after their degrees,” she added.

Cornell is now working to internationalize the doctoral experience for all students. Internationalizing the Ph.D. process would help to expand a graduate’s professional networks and employability, she said.

At the institutional level, it will broaden intellectual discoveries, help academics to address complex global problems and increase the visibility and exposure of the institution globally, she said.

Jean Chambaz, president of the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in France, said that universities needed to move beyond memoranda of understanding when it comes to working together internationally.

“We need focused, balanced programs on questions of common interest that include multilateral doctoral candidates and staff circulation,” he told delegates.


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Below you see why more and more staff are being cut from our public universities-----all the jobs are being outsourced to global corporations that are doing the work overseas that people right here in Maryland should be doing and these citizens of Maryland would do a better job.  It is done simply to reduce labor costs as pay is lower overseas and we wouldn't want all of those pesky public sector benefits providing the citizens of Maryland a first world quality of life say neo-liberals.


Is a global corporation needed to process college applications charging fees for doing so -----money which could hire a local person with a public university to do this job?  We all know massive corporate fraud is infused in all these business arrangements so universities are losing far more money by outsourcing these jobs than saving.  So, fighting fraud in court is worth eliminating staff at a university who could be held accountable to do the work right?

THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL FOR YOU---WORKING FOR
WEALTH AND PROFIT SENDING ALL PUBLIC ASSETS TO CORPORATIONS WHILE IMPOVERISHING THE CITIZENS OF AMERICA.


IT IS ABSOLUTELY ABSURD THAT AN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION IS INVOLVED IN ALL THIS INTRIGUE------JUST EDUCATE THE US CITIZENS!


Troubles at Embark

July 3, 2014 By Ry Rivard  Inside Higher Education

Embark, whose software helps colleges to process online applications, has owed graduate and professional schools millions of dollars and misled university officials about why it wasn’t quickly paying up, a former executive of the company is alleging amid an ongoing legal dispute.

In June 2013, Embark owed its clients $4.7 million from student application fees it collected, according to a filing in New York state court by lawyers for Raza Khan, a former chief technology officer and board member at Embark.

Even though payments were supposed to be made in a matter of months, $1.2 million of that had been owed to colleges for more than a year, according to a spreadsheet filed last month that is said to reflect the company’s bookkeeping as of late June 2013.

Khan, who left the company around the same time, alleges company officials improperly spent money owed to colleges in order to deal with Embark’s “cash flow problems.” The money was supposed to go to colleges directly and quickly, but, according to Khan, Embark officials intentionally delayed paying back colleges and “concocted” false stories to cover up the true reason for the delays.

Embark processes admissions applications for colleges across the world, including elite graduate programs. Colleges pay Embark for its services, but Embark is obligated to pay the institutions all or most of the application fees it collects. Khan’s allegations center on Embark’s failure to give colleges their share of those student application fees.

Embark got a judge to partially seal the documents, but they were available on the court’s website for several days last month.  The company’s lawyer declined repeated requests for comment on the merits of Khan’s claims.

Khan is engaged in a bitter legal fight with his former business partner and high school classmate, Vishal Garg.

In June 2013, Embark owed its clients $4.7 million, including student fees collected as far back as 2009, according to Khan’s filing.

The largest single unpaid amount is over $1 million, which Embark is said to owe to Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Sid Dinsay, a spokesman for the medical school in New York City, declined to comment.

When colleges asked for their money, the company sometimes “concocted” reasons that its payments were delayed, according to Khan’s filing.

In a September 2011 email also contained in Khan’s filing, Blake Avalone, then director of client relations, told another Embark official to use a “canned response” to hold off a college that was asking for money dating to the beginning of that year. The response Avalone approved blamed a “credit card processor” for the delay. Khan said in his filing that this was among the “false explanations” Embark gave colleges for payment delays.

Another Embark employee in the same email thread suggests that the email “be sent from ‘Accounting’ if that helps.” In an email chat included in the court filing, the same employee also said, “if we're going to lie, the vaguer the better no.”

Avalone, now Embark’s managing director, did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment. Emails and voicemails were not returned by anyone at Embark over the past two weeks.

Several universities, including the University of Michigan and at least one graduate program at Harvard University, have threatened legal action against Embark. Officials at both those institutions said they were paid by Embark after they made those threats.

At least one other university has recently complained to Embark. The University of California at Davis hired a lawyer to help it collect money it says Embark has owed since spring 2012, according to a letter released by the university.  In mid-May of this year, the university’s lawyer demanded that Embark pay $38,589 by June 15. That didn’t happen.

“No money was received – only a promise from the [Embark] president to follow up,” a UC Davis spokeswoman said in an email last month.

Other universities are being paid back, if only gradually.

A spokesman for Thunderbird School of Global Management said last month Embark still owes it $71,000. The school ended its relationship with Embark last fall for other reasons, the spokesman said. Khan’s filings suggest the school was owed $215,000 at one point. Thunderbird could not confirm that figure.

As of last summer, Rutgers University’s business school was owed $261,000 for fees dating as far back as April 2011, according to Khan’s filing. Much of that has been paid, the university said last month.


“Since the beginning of 2014, Embark has paid $229,260 to the Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick,” a Rutgers spokesman said in an email. “The school continues to work with Embark to collect the remaining balance.”

It’s not clear exactly how precise the spreadsheet is in Khan’s filing: It says Georgia State University is owed $81,000 for fees it collecting in 2010 and 2011, though a Georgia State official said that Embark paid it $80,000 several years ago for work done in 2009 and no longer owes the university money. UC Davis, on the other hand, is asking for more money than the spreadsheet shows it is owed.

Khan first made allegations about Embark’s repayments to colleges in July 2013, when he sued his business partner Garg. But Khan provided more details about Embark’s business last month in a separate case in which Embark is suing him.

Garg and Khan founded MyRichUncle, an upstart student loan company that made its name lending directly to students before its parent company, MRU Holdings, went bankrupt in 2009. MyRichUncle was well-known in higher ed circles in the mid-2000s for its aggressive marketing that accused college financial aid officers of engaging in “kickbacks.”

Before the bankruptcy, MRU quietly bought Embark from the Princeton Review in 2007, vowing to invigorate a company that had seen its value and reach tumble during the six years Princeton Review owned it.

Khan’s filing suggests he and Garg were unable to do so. Now, Garg’s wife, Sarita James, is president of Embark. James did not respond to multiple emails over the past two weeks seeking comment.

Khan claims Garg and others at Embark “circulated false financials” to the company’s clients and delayed payments to them because of cash flow problems.

Sometimes, even after threatening legal action, a client would stick with Embark.

In February 2013, a graduate program within Harvard Law School asked Embark for $120,000 owed to it since November and December 2012.

“Despite the promise of wire transfers by Embark (supposedly made on Feb. 1 initially and then again on Feb. 20), and despite our request for actual confirmation of the transfers, we have not received anything, not even evidence that any of the wire transfers were actually made,” Harvard assistant dean Jeanne Tai wrote in a February 2013 email, which appeared in the court filing. Harvard is not a party to the litigation.

Reached last month by phone, Tai said everything had since been squared away.

“They have since made good on everything they owed and since that period of time, we haven’t had any trouble getting what they owed us,” she said.

The Harvard graduate program remains a client.

Khan’s filing said even though Embark knew that it owed money to colleges, Garg, the former head of the company, “did not intend to cause Embark to pay such amounts owed unless and until the schools complained.”

Officials at several other institutions said to be owed money declined to comment in detail or did not return calls seeking comment about their relationship with Embark.

After the MRU bankruptcy filing, Khan and Garg quickly started another company, Education Investment and Finance Corporation, or EIFC, which manages and services private student loans and mortgage-backed securities.
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Bill and Hillary Clinton are the face of these global corporations and neo-liberalism.  They plan to win the White House in 2016 and are getting Hillary into all venues they had a hand in destroying.  High tuition and devastating student loan debt happened because the Clintons started the corporatization of US universities with the goal of creating US global corporate universities.  Bill and Hillary are the face of the 2008 economic crash that has left millions of US college grads without employment----they created these Wall Street banks by deregulating the financial industry and breaking Glass Steagall so these banks could grow to the global corporations knowing they would control the US government and economy.

PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW HILLARY AND NEO-LIBERALS TO TAKE CONTROL OF DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAMPAIGNING----RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES AGAINST ALL NEO-LIBERALS IN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES.  You can see why, here in Maryland it was critical for Anthony Brown to win-----heaven forbid the candidate wanting to dismantle all of this corporate structure win!


The Clinton's funded Anthony Brown's campaign because he will embrace this global corporate structure as O'Malley did and the marginalization of the citizens of America.
  The Clinton Foundation is a global corporate development institution so all that money she is making will be tax-free.

Scrutiny for Hillary Clinton Speaking Fees at Colleges

July 3, 2014

Inside Higher Ed

At least eight universities have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton to speak on their campuses, The Washington Post reported. Students at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where she is due to be paid $225,000 to speak in the fall, have protested, and that is drawing attention to the likely presidential candidate's high fees, not all of which have been previously disclosed. Some of the payments ($200,000 is believed to be standard) have gone not to Clinton personally, but the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

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Here in Maryland, Baltimore is ground zero for the dismantling of public education from K-college.  Johns Hopkins is the driver of this policy.  They have a corporation that works to recruit overseas education labor and bring them to America to work in K-12 and in universities and colleges.  Why bring immigrant labor to teach in US schools when we have huge unemployment and plenty of teachers?  Well, Race to the Top and all of the teacher accountability that has nothing to do with quality education but everything to do with chasing current teachers out of a hostile system----- will need people to replace the US teachers that leave out of frustration and the fact that no one will want to be exposed to these kinds of working conditions.  There comes the need for foreign workers taking jobs in public schools.

Remember, the goal with K-12 is to have online classes that only need a person like an education tech in the classroom to facilitate an online presentation of material.  That education tech does not need to be a real teacher-----they only need to know how to start the online lessons and administer the tests.  So, neo-liberals have as a goal of completely dismantling our entire public education system and quality democratic education.  Think the absolutely botched rollout of Race to the Top is an accident?  This policy has been in the making since the beginning of the Bush Administration----it is a republican policy written by US corporations a decade ago----it is no accident that teachers are being subjected to the worst of conditions in this education reform rollout----neo-liberals hate labor and unions and want to get rid of public sector unions through privatization with national charter chains and global corporations specializing in education temps.


I cannot tell you how revolting it is that America is behind all of this labor abuse and it is neo-liberals controlling the people's Democratic Party leading this.

Neo-cons write the policy and neo-liberals run as Democrats to implement these policies that kill the labor that votes for them.

Monday, May 26, 2014, 1:00 pm

Trafficked Teachers: Neoliberalism’s Latest Labor Source

BY George Joseph Working In These Times


Recruiting companies in the U.S. are attracting some of Philippines' best teachers with one-year guest worker visas to teach in American public schools, saddling the teachers with hidden fees and furthering the Philippines' growing teacher shortage. (SuSanA Secretariat/ Flickr / Creative Commons)  

Between 2007 and 2009, 350 Filipino teachers arrived in Louisiana, excited for the opportunity to teach math and science in public schools throughout the state. They’d been recruited through a company called Universal Placement International Inc., which professes on its website to “successfully place teachers in different schools thru out [sic] the United States.” As a lawsuit later revealed, however, their journey through the American public school system was fraught with abuse. 

According to court documents, Lourdes Navarro, chief recruiter and head of Universal Placement, made applicants pay a whopping $12,550 in interview and “processing fees” before they’d even left the Philippines. But the exploitation didn’t stop there. After the teachers landed in LAX, they were required to sign contracts paying back 10 percent of their first and second years’’ salaries; those who refused were threatened with instant deportation.

“We were herded into a path, a slowly constricting path,” said Ingrid Cruz, one of the teachers, during the trial, “where the moment you feel the suspicion that something is not right, you're already way past the point of no return." Eventually, a Los Angeles jury awarded the teachers $4.5 million.

Similar horror stories have abounded across the country for years. Starting in 2001, the private contractor Omni Consortium promised 273 Filipino teachers jobs within the Houston, Texas school district—in reality, there were only 100 spots open. Once they arrived, the teachers were crammed into groups of 10 to 15 in unfinished housing properties. Omni Consortium kept all their documents, did not allow them their own transportation, and threatened them with deportation if they complained about their unemployment status or looked for another job. 

And it’s not always recruiting agencies that are at fault. According to an American Federation Teachers report, in 2009, Florida Atlantic University imported 16 Indian math and science teachers for the St. Lucie County School District. Labeling the immigrant teachers as “interns,” the district only spent $18,000 for each of their yearly salaries—well below a regular teacher’s rate. But because the district paid the wages to Florida Atlantic University, rather than the teachers themselves, the university pocketed most of the money, giving the teachers a mere $5,000 each.

Researchers estimate that anywhere from 14,000 to 20,000 teachers, imported on temporary guest worker visas, teach in American public schools nationwide. Such hiring practices are often framed as cultural exchange programs, 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.”

A manufactured problem School districts frequently justify hiring lower-paid immigrants by pointing to teacher shortages in chronically underfunded rural and urban school districts. And it’s true: In poorer areas, classrooms are often overcrowded and understaffed. But this dearth of instructors did not come out of nowhere. Rather, it is an inevitable result of the austerity measures pushed through on a federal, state, and local level after the panic of the 2007 financial crisis.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, between 2008 and 2011, school districts nationwide slashed 278,000 jobs. This bleeding has not stopped: According to the Center on Education Policy, almost 84 percent of school districts in the 2011-2012 school year expected budget shortfalls, and 60 percent planned to cut staff to make up deficits.

Thus, we see a familiar pattern of neoliberal “restructuring” in American school systems: Cut public institutions to the bone, leave them to fail without adequate resources, then claim the mantle of “reform” while rebuilding the institutions with an eye towards privatization.   

In many cities, newly laid-off instructors are left to languish while their former employers employ underpaid replacements to fill the gaps. For example, the Baltimore City Public Schools district has imported more than 600 Filipino teachers; meanwhile, 100 certified local teachers make up the “surplus” workforce, serving as substitutes and co-teachers when they can. 

The manufactured labor scarcity narrative, used to justify the importation of guest worker teachers, provides districts with the opportunity to employ less costly, at-will employees, whose precarious legal status is often exploited. Such moves to pump up the workforce with workers—not here long enough to invest themselves in organizing or bargaining struggles—also serve to weaken shop-site solidarity and unions’ ability to mobilize on a larger scale.

The recruiting contactors’ advertisements to districts are particularly instructive in this regard, noting their recruits’ inability to qualify for benefits and pension contributions. In an extensive study, education professors Sue Books and Rian de Villiers found that recruiting firms tend to appeal to districts on the basis of cost-saving, rather than classroom quality. As one Georgia contractor, Global Teachers Research and Resources, advertises, “school systems pay an administrative fee [to GTRR] that is generally less than the cost of [teacher] benefits. Collaborating with GTRR means quality teachers with savings to the school systems.” Even more egregiously, a Houston based recruiting firm called Professional and Intellectual Resources exclaims that their “bargain-priced” Filipino teachers can “make the most out of the most minimal resources. 

Memorizing isn’t learning This criterion for hiring makes sense in the context of what philosopher Paulo Freire calls “the banking concept of education.” In his 1968 classic, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire critiques the pedagogical tradition of rote memorization, in which the teacher-as-narrator “leads the students to memorize … the narrated content.” Freire argues, “It turns [students] into ‘containers,’ into ‘receptacles’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is.”

However, Freire’s “narrative” is no longer even in the hands of teachers, who might at least have some understanding of content relevant to students. Instead with the rise of test-based approach to education, forced through with No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core, and numerous ramped-up state tests, nameless corporate and federal employees now tie teachers and students’ success to the production of higher test scores. Thus, today’s cutting-edge education reform movement has brought this “banking concept of education” back into vogue, demanding “objective measures” and “accountability” through constant standardized testing. 

The idea that new teachers should be imported from halfway around the world for yearlong stints, knowing no background about the communities they are entering and the content relevant to them, is only justified if the teacher is reduced to an instrument of standardized information transmission. And if teachers are just such instruments, why not search the global market for the cheapest, most malleable ones possible?

As Books and de Villiers point out, many recruiters’ advertisements reflect this logic: “Only two [recruiters’] websites apprise teachers of the socio-economic, racial, ethnic, and religious diversity in many U.S. schools. Only five include useful educational links, and only three provide information about school-based mentoring.” So for corporate recruiters and their district clients, finding the right match for a school is not about teacher quality or experience, but rather cost and expendability.

The phenomenon of teacher trafficking, then, doesn’t rest entirely on recruiters’ mercenary tendencies or districts’ drive to cheapen their labor. It also rests on the larger neoliberal conception of workers. In this case, teachers become moveable parts, switched out in accordance with the iron laws of supply and demand in order to more efficiently output successful test scores, whose value comes to represent students themselves. 

Colonialism in the classroom The American importation of Filipino teachers, as well as educators from other countries, has consequences beyond the United States, too. According to Books and de Villiers, several recruiting agencies only seek out teachers in the Philippines because its high poverty rates and supply of quality teachers make it, as one journalist from the Baltimore Sun put it, “fertile ground for recruits.” Meanwhile, the nation has an estimated shortage of 16,000 educators and the highest student-teacher ratio in Asia at 45:1.

As one Filipino union leader told the American Federation of Teachers, “To accommodate the students, most public schools schedule two, three and sometimes even four shifts within the entire day, with 70 to 80 students packed in a room. Usually, the first class starts as early as 6:00 a.m. to accommodate the other sessions.” And as American corporate forces have exploited the Philippines for its best teachers, pushed across the world by the beck and call of the market, agents of the nonprofit world have taken it upon themselves to send American substitutes in their place.

Launched last year, Teach for the Philippines presents itself as “the solution” to this lack of quality teachers in the country—a claim similar to those of its U.S. parent organization, Teach for America, a behemoth nonprofit that each year recruits thousands of idealistic college graduates to become (and often replace) teachers in low-income communities after a five-week training camp.

The Teach for Philippines promo video begins with black and white shots of multitudes of young Filipino schoolchildren packed into crowded classrooms, bored and on the verge of tears. A cover version of a Killers song proclaims, “When there's nowhere else to run … If you can hold on, hold on” as the video shifts to the students’ inevitable fates: scenes of tattooed gang kids smoking, an isolated girl and even a desperate man behind bars. In the midst of this grotesquely Orientalizing imagery, text declares, “Our Country Needs Guidance,” “Our Country Needs Inspiration,” and finally “Our Country Needs Teachers.”           

Teach for the Philippines recruits young Filipinos both domestically and internationally, with special outreach to Filipino Americans. Though still in its start-up phase, with only 53 teachers in 10 schools, the program presents a disturbing vision for the future of teaching in the context of a global workforce. While the Filipino teachers imported to America are not necessarily ideal fits, given their inability to remain as long-term contributors to a school community, at least they are for the most part trained, experienced instructors. Within the Teach for the Philippines paradigm, however, Filipino students, robbed of their best instructors, are forced to study under recruits, who may lack a strong understanding of the communities they are joining and have often have never even had any actual classroom experience.

But Teach For the Philippines is just one growing arm of Teach for America’s global empire, now spanning the world sites in 33 countries and enjoying millions in support from neoliberal power players like Visa and even the World Bank. So while austerity-mode Western nations may seek to cut costs by employing no-benefits guest workers, countries such as the Philippines will be forced by the unbending logic of the market to plead for international charity—summer camp volunteers looking to “give” two years of their lives to really make a difference.           

In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire argues, “It is to the reality that mediates men, and to the perception of that reality held by educators and people, that we must go to find the program content of education.” But for such a reality to be approached, teachers and communities must have the opportunity to grow together, to listen to each other, and to understand the reality that they seek to transform. By pushing teachers into a globalized pool of low-wage temp workers, teacher trafficking precludes this possibility.








0 Comments

June 23rd, 2014

6/23/2014

0 Comments

 
As a progressive democrat I love the Federal government and the ability of this highest structure of government to pass law that standardizes rights across the county....it is a necessity to have this structure in a country as large as ours.  The problem occurs when these centralized government structures start handing all power of policy or legislation to one person---the President, the governor, or the mayor/county executive-----leaving out the legislative body.  That is what neo-liberals and neo-cons are doing right now.  The formation of commissions is one step in this process with the executive appointing these bodies that then pass policy without the legislative body.  Executive orders, once used with extreme rarity have been more and more common under Clinton/Bush/Obama installing policy that they know would not pass through a legislative body.

Remember, the Trans Pacific Trade Pact recognizes only a global corporate tribunal as the body able to change laws that are included in these treaties and these treaties effect every avenue of life.  All of this requires a centralization of government as seen in nations like China.

This is why you are seeing an inability to engage on any public policy issues and it is why all your rights as citizens are being totally ignored.....neo-liberals and neo-cons are working to install all of the structures leading to this TPP global corporate tribunal structure.  It is why as well this election for governor in Maryland refused to allow a candidate fighting against this structure to be heard.  Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur are the only three democratic candidates because they are all neo-liberals ready to continue to install this global corporate structure that takes all legislative power away from the American people and the citizens of Maryland.




Centralized government

From Wikipedia

A centralised government (spelled centralized government in American English) is one in which power or legal authority is exerted or coordinated by a de facto political executive to which federal states, local authorities, and smaller units are considered subject


This morning I listened to a report that the Baltimore County administrators were going to integrate the Baltimore County Library System technology with the county's in an effort to save a few million dollars.  Remember, the county wastes a few million dollars on any number of corporate subsidies or outsourcing to private businesses which end in costing more money than if the public sector did the work itself.  So, this is not a cost-cutting issue......it is the centralization of technology at a time when government at all level is selling public data for revenue that is the problem.

The library administrators were concerned about the lose of control of these technology staff and department for just that reason.  Libraries are tasked with making sure the patrons using their sources have privacy issues met.  The county on the other hand sells public data and this library database will be no different.  Control extends beyond who is checking out what or using computers to visit what websites------it allows the county control of censuring websites through intranet services.  If you think that far-fetched know that Johns Hopkins Library and its internet service affecting all campuses -----a large pool of employees and students-----does this already to an extent.  Intranet servers can censure and do.  So, when a library system that is for some the only way to access the internet loses control to allow freedom of content and privacy-----


Librarians across the country hit the protest lines when Obama and a neo-liberal Congress passed laws that allowed NSA to collect library patron's data and librarians were told they were legally bound to silence in the Federal government's collection of that data.  We know know that the NSA is Wall Street and Wall Street is selling the data collected to overseas governments and organizations so none of this is being kept private---no matter how much they tell you it is.  So yet another sector of employees----this time librarians-----are being told that what used to be their duty to protect the public is no longer their duty.  If you think this is about saving a few million dollars of public money----look at the billions of dollars lost each year to corporate fraud and more billions given away in corporate subsidies and tax breaks.

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY FOLKS!

Mount Prospect Public LibraryPrivacy and Confidentiality of Patron Information Policy


October 2009

Administrative Modification4Illinois Records Confidentiality Act (75 ILCS 70/1-2)(75 ILCS 70/1) (from Ch. 81, par. 1201)


Sec.1. (a) The registration and circulation records of a library
are confidential information. No person shall publish or make any information contained in such records available to the public
unless:(1)required to do so under court order; or(2)the information is requested by a sworn law enforcement officer who represents that it is impractical to secure a court order as a result of an emergency where the law enforcement officer has probable cause to believe that there is an imminent danger of physical harm.The information requested must be limited to identifying a suspect, witness, or victim of a crime. The information requested without a court order may not include the disclosure of registration or circulation records that would indicate materials borrowed, resources reviewed, or services used at the library.If requested to do so by the library, the requesting law enforcement officer must sign a form acknowledging the receipt of the information. A library providing the information may seek subsequent judicial review to assess compliance with this Section.This subsection shall not alter any right to challenge the use or dissemination of patron information that is otherwise permitted by law.(b)This Section does not prevent a library from publishing or making available to the public reasonable statistical reports regarding library registration and book circulation where those reports are presented so that no individual is identified therein.(b-5)Nothing in this Section shall be construed as a privacy violation or a breach of confidentiality if a library provides information to a law enforcement officer under item (2) of subsection (a).(c)For the purpose of this Section, (i) “library” means any public library or library of an educational, historical or eleemosynary institution, organization or society; (ii) “registration records” includes any information a library requires a person to provide in order for that person to become eligible to borrow books and other materials and (iii) “circulation records” includes all information identifying the individual borrowing particular books or materials.(Source: P.A. 95-40, eff. 1-1-08)(75 ILCS 70/2) (from Ch. 81, par. 1202)Sec. 2. This Act may be cited as the Library Records Confidentiality Act.(Source: P.A. 86-1475.)



THIS IS A MOVEMENT AWAY FROM FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PRIVACY.  NOTE AGAIN, THIS POLICY ONLY SAVES A FEW MILLION DOLLARS AT MOST AND HANDS IT TO A GOVERNMENT USING PUBLIC DATA SALES AS REVENUE.



When President Obama or Governor O'Malley say they promote OPEN GOVERNMENT-----this does not mean transparency to the American citizens of government operations-----quite the opposite.  It means that any public information wanted will be sold to the highest bidder. 


THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW YOU HAVE A NEO-LIBERAL RUNNING AS A DEMOCRAT-----DO YOU HEAR YOUR POL DECRYING THE WHOLESALE MARKETING OF ALL CITIZEN'S PERSONAL DATA?


Sales Of Public Data To Marketers Can Mean Big $$ For Governments August 26, 2013 10:00 PM 

DENVER (CBS4) – Roughly 60 percent of the mail we get can be classified as junk mail, but sometimes that flood of mail seems nonstop, and the pitches are often unsettlingly specific. This tends to happen particularly after major life events.

A CBS4 Investigation has uncovered that government agencies at all levels are selling personal information to marketing companies.

Eric Meer is a small business owner who works out of his home in Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood. Meer says he was deluged by direct mail after registering his small business with the Colorado Secretary of State. He says many of the ads he received were deceptive asking him to pay fees that he wasn’t required to pay.

Meer had a hunch the Secretary of State was selling his business information to marketing companies. CBS4 confirmed his hunch was right. Last year, the Secretary of State brought in $59,000 for business registration data.


“It feels like a betrayal,” Meer said. “Because our government is supposed to protect us, not to sell our information and profit from us.”

Spokesperson Andrew Cole confirms the Secretary of State sells business information for monetary amounts ranging from $200 to $12,000, depending on frequency and amount of information requested. But, Cole says the fees only cover the costs of running the databases.

“We are not looking to make money,” said Cole. “We charge to cover our costs.”

According to Cole, there is no way to opt out of these lists and anyone can buy them, even scammers. There is no screening process.

“It’s a public database,” Cole said. He said it’s “meant to be public” and part of running a transparent government.

The Secretary of State also sold voter registration information — including names, addresses and political party affiliation of voters — for $58,000, last year.

Do you ever notice a surge of confusing mail after refinancing, a foreclosure, or buying a house? The Denver Clerk and Recorder made $32,000 last year selling home sale data.

It happens in college, too. The University of Colorado Boulder buys names from the SAT for 33 cents each and names from the ACT for 34 cents each for recruiting purposes. CU sells student information to private meal plans and storage companies for $15,000 a year.

Even death is for sale. The Social Security Administration sells a “Master Death Index” for 7,500 each. The result, an onslaught of letters to surviving family members asking to purchase a home.

Local marketer Becky Seely has purchased lists in the past and says it’s clear these agencies are catering to marketers.


“What average consumer needs to know the deaths that happened in the last three months or the new businesses that registered?” asks Seely.

But she says most of the time we put ourselves on marketing lists without realizing it. The most common ways our information is collected and then circulated is when we enter a contest, use a valued customer shopping card, register a product, subscribe to a magazine or even give money to a charity.

“It’s kind of an endless black hole of lists, unfortunately,” Seely said.

The Direct Marketing Association has blocked every state effort to create a mandatory “do not mail” registry similar to a do not call list. However, the same group offers its own registry that promises to cut down on the junk mail you receive.

The Direct Marketing Association says you cannot stop bills, statements, notices and political mailings. The group also offers a deceased Do Not Contact list.
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At a time when identity theft is ubiquitous one wonders what information is going out as regards SS information from our government.  We know that the NSA is acting illegally as regards data collection and distribution to outside parties so how do we know the article below honors the idea that only legal information can be attained in these data sales?  Can you imagine the personal history one can attain from a lifetime of SS information in building identity?

One expects that things like census data are sold in bulk data but when every avenue of public life is opened and made easily attainable-----and for sale---as the article above has a citizen saying----I FEEL BETRAYED BY MY GOVERNMENT.

The need to do this for revenue whether Federal, state, or local is precisely the problem of lost corporate revenue and the sending of that revenue collected to these same corporations as subsidy.


NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS DO NOT SEE PUBLIC JUSTICE OR BILL OF RIGHTS BECAUSE THEY DO NOT SEE YOU AND I AS CITIZENS.



Social Security
Open Government Initiative

Social Security Data

Social Security has a long history of collecting data to carry out our mission. Our data are about people-their wages, their identifying information, their employers, their addresses, and much more. The first regulation we published included a commitment to the public to safeguard the personal information entrusted to us. This commitment is as solid as it was when Social Security began in 1935 and is further strengthened by privacy laws. We cannot publicly release much of our data because it is protected by the Privacy Laws, the Internal Revenue code, and other statutes. While some of the data can be anonymized, much of it cannot. Our open government data transparency efforts recognize these constraints and all releases will protect privacy in accordance with all applicable laws.

Here, we aim to provide you with convenient, one-stop access to high value datasets along with explanations about the data. As you browse the catelog below, click on the dataset title to see more information about the dataset. The following datasets have all been submitted to the federal government data catalog, Data.gov where you can view the catalog of SSA data along with data from many other agencies.


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The HIPAA laws overseeing patient privacy used to be taken so seriously we were taught at hiring orientation with a health care center that no information on patients are to be spoken in any public areas.  Elevators used to be the problem when two doctors would chat about a patient case with the general public in the elevator.....that was prohibited.

Now, there is absolutely no restrictions by private health providers in selling medical data as we see with the private Medicare Advantage and the making of money by these health insurers on the data they assemble from the people paying for their insurance plans.  We know restricted data is being released and we know patient names are indeed left attached to these data often......even as we are told names are not associated with data.  Research shows that corporations buying the data have no trouble identifying the name of patients even if the name is not included.....

THERE IS NO PRIVACY NOW AS REGARDS YOUR MEDICAL DATA AND ALL THAT IS TIED WITH PRIVATIZING AND PROFITIZING THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY.


(“HIPAA”).1 The Privacy Rule standards address the use and disclosure of individuals’ health information—called “protected health information” by organizations subject to the Privacy Rule — called “covered entities,” as well as standards for individuals' privacy rights to understand and control how their health information is used. Within HHS, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) has responsibility for implementing and enforcing the Privacy Rule with respect to voluntary compliance activities and civil money penalties.

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When we centralize such extensive systems like data systems we are placing into the hands of a few all the power of information and how it is disseminated.  In Maryland we already have a problem with having grand announcements by politicians that a policy has been successful as shown by data only to find the data was skewed.  It is of no value to the American people if we find years later the data was skewed.

In modern history data was collected and analyzed by our public universities by academics with the goal of providing unbiased and accurate information.  Today, corporatization of our universities has created the inability to rely on that source and as we see more and more data centralized and taken from the realm of more and more people-----there goes the whistle blowers who see problems and report them.  We already have a war on whistle blowers as the people in power take the nation more towards autocracy.

In Maryland, we have had the executive offices of governor and mayor/county executive garner more and more control of public policy with the creation of commissions that then decide public policy behind closed doors and without legislative approval and those commissions are appointed by these very executives----governor, mayor, or county executive.  This centralization is what is taking all power of the people to participate in government-----it is allowing corporate pols to deal only with corporations and their bidding----and this consolidation of technology and data further erodes the hands on opportunity of the citizens of Maryland to know what the real information is and how it is processed.

We know as well with these neo-liberals and neo-cons----that the IT is handled by private corporate contractors having exposure to what is told to citizens as kept private by the government.  This was the big issue over the building of these health systems whether at the Federal or state level----private corporations are directly exposed to private information when government outsources everything to these large corporations.

We know that many programs in NSA are run by Wall Street and all that data is in turn sold overseas to governments that now have our private information and we have no idea where it goes from there.

THIS IS CRITICAL FOLKS!  YOU ARE WATCHING AS THIS CENTRALIZATION LEAVES THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND CITIZENS OF MARYLAND WITHOUT ACCESS TO MUCH OF THE DATA COLLECTED AS A MEANS OF KNOWING WHAT WE ARE BEING TOLD IS TRUE.


What Is a Centralized Organizational Structure?




  • Written By: Mary McMahon
  • Edited By: Shereen Skola
  • Last Modified Date: 31 May 2014  Wise Geek


A centralized organizational structure is an approach to handling decisions that concentrates the power at the top of a hierarchy. A limited number of people have the ability to make decisions and they are senior members of the company or organization. This contrasts with a decentralized organizational structure, where higher-ups delegate authority down a chain of command to allow employees at many levels to make decisions. There are advantages and disadvantages to both structures that may be considered in the course of developing or modifying an organizational structure.

This approach can be seen everywhere from small businesses to large companies. A business owner with only a few employees may prefer to make all the decisions for the business in a centralized organizational structure. Employees must discuss any planned activities or concerns with the owner, and cannot independently make decisions, except in very controlled circumstances. This allows for greater control over business operations.

At large companies, the centralized organizational structure is typically paired with a very large and heavily tiered hierarchy. As people work their way up the hierarchy, they have more authority and more connections to people who can make decisions. At the very top lie the handful of people with the ultimate power over activities at the company. These can be members of a board, or chief officers, depending on how the business is organized.

Ad One advantage of centralized organizational structure is efficiency. When decisions need to be made, they are made quickly, because no consultation is necessary. However, the disadvantage to central control is that it may take a long time for issues to reach the people who can make decisions. They are often overloaded with work and it may take some time for an issue to come to their attention. In a decentralized structure, autonomy at lower levels can allow for faster resolution of minor problems because they do not need to be escalated through a series of tiers.

Another potential flaw of centralized organizational structure is stagnation. Upper officials of a company may not be in touch with workers, or could lag behind on industry developments. When they are the only people making decisions, it may be hard for a company to move forward and promote progress. This structure can also contribute to a more hidebound culture where employees feel less valued. People trusted with decisions tend to feel more connected to their employers, and may be more prone to stay in the long term
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June 19th, 2014

6/19/2014

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NEO-LIBERALS ARE NOT DEMOCRATS FOLKS----THEY WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT----STOP ALLOWING A DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PARTY CONTROLLED BY NEO-LIBERALS CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES IN PRIMARIES!

CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND IS THE ONLY CANDIDATE FIGHTING GLOBAL CORPORATE CONTROL OF OUR ECONOMY!

DO YOU KNOW WHY THE MEDIA HAS MADE A CIRCUS OF THE RIDICULOUS HEALTH CARE SYSTEM ROLL-OUT?  IT TAKES ALL OF THE MEDIA ATTENTION FROM WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING WITH THE AFFORDABLE CARE REFORM.

I'll move on to Social Security on Friday but wanted to look specifically at what will happen with the Affordable Care Act in place as affects PHARMA.  Remember, Trans Pacific Trade Pact acts to curb all subsidy to PHARMA in nations joined to this treaty and to curb manufacturing of generics----a big business in developing nations.  Bill Gates and his PHARMA empire want to maximize profits by getting rid of generics and extending patenting rights to name brand.  That is what TPP does.  We already know what happens when an industry develops global markets-----the prices climb to 'market-value' and start being inflated by market speculation and manipulation.  So, we know PHARMA prices will soar with ACA.  Look below to see some of the effects already as drugs become scarce because they do not bring profits and generic prices rise as nations around the world are forced to close generic PHARMA factories. 

THE UNITED STATES IS DOING THIS AND IT IS OBAMA AND THE NEO-LIBERALS IN CONGRESS ALLOWING HEALTH CORPORATIONS TO WRITE THESE POLICIES.


Keep in mind as well-----when all this instability in pricing that comes with global market pricing and speculation, small businesses will not be able to stay in business.  There goes more small businesses in our communities....our local pharmacies.  Each time neo-liberals introduce these consolidation and deregulation policies as Clinton did and now Obama----an entire industry becomes controlled by the few global corporations at the top and prices soar, quality disappears, and service declines.

THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT IS ALLOWED TO CONTINUE.  NEO-LIBERALS WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT----THEY ARE NOT DEMOCRATS.

Expanded and Improved Medicare for All takes all of the global health systems out of the mix eliminating private insurers......controlling profit-margins through public market-share.  Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland will build several small generic manufacturing facilities across Maryland to supply the citizens with all the generics they need and we can contain the costs.



Pharmacists concerned about drug pricing, Affordable Care Act

Posted: Sep 30, 2013 4:39 PM EST Updated: Sep 30, 2013 4:47 PM EST By Rebecca Trylch l   SWARTZ CREEK (WJRT) - (09/30/13) - The lead-up to the beginning phases of the Affordable Care Act has been a roller coaster ride for some independent pharmacies.

In recent months some pharmacists say generic drug prices have uncharacteristically spiked.

A couple of the pharmacists ABC12 spoke with directly tie that roller coaster effect to the Affordable Care Act, also referred to as Obamacare. Others aren't ready to link the two together.

But here's what pharmacist Mark Luea with Luea Pharmacy in Swartz Creek tells us has happened to him.

Since June he's seen several of his generic prescription drug prices go up, drastically.

One example he provided involved an anti-seizure medication.

It was just under $135 one week. The very next week that same drug cost more than $1,600.

"When I see the drastic prices, our jaws drop," Luea said. "This is not normal. This is the first time I've seen anything like this in the pharmaceutical market in 30 years."

When Luea questioned the increase, he was first told there was an issue with the raw materials.

Then he was told a contamination issue shut down the place it was made in India, causing a supply shortage.

Later he was told by his wholesale supplier, who he buys most of his prescription drugs from, that manufacturers were to blame.

"Apparently the manufacturers are concerned that their profits are going to be cut horribly by the Affordable Care Act. So it's kind of the feast and famine, and right now they're really feasting," Luea said. "They're worried about a fixed profit that is going to be starting Jan. 1, 2014."

Luea says the ever-changing prices has lead to a related battle with health insurance companies that is costing him money.

Sometimes insurance companies won't reimburse him for the full cost that he paid.

"So who gets hurt? The pharmacy, not just my retail pharmacy, all retail pharmacies, and of course ultimately the consumer," Luea said.

He hopes this struggle isn't permanent.

"I truly, truly believe that the wholesale manufacturers of generic drugs will continue this high pricing right up until Dec. 31. After that, we'll see."


The Michigan Pharmacists Association is concerned about drug pricing and insurance reimbursement problems too.

And while it's not linking the issue to the Affordable Care Act, it is urging its members to contact their state lawmakers.

Chief Executive Officer Larry D. Wagenknecht also released this statement:

"When the pharmacist's cost to purchase generic prescription drugs increases, insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers are very slow at raising their reimbursement rates, sometimes taking week to months. Because of this, pharmacists are unable to provide the essential medications and treatments required to care for their patients."



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As you see below, the ACA hands ever more ability of states to decide all avenues of health care and policy so each state will look differently as to how it will meet the continual gutting of funding of Medicare and Medicaid-----if you are going to dismantle a Federal program you first piecemeal the power of policy and that is what the ACA does.

Looking at drug costs we already see where citizens are having to make decisions as to what health insurance plan to buy according to what PHARMA or medical procedures it covers.  Everyone knows a person cannot be adequately covered under this process and that such piece-mealing with make costs soar for the American people trying to get what they need.  This is happening first with the lower-level plans like Medicaid and Bronze plans but it will engulf Medicare as it ends as a Federal program and the costs to upper-tier plans like Silver and Gold plans will take more and more disposable income from the upper-middle.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT THE CREATION OF GLOBAL HEALTH SYSTEMS DRIVEN BY WORLD MARKETS WILL COMPLETELY DISMANTLE OUR FEDERAL PROTECTIONS AND BENEFITS WE RECEIVE THROUGH  OUR FEDERALLY RUN HEALTH PROGRAMS.


Remember, this is exactly what happened to the financial industry when Clinton deregulated and consolidated to create the global banking system.  We are now paying for financial services with fees for every single service----and that will be what health care will look like under ACA.  You will be forced to purchase your health plan like you do cable television stations.

Raise your hands if you knew that handing the responsibility of controlling health costs to the very health institutions creating the soaring costs would result in the American people unable to access most health care and in this case PHARMA!  EVERYONE.  So, when the Affordable Care Act states its intentions were to lower cost and all we see is what happens when corporations are encouraged to consolidate and grow in power----maximization of profit by any means------

WE KNOW THAT NEO-LIBERALS ARE LYING ABOUT THE INTENT OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.




'Although the money for covering uninsured Americans is coming from Washington, the heath care law gives states broad leeway to tailor benefits, and the local approach can also allow disparities to emerge'.

Drug Cost May Vary Greatly By State After Obamacare Implementation

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR 05/13/13 11:35 AM ET EDT

  WASHINGTON — Cancer patients could face high costs for medications under President Barack Obama's health care law, industry analysts and advocates warn.

Where you live could make a huge difference in what you'll pay.

To try to keep premiums low, some states are allowing insurers to charge patients a hefty share of the cost for expensive medications used to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other life-altering chronic diseases.


Such "specialty drugs" can cost thousands of dollars a month, and in California, patients would pay up to 30 percent of the cost. For one widely used cancer drug, Gleevec, the patient could pay more than $2,000 for a month's supply, says the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

New York is taking a different approach, setting flat dollar copayments for medications. The highest is $70, and it would apply to specialty drugs as well.

Critics fear most states will follow California's lead, and that could defeat the purpose of Obama's overhaul, because some of the sickest patients may be unable to afford their prescriptions.

"It's important that the benefit design not discriminate against people with chronic illness, and high copays do that," said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, a data analysis firm catering to the health care industry and government.


Avalere's research shows that 1 in 4 cancer patients walks away from the pharmacy counter empty-handed when facing a copay of $500 or more for a newly prescribed drug.

"You have to worry about a world where if you happen to contract cancer or multiple sclerosis, you are stuck with a really big bill," Mendelson said. "It's going to be very important for states to take a long, hard look at their benefit design."

Although the money for covering uninsured Americans is coming from Washington, the heath care law gives states broad leeway to tailor benefits, and the local approach can also allow disparities to emerge.

A spokesman for Covered California said state officials are trying to balance between two conflicting priorities: comprehensive coverage and affordable premiums.

"We are trying to keep the insurance affordable across the board," said Dana Howard, the group's spokesman. "This is just part of trying to manage the overall risk of the pool." Covered California is one of the new state marketplaces where people who don't get coverage on the job will be able to shop for private insurance starting this fall. Coverage takes effect Jan. 1.

Insurers are forecasting double-digit premium increases for individual policies, as people with health problems flock to buy coverage previously denied them. The Obama administration says the industry warnings are overblown, and that for many consumers, premium increases will be offset by tax credits to help buy insurance. And officials say it's important to realize that the law sets overall limits on patients' liability, even if those seem high to some people. Still, a full picture of costs and benefits isn't likely to come into focus until the fall.

Howard said California officials are aware of the concerns about drug costs and are trying to make medications more affordable.

Meanwhile, he said consumers will be protected because the law limits total out-of-pocket costs – the deductibles and copayments that policy holders are responsible for, apart from monthly premiums. In California, the annual out-of-pocket limit for an individual is $6,400, although it can be as low as $2,250 for low-income people. Once that limit is reached, insurance pays 100 percent.

That's still a lot of money, and such reassurances haven't dispelled the concerns.

"The intent of the Affordable Care Act is to make sure that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care," said Brian Rosen, a senior vice president of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He adds that there is a danger that the insurance marketplaces "will discriminate against the patients with the highest medical need. That would completely undermine the spirit of the ACA."

The group has been joined by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., in urging state officials to reconsider the policy. The high copays "could prevent many patients from receiving the lifesaving treatments they need because of prohibitively high cost," Matsui wrote to the state.

The problem with costly drugs is similar to another money issue with the health care law – a provision that could price millions of smokers out of coverage. Insurers are allowed to charge tobacco users buying an individual policy up to 50 percent higher premiums. For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year, on top of the standard premium. California is trying to override that problem by passing its own law. There's also pending state legislation to address some issues with prescription costs, but its prospects are unclear.

Meanwhile, leukemia patient Lisa Lusk worries about what will happen to her. A nursing assistant who lives near Fresno, Lusk is hoping to return to work in the next few months. When that happens, she expects to lose emergency coverage she's now getting through the state. And the medication Lusk takes to manage her chronic form of the disease costs more than $5,000 a month.

"I'm scared that when I get a job my copay may be more than $1,500 a month," said Lusk. "I'll just be working to pay for my medications."
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So, the health market manipulation begins as Obama's Health Secretary says------she does not see the state health plans under ACA as FEDERAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAMS HELD TO FEDERAL PROTECTIVE LAWS.  So, bring the fraud and corruption on says the neo-liberal Sebelius-------lying, cheating, and stealing rules with the Affordable Care Act.

'HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on October 30 sent a letter that threatens to further exacerbate health insurance affordability concerns.  The Sebelius letter to Rep Jim McDermott (D-WA) says that HHS “does not consider” qualified health plans under the Affordable Care Act to be “Federal health care programs” for purposes of federal anti-kickback rules.  Pharmaceutical industry representatives cheered this letter because, in their view, it gives a green light to the use of copay coupons'.

Remember, Obama appointed Sebelius knowing this Kansas insurance regulator had a history of working for the health insurance industry, not the public.  So, having Sebelius set the legal stage for making it harder for the public to seek justice from abuse of the Affordable Care Act would be expected.  Below you see the conversation over 'co-pay coupons' designed to undermine any effort to make these state insurance systems 'affordable'.  What will people who cannot meet co-pays and deductibles do to access the most limited amount of care?  Go to coupons.

Keep in mind as well, the ACA is premised completely on high levels of subsidy and in this age of massive corporate fraud and exploding economies drawing government coffers deeper into debt------

THOSE SUBSIDIES WILL DISAPPEAR JUST AS PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYEE BENEFITS ARE DISAPPEARING.


Can you imagine as a family trying to figure out how to buy insurance with a hodge-podge of coverage designed to have costs soar if you need to go outside of what is listed in a plan? 

WAKE UP PEOPLE-----YOU ARE BEING TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS AND THIS IS LIFE AND DEATH!


Simply ending this very private and profit-driven state health system and replacing it with Expanded and Improved Medicare for All will keep our Federal Medicare program strong and keep health care coverage standard for all. 

MARYLAND HAS ONE OF THE WORST OF PRIVATE HEALTH PLANS AND HAS ALREADY MOVED AWAY FROM ANY FEDERAL OVERSIGHT.  IT ALSO HAS THE GREATEST HEALTH DISPARITIES.

Insurance Premiums Affordable Care Act — HHS Blind Eye to Copay Coupons Will Lead to Increased Health Insurance Premiums


11-7-2013
| 1 Comment | Edward C Lawrence



As if the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) weren’t already feeling political heat over the botched federal health insurance website launch and over health insurance cancellation letters and increased premiums for millions of Americans, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on October 30 sent a letter that threatens to further exacerbate health insurance affordability concerns.  The Sebelius letter to Rep Jim McDermott (D-WA) says that HHS “does not consider” qualified health plans under the Affordable Care Act to be “Federal health care programs” for purposes of federal anti-kickback rules.  Pharmaceutical industry representatives cheered this letter because, in their view, it gives a green light to the use of copay coupons.

We have written about how drug manufacturer copay coupons for brand-name drugs increase health insurance costs by undercutting health plan incentives for beneficiaries to use equally appropriate generic or less-expensive brand drugs.  In an interview we published in September, Kevin G. McAnaney, a former official in the HHS Inspector General’s office, talked about how the use of copay coupons in connection with federally-subsidized health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act would likely violate federal anti-kickback laws.  In McAnaney’s view, federally subsidized plans under the Affordable Care Act, whether purchased on the federal exchange or in state exchanges, are “Federal health care programs” subject to criminal anti-kickback laws.  McAnaney talked about the potential legal exposure of pharmaceutical companies offering copay coupons and pharmacies accepting them.

Secretary Sebelius’s letter stating that HHS does not consider ACA health insurance plans to be “Federal health care programs” provides absolutely no legal justification for its conclusion.
  The letter correctly recites that under the relevant portion of the anti-kickback law, a “Federal health care program” is “any plan or program that provides health benefits, whether directly, through insurance, or otherwise, which is funded directly, in whole or in part, by the United States Government…or any State health care program….” But then the letter simply states that the department “does not consider” qualified health plans and other programs related to the Federal health exchange to be “Federal health care programs.”  The letter goes on to say this includes the State-based and Federally-facilitated Marketplaces; the cost-sharing reductions and advance payments of the premium tax credit; navigators and other federally-funded consumer assistance programs; and co-op health plans.  According to the letter, this “conclusion was based upon a careful review of the definition of ‘Federal health care program’ and an assessment of the various aspects of each program under Title I of the Affordable Care Act and consultation with the Department of Justice.”  That’s the entirety of the HHS rationale!

Fortunately for those whose health insurance premiums would be increased if copay coupons are allowed under Affordable Care Act plans, the HHS letter is not the final word.  The Sebelius letter does not, and cannot, change the underlying Federal anti-kickback rules that will almost certainly be interpreted by the courts.  According to a Wall St. Journal article, “Branded Drugs Chalk Up a Win Under Health Law” (Nov. 3, 2013), the “Pharmaceutical Care Management Association plans to challenge the HHS determination.”  The HHS decision “also could be reversed …by one of the lawsuits that union health-insurance plans and other plaintiffs have filed to block copay-card use, or by a probe by the HHS Office of Inspector General into illegal copay-card use by Medicare Part D beneficiaries.” 

Perhaps more of a risk for drug companies and pharmacies involved with copay coupons is the threat of Federal False Claims Act suits brought by private parties.  A Bloomberg BNA story, “Sebelius: ACA Exchange Plans Are Not ‘Federal Health Care Programs’” (Oct. 31, 2013) (subscription) quotes Arnold & Porter attorney Kirk Ogrosky as saying the HHS decision “simply opens the door to coupons in exchanges, but it also signals that relator’s counsel are free to file False Claims Act cases.”  The False Claims Act gives a significant incentive to private parties to file qui tam, or whistleblower, suits even when government agencies may not be interested in doing so.  As an example, on November 4, 2013, the Justice Department announced that pharmaceutical manufacturer Johnson & Johnson would pay $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil liability and that whistleblowers would receive nearly $168 million from that.

In what appears to be a belated recognition of the adverse implications for health insurance underwriting resulting from the Sebelius letter, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (part of HHS) on November 4 released guidance encouraging health insurance issuers to reject support of cost-sharing payments by commercial entities.  While not specifically mentioned in the CMS guidance, the discouraged practices clearly include drug company copay coupons:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has broad authority to regulate the Federal and State Marketplaces (e.g., section 1321(a) of the Affordable Care Act). It has been suggested that hospitals, other healthcare providers, and other commercial entities may be considering supporting premium payments and cost-sharing obligations with respect to qualified health plans purchased by patients in the Marketplaces. HHS has significant concerns with this practice because it could skew the insurance risk pool and create an unlevel field in the Marketplaces. HHS discourages this practice and encourages issuers to reject such third party payments. HHS intends to monitor this practice and to take appropriate action, if necessary.

We would not be surprised to see the HHS Inspector General and/or Congressional committees inquire into the decision process behind the Sebelius letter.



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The last article will talk about the Obama administration 'fighting' what we all know will be the result of PHARMA amassing huge wealth through global markets-----buying off any market-mechanism that will take market share away from big PHARMA.  Obama and neo-liberals took PHARMA out of the health reform issue by making sure none of the reform hurt PHARMA and indeed, these corporations will be cashing in big time as the world's citizens are soaked for the very life-saving drugs we have all been used to accessing.

The number of people made unable to access ordinary PHARMA will be in the hundreds of millions if not a billion and many of those will be right here in the US.  This article on TPP talks of how the drug distribution in developing worlds will change but remember-----

OBAMA AND NEO-LIBERALS HAVE TPP SITTING THERE AND NEO-LIBERALS IN STATES LIKE MARYLAND ARE ALREADY PASSING THE LAWS THAT ALLOW ALL OF THESE TPP REQUIREMENTS BE MET.

This is what Maryland's Sharfstein and Barbot have been doing as head of Maryland and Baltimore Health Departments.....creating the structures that will deliver this tiered level of access and the third world clinic care/home health care that will handle people dying from lack of access to ordinary care.
  Johns Hopkins has built an entire global health tourism system on the backs of Baltimore citizens lack of access from stolen Medicare and Medicaid leaving longevity inequity of 30 years.  This is what the Affordable Care Act makes standard all across America.

THOSE 'COST SAVINGS' FROM BUNDLED PAYMENTS MEANS YOU AND I WILL BE NICKEL AND DIMED TO DEATH IN THE PURSUIT OF MAXIMIZING PROFIT.

As Obama uses the Federal legal system to 'fight in court' what we all know corporations with increasing size and wealth will do-----Obama is pushing to fast-track the TPP which he has spent his entire time in office working with corporations to write.  Bush and neo-cons started TPP and Obama and neo-liberals are trying to finish the deal. 

WE DON'T KNOW WHAT IS IN TPP SHOUT YOUR DEMOCRATIC INCUMBENT!  THE ENTIRE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT BUILDS THE STRUCTURES TO INSTALL TPP FOR GOODNESS SAKE AND YOUR POLS KNOW IT.



The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Public Health

The TPP would provide large pharmaceutical firms with new rights and powers to increase medicine prices and limit consumers' access to cheaper generic drugs. This would include extensions of monopoly drug patents that would allow drug companies to raise prices for more medicines and even allow monopoly rights over surgical procedures. For people in the developing countries involved in TPP, these rules could be deadly - denying consumers access to HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis and cancer drugs.

The TPP would establish new rules that could undermine government programs in developed countries. The TPP would control the cost of medicines by employing drug formularies. These are lists of proven medicines that the government selects for use by government health care systems. Lower prices are negotiated for bulk purchase of such drugs and new medicines that are under monopoly patents are not approved if less expensive generic drugs are equally effective. Drug firms would be empowered to challenge these decisions and pricing standards. In the United States, these rules threaten provisions included in Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' health programs to make medicines more affordable for seniors, military families and the poor.

TPP would empower foreign pharmaceutical corporations to directly attack our domestic patent and drug-pricing laws in foreign tribunals. Already under NAFTA, which does not contain the new rules proposed for TPP, drug firm Eli Lilly has launched such a case against Canada, demanding $100 million for the government's enforcement of its own patent standards. 

The TPP would also empower foreign corporations to directly challenge domestic toxics, zoning, cigarette and alcohol and other public health and environmental policies to demand taxpayer compensation for any such policies that undermine their expected future profits. Often initiatives to improve such laws are chilled by the mere filing of such an "investor-state" case. In other instances, countries eliminate the attacked policies. For instance Canada lifted a ban on a gasoline additive already banned in the U.S. as a suspected carcinogen after an investor attack by Ethyl Corporation under NAFTA. It also paid the firm $13 million and published a formal statement that the chemical was not hazardous.




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How do you end the availability of generics?  You create massively wealthy global PHARMA corporations that can afford to buy out all deals to form generic-producing companies.  ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING?  How have large corporations always gained market share-----by stamping out the competition.  So, big PHARMA sees a group of business people planning to create a generic manufacturing of a brand name drug and simply pay them not to.

That is what is happening all over the world.  So, when the Affordable Care Act sends more money to funding generic medication for the American people at the same time they know the consolidation of the health industry will give such power to these global health systems as to eliminate the production of generics-----THEY ARE LYING TO YOU AS TO THE INTENT OF THE ACA.

One more point with what is called 'biologics'.  For those noticing a corporation like Johns Hopkins now having a BIOTECH campus attached to its campus......this is the patent pipeline to new PHARMA that will hit the market.  ACA allows 'biologics' to hit the market with little FDA oversight or clinical trial requirements.  It will fast-track what will be multiple versions of 'generic' protein-based PHARMA allowing a corporation like Johns Hopkins to hit the market with drug after drug having no real value but earning money simply through winning market share with marketing.  All of this is completely without value to society----it is simply happening to allow Johns Hopkins to make a slight change in PHARMA formula to patent and sell. All of the manipulation of the drug market with the few methods I shared today will explode and the quality of drug most people will receive will deteriorate.  The most current drugs will be unattainable for most and the availability of what will be called 'generic' will be limited to PHARMA that is so old-----as to have no efficacy.




ALL OF MARYLAND POLS KNOW THIS IS WHAT IS IN STORE AND THEY ARE PASSING ALL THE LAWS NECESSARY AND MARYLAND IS BUILDING ONE OF THE MOST PROFIT-DRIVEN SYSTEMS IN THE NATION.

Court: Can drug companies pay to delay generics?

By JESSE J. HOLLAND and LINDA A. JOHNSON March 24, 2013 11:51 PM WASHINGTON (AP) --

Federal regulators are pressing the Supreme Court to stop big pharmaceutical corporations from paying generic drug competitors to delay releasing their cheaper versions of brand-name drugs. They argue these deals deny American consumers, usually for years, steep price declines that can top 90 percent.

The Obama administration, backed by consumer groups and the American Medical Association, says these so-called "pay for delay" deals profit the drug companies but harm consumers by adding 3.5 billion annually to their drug bills.

But the pharmaceutical companies counter that they need to preserve longer the billions of dollars in revenue from their patented products in order to recover the billions they spend developing new drugs. And both the large companies and the generic makers say the marketing of generics often is hastened by these deals.

The justices will hear the argument Monday.

Such pay-for-delay deals arise when generic companies file a challenge at the Food and Drug Administration to the patents that give brand-name drugs a 20-year monopoly. The generic drugmakers aim to prove the patent is flawed or otherwise invalid, so they can launch a generic version well before the patent ends.

Brand-name drugmakers then usually sue the generic companies, which sets up what could be years of expensive litigation. When the two sides aren't certain who will win, they often reach a compromise deal that allows the generic company to sell its cheaper copycat drug in a few years — but years before the drug's patent would expire. Often, that settlement comes with a sizeable payment from the brand-name company to the generic drugmaker.

Numerous brand-name and generic drugmakers and their respective trade groups say the settlements protect their interests but also benefit consumers by bringing inexpensive copycat medicines to market years earlier than they would arrive in any case generic drugmakers took to trial and lost. But federal officials counter that such deals add billions to the drug bills of American patients and taxpayers, compared to what would happen if the generic companies won the lawsuits and could begin marketing right away.

A study by RBC Capital Markets Corp. of 371 cases during 2000-2009 found brand-name companies won 89 at trial compared to 82 won by generic drugmakers. Another 175 ended in settlement deals, and 25 were dropped.

Generic drugs account for about 80 percent of all American prescriptions for medicines and vaccines, but a far smaller percentage of the $325 billion spent by U.S. consumers on drugs each year. Generics saved American patients, taxpayers and the healthcare system an estimated $193 billion in 2011 alone, according to health data firm IMS Health.

  But government officials believe the number of potentially anticompetitive patent settlements is increasing. Pay-for-delay deals increased from 28 to 40 in just the last two fiscal years and the deals in fiscal 2012 covered 31 brand-name pharmaceuticals, Federal Trade Commission officials said. Those had combined annual U.S. sales of more than $8.3 billion.

The Obama administration argues the agreements are illegal if they're based solely on keeping the generic drug off the market. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, speaking at Georgetown Law School recently, noted that once a generic drug gets on the market and competes with a brand-name drug, "the price drops 85 percent." That quickly decimates sales of the brand-name medicine.

"These agreements should actually be considered presumptively unlawful because of the potential effects on consumers," Verrilli said.

In the case before the court, Brussels, Belgium-based Solvay — now part of a new company called AbbVie Inc. — reached a deal with generic drugmaker Watson Pharmaceuticals allowing it to launch a cheaper version of Solvay's male hormone drug AndroGel in August 2015. Solvay agreed to pay Watson an estimated $19 million-$30 million annually, government officials said. The patent runs until August 2020. Watson, now called Actavis Inc., agreed to also help sell the brand-name version, AndroGel.

Actavis spokesman David Belian disputed the government's characterization of the agreement with Solvay. Belian said that in addition to licensing agreement over Solvay's Androgel patents, Watson was being compensated for using its sales force to promote Androgel to doctors.

AndroGel, which brought in $1.2 billion last year for AbbVie, is a gel applied to the skin daily to treat low testosterone in men. Low testosterone can affect sex drive, energy level, mood, muscle mass and bone strength.

The FTC called the deal anticompetitive and sued Actavis.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected the government's objections, and the FTC appealed to the Supreme Court.

The federal district and appellate courts both ruled against the government, AbbVie, which is based in North Chicago, Ill., said. "We are confident that these decisions will be upheld by the Supreme Court."

The Generic Pharmaceutical Association's head, Ralph Neas, said the settlements are "pro-consumer, pro-competition and transparent." He said every patent settlement to date has brought a generic drug to market before the relevant patent ended, with two-thirds of the new generic drugs launched in 2010 and 2011 hitting the market early due to a settlement.

"By doing what the FTC wants, you're going to hurt consumers rather than help them," said Paul Bisaro, CEO of Actavis of Parsippany, N.J.

Bisaro said consumers will save an estimated $50 billion just from patent settlements involving Lipitor, the cholesterol-lowering drug made by Pfizer Inc. of New York that reigned for nearly a decade as the world's top-selling drug.

Lipitor's patent ran until 2017, but multiple generic companies challenged it. Pfizer reached a settlement that enabled Actavis and a second company to sell slightly cheaper generic versions starting Nov. 30, 2011 and several other generic drugmakers to begin selling generic Lipitor six months later. The price then plummeted from Pfizer's $375 to $530 for a three-month supply, depending on dosage, to $20 to $40 for generic versions.

Because generic companies tend to challenge patents of every successful drug, the FTC's position would impose onerous legal costs on brand-name drugmakers and limit their ability to fund expensive research to create new drugs, said the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents brand-name drugmakers.

According to the 2010 RBC Capital Markets study, when trial victories, settlements between drugmakers and dropped cases are combined, generic companies were able to bring their product to market before the brand-name drug's patent expired in 76 percent of the 371 drug patent suits decided from 2000 through 2009.

Consumer, doctor and drugstore groups have lined up to support the Obama administration in this case.

"AARP believes it is in the interest of those fifty and older, and indeed the public at large, to hasten the entry of generic prescription drugs to the marketplace," said Ken Zeller, senior attorney with the AARP Foundation Litigation. "Pay-for-delay agreements such as those at issue in this case frustrate that public interest."

The American Medical Association, the giant doctors' group, believes pay-for-delay agreements undermine the balance between spurring innovation through patents and fostering competition through generics, AMA President Dr. Jeremy A., Lazarus said. "Pay for delay must stop to ensure the most cost-effective treatment options are available to patients."

Drugstores also believe pay-for-delay deals "pose considerable harm to patients because they postpone the availability of generic drugs which limits patient access to generic medications," said Chrissy Kopple of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

Eight justices will decide this case later this year. Justice Samuel Alito did not take part in considering whether to take this case and is not expected to take part in arguments.



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June 03rd, 2014

6/3/2014

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TALKING ONE MORE TIME FOR NOW ON THE DISASTER OF PRIVATIZING PUBLIC HEALTH THROUGH PRIVATIZING UNIVERSITIES AND THE EFFECTS OF AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.  WE CAN SEE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IN THE WAY THE PRIVATIZED PATENT SYSTEM AND THE LACK OF FDA OVERSIGHT IS MAKING OUR HEALTH SYSTEM DANGEROUS!

ALL OF MARYLAND CANDIDATE'S FOR GOVERNOR WILL CONTINUE THIS GLOBAL CORPORATE STRUCTURE FOR HEALTH CARE EXCEPT CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR



I listened to a NPR------corporate media all the time----report on the escalating problem of medical procedures and devices passing FDA approval and failing and sometimes killing the American people.  The numbers are soaring as the FDA is now working to send these products to market for profit and allowing the failures to be discovered after the fact by harming the citizens of America.  This NPR article looked at one medical procedure that was approved by the FDA after a supposed 'clinical trial' of a few hundreds of people.  The entire process looked to be filled with false data and sketchy connections with who and how the medical research was conducted and if any of the results were reproducible or if the efficacy was real.

  ERGO-----THE ENTIRE PUBLIC HEALTH CLINICAL TRIAL PROCEDURE IS BEING DISMANTLED AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC WILL NOW BE THE TEST SUBJECTS.  IF HARM IS DONE-----TOUGH LUCK AND WE WILL ALLOW THE BAD MEDICAL PROCEDURE TO CONTINUE REGARDLESS IN ANOTHER FORM.

This is what a corporate state looks like and it is Trans Pacific Trade Pact already in action as Obama has filled his Federal agencies with the same kinds of people that Bush did-----people committed to global corporate control of all public policy.

THIS IS WHAT YOUR ELECTIONS FOR GOVERNOR AND MAYOR ARE ABOUT-----WE THE PEOPLE MUST WIN THESE ELECTIONS!

What is happening as well is that Obama and your neo-liberal Congress person sent hundreds of billions of dollars to higher education under the guise of building stronger education but what they are building are corporate university research facilities complete with patenting of research done at this university.  Most institutions receiving those hundreds of billions to build their corporate R and D?  Ivy League universities like Johns Hopkins.  What this policy does is make these universities corporations that receive tons of public taxpayer money to subsidize research in the guise of education while it is simply a patent machine for corporate R and D.  When you see BIOPARK outside of Johns Hopkins or University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore (a quasi-institution, not public so they say)   ---you are seeing the public subsidizing with what is called education funding the profits of what are now corporations.

More important is combining this with the fact that the clinical trial structure and fast FDA approval of these patented procedures, devices, or medications that are simply rubber-stamped and you have ABSOLUTELY NO PUBLIC OVERSIGHT OF ANY OF THE HEALTH INDUSTRY ACTIONS.  Remember, universities----especially public universities ------were the one institutions charged with making sure the data and research of products protected the people.  These corporate structures built by neo-liberals like O'Malley and neo-cons like Erhlich are now doing just that.......creating an unaccountable and fraudulent system in our medical research structure.

OBAMA AND NEO-LIBERALS IN CONGRESS-----ALL MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS------DELIBERATELY SENT MONEY TO BUILD WHAT THEY KNOW WILL HURT AND/OR KILL CITIZENS IN THE NAME OF CORPORATE PROFIT.


This is what Trans Pacific Trade Pact and the Affordable Care Act is all about.....consolidating the health industry into global corporate health systems that are deregulated and unaccountable and that will do harm without a second thought in pursuit of profit.  This is what the Maryland Health reform has done these several years under O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake in Baltimore-----created the structures to allow all this to happen and with no oversight or accountability structures.

SEE WHY CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND AND HER PLATFORM MUST BE KEPT OUT OF THIS ELECTION????


'The 510(k) loophole

Although the FDA requests clinical data in about 10% of cases, one concern over the 510(k) system is that testing is insufficient and so products that are either unsafe or ineffective could be released to market'.


Please read below to the 510 loophole.....it has made the FDA just as the SEC----working for corporate interests against the people's interests.  That is what a corporate state does.

How does the FDA 'approve' medical products?

Thursday 20 February 2014 - 8am PST

Written by David McNamee  Medical News Today



  You may have seen medical products that claim to be "FDA cleared," "FDA registered," "FDA listed" or "FDA approved" - but what do these labels mean? You would be forgiven for feeling confused.

In this feature, we look at what the differences in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classification actually mean, what you need to be aware of as a consumer and what the future holds for the regulation and classification of medical products in the US.

Though you may see labels on a wide variety of medical products - from implantable defibrillators to smartphone apps - bearing legends such as "FDA registered," in reality these claims are often disingenuous. But regulation over the correct terminology is rarely enforced.

Class 1, 2 and 3 In truth, the only products that the FDA specifically "approve" are drugs and life-threatening or life-sustaining "Class 3" medical technology (such as defibrillators). These are submitted to a rigorous review process called "pre-market approval" (PMA), to prove that the benefits of the products outweigh any potential risks to the health of the patient.


The only products that the FDA specifically "approve" are drugs and life-threatening or life-sustaining "Class 3" medical technology. Scientific evidence from clinical trials must be provided by the manufacturers demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of their product. Just 1% of products pass PMA.

Over-the-counter drugs are monitored by the FDA, but they are submitted to a less rigorous testing procedure, especially if they are assumed to be safe.

Vitamins, herbs and supplements are not tested by the FDA unless they are an active ingredient in a drug that requires FDA approval - so manufacturers of supplements are not allowed to claim that their products can treat any specific disease, only that they "promote health."

Despite this, some supplement companies are known to illegally claim their supplements are "FDA approved." It is thought that the FDA are unable to intervene in every instance due to limited resources.

Low-risk medical devices, such as stethoscopes and gauze, are known as "Class 1" and are exempt from FDA review.

"Class 2" medical devices are defined as not life-sustaining or life-threatening, though this category covers a wide spectrum of devices, from X-ray machines to some exercise equipment.

The level of scrutiny attached to Class 2 devices is much lower than Class 3. The devices do need FDA "clearance" before they can be marketed and sold, but rather than submit their products for clinical trial, the manufacturers are required instead to convince the FDA that their products are "substantially equivalent" to products that have been previously cleared by the FDA.

Substantially equivalent means that the device has the same intended use and approximate technical characteristics as an existing product.

Products that pass this clearance process may be referred to as "FDA cleared" or "FDA listed," but this is not the same as "FDA approved," which only relates to the prescription drugs and Class 3 devices that have passed PMA.

This approval method for Class 2 devices has been the subject of mounting controversy. The process is known as "510(k)" - named after its section in the law.

The 510(k) loophole


Although the FDA requests clinical data in about 10% of cases, one concern over the 510(k) system is that testing is insufficient and so products that are either unsafe or ineffective could be released to market.


Under 510(k), devices that have passed clearance, but have later been found dangerous or ineffective and are recalled, are not automatically removed from the FDA's list of cleared products. Another worry about this process is that the more "substantially equivalent" (but not identical) products are listed, the more a chain grows of FDA-cleared products that increasingly move away from the original product.


But perhaps the most concerning feature of 510(k) is that devices that have passed clearance, but then have later been found dangerous or ineffective and are recalled, are not automatically removed from the FDA's list of cleared products.

This is a loophole that allows any new products bearing the same faults to remain eligible for FDA clearance through 510(k).

In a 2012 report, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended that 510(k) be replaced with an "integrated pre-market and post-market regulatory framework that effectively provides a reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness throughout the device life cycle."

But these recommendations - though popular with consumer advocacy groups - were rejected by the FDA.

A congressman (now senator) for Massachusetts, Ed Markey, campaigned for the reform of 510(k) and proposed a 2012 bill to close the loophole.

But the bill was not passed. It received opposition from medical device manufacturers and members of Congress who claimed that the existing FDA review processes are already too time-consuming and unpredictable, compared with other countries, so inserting more safeguards and regulatory steps would have the effect of strangling innovation.

Medical News Today spoke to Dr. Michael A. Carome, director of the non-profit consumer rights organization Public Citizen's Health Research Group, about 510(k).

Dr. Carome cites a report that Public Citizen issued in 2012 highlighting "a concerted lobbying campaign intended to weaken the already lax regulatory oversight of medical devices."

"For example, in 2011 the medical device industry spent $33.3 million on lobbying, raising its total to $158.7 million since 2007. This lobbying campaign has been very successful and has generally drowned out calls for stronger medical device regulation from consumer advocates like Public Citizen."

Carome also sees a second obstacle in the FDA itself, "which has been very resistant to proposals to strengthen or replace the 510(k) system."


"The FDA seems beholden to the medical device industry and the mantra that promotion of 'innovation' is the most important goal in the regulation of medical devices," he adds.


More recently, Sen. Markey wrote to the FDA, appealing directly for them to reform 510(k).

Sen. Markey was satisfied with the FDA's response, announcing in December 2013 that database modifications proposed by the agency "will help decrease the dangers and increase the awareness of medical devices that may be made based on flawed models."

Dr. Carome feels, though, that the FDA's proposed measures "fail to adequately address the underlying flaws in the 510(k) premarket clearance process."

The central issue remains that new Class 2 medical devices found to be "substantially equivalent" to recalled but previously cleared devices are still obliged - by law - to be cleared by the FDA, despite whatever flaws the devices contain.

"The slightly improved transparency provided by FDA's revised database for 510(k)-cleared devices does not close this dangerous loophole in the existing law that threatens patient safety," Carome concludes.

But what are the Class 2 devices that have caused patient safety concerns?

Carome points to the DePuy metal-on-metal Articular Surface Replacement (ASR) hip implant - an "example of a medical device heavily promoted as being innovative and better than earlier types of devices."

In November 2013, DePuy - an orthopedics company owned by Johnson & Johnson - announced a $2.5 billion settlement to resolve more than 8,000 of 12,000 public liability claims filed in US courts after their metal-on-metal hip was recalled in 2010. The ASR was found to shed metallic debris as it wears, causing pain and injury to the patient.

The Myxo ring In 2008, a surgeon named Dr. Patrick McCarthy at Chicago's prestigious academic medical center, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, was found to be installing a device he had invented - the McCarthy Annuloplasty Ring - into the hearts of cardiology patients without the informed consent of the patients.


"If you are planning to receive a medical device in a US hospital, there is no way to confirm whether the device is FDA approved, investigational or registered," says Dr. Rajamannan. Concerned patients were even more alarmed when they discovered that the ring had also not been submitted to the FDA for review.

"There are no guideposts for us. You don't learn about this stuff in med school," McCarthy was quoted by the Chicago Tribune as saying, when questioned on why he had bypassed FDA approval.

The ring's manufacturer, a company called Edwards Lifesciences, later falsely claimed that the device was exempt from the 510(k) process and so did not require FDA clearance.


When a concerned colleague of McCarthy's, Dr. Nalini Rajamannan, contacted the FDA, an investigation was triggered, which ultimately saw the ring cleared for use - despite having already been sewn into the hearts of 667 patients.

But further controversy surrounded the FDA's clearance, which simply relied on a clinical study Dr. McCarthy himself had written as evidence that the ring - now rebranded "Myxo dETlogix" - was safe and effective.

Dr. Rajamannan - who was co-author on that study before withdrawing when she learned that the patients involved were not giving informed consent - later wrote a book detailing the controversy and continues to campaign on behalf of patients installed with the Myxo ring.

Speaking to Medical News Today, she says that the concerns over the Myxo device have still not been addressed by the FDA:


"The FDA has written a formal letter stating that they would not be investigating the matter any further. These heart valve rings that are being cleared under the 510k process for Edwards Lifesciences are associated with over 4,000 adverse events and over 645 deaths."

"The other major heart valve manufacturers have less than 20 events for their rings in the FDA database."

What does the future hold for FDA regulation? As we have shown in this feature, the confusion over the various stages of FDA "approval" and "clearance" is not limited to patients. These examples show that FDA classifications and processes can also - naively or wilfully - be misinterpreted by manufacturers and medical professionals.

The concerns from doctors, patients and consumer advocacy groups on the lack of regulation of medical products and the conflicts of interest within those regulatory processes remain.

Dr. Carome recommends that the IOM's 2012 guidelines be implemented and suggests that more of the Class 2 products sped through to market under 510(k) need to be reclassified as Class 3, for which the PMA process is much more stringent.

"Manufacturers do heavily promote their devices as being new and innovative, and many health care providers and patients believe that a 'newer' or 'innovative' device must be better," reasons Carome. "However, in most cases, there is no evidence that the newer medical devices are any better than older devices or other less-invasive treatments that don't involve a medical device."

"It is a real safety problem," agrees Dr. Rajamannan, who adds: "If you are planning to receive a medical device in a US hospital, there is no way to confirm whether the device is FDA approved, investigational or registered."

"The patients in the US are at major risk and the FDA is doing nothing to help the patients."
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As I said, Maryland TV is plastered with injury law firms gathering patients that are victims of this horrendous system.  As we all know, the injury lawyers get all the money in the end and the patients are harmed for life.  This is what a third world nation looks like----citizens cannot even seek medical help without being fearful the procedures are happening in their interests and not for profit.

In Maryland, the Maryland Assembly has passed laws that make it as hard as possible for the public to seek justice in medical malpractice and it does not require medical malpractice insurance---meaning doctors prone to bad practices would love to come to Maryland.  NONE OF THESE POLICIES ARE DEMOCRATIC----YET MARYLAND IS CALLED A 'PROGRESSIVE' STATE.  It is a neo-liberal/neo-con state.





New Jersey Personal Injury Blog FDA Failed to Properly Test Medical Devices before Approval

By Blume Donnelly Fried Forte Zerres & Molinari
on March 9, 2011

CNN
recently reported that a review of recall data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that the majority of the 113 Class III medical devices that were recalled between 2005 and 2009 for serious, life-threatening dangers, did not undergo the FDA’s more rigorous pre-market approval process, also referred to as “PMA.” Instead, the agency cleared the devices using a less stringent process known as the 510(k) process, under which clinical testing is not required. This discovery brings to light that many medical products that were given clearance, such as automated external defibrillators (AEDs), artificial hip joints, and heart valves, were marketed to and used on consumers without undergoing clinical testing in advance.

Under FDA policy, all Class III devices are required to undergo the PMA premarket approval process, including clinical testing, in order to determine if “sufficient valid scientific evidence” is found that the medical device is safe for its intended use.

However, a report from the Government Accountability Office in 2009 discovered that approximately 66 percent of all Class III devices were approved using the less demanding 510(k) process instead of the PMA because it was “less burdensome”. An additional study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Archives of Internal Medicine, found that approximately 71 percent of the 113 medical devices recalled between 2005 and 2009 were given approval through the 510(k) process.

Many believe the reasons for the shortcomings in testing are because the agency does not have the necessary funding and staff to conduct a clinical study for all medical devices requiring same. While a medical device’s manufacturer does pay for a fraction of the expenses related to a PMA approval, the majority of the cost falls to the FDA, which is under-funded. Choosing to approve a medical device under the 510(k) process is much less expensive.

The FDA has admitted that the 510(k) approval process needs to be toughened, and has stated it intends to take action to improve the process in 2011. Additionally, the FDA has stated it will evaluate all remaining Class III devices slated for the 510(k) process to determine if the device should undergo the PMA process. As a result, there may be dangerous medical devices on the market that have not received proper government approval.

If you believe that a defectively designed or manufactured medical device may have seriously affected your health or the health of a loved one, contact a New Jersey product liability attorney at Blume Goldfaden. Call 973-635-5400 to schedule a no-cost consultation with one of our lawyers.





____________________________________________________
Keep in mind that a republican Bush slashed funding for most Federal agencies as a way to make oversight and accountability go away.  So, when Obama makes an increase of 2-3% he is doing nothing towards rebuilding these agencies.  In fact, much of the funding that makes it to these agencies is simply lost in private outsourcing with all its fraud and corruption.

When they say 'it's the sequestration and the national debt' 

WE SAY----NO, IT'S THE FAILURE TO RECOVER TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD THIS LAST DECADE.

This funding status quo simply keeps our Federal agencies in a mode of 'doing no harm' to corporate profits.

STOP ELECTING NEO-LIBERALS!  DO YOU HEAR YOUR POLS SHOUTING TO BRING BACK TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD!  MARYLAND POLS LOVE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION SO THERE IS NOT A WORD


Once again republican think tanks are crying foul but they are the ones behind all of the dismantling of these agencies creating the fraud and corruption and loss of trillions of dollars.  Their figures are right---$900 billion from Medicare will be taken from the patient's care and not hospital profits.


Reaction to Obama's 2015 HHS funding:

Various health care providers and organizations have responded to the proposal, with many calling for increased funding for health-related agencies and initiatives.

The Federation of American Hospitals criticized proposed funding cuts to Medicare, with FAH President and CEO Chip Kahn saying they would "further threate[n] seniors' access to vital hospital services" and noting that both Republicans and Democrats oppose such reductions (Demko/Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 3/4). According to National Journal, the group is hoping to persuade Congress against the cuts by touting a new study estimating over $900 billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years through cost cutting resulting from changes to the way providers deliver care (Ritger, National Journal, 3/4).

American Hospital Association President and CEO Richard Umbdenstock said the proposal contained some "problematic policies" that would hurt hospitals' abilities to improve the health care system and place patients' at risk of losing access to services (Demko/Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 3/4).

Kasey Thompson, president and chair of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA and vice president of policy, planning and communications for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, called for additional FDA funding, saying, "Given that FDA regulates about 25 cents of every dollar of the gross domestic product, it does not have enough money to fulfill its public health mission."

Alliance for a Stronger FDA Deputy Executive Director Steven Grossman added that the group plans to ask Congress for more FDA funding (Lee, Modern Healthcare, 3/4).

The proposed increase in NIH funding also generated backlash. Research! America President Mary Woolley in a statement said that the U.S. "simply cannot sustain [its] research ecosystem, combat costly and deadly diseases ... and create quality jobs with anemic funding levels that threaten the health and prosperity of Americans," adding, "These funding levels jeopardize our global leadership in science -- in effect ceding leadership to other nations as they continue to invest in strong research and development infrastructures" (Viebeck, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 3/4).




_____________________________________________________


This is how crazy things have gotten.  California is indeed ground zero for this university as corporation model starting with Stanford and now consuming all public universities.  Remember, California had the best education system in the world----I had the pleasure of attending California schools at all levels-----but this move to corporatize has ruined the entire higher education system and they are now creating the tiered higher ed as they are in Maryland with working and middle class being tracked into vocational K-career college.

This is critical to health care because these large universities whether public or private are the source of public protections for health.  If the data is corrupt at universities-----no one is watching the health corporations either.  So, if you think funding universities by making them corporations is a good idea----THINK OF ALL THE FACTORS CONNECTED TO THIS.

It is interesting to note that Governor Brown-----who will try to run for President as a 'progressive' on his old record as a real progressive in the 1970s---appointed Napolitano-----HEAD OF HOMELAND SECURITY WITH NO EDUCATION BACKGROUND as Chancellor of California Higher Education School System.

THE CONTINUED USE OF INSIDERS FILLING APPOINTED POSITIONS AT ALL LEVELS.


When they talk of 'start ups from this university research' they do not tell you that 9 times out of ten those start-ups that are successful are simply absorbed into global corporations.  IT IS A PIPELINE.  Keep in mind that these corporate universities sell this corporate structure as funding schools but it is this structure that has student tuition sky high subsidizing this research and patenting process.  Maryland has done the same to its universities as this article shows in California and it is where all public funding for education is now going.  Johns Hopkins has had so much money funneled to it from our Congress neo-liberals that it owns much of the land in Baltimore's downtown and city center and it is all simply businesses connected to Hopkins.  THIS IS HOW YOU BUILD A GLOBAL CORPORATION THAT CONTROLS A REGION----

Patent-reform legislation spurs controversy among universities

Tina Pai/Staff By Tahmina Achekzai

Last Updated April 28, 2014

In 1994, Michael Doyle, then the director of a computer lab at UCSF, patented software that allowed doctors to view embryos online — the first “interactive” application on the web.

A few years later, the University of California licensed a patent to a company Doyle created called Eolas, which, claiming rights to the idea of embedding interactive content on web pages, sued Microsoft in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The university, a co-plaintiff in the case, took a $30.4-million cut in what is now widely regarded as a classic case of “patent trolling.”

This week, Congress is marking up legislation in hopes of combating patent trolls — companies that purchase patents not to commercialize a product but to reap licensing revenue.

The UC system holds nearly 4,000 U.S. patents that have led to thousands of inventions and hundreds of startup companies. The University of California leads the nation’s universities in patent development, but pending legislation may change that.

Politicians vs. trolls

Traditionally, researchers apply for patents that give them full ownership of their idea or invention and then sell the rights to outside companies, hoping to take their discoveries from the lab to industry. But when the inventions seem to have little hope for commercialization, “patent trolls” may step into the picture.

Trolls, more formally known as patent-assertion entities, will find and subsequently sue businesses they accuse of infringing patent rights. Serving as a middleman between inventors and businesses, trolls collect licensing fees, a portion of which the inventors may receive.

According to the 2013 White House Patent Assertion and U.S. Innovation Report, suits filed by patent trolls tripled from 2010 to 2012, at which point they comprised 62 percent of all patent-infringement cases.

Experts say that because it costs millions of dollars to ascertain what a patent covers, companies faced with these lawsuits may choose to settle rather than to fight.

In November, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced a bill hoping to increase transparency within the patent system and to curb the emerging trend of patent trolling.

The bill would require any patentee who has filed a lawsuit to disclose any financial interests. It also requires the Federal Trade Commission to exercise authority over the misuse of demand letters: notices to companies claiming restitution for breach of license.

Academic qualms

Though the legislation is designed to serve as a deterrent to patent trolls attempting to sue other parties, universities worry it will invariably impede their efforts to enforce their own patent rights.

Earlier this month, the Association of American Universities — of which the UC system is a part — signed a joint letter addressed to Leahy outlining its concerns. The letter was also signed by the Association of University Technology Managers, made up of representatives from “technology transfer” offices at many universities who guard university research.

“Much of the legislation that is currently under discussion in Washington goes far beyond what is necessary simply to prevent that abuse of the patent system,” said David Winwood, the vice president for advocacy at the Association of University Technology Managers.

Of particular concern among both universities and members of Congress is the possible addition of a fee-shifting provision, which would require the losing party in a lawsuit to cover fees and expenses incurred by the opposing party.

Carol Mimura, UC Berkeley’s assistant vice chancellor of intellectual property and research industry alliances, explained that the threat of incurring additional fees could discourage universities from filing lawsuits against actual infringers.

“The provision favors large, deep pockets, not the little guys,” Mimura said in an email. “Big companies and deep pockets create a David and Goliath situation that discourages investment, as opposed to encouraging it.”

While the university protects its employees, co-inventors are sometimes undergraduate students who are not protected and would have to pay for the damages. As a result, she said, they may be discouraged from filing patents — and, consequently, inhibited from advancing “innovation.”

Gary Falle, UC’s associate vice president for federal government relations, argues Congress needs to take a more “balanced approach” when addressing patent abuses.

“The UC is the lead in the nation in the number of patents (awarded annually), and we want to make sure that is protected,” said Falle. “We just want to make sure that the patents the university is awarded are able to move into technology, commercialization and innovation.”


Trimming the troll

Yet Robin Feldman, a law professor at UC Hastings College of the Law who researches patent trolling issues extensively, believes the legislation is vital to the abused patent system.

Feldman suggested universities might have underlying incentives in opposing the legislation. She noted that universities, while not filing patent lawsuits directly, may deliberately ally with nonpracticing entities to increase revenue.

“They do appear to be feeding the patent trolls at least to some extent,” she said. “There’s so much pressure on universities to find funding sources, and it is difficult for them to resist the temptation to sell to those who won’t make any products.”

Still, according to Mimura, UC Berkeley only licenses patents to commercial entities in accordance with university patent policy. And, despite what history may suggest, Mimura said the University of California does indeed support patent reform and has even reached out to Sen. Dianne Feinstein thanking her for support of patent reform.

In regard to current legislation efforts, the UC system only wants to shift the discussion in the right direction, Falle said.

“We believe that addressing bad behavior by stopping those who send multiple demand letters in the hope of extracting fees out of fear will be the focus of reform — not shutting down the entire patent system that is the goose that laid the golden egg,” Mimura said.

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

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