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May 14th, 2014

5/14/2014

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IF OBAMA ISN'T MAKING EXECUTIVE DECISIONS TO BUILD STRUCTURES TO END SOCIAL SECURITY----myRA, MEDICARE AND MEDICAID----THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT-----HE IS BUILDING THE STRUCTURES FOR IMMIGRATION NEEDED TO MOVE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT FORWARD.......THE HIGH-SKILLED GREEN CARD POLICY AND GENERAL LIFTING OF IMMIGRATION NUMBERS EACH YEAR.

WE LOVE IMMIGRANTS BUT NOT POLICY THAT SEEKS TO LEAVE ALL WORKERS  EXPLOITED AND IMPOVERISHED.

Do you hear your labor unions shouting and fighting this? 


As republicans pretend to fight this high-skilled immigration reform policy now fast-tracked by Obama remember again-----the immigration policy that allows high-skilled immigrants only is a republican policy so it is not the democratic party moving these bad policies forward----it is neo-liberals and republicans.



As we see below, NPR's favorite 'good billionaire' Bill Gates is now being exposed as really, really bad.  When he isn't off pushing the Trans Pacific Trade Pact that seeks to end public health and health care subsidy so his PHARMA can maximize profits----ending public education so his education tech industries and selling of computers for online lessons can maximize profits---and while at it let's garner a majority share of militarized food with the Monsanto/Blackwater corporate merger. 
WHAT A GUY.

He just keeps on taking and killing democratic societies all for market share.  Below you see he and his tech buddies are now building an immigration policy that kills not only US workers, but Hispanic workers already in the US and even the foreign grads indentured to jobs that exploit them.

Obama just used Executive privilege yet again to move immigration reform to only high-skilled immigrants and their spouses.  So, he is single-handedly putting into place the structures for Trans Pacific Trade Pact while your neo-liberal incumbents are silent. 
Remember, TPP allows global corporations to bring people from developing nations to work in the US under the conditions of that third world nation....say India or China.  This is especially true for low-wage immigrant workers but it affects high-skilled workers as well.  The path to citizenship never comes for 99% as buying your citizenship is now the policy and the cost is prohibitive.

These are not democratic policies----they are neo-liberal and neo-con policies meant only to maximize profit at the expense of further impoverishing workers.


Remember as well each time the President uses Executive privilege.....we move away from having a legislative branch.  Clinton started using this once rarely used executive practice, Bush increased the use, and now Obama is moving the most controversial polices through this practice.  If your pol is not shouting loudly about how bad this is for US democracy no matter what party does it----they are not working for you and me.

THOSE HISPANICS WHO THINK NEO-LIBERALS ARE WORKING FOR THEM----THINK AGAIN.  ALL MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.

The foreign grads falling into these high-skill jobs become indentured into often the most menial of jobs.
__________________
STEM labor shortages?: Microsoft report distorts reality ...www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages... 
__________________
We had a glut of nursing staff last decade as college students were told nursing would always be a strong field for hiring.  Then, neo-liberals and neo-cons starting bringing immigrant labor over to the US to take those health care jobs.  Now we have high unemployment for nursing and professional health positions.

The American people and especially progressive labor and justice love immigrants and work to protect their rights as workers just as all workers.  Immigrants already in the US must see that flooding the labor market now while unemployment is at 36% and hirer for Hispanic workers already in the US-----that this kind of immigration policy means to hurt all workers.


So, when we hear the mantra of STEM in K-12 and we see a steady stream of health care and tech industry layoffs and grads with no jobs-----we are not getting accurate data. 

This article does a good job showing that media is deliberately misinforming the American people and research data is being skewed by corporate universities and a corporate run government.


Columnist Diane Ravitch: Why Are So Many STEM Graduates Unemployed?

By Wired Academic on July 24, 2012


By Diane Ravitch, Guest Columnist

How many times have we heard the President, the Secretary of Education, and leaders of corporate America tell us that we must produce more scientists? That there are thousands of jobs unfilled because we don’t have qualified college graduates to fill them? That our future depends on pumping billions into STEM education?

I always believe them. Science, engineering, technology and mathematics are fields critical for the future.

But why then, according to an article in the Washington Post, are well-educated scientists unable to find jobs?

Three years ago, USA Today reported  high unemployment among scientists and engineers.

Some experts in science say there is no shortage of scientists, but there is a shortage of good jobs for scientists.

Some say that the pool of qualified graduates in science and engineering is “several times larger” than the pool of jobs available for them. And here is a shocker: The quality of STEM education has NOT declined:

Despite this nearly universal support for upgrading science and math education, our review of the data leads us to conclude that, while the educational pipeline would benefit from improvements, it is not as dysfunctional as believed. Today’s American high school students actually test as well or better than students two decades ago. Further, today’s students take more science and math classes, and a large number of students with strong science and math backgrounds graduate from U.S. high schools and start college in S&E fields of study. 

Why don’t our leaders tell us the truth? Why don’t they tell us that many of our highly trained young people will not find good jobs in research labs or universities or anywhere else?

I have said before on this blog that the economy is changing in ways that no one understands, least of all me.

Over the past century, whenever reformers told the schools to prepare students for this career or that vocation, the policymakers and school leaders were woefully inadequate at predicting which jobs would be available ten years later. When the automobile was first invented, there were still plenty of students taking courses to prepare them to be blacksmiths. The same story could be repeated over the years. We are not good at prognosticating.

My own predilection is to believe that all young people should get a full and rounded general education, which will teach them to think and evaluate new information. I prefer an education that includes the usual range of disciplines, not because of tradition but because each of them is valuable for our lives.

We don’t know what the future will bring, but we all need to learn the skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. We don’t know what jobs will be available in ten or twenty years, but we all need to study history, so that we possess knowledge of our society and others; we need an understanding of science so we know how the world works; we need to be involved in the arts, because it is an expression of the human spirit and enables us to think deeply about ourselves and our world. I could make the same claims for other disciplines. The claim must be based on enduring needs, not the needs of the job market, because the only certainty is that the  job market will be different in the future.

Ravitch is a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University. This post first appeared on DianeRavitch.net

________________________________________
This is a long article but a good one.  You see Mikulski's office is targeted as Johns Hopkins is the worst for exploiting foreign green card professionals.  I have a friend here in Baltimore working at Hopkins from India left with the mind-numbing tasks of repetitive lab tests garnering only a grad assistant wage and after years in this position------no hope in site for citizenship or a better job.  Hopkins is of course now a corporation so is using this Indian immigrant purely to maximize profit.  Meanwhile------unemployment across America and in Maryland is 36% and as you see US STEM grads are the largest group.

Remember, this immigration reform was never about giving justice to Hispanic workers already in the US.....neo-liberals are trying to create a third world system of deeply impoverished professional workers-----even doctors, lawyers, and Indian Chiefs are impoverished in the third world.  There is more to these policies.  When heading for the third world status those in power always surround themselves with administrative professional that are not citizens----they have no rights as US citizens and are kept in an indentured state with fear of deportation to maintain loyalty as conditions worsen in the US.  This is why you always see an exodus of immigrant workers fleeing a collapsing dictatorship. 

AUTOCRATIC SOCIETIES NEED LOTS OF PEOPLE WORKING KEY JOBS HAVING NO RIGHTS AS CITIZENS.


Meanwhile, the Hispanic workers fighting for REAL immigration reform are left with no hope for the pathway to citizenship or enforcement of labor laws to their benefit-----because abuse of labor is the goal of neo-liberals and republicans.

AS LONG AS WE HAVE NEO-LIBERALS AND NOT PROGRESSIVE LABOR AND JUSTICE RUNNING IN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES!  STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PARTY CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES----LET'S REBUILD THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE!



'But many leading STEM-labor-force experts agree that the great majority of stem workers entering the country contribute less to innovative breakthroughs or job growth for Americans than to the bottom lines of the companies and universities that hire them'.


12:00 AM - May 1, 2013

It doesn’t add up A science writer questions the conventional wisdom of US-born STEM workers

By Beryl Lieff Benderly  Columbia Journalism Review


Homegrown President Obama, seen here visiting at technical college in North Carolina, supports bringing more foreign STEM workers to the US, despite high unemployment among US workers. (Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images)

In late February, Christine Miller and Sona Shah went to the Capitol Hill office of Miller’s senator, Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, to talk about immigration reform and the job market for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers. Miller, an American-born MIT grad with a PhD in biochemistry, had 20 years of research experience when Johns Hopkins University laid her off in 2009 because of funding cuts. Shah, an Indian-born US citizen with degrees in physics and engineering, had been laid off earlier by a computer company that was simultaneously hiring foreign workers on temporary visas. Proposals to increase admission of foreign stem workers to the US, Miller and Shah told Erin Neill, a member of Mikulski’s staff, would worsen the already glutted stem labor market.

According to Miller, Neill told them this is not the argument “she normally encounters on this issue.” The conventional wisdom is that tech companies and universities can’t find enough homegrown scientists to hire, so they need to import them from China and India. Neill suggested to Miller and Shah that “we would have more impact if we represented a large, organized group.”


Miller and Shah are, in fact, part of a large group. Figures from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, and other sources indicate that hundreds of thousands of STEM workers in the US are unemployed or underemployed. But they are not organized, and their story is being largely ignored in the debate over immigration reform.


The two main STEM-related proposals currently part of that debate in Congress would increase the number of temporary high-skill worker visas (also called guestworker visas), and give green cards to every foreign graduate of an American college with a master’s or PhD in a STEM field. Media coverage of these proposals has generally hewed, uncritically, to the unfounded notion that America isn’t producing enough native talent in the science and engineering fields to satisfy the demands of businesses and universities—and that foreign-born workers tend to be more entrepreneurial and innovative than their American-born counterparts. Allowing more stem immigrants, the story goes, is key to adding jobs to the beleaguered US economy.

It is a narrative that has been skillfully packaged and promoted by well-funded advocacy groups as essential to the national interest, but in reality it reflects the economic interests of tech companies and universities.

High-tech titans like Bill Gates, Steve Case, and Mark Zuckerberg are repeatedly quoted proclaiming a dearth of talent that imperils the nation’s future. Politicians, advocates, and articles and op-eds published by media outlets—including The New York Times, Forbes, CNN, Slate, and others—invoke such foreign-born entrepreneurs as Google’s Sergey Brin or Yahoo’s Jerry Yang, as if arrival from abroad (Brin and Yang came to the US as children) explains the success of the companies they founded . . . with partners who are US natives. Journalists endorse studies that trumpet the job-creating skills of these entrepreneurs from abroad, while ignoring the weaknesses that other scholars find in the research.

Meanwhile, The National Science Board’s biennial book, Science and Engineering Indicators, consistently finds that the US produces several times the number of STEM graduates than can get jobs in their fields. Recent reports from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, and the American Chemical Society warn that overproduction of STEM PhDs is damaging America’s ability to recruit native-born talent, and advise universities to limit the number of doctorates they produce, especially in the severely glutted life sciences. In June 2012, for instance, the American Chemical Society’s annual survey found record unemployment among its members, with only 38 percent of new PhDs, 50 percent of new master’s graduates, and 33 percent of new bachelor’s graduates in fulltime jobs.
Overall, STEM unemployment in the US is more than twice its pre-recession level, according to congressional testimony by Ron Hira, a science-labor-force expert at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

And yet, a bill introduced in Congress last year that would have heeded the NIH recommendation by limiting visas for biomedical scientists was attacked in a Forbes article that suggested it could delay progress on the search for a cure for cancer by keeping out able researchers.

* * * Foreign-born scientists and engineers have, of course, contributed significantly to American society as innovators and entrepreneurs—and the nation’s immigration policy certainly needs repair. But many leading STEM-labor-force experts agree that the great majority of stem workers entering the country contribute less to innovative breakthroughs or job growth for Americans than to the bottom lines of the companies and universities that hire them.


Temporary visas allow employers to pay skilled workers below-market wages, and these visas are valid only for specific jobs. Workers are unable to take another job, making them akin to indentured servants. Universities also use temporary visas to recruit international graduate students and postdoctoral scientists, mainly from China, to do the gruntwork for professors’ grants. “When the companies say they can’t hire anyone, they mean that they can’t hire anyone at the wage they want to pay,” said Jennifer Hunt, a Rutgers University labor economist, at last year’s Mortimer Caplin Conference on the World Economy.

Research by Hira, Norman Matloff of the University of California-Davis, Richard Freeman of Harvard, and numerous others has shown how temporary visas have allowed employers to flood STEM labor markets and hold down the cost of tech workers and scientists doing grant-supported university research. Wages in the IT industry rose rapidly throughout the 1990s, but have been essentially flat or declining in the past decade, which coincides with the rising number of guestworkers on temporary visas.

In his new book, Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs, Peter Cappelli, a human-resources specialist at the Wharton School, concludes that companies’ reported hiring difficulties don’t arise from a shortage of qualified workers, but from rigid recruitment practices that use narrow categories and definitions and don’t take advantage of the applicants’ full range of abilities. Companies so routinely evade protections in the visa system designed to prevent displacement of American citizens that immigration lawyers have produced videos about how it is done. For instance, tech companies that import temporary workers, mainly recent graduates from India, commonly discard more expensive, experienced employees in their late 30s or early 40s, often forcing them, as Ron Hira and other labor-force researchers note, to train their replacements as they exit. Age discrimination, Hira says, is “an open secret” in the tech world.

The temporary-visa system also facilitates the offshoring of STEM work, particularly in the IT field, to low-wage countries. Outsourcing companies use the temporary visas to bring workers to the US to learn the jobs that the client company is planning to move to temp workers’ home country. The 10 firms with the largest number of H-1B visas, the most common visa for high-skill workers, are all in the business of shipping work overseas, and former Indian commerce minister Kamil Nath famously labeled the H-1B “the outsourcing visa.”


These practices have helped to reduce incomes and career prospects in STEM fields drastically enough to produce what UC Davis’s Norman Matloff calls “an internal brain drain” of talented Americans to other, more promising career opportunities such as Wall Street, healthcare, or patent law.


The proposal before Congress to automatically grant green cards to all STEM students with graduate degrees—regardless of field, origin, or quality—would exacerbate the problem of already overcrowded markets,
according to new research by Hal Salzman of Rutgers University, Daniel Keuhn of American University, and B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University. It also would benefit universities facing tough financial times by dramatically increasing the allure of American graduate schools, and thus the income potential to universities. And, as Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said at a 2011 hearing,
it would “further erode the opportunities of American students. Universities would in essence become visa mills.”

Academic departments generally determine how many graduate students they admit, or postdocs they hire, based on the teaching and research workforce they need, not on the career opportunities awaiting young scientists. Unlike companies, universities have access to unlimited temporary-worker visas. This allows universities to hire skilled lab workers and pay them very low, “trainee” wages. Postdocs are an especially good deal for professors running labs because they don’t require tuition, which must be paid out of the professors’ grants, notes Paula Stephan, a labor economist at Georgia State University, in her book How Economics Shapes Science.

* * * Immigrants constitute the nation’s “only shot at getting a growing economy,” because they “start more jobs than natives,” declared New York Times columnist David Brooks on Meet the Press in February. “Every additional 100 foreign-born workers in science and technology fields is associated with 262 additional jobs for US natives,” he had written in the Times, adding that “a quarter of new high-tech companies with more than $1 million in sales were also founded by the foreign-born.”

These claims, cited by Brooks and many others, arise from a body of research that has been the subject of scholarly dispute—though you’d never know it from the media coverage of this issue. The overwhelming majority of coverage presents the conclusions reached in studies like the one conducted by Duke University’s Vivek Wadhwa, who publishes widely in popular media and speaks frequently on immigration issues. About a quarter of the 2,054 engineering and technology companies that responded to Wadhwa’s telephone survey said they had a “key founder”—defined as a chief technology officer or a CEO—who was foreign-born. Extrapolating from that figure, the study credits immigrant-founded companies with employing 450,000 people nationally in 2005.

But a nationwide survey by political scientist David Hart and economist Zoltan Acs of George Mason University reached a different conclusion.
In a 2011 piece in Economic Development Quarterly, Hart and Acs note that between 40 and 75 percent of new jobs are created by no more than 10 percent of new businesses—the so-called high-impact firms that have rapidly expanding sales and employment. In their survey of high-impact technology firms, only 16 percent had at least one foreign-born founder, and immigrants constituted about 13 percent of total founders—a figure close to the immigrant share of the general population. But the more fundamental problem with Wadhwa’s study, Hart and Acs suggest, is that it does not report the total number of founders at a given company, making conclusions about immigrants’ overall contribution impossible to quantify.

Evaluating the issues of statistics and sample selection that divide the academic researchers is beyond the purview of most general media, but informing readers that reputable researchers reached different conclusions is not. Though real, the immigrant role in high-tech entrepreneurship could be considerably less dramatic than many writers claim. Research on Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in 1999 by AnnaLee Saxenian, for example, found that 36 percent of high-tech companies owned by Chinese immigrants were doing nothing more groundbreaking than putting together computers for sale from components.

* * * As Erin Neill, of Senator Mikulski’s staff, pointed out, no one in the immigration debate speaks effectively for US-born STEM workers. The IT world’s libertarian ethos, the relative poverty among young scientists and their unemployed and underemployed peers, and a fear of antagonizing present or potential employers all hamper efforts to organize these workers
. National scientific associations and advocacy groups sponsored by industry and universities, meanwhile, represent the interests of those who benefit from the system—tenured faculty, university administrators, and company executives, including those at companies whose donations support scholarly conferences and other association activities. These organizations and their lobbyists frame their policy arguments with feel-good abstractions about the inherent value of science and research and innovation, suggesting they are a panacea for America’s economic ills.

Which brings us to the story of Xianmin Shane Zhang, a software engineer in Minnesota. According to his LinkedIn page, Zhang earned his BS in engineering in his native China, one MS in physics at Southern Illinois University, and another in computer science at the University of Houston. His profile next lists a series of IT jobs at US companies. In 2005, 43-year-old Zhang was one of a group of workers over 40 who sued their former employer, Best Buy, for age discrimination, when the company laid them off after outsourcing their jobs. The suit ended in an undisclosed settlement.

After being laid off by Best Buy, Zhang eventually fulfilled the rosy forecast of those advocating increased STEM-worker immigration by becoming an entrepreneur, though hardly following the innovation and jobs-for-Americans script. His Z&Z Information Services in St. Paul helps US companies outsource their IT and programming needs to China. “Giving green cards to foreign students can lead to offshoring as well,” notes Norman Matloff, who uncovered this tale. That’s because young scientists and engineers from abroad get older, and wind up facing the same age discrimination and glutted market as their native-born colleagues. Why isn’t that reported, too?


______________________________________
Below you see Pritzker-----Hyatt heiress as Obama's Commerce Secretary.  She is of course the face of impoverishment and workplace abuse of many immigrant workers coming through her hotel chain.

This Senate Immigration bill was never about a pathway to citizenship or even Hispanic immigrants....it was always about a market-based immigration policy that seeks only to lower US global corporation's labor costs using immigrant labor mostly from Asian nations and mostly at the high-skilled level.  So, the millions of Hispanic immigrants who are always made the face of these immigration reforms are being relegated to the same underserved and underfunded schools as US children having little opportunity to access the higher education paths needed to land anything other than poverty jobs.

The foreign graduates that are allowed to stay are trapped in an indentured state with low wages never truly advancing from the most menial of jobs in the high-skilled areas.  At the article above made clear------there are fewer than 20% of foreign grads that go on to building viable corporations that contribute to the US economy.

The other side of this is that these foreign grads now allowed to work in US corporations are hired to work on overseas expansions of global corporations giving little value to the US economy------and in fact contributing to the stagnation of the economy by displacing thousands of US citizens graduating with STEM degrees. 

OBAMA AND NEO-LIBERALS ARE DELIBERATELY CREATING THE CONDITIONS TO KEEP UNEMPLOYMENT HIGH FOR US WORKERS AND GRADUATES LEFT WITH TONS OF STUDENT LOAN DEBT AND WITH A WALL STREET STUDENT LOAN COLLECTION PROCESS-----STUDENTS ARE NOT ONLY UNEMPLOYED----THEY ARE PREY TO WALL STREET FEES, FINES, AND HARASSMENT.


Obama to ease rules for foreign high-skilled workers

Alan Gomez, USA TODAY
5:48 p.m. EDT May 6, 2014(Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images)


The Obama administration wants to let nearly 100,000 spouses of foreigners working in high-tech fields to work here as well in a move critics say is harmful to nearly 10 million jobless Americans.

The administration also hopes to ease the process for foreign professors and researchers who are trying to extend their stays in America.

The proposed changes, announced Tuesday by Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, come as high-tech companies and university officials continue pressing Congress and the Obama administration to ease restrictions that they say make it difficult to import highly skilled foreign workers.

Groups like FWD.us, created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and other tech organizations are lobbying Congress for expanded visa programs they use to hire foreign workers.

Mayorkas said the proposed rule changes keep America competitive as more countries offer incentives to attract the workers.

"The proposed rules announced today provide important support to U.S. businesses while also supporting economic growth here in the U.S.," he said. "This enhances our country's competitiveness to attract skilled workers from other countries."

But critics accuse the pro-visa groups of wanting cheap labor, and say Obama should be helping U.S. citizens get jobs rather than making it easier for foreigners to expand their employment opportunities in the United States.

"The U.S. already provides businesses with 700,000 temporary guest workers every year to compete against unemployed Americans, in addition to the annual flow of 1 million permanent legal immigrants," said Stephen Miller, a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who has opposed efforts to import more foreign workers.

"The administration's unilateral decision to increase that number will hurt already-struggling American workers."

The proposed changes will be published in the Federal Register this week and then be open to 60 days of public comment before the administration can implement them.

The first proposed change affects holders of H-1B visas, which are granted to foreigners trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Current rules allow their spouses to move to the U.S. with them, but restricts them from working.

The new rule would allow the spouses of those H-1B holders who are in the process of applying for a green card to find work.

Mayorkas estimated that 97,000 people could benefit from that rule change in the first year, and 30,000 each year after.

The second proposed change focuses on a series of visa holders who come from Chile, Singapore, Australia and the Northern Mariana Islands. Current rules allow workers from those countries who have at least a bachelor's degree in a specialized field to extend their stay, but they must produce certain evidence of the success they've had. The proposed change would extend the time those workers could stay in the U.S. and allow them to use new forms of evidence to win their stay in the U.S.

Microsoft vice president of government affairs Fred Humphries said they remain committed to getting a broader immigration fix through Congress. But in the mean time, he said the two "thoughtful, commonsense changes" would help them recruit abroad.

"These changes will improve American competitiveness for the best talent in the world," Humphries said.

Critics say the changes are not being implemented for economic reasons.


"The administration's political motivation in announcing this change now is to throw a bone to the tech firms to keep them in the (comprehensive immigration reform) camp and not try to cut a separate deal with Republicans," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of immigration.

Mayorkas and Pritzker said the changes will help U.S. business and universities retain the workers they need, but they stressed that Congress needs to find a broader immigration solution to address all the deficiencies in the system.

"As the president said in his State of the Union Address, we are committed to achieving a lasting solution," Pritzker said. "Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle can make this happen."


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March 19th, 2014

3/19/2014

0 Comments

 
AS I SPEAK ABOUT EDUCATION REFORM THAT HAS MANY FOREIGN LANGUAGES TAUGHT IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS....REMEMBER, BEING FORCED TO EMIGRATE OVERSEAS FOR WORK IS NOT PROGRESSIVE POLICY AND THIS IS FOR WHAT EDUCATION REFORMERS ARE PLACING THIS EMPHASIS ON FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.  It sounds progressive, but the goals for US citizens are regressive.

IF YOUR POLITICIANS ARE NOT SHOUTING AND EDUCATING YOU AS TO WHAT TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT (TPP) AND NEO-LIBERALISM HAVE AS A GOAL---THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS.


Regarding corporate BBC/NPR/APM report on the state of Ireland:

From Wall Street's view Ireland was a success in the scheme of sucking all public wealth from a nation and then having the public pay to replace all the money off-shored by the looters.  I liked as well the emphasis on the fact that Ireland's young people are now EMIGRANTS......as a result.  Ireland's elected pols subjected its citizens to the worst of austerity and indeed took most public wealth in the country as is happening in the US today.  Remember, Iceland nationalized its banks and made the looters pay and is far better off than any nation that did not do that.  DO YOU EVER HEAR OF ICELAND'S SUCCESS?

I would like to look at this one case that mirrors all nation's efforts to address the massive looting by corporations of national Treasuries and public wealth.  Are Irish really playing to TROIKA or have their voices been silenced?

Another important piece from this report was the push of youth towards emigration.  That is indeed the plan for neo-liberals------empire-building means citizens are exported to overseas jobs to live as ex-pats after all.  So, when Maryland and the Federal education reformers say we need lots of foreign language in elementary schools-----they are not being progressive-----they are preparing our children for becoming ex-pats-----emigrants.

RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU WANT YOUR CHILD'S FUTURE TO HOLD ONLY AN OPTION OF WORKING OVERSEAS?  NO ONE.  EVEN IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL GRADS DO NOT WANT THIS.  Raise you hand if you want a strong public education system that prepares people to work in a domestic economy fueled with US families as consumers?  EVERYONE.  See the disconnect?


NEO-LIBERALS ARE PREPARING TO MAKE OUR CHILDREN TOOLS OF EMPIRE BUILDING BY SENDING THEM OVERSEAS AND LIVING AS EX-PATS JUST AS BBC DESCRIBED IS HAPPENING IN IRELAND.

Who will be staying in the US?  With Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) citizens who will live as Chinese citizens did while US corporations used China for offshore factory work.



The Bank Guarantee That Bankrupted Ireland


Posted on Nov 2, 2013 kevin dooley (CC BY 2.0)
By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt

This piece first appeared at Web of Debt.

The Irish have a long history of being tyrannized, exploited, and oppressed—from the forced conversion to Christianity in the Dark Ages, to slave trading of the natives in the 15th and 16th centuries, to the mid-nineteenth century “potato famine” that was really a holocaust. The British got Ireland’s food exports, while at least one million Irish died from starvation and related diseases, and another million or more emigrated.

Today, Ireland is under a different sort of tyranny, one imposed by the banks and the troika—the EU, ECB and IMF. The oppressors have demanded austerity and more austerity, forcing the public to pick up the tab for bills incurred by profligate private bankers.

The official unemployment rate is 13.5%—up from 5% in 2006—and this figure does not take into account the mass emigration of Ireland’s young people in search of better opportunities abroad. Job loss and a flood of foreclosures are leading to suicides. A raft of new taxes and charges has been sold as necessary to reduce the deficit, but they are simply a backdoor bailout of the banks.

At first, the Irish accepted the media explanation: these draconian measures were necessary to “balance the budget” and were in their best interests. But after five years of belt-tightening in which unemployment and living conditions have not improved, the people are slowly waking up. They are realizing that their assets are being grabbed simply to pay for the mistakes of the financial sector.

Five years of austerity has not restored confidence in Ireland’s banks. In fact the banks themselves are packing up and leaving. On October 31st, RTE.ie reported that Danske Bank Ireland was closing its personal and business banking, only days after ACCBank announced it was handing back its banking license; and Ulster Bank’s future in Ireland remains unclear.  The field is ripe for some publicly-owned banks. Banks that have a mandate to serve the people, return the profits to the people, and refrain from speculating. Banks guaranteed by the state because they are the state, without resort to bailouts or bail-ins. Banks that aren’t going anywhere, because they are locally owned by the people themselves.

The Bank Guarantee That Bankrupted Ireland

Ireland was the first European country to watch its entire banking system fail.  Unlike the Icelanders, who refused to bail out their bankrupt banks, in September 2008 the Irish government gave a blanket guarantee to all Irish banks, covering all their loans, deposits, bonds and other liabilities.

At the time, no one was aware of the huge scale of the banks’ liabilities, or just how far the Irish property market would fall.

Within two years, the state bank guarantee had bankrupted Ireland.  The international money markets would no longer lend to the Irish government.

Before the bailout, the Irish budget was in surplus. By 2011, its deficit was 32% of the country’s GDP, the highest by far in the Eurozone. At that rate, bank losses would take every penny of Irish taxes for at least the next three years.

“This debt would probably be manageable,” wrote Morgan Kelly, Professor of Economics at University College Dublin, “had the Irish government not casually committed itself to absorb all the gambling losses of its banking system.”

To avoid collapse, the government had to sign up for an €85 billion bailout from the EU-IMF and enter a four year program of economic austerity, monitored every three months by an EU/IMF team sent to Dublin.

Public assets have also been put on the auction block. Assets currently under consideration include parts of Ireland’s power and gas companies and its 25% stake in the airline Aer Lingus.

At one time, Ireland could have followed the lead of Iceland and refused to bail out its bondholders or to bow to the demands for austerity. But that was before the Irish government used ECB money to pay off the foreign bondholders of Irish banks. Now its debt is to the troika, and the troika are tightening the screws.  In September 2013, they demanded another 3.1 billion euro reduction in spending.

Some ministers, however, are resisting such cuts, which they say are politically undeliverable.

In The Irish Times on October 31, 2013, a former IMF official warned that the austerity imposed on Ireland is self-defeating. Ashoka Mody, former IMF chief of mission to Ireland, said it had become “orthodoxy that the only way to establish market credibility” was to pursue austerity policies. But five years of crisis and two recent years of no growth needed “deep thinking” on whether this was the right course of action. He said there was “not one single historical instance” where austerity policies have led to an exit from a heavy debt burden.

Austerity has not fixed Ireland’s debt problems. Belying the rosy picture painted by the media, in September 2013 Antonio Garcia Pascual, chief euro-zone economist at Barclays Investment Bank, warned that Ireland may soon need a second bailout.

___________________________________________


Ireland was suckered into this neo-liberal policy of making a state or country home to business by giving them everything they want.  In the US Texas leads in this policy and neo-liberal states like Maryland are following.  What happens when you allow this race to the bottom in attracting jobs is what happened in Ireland.  Citizens are taken on whatever ride neo-liberals want always to the detriment of labor and justice.

This is why we need to take back the democratic party-----the people's party from the neo-liberals and move back towards economic policy that allows our country stability and first world quality of life.  It is not too late as neo-liberals try to tell us.  WE SIMPLY NEED TO SHAKE THE NEO-LIBERAL BUGS FROM THE RUG!

In this article I like the DUMP THE EURO because right now the monetary capture of the TROIKA makes European unity a lose-lose situation for individual nations and their citizens.




John T. Harvey John T. Harvey Contributor
Leadership 7/08/2013   Forbes

Ireland: No More Austerity (and Dump the Euro)


Today, my wife and I are traveling to Ireland to visit the town where my grandfather grew up (and maybe have a beer or two–if we survive my driving!). The economy there presents a sad case study for the austerity programs being forced on economies around the world. Just days ago, it was reported that Ireland appears to be in recession once again (Ireland falls back into recession). How can this be given the rapid growth of the Celtic Tiger just a few years ago? Actually, this comes as no surprise to many economists because the so-called solutions being implemented are a function of the very same principles that caused the collapse in the first place. Unless a significant about-turn is executed, stagnation, emigration, and unemployment will continue for years to come.

That culprit is the philosophy of neoliberalism. It argues, among other things, that unregulated financial markets efficiently price assets, higher profits are good for everyone as they lead to increased employment and wages (the so-called trickle down effect), and governments represent a net drag on economic activity. Neoliberalism has been a powerful force driving world economic policy since the 1980s and as such laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are experiencing today. Ireland was not immune to these influences and, as a consequence, policy makers lowered corporate tax rates, made transfer pricing rules business-friendly, and adopted a largely hands-off approach to financial regulation (even when improprieties emerged). Dropping the punt in favor of the euro was also seen as a sign of economic responsibility because it linked Irish policy to that of the fiscally-prudent Germans.

What resulted was the emergence of Ireland-as-tax-haven. Yes, foreign firms were attracted and the impact was not entirely negative, but they tended to repatriate a substantial portion of their profits so that this money was available neither as a component of domestic income nor as part of the tax base. This, along with low euro interest rates that were more appropriate to the German than Irish economy, created an environment in which borrowing was easy and it appeared that no investment could fail. An asset bubble–something that neoliberalism says cannot happen in a free market since assets are priced efficiently–naturally followed. As is well known, that bubble burst in 2008.

But then, rather than decide that the earlier policies had failed, bets were doubled. In keeping with the neoliberal assumption that businesses were the key to prosperity, it was they, not the citizens, that the Irish government protected. In addition, Ireland continued to cede control of monetary policy by remaining on the euro. But most egregious of all was following the neoliberal advice of reining in “wasteful” government spending via austerity.

There is little more difficult to understand than the widespread fetish for balanced government budgets. Anyone who believes that lowering public spending will help an economy expand is woefully ignorant of both elementary accounting principles and basic economic theory. With respect to the former, by definition, a public sector deficit must equate to a private sector surplus. If you reduce one, you reduce the other. That cutting government spending means cutting private sector income is an inescapable fact (see for example Why you should love government deficits).

Furthermore, the key problem in modern economies is the inability of the private sector to consistently generate sufficient demand to hire all those willing to work. Consider this. Why did the Great Depression strike America? Was there a mass wave of laziness in the United States? Did Americans forget how to produce all the goods and services people had been consuming during the Roaring 20s? Of course not. The problem was insufficiency of demand, which is why once US government deficits grew, standards of living were able to not only recover, but reach new heights. Nor was the period thereafter one of economic collapse as the weight of government debt suffocated American firms and consumers. The fact is, the private sector needs government spending to supplement demand. The latter creates jobs and income when the former cannot.

And so it comes as little surprise that Ireland’s austerity policies have generated nothing more than…austerity. Unemployment stands at nearly 14%, an obscene level given that it was closer to 4% a mere six years ago. It’s not as if the goods and services that Irish men and women purchased back in 2007 are no longer producible. There is zero reason that the same standard of living could not be enjoyed today. The austerity policies are a monumental injustice and a crime against every Irish man, woman, and child affected by the contraction that has followed.

Recovery will only come when the Irish government rejects the neoliberal worldview and takes steps to directly employ the unemployed. This will require, at least at the outset, larger government deficits. This also means that Ireland MUST leave the euro so that fiscal policy is no longer tied to the wishes of the European Central Bank and hedge fund managers. Nations with their own currencies are never forced to borrow abroad to finance their own government’s spending (for more on how deficits actually work see The big danger in cutting the deficit). But so long as Ireland uses the euro, it will be dependent on the acquiescence of foreigners for both monetary and fiscal policy. And for far too long Ireland has been run for someone other than the Irish.

Now is the time to abandon austerity, increase spending, and leave the euro. The other path has already been tried.


__________________________________

Please go to this site and view the slide show that accompanies the article.  All of Europe's nation's are seeing their public sector dismantled as this was the goal of the massive corporate frauds sucking all wealth from nation's Treasuries.....and it is why neo-liberals here in America deliberately ignore the massive fraud and work to dismantle the public sector.

Public health and public education are the next global market say neo-liberals so give it up!  THIS IS WHY WE ARE SEEING PUBLIC HEALTH DISMANTLED BY THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.

THE PIIGS NATIONS IN EUROPE ARE SEEING THE LEVEL OF AUSTERITY THAT WILL COME TO THE US WITH THE NEXT ECONOMIC COLLAPSE ---LATER THIS YEAR.  Stability until after these primary/general elections.  This is why these 2014/2016 elections are so important for labor and justice.




Ireland austerity: Hospitals to send some patients home on weekends


Friday Aug 31, 2012 6:17 AM

By NBC News staff

Hospitals in Ireland will send some patients home at weekends after the country’s public health services announced a new round of deep cuts, according to a media report Friday.

Cash-strapped hospitals will have to shut some wards on weekends as part of an effort to cut $44 million in spending on staff and overtime by the end of 2012, according to the Irish Independent.
Slideshow: Austerity in Ireland

Adam Patterson / Panos for nbcnews.com

Irish voters share their views on austerity and the economy as they prepare to vote in a referendum on the European Union's new fiscal treaty.

Launch slideshow

 

'The country is on its knees': Ireland grapples with economic collapse

The cuts were announced Thursday by senior staff at the Health Service Executive.

The health service is facing cuts of $163 million across the service, reports said. Overall, the country's health system is running a $315 million deficit, according to the Irish Times.

Officials said the staff shortages that the cuts would cause meant that more hospitals would have to operate "five-day" wards, according to the Independent.

That meant that patients assessed as "clinically suitable" would be sent home for weekends but would return to hospitals on Mondays.

Ghost towns tell the story of Ireland's faded dream

"Every effort has been made to target areas that do not impact on direct patient or client services," the newspaper quoted Laverne McGuinness of the Health Service Executive as saying.

The disability organization Inclusion Ireland condemned the cuts.

_______________________________________

Guess who is profiting from the dismantling of the Spanish public sector and wealth.  The same people creating the massive frauds.  Guess who else?  US public and private pension funds.  Yes, labor and justice is having their pensions used to squeeze all the public wealth from these social democracies.  Know what is next?  These same US pensions will be left to prop this sovereign debt as the next crash comes and the looters are covered by these credit default swaps (CDS).  Same thing as happened with the subprime mortgage fraud and economic crash.

NEO-LIBERALS ARE SETTING THE STAGE TO DO THE SAME THING TO CITIZENS IN EUROPE AND US AS WAS DONE IN 2008.  IS YOUR POLITICIAN SHOUTING THIS LOUDLY AND STRONGLY?

Of course you do not hear that the Spanish people as with the Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Greek citizens are protesting en masse and vow to obtain justice from these fleecings.




 Portugal Default Swaps Signaling Gain From Pain: Euro Credit



By Abigail Moses and Maria Tadeo Aug 16, 2012 4:25 AM ET


Portugal’s fiscal reforms are giving investors the greatest confidence in its debt in more than a year, even as its economy struggles under the weight of austerity.

Credit-default swaps on Portugal dropped as low as 725 basis points today, from 1,515 in January and 1,237 in May. The contracts have fallen by the most of any government this year and by more than every nation except Ireland in the past month.

The implied probability of Portugal defaulting on its debt has declined to 46 percent from 73 percent as optimism that spending cuts and tax increases will get finances back on track outweighs a shrinking economy and rising unemployment. The government is trying to fulfill the terms of a 78 billion-euro ($122 million) bailout and return to bond markets next year.

“It’s the poster child of success for the European programs,” said Arif Husain, the London-based director of European fixed-income at AllianceBernstein Ltd., which oversees $407 billion and holds Portuguese bonds. “The reforms, unless something goes crazily, strangely wrong, will always lead to a short term contraction but put it on a better foot going forward.”

Investors are both buying bonds and paring bearish bets, with credit-default swaps protecting the smallest amount of Portuguese debt since at least 2009, when Bloomberg started collecting data from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. A total of 4,153 swaps contracts covering a net $4.5 billion of bonds were outstanding as of Aug. 10, down from $9.6 billion in January 2010.
Record Yields

The Portuguese 10-year yield was at 9.88 percent at 9:07 a.m. in London, down from a euro-era record of 18.29 percent on Jan. 31, while the rate on similar-maturity Spanish debt was 6.68 percent. German 10-year bunds yield 1.55 percent and Irish nine-year bonds pay 6.06 percent.

Portugal’s gross domestic product shrank for a seventh quarter in the three months through June, falling 1.2 percent from the previous period, while unemployment rose to a euro-era record of 15 percent.

The nation, which has 173 billion euros of debt outstanding, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, is seeking to narrow its budget deficit to 4.5 percent of GDP this year and 3 percent in 2013. It sold stakes in state-owned companies including utility EDP-Energias de Portugal SA and power-grid operator REN-Redes Energeticas Nacionais SA to bolster public finances.
Troika Demands

Reforms are being demanded by the so-called troika of international creditors -- the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

“Portugal has been successful in meeting the targets required by the troika, the privatization program has been quickly implemented and the country is responding to austerity,”
said Joaquim Gomes, a fund manager of Dunas Capital Gestao de Activos in Lisbon. “I’m confident that Portugal will make a successful return to the bond market in 2013.”

Gomes said he’s now buying Portugal’s 30-year bonds, after buying five-year notes starting last year. The nation’s five- year notes yield 8.38 percent, while the rate on the longer- dated securities is 8.89 percent.

In the first seven months of 2012, Portuguese debt returned 28 percent, the most of 26 markets tracked by indexes compiled by Bloomberg and the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies. German bunds rose 4.1 percent and Spanish debt fell 5.1 percent.
Irish Risk

As austerity in Portugal wins plaudits from credit investors, Irish debt risk is also falling as the government reforms its economy. The nation sold bonds last month for the first time since it sought a 67.5 billion-euro international rescue in November 2010.


Swaps on Ireland dropped as low as 449.5 basis points today, the lowest in almost two years, from a peak of 1,181 last July.

“A lot of people are extrapolating Portuguese yields toward where Ireland has gone,” Husain said.

The troika will arrive in Lisbon on Aug. 28 for its fifth review mission ensuring that the conditions attached to the bailout program remain on track.

Risks remain and a return to the bond market next year may be “premature,” according to Gilles Moec, co-chief European economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London. But the government is doing “more than enough to justify continued support from the EU,” he wrote in an Aug. 10 note to investors.
Crisis Contagion

Contagion from the crisis in neighboring Spain is one of the biggest threats to Portugal’s recovery, according to Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank in London. The Spanish government is considering requesting aid, European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn signaled in a Bloomberg Television interview this week.

“As long as Spain is in trouble, returning to the markets for Portugal will be difficult,” Schulz said. “One big advantage for Portugal is politically stability, the country has a stable government and the success of the adjustment program acts as glue.”

Portugal’s President Anibal Cavaco Silva last week called on the ECB to buy its debt to help the government return to markets. The central bank said this month it may intervene in tandem with Europe’s bailout funds if troubled nations commit to improving their economies and fiscal positions.

“The Portuguese government has exceeded expectations,” said Schulz. “The real test for the Portuguese economy will be whether or not it can return to the market in 2013 at a sustainable level.”


________________________________________

We need to see the youth in America get ahead of this next economic crash that will leave America worse than Europe in the assault of the banks on Western nations.  If you do not see that EMIGRATION is the employment future US global corporations have for US citizens.....YOU NEED TO SEE IT COMING!



Young Europeans Against Austerity Launch "Troika Party" to Run in 2014

Wed, 12/4/2013 - by Steve Rushton  Occupy.com

 

Neoliberalism erodes democracy and people’s sovereignty: this is the defiant message from the pan-European Troika Party, an irony-steeped political party that has announced its run for the European Union parliamentary elections in May 2014. The party's slogans include, “Vote for us and you will never have to vote again!” and “Democracy is not competitive!”

Set to formally launch in January 2014, the Troika Party aims to become a rallying point across the continent against the current economic direction forced by austerity policies. “The campaign is a tool to raise awareness and dismantle the current neoliberal narrative, unpacking Troika’s role in European decision making,” one of the Troika Party’s organizers, Emma Avilés, told Occupy.com.

From Madrid, Avilés works on collective projects within the 15M movement, formerly dubbed by the media as the Indignados. “There is not a focus on who to vote [for] or not voting," she added. "We aim at people rethinking the concept of democracy.”

The party takes its name from the trio alliance – the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – which has determined the bailout and austerity packages imposed on southern European countries in recent years, widely seen as devastating those nations' social programs in favor of rescuing the banks that gambled away and indebted their economies.

Due to the bailouts, Greece is regarded to be suffering the worst humanitarian disaster in peacetime Europe. Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are all suffering severely, too. The bailouts encapsulate northern Europe’s reaction to the financial crisis – a demand for belt-tightening austerity measures that include public service cuts, workers' rights reductions and slashed wages – all of which are deepening already entrenched economic inequality. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reports that austerity has caused Europe’s worst humanitarian crisis in 60 years.

As strategy goes, the Troika Party looks to build on the "Can’t pay, won’t pay" slogan which calls into legitimacy the dominant narrative of the international debt crisis: that countries are expected to pay back to the financial industry the debts that banks and corrupt, irresponsible governments were responsible for incurring. The Troika Party points out that the countries cannot afford to pay off these debts, even if they were legitimate.

“There is a big difference between understanding the crisis as something inevitable and our fault, then accepting austerity measures, the loss of rights and the undermining of democracy,” continued Avilés. “On the other hand, we want people to read it in a different light: the crisis as a 'scam' with specific actors that move the strings and benefit from it.”

The current, neoliberal economic structure is widely blamed as the key factor behind the Eurozone debt crisis –a contention forwarded inan academic paper by economists at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, which addresses how the Eurozone’s financial architecture is “protecting the interests of financial capital” and “facilitating the dominance of Germany at the expense of the Eurozone.”

In the fallout of the sub-prime mortgage crisis that spread to Europe, the scholars say investors saw Greece as an easy target and suggest the European Central Bank should have stopped “speculators playing destabilizing games.” Furthermore, the paper catalogues the ways austerity is causing poverty and recession in Europe's peripheral countries – meaning the debts are even less likely to be repaid.

"Short-selling," they contend, is one mechanism that deepened Greece’s troubles greatly. In times of crisis, speculators can short-sell financial assets and deepen a crisis by fueling panic and financial hysteria. This is done simply by borrowing assets, immediately selling them for a high price, then buying back those assets at a lower price. Looking at Greece’s crisis, now in its fifth year, the Financial Timesreports it was not only hedge funds that were responsible, but banks, insurance and pension companies which profited greatly as Greece’s debts escalated.

The Greek Credit Default Market is a key example. It was in the interests of the holders of these financial assets for Greece to default, as a default meant they got paid out. This credit default market’s value rose sharply in the run-up to Greece’s default. Worse still, from the perspective of the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe in Greece, the impacts of the credit default market created more panic sharpening the crisis.

A dominant power creates consent by shaping what people think of as “common sense,” according to the political philosopher Antonio Gramsci. In turn, Gramsci suggested that hierarchies can be challenged by undermining their myths. The notion of redefining common sense is core to the Troika Party’s platform. Alongside providing a hub for analysis, the party aims to challenge the messages that underpin neoliberalism itself.

“All around Europe we are hammered with tailored messages that are becoming mantras we unconsciously repeat, hiding the real truth about the direction Europe is taking and its consequences,” suggested Avilés. “Instead, we want to point at how Europe is walking towards a non-democratic model where finance and economic power have more say that citizens.”

The campaign aims to push serious economic and political messages in a fun and engaging way. “It will use satire, sarcasm and humor to dismantle the neoliberal narrative, backed up with visual tools and 'everyday language' to explain to Europeans what is really happening behind the curtains,” she said.

“This type of campaigning will play a key role in bringing political messages to sectors of the population that are not yet politicized, contributing to the multi-level European struggle against the 'E.U. crisis regime'.”

The Troika Party says it wants to challenge the stereotype that southern Europeans caused the crisis because they are lazy and that the southern countries spent too much on public services. The inspiration for the pan-European party came from Spain, where a version of it has already been active. It was later put forward at a convergence of members from different social and political movements who met in Amsterdam in October.

“Everyone is invited” is another slogan for the campaign, which seeks to create events, actions, reports and media that can be shared online. Party organizers purposefully left lots of space for campaigns and platforms to be tailored to each country.

The potential breadth of targets reach beyond the bailouts and austerity; the group highlights examples like the upcoming Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, and the Competitiveness Pact which could be included as points of opposition in the platform.

“On a global level there are movements fighting against austerity measures, illegitimate debt, questionable bailouts, privatizations, loss of labor, civil and human rights or attacks on natural resources, which this campaign might reach out to,” Avilés added. "We need to recover the true spirit of citizens as political actors."

- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/young-europeans-against-austerity-launch-troika-party-run-2014#sthash.pA6rnaae.dpuf
0 Comments

March 14th, 2014

3/14/2014

0 Comments

 
We want to thank Unite Here 7 for all of the hard work this union does for the workers it supports.  The leadership braved the civil disobedience of risking arrest to shout out as hard as they could about the abuse of workers in Maryland!

NEO-LIBERALS IN MARYLAND REALLY HATE WORKERS!



This rally in Annapolis was a powerful event.  The number of people coming to these rallies are growing and the general public is waking up and joining.  We thank workers who risks their jobs and retribution from employers to stand with unions as we rebuild Maryland's labor laws and protections.

Low-wage is not only a problem for those not finishing school or going for higher education.  It is happening to all workers no matter the degrees.  Remember, neo-liberals intend to create in the US what corporations had in third world countries and professionals earn little more than those impoverished at the bottom pay scale.  Doctor, lawyer, and Indian Chief earn next to nothing in third world countries.  It is the middle-class that has the power of voice and money to fight this and must stand with all citizens.  Remember,

AN INJUSTICE FOR ONE WILL BECOME AN INJUSTICE FOR ALL!


I want to shout out as well that labor and justice need to take the status of public private partnership to court as an illegal entity.  In this one case of the BWI workers and AirMall....you have a publicly owned airport run by Maryland Transportation Authority allowing private corporate national chains to act illegally.  They are allowing as well for those employees not to be paid what should be a public employee wage and benefit. You see, if the government owns the property then the rules of the state need to apply.  The idea that the state and localities are going to get away from protecting employees with these private partnerships and indeed, actually work to exploit these employees because it brings more money into government coffers all while protecting AirMall from corporate taxes is illegal. 

MARYLAND CITIZENS MUST NOT ALLOW A GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE THAT SEEKS NOT ONLY TO IMPOVERISH AND EXPLOIT CITIZENS FOR ITS OWN REVENUES WHILE PROTECTING CORPORATIONS FROM PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE......BUT, AT THE SAME TIME THESE PARTNERSHIP STRUCTURES TAKE AWAY PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY-----WHICH IS THE POINT OF PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS.


If taken to court I feel certain that this status will/should be found illegal.  It will have to be taken outside of Maryland because Maryland courts have been stacked with corporate judges by O'Malley.

Rally and March in Annapolis

Public · By Unite Here Local 7


    • Thursday, March 13, 2014
    • 12:00pm
  • Asbury United Methodist Church 87 West Street, Annapolis Maryland
  • Join us as we stand in solidariy with workers at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.

    Busses will leave from Unite Here Local 7 offices at 1800 North Charles Street at 10 a.m. Rally will begin at Asbury United Methodist church located at 87 West Street, Annapolis, Maryland followed by a march to Lawyer's Mall.

    Why are we marching?

    Non-tipped concessions workers a BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport earn a median wage of $8.50 per hour. Only 17% of surveyed workers reported that they received health insurance through their jobs. Only 10% of surveyed workers reported that they received paid sick day. The lowest paid employees of the Maryland Aviation Authority receive $13.45 per hour. They are guaranteed health insurance, paid sick days, and a pension.

    The Thurgood Marshall Equal Pay Act creates a waqe equity supplement whereby the state of Mayland will temporarily make up the difference between the wages of concessions workers and those of the lowest-paid employees of the Maryland Aviation Authority.

    Join us as we march towards equality at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.

Many, many thanks to all of the 300+ of you who came out to our march today! We had a wonderful and inspiring day. More photos to come. — at Maryland State House.

_________________________________________
First, we need to acknowledge that the Maryland and local government structural budget deficits are created by massive corporate fraud and corruption and corporate welfare in the form of corporate tax breaks......it has nothing to do with public services, public employees, and public programs.

That said, we want to remind these public union leaders that 1/2 of pension value was lost to pension fraud in the 2007 economic collapse.  Throwing pensions from the then safety of the bond market into an imploding stock market in 2007 to collapsing buoy big banks is public malfeasance and corporate fraud.  It was intentional and it was duplicitous.

UNION LAWYERS NEED TO GET THAT 1/2 VALUE LOST TO FRAUD BACK ALONG WITH ALL THE GAINS THOSE FUNDS WOULD HAVE HAD IN THIS PAST BULL MARKET.

O'Malley has underfunded and defunded pensions from his tenure as Mayor of Baltimore.  It is no secret that he does not intend on public sector workers getting much if any of those promised and contracted benefits, whether pensions or health care.  Public sector unions had better know their health plans will be thrown into these private state health systems and will be worth whatever tier an employee can pay....for city and state employees who do not make much.....that will be Medicaid or Bronze at best....both mostly preventative care.


This game that Maryland media and government officials play with union leaders has two goals:  First, by threatening unions with loss of union rights or future wage increases the intent is to make the unions concede to bade deals.  DEMOCRATIC POLS WOULD NOT DO THAT!  Second, by announcing that union leaders knew of this deal that hurt its membership it undermines confidence in unions and their leadership.  This is deliberate.  Finally, when union leaders feel they must support the same politicians who place them in these positions-----they endanger the future of unions in Maryland.  So, to take the pressure off of unions and leadership to allow them to do the right thing for their membership

THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND MUST RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES SO LABOR WILL HAVE FRIENDLY POLITICIANS AND GOVERNMENT APPOINTEES IN OFFICE.  WAKE UP-----WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THESE LABOR GROUPS WILL COME TO YOU UPPER- MIDDLE-CLASS MARYLANDERS!

Union leaders have to stop this race to the bottom and run their own candidates in primaries.  Labor cannot support neo-liberals who are killing them!

THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL FOR YOU AND ALL MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS!



Unions, pension board unhappy O’Malley cut $100M in promised payment to retirement fund


January 17, 2014 at 6:58 am

By Len Lazarick

Len@MarylandReporter.com

IMarch 15, 2011, Alvin Thornton (in suit) and union leaders head march to State House.

The largest unions representing state workers and public school teachers are upset at Gov. Martin O’Malley’s decision to permanently cut $100 million from extra payments into the state pension system. The money came from additional employee salary deductions required by a 2011 pension reform, and was intended to help cure underfunding in the pension system.

The Board of Trustees of the State Retirement and Pension System, headed by State Treasurer Nancy Kopp, is also opposed to reducing the promised $300 million payment down to $200 million. This delays the goal of funding of the state pensions system at 80% by a full year, from 2024 to 2025. The pension system was 100% funded 12 years ago, but 80% is the accepted standard for public systems.

MarylandReporter.com raised the issue at the governor’s news conference on his proposed budget Wednesday. O’Malley had not mentioned cutting the pension payment in his presentation, even though it is listed as the largest spending reduction he is proposing to balance next year’s budget.

After his explanation of the change, O’Malley was specifically asked if the public employee unions had signed off on the reduction.
The video of the Jan. 15 news conference shows O’Malley turning to Chief of Staff John Griffin and Budget Secretary Eloise Foster, and both nod their heads indicating the unions had agreed. (The video is in the video library under Jan. 15, 2014 and the exchange takes place around minute 41.)

Unions unaware of the change

Looking west from the State House steps, thousands fill Lawyer’s Mall, Bladen Street and Rowe Boulevard for the “Keep the Promise” rally against pension changes in 2011.

On Thursday, representatives of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Maryland State Education Association told a reporter that they were not aware of the $100 million cut in this year’s pension payment. The union representatives also seemed totally unaware that O’Malley wanted to make the cut permanent by changing the law in the Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act of 2014 (page 11) that he introduced Wednesday to implement the budget.

“AFSCME members don’t agree with the state’s decision to underfund pension contributions,” said Patrick Moran, president of  AFSCME Maryland. “We’re hopeful the state will balance its budget and make its pensions contributions — just like state employees do every year.”

But the permanent cut is exactly what Foster recommended in a report sent Wednesday to the budget committees and the Joint Committee on Pensions.

Foster’s report also includes the position of the pension board; it “strongly recommends” that the state continue to make the $300 million payment.

The board said the savings achieved by restructuring benefits should be plowed back into the pension system, which is currently only about 65% funded.

“It should be noted that of the total $300 million reinvestment, approximately two-thirds is a result of the fact that the reforms increased employee contributions,” the board said.

The 2011 pension reform legislation, which O’Malley pointed out caused “the largest public employee protest” of his administration, raised employee contributions from 5% to 7% of salary.

Cut made to balance budget, reduce structural deficit

At Wednesday’s budget rollout, from right, Gov. Martin O’Malley, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Budget Secretary Eloise Foster, Chief of Staff John Griffin.

O’Malley said the proposed cut in pension payment was “due to more favorable actuarial forecasts.” But Foster’s report makes clear the motivation was to balance the budget this year and “improve budget sustainability by reducing the structural deficit.”

The cut in the pension payment will save the state $1.2 billion over the next five years. The state has not making its full annual required contribution established by the outside actuaries for more than a decade. Only last year did it approve a change to the funding method to address the shortfall.

The $300 million cap on reinvestment of pension savings was controversial in 2011 at the time the pension changes were passed. The teachers union wanted even more money put back into the system.

________________________________________

As I listened this morning to corporate WYPR regarding the fact that Maryland has one of the highest immigrant arrest by ICE and that 43% of the arrests involved people with no criminal background I waited for just one word of acknowledgement that immigrants in Maryland are being fleeced of their wages and abused in the workplace.  NOT ONE WORD. 

MARYLAND MEDIA WANTS TO SHOW CONCERN FOR IMMIGRANTS WITH THE IDEA OF 'TRUSTING' POLICE WHILE THEY ARE BEING EXPLOITED AND ABUSED IN THE WORKPLACE.

The reason Maryland media does this is that they want more immigrants to come to Maryland to be fleeced and abused to enrich the corporations committing these crimes.  Nothing hurts a corporate policy of luring immigrants to work to abuse them then reports of arrests and harassment by ICE.

THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND ARE DEMANDING THAT NEO-LIBERALS IN THIS STATE STOP IGNORING THE FACT THAT LOW-WAGE WORKERS, BOTH IMMIGRANT AND DOMESTIC ARE OPENLY FLEECED OF THEIR WAGES JUST AS IF THEY WORKED IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY!

At the same time, Immigrant Justice groups must stop supporting the very politicians allowing this abuse.  Neo-liberals passing the Dream Act or Immigration Reform are doing it for Trans Pacific Trade Deal agreements, not to protect and help immigrants here now.  TPP allows ever growing numbers of high-skilled immigrants and their families will have the money to go to universities in Maryland......most domestic immigrants will not as all they earn is stolen.  Dream Act is directed at future high-skilled immigrants. Most immigrants already in America will, like low-wage Americans, be funneled through vocational tracking and job training community colleges.  This is not an American Dream, believe me.

The Senate's Immigration Bill is tied to TPP too.  It is market-based and designed not only to flood the high-skilled market with immigrant workers.....but it allows growing numbers of third world immigrants to be brought to the US and exploited just as they would be in that third world country.  Immigrants already in the US will be pushed into an even more abusive work environment if that is even imaginable. 


NEO-LIBERALS WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AT THE EXPENSE OF LABOR AND JUSTICE.....STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES.  RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARY ELECTIONS TO SHAKE THE NEO-LIBERALS OUT OF THE PARTY!

Immigrants in America now have to know that the democratic party IS the party of the people.  It has simply been hijacked by corporate politicians that need to go.

Immigrants' Rights

The PJC’s Immigrants’ Rights Project seeks to protect and expand the rights of low-wage and poverty-stricken immigrants in Maryland. We are concerned with wage theft, consumer law issues, housing abuses and want to ensure that immigrants have access to state courts, programs and agencies.


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Wage Theft Shatters American Dream for Many Low-Income Immigrants Wage theft in the United States has reached near epidemic levels among low-wage workers.

Korean immigrant workers, represented by AALDEF, held a protest with supporters against abusive employment practices at a New Jersey restaurant in April, 2010."



  • December 27, 2011

Eight years ago, “Mrs. Kim” came to the United States from China “to pursue her American Dream,” but thanks to unscrupulous business practices familiar to many Asian immigrants working in low-wage industries, things went horribly wrong.

Kim, who did not want to use her real name because she is still involved in litigation, began life in the U.S. preparing dumplings and side dishes at a Korean restaurant in Bergen County, New Jersey.

The job went well for a few years. It was hard, but Kim was getting paid for her efforts.

“When I first started working, [the owner] agreed to pay me $600 per week,” she said. “Specific hours were not indicated, but she did indicate I would have to work over 12 hours per day.”

Though she worked as many as 17 hours a day, when the restaurant’s business started to decline, the owner began paying employees late or not paying them at all.

Kim is suing her former boss for more than $40,000 in minimum and overtime wages that have been withheld and additional liquidated damages.

“Wage and labor laws are designed to cover every worker. Immigration doesn’t come into it. But that’s not what we’ve seen in Asian-American communities,” said Shirley Lin, an attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), who has taken Kim’s case. “We’ve seen employers push them to the extreme with long hours and abusive practices.”

Easy Targets

Lin said that employers in these kinds of situations often threaten to report the employee to immigration authorities if they challenge the abuse.

She said Asian immigrant workers in low-wage industries, like their Latino, African-American and Caucasian counterparts, are susceptible to wage theft for a variety of reasons, including language barriers, fear of deportation and a lack of education about their rights.

Wage theft in the United States has reached near epidemic levels among low-wage workers, according to a landmark 2008 national survey of nearly 4,000 low-wage workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

Seventy percent of the workers surveyed were foreign-born.

The survey, which was conducted by the Center for Urban Economic Development, the National Employment Law Project, and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, found over two-thirds of low-wage workers experienced “at least one pay-related violation” in the work week reported.

Furthermore, 26 percent of workers were paid less than the legal minimum wage; 76 percent of employees who worked overtime were not paid the legally required overtime rate; 70 percent of workers who performed work outside of their regular shifts did not receive any pay for this work; and 30 percent of tipped workers were not paid the tipped minimum wage.

Lacking an income, Kim said she was forced to borrow money from friends and not pay bills just to survive.

“They’re making employees suffer,” Kim said. “If you can’t run a business and pay your employees, you shouldn’t run a business. You shouldn’t take advantage of workers like this.”

She is now working at another restaurant and said she’s extremely stressed and tired from her experience with her former employer.

“I can’t sleep at night. It’s affecting my future employment because I’m not as strong. I’ve cried many tears over this employer.”

Paying the Boss

There is an added dimension to Kim’s struggles.

Her stress grew when her previous boss began pressuring employees to lend their money to support the business, another manifestation of wage theft, said Lin. Kim submitted, giving up around $55,000.

She said her boss would appear to pay her back by giving her postdated checks, but she was often told not to deposit them and when she did, the checks bounced.

“At the time I lent her money, I trusted her,” Kim said. “I thought she would share her success with her employees, but that’s not how it turned out. I helped her open a second restaurant. The owner became very greedy, borrowed money from employees and delayed paying our wages.”

Conning workers into giving loans is not the most common type of theft, which usually comes in the form of failure to pay, not paying required overtime wages, not paying for work required before and after a shift, or paying less than the minimum wage.

Kim, who has a husband and son back in China who she has not seen for eight years, said she sometimes regrets coming to the U.S. because of the stress caused by failing victim to, and fighting, wage theft.

"My husband has threatened to divorce me because of this,” she said. “My family wants me close to them, but because this is so important to me, I don’t want to give up.”

Kim’s is not an isolated case.

According to the survey by the Center for Urban Economic Development, Asians immigrants were the most susceptible to overtime abuse and off-the-clock violations compared to other racial groups studied.

Cracking Down

The problem has spurred a number of groups to try to help, including Adhikaar, which assists Nepalese, and the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, which aims to protect Chinese immigrants from exploitation.

Lin said workers like Kim are in a “vacuum of oversight and enforcement of our labor laws.”

“Without any government oversight, it falls upon the workers to hold the line against these kinds of unscrupulous employers.”

According to Nancy J. Leppink, deputy administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), the division has increased its number of investigators. They help to enforce minimum wage, overtime pay, record-keeping, child labor and other labor laws.

This reverses a trend cited by the Government Accountability Office, which found that enforcement actions by the WHD decreased from 51,643 in 1998 to 29,584 in 2007, despite an increase in the number of worksites and employees. The number of investigators in the WHD decreased by 20 percent during this period, falling to just 732 nationwide in 2007.

“Since  2009, the WHD has hired more than 300 investigators, bringing the agency’s total to more than 1,000 investigators,” Leppink wrote in an email. “In 2011, WHD collected a record number of back wages, which totaled $224.8 million, and helped over 275,000 workers. These additional resources, coupled with WHD’s changes to how it prioritizes its work to be more strategic, have clearly revived WHD’s enforcement program on behalf of the workers in this country.”

She added that more than 600 of WHD’s investigators speak a language other than English, including Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese.

“Some of our WHD staff are fluent in many languages,” Leppink wrote. “We also have available a language interpretive service which can assist with translation in more than 170 languages.”

Room for Improvement

While Lin called these developments “laudable,” she’d said she would like to see the specifics of how these resources are allocated.

“Navigating a wage claim is extremely complex, and in some cases takes more than a year,” she said. “Telephonic access is a good step, but the critical stage of the investigation is [done] onsite and typically includes interviewing an employer who might be monolingual and employees who speak many different languages. The DOL should take proactive steps to figure out what communities are in more need of language access among its staff investigators.”

There still may be hope for wage theft victims like Kim. Some of these cases do have happy endings.

Earlier this month, three Korean chefs were able to recover nearly $40,000 in unpaid wages from a sushi restaurant after one, who had worked with AALDEF before, organized them to take action.


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January 31st, 2014

1/31/2014

0 Comments

 
Regarding Immigration Reform, TPP, and Maryland's real unemployment:

WATCHING OBAMA/O'MALLEY ONE CAN ACTUALLY SEE THE CORPORATE STRINGS PULLING HIS MOUTH UP AND DOWN!  THIS IS SERIOUS FOLKS----NEO-LIBERALS RIGHT HERE IN MARYLAND ARE PUSHING THIS AS HARD AS THEY CAN AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS HEADED BY PEOPLE WANTING TO MAKE A BUCK ARE LEADING IMMIGRANTS AND JUSTICE TO SUPPORT THIS AS A SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUE!

One thing you can bet on when you listen to main stream media and NPR/APM is news that has no basis in fact.  As they are shouting the unemployment is 6.1% here in Maryland it is really 36%......far higher than at the time of the crash.  So, why are national and local news deliberately deceiving the public?  First, people would be out in the street protesting as in other Western countries that still have free press.....second, the entire premise of Immigration Reform tied to TPP is that employment figures must be low enough for corporations to bring in immigrant/green card labor.  SEE WHY MARYLAND MUST MAKE ITS 36% UNEMPLOYMENT LOOKS LIKE 6.1%?  If you look at national advertizements you will see this figure used for unemployment in Baltimore if you can believe it!  So, as with all stats released by Maryland state or Baltimore City.....there is no basis of truth in the figures.  This happens because neo-liberals and republicans have dismantled all of public agencies tasked with oversight and producing this data.  WE FIX IT BY RUNNING LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES AND REPLACING THESE NEO-LIBERALS.....ALL POLS IN MARYLAND ARE NEO-LIBERALS!



This is great....it shows Maryland with a long-term unemployed at 36% as they shout out that unemployment in Maryland is at 6.1%. Keep in mind that Congress passed an extension of unemployment insurance with a 6.7% level of exclusion for states falling under that level. Maryland immediately feel below that 6.7% and as a result.....all those who would have gotten longer unemployment dropped off the rolls....ergo...the 6.1%.

Keep in mind that with long-term unemployed and part time workers over 40% of Americans are income distressed and neo-liberals like it that way!!!! Desperate workers maximizes corporate profits!  Take a look at the interactive map/graph in this article below to see how each state in America has the highest unemployment in Western world.  YOU HEAR NPR SHOUT OUT THAT SPAIN HAS THE HIGHEST AT 25%.....MARYLAND HAS SPAIN BEAT AND NEO-LIBERAL STATES HAVE HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY NEO-LIBERALS ROLL!


Long-Term Unemployment Is at Record Levels in Virtually Every State

www.epi.org

During last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama stressed the urgency of reinstating the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program for long-term unemployed workers, which, in an unprecedented move, Congress allowed to expire last month. This federal program typically provided a maximum of 28 weeks of additional benefits to workers who lost a job, through no fault of their own, and had exhausted their regular state benefits but were still unable to find work. With the program’s expiration, more than 1.5 million jobless workers have already stopped receiving aid and more than 2 million more will exhaust their benefits by the end of this year.

Laid-off workers will now lose any support after only six months, the maximum duration of unemployment insurance benefits in most states. The map below shows the share of the unemployed who have been jobless for six months or more in each state. There are 28 states, plus the District of Columbia, where more than a third of the unemployed have been jobless for six months or more. In New Jersey (46.6 percent), the District of Columbia (46.6 percent), and Florida (46.2 percent), nearly half of the unemployed are long-term unemployed.

With long-term unemployment still at record levels, Congress’ failure to renew this program is shocking; long-term unemployment benefits have never been cut off before with long-term unemployment so high. The highest the national long-term unemployment share ever reached prior to the Great Recession was 26 percent in June of 1983. Currently, there are 41 states (plus the District of Columbia) with long-term unemployment shares above 26 percent.

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How is the Immigration Reform and TPP attached to employment figures?  Let's remember what the neo-liberal Senate and republicans have as their main goal with this market-based Immigration bill sold as a help for Hispanic undocumented workers.
First there is the law enforcement element of Immigration Reform that has US prisons now filled with undocumented workers....Obama as a neo-liberal has placed imprisonment on steroids......think about California being the incarceration capital of the world.....neo-liberals.  The border enforcement along with countries like Peru will join Mexico knowing the same massive displacement of its citizens will happen again as global corporations come into these countries and send the citizens packing as described in the article below.  So, the Immigration Bill works to stop what will be a rush to the US border for jobs as it takes these immigrants now in the US and places them on restrictions that will indenture them for life or until they fail to meet the terms are are deported.

The Pathway to Citizenship is like the Trail of Tears for the native Americans.  It says you must remain continually employed for years......think how abusive workplaces are now and then think what will happen when employers know these immigrants will not be able to quit.  When they do.....these employers report them to authorities and the immigrant is deported.  When talking to the Super Shuttle workers in Maryland who are shouting they are indentured and enslaved by contracts that allow them no money.....their words were.....'we will lose our jobs and be deported but we cannot live like this'.  THIS IS MARYLAND AND THIS IS NOW!  IMMIGRATION REFORM SIMPLY PUTS THIS INTO LAW.  

PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP INDENTURES IMMIGRANTS AND MAKE DEPORTATION A STRONGER LIKELIHOOD.

This is all important because TPP is all about bringing immigrants just like these Maryland immigrants from Africa to America and tying them to just the same contracts that they too will not be able to tolerate.  So, they will work a while, discover they are enslaved in America and want to leave but have no way to disengage from these contracts.  With the US having suspended Rule of Law, these workers will not have the US Federal Justice/Maryland Attorney General protecting them.  So, how will immigrants be able to pay back taxes and current taxes and all these Pathway requirements as indentured servants?  Add to that stolen wages and illegal independent contractor status for those lucky enough to avoid endenturement....THE ANSWER IS THEY WILL NOT.  THEY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO ACCUMULATE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY THEIR WAY TO CITIZENSHIP.....WHICH IS THE POINT OF TPP.

The 1% say we'll take bring a few immigrants into our ranks to lord over the bulk of workers as they do now in Maryland.....as slavery always has.......but most immigrants will be trapped in the same indenturement as now exists in third world countries.  THIS IS WHAT IMMIGRATION REFORM IS ALL ABOUT.  

The second piece of Immigration Reform is the high-skilled labor end where TPP has high-skilled labor come to the US and if they are working for a global corporation....which most skilled businesses are these days....the employer will be able to hire them under terms of the country to which the corporation is attached if following US law causes lost profit.....which it always does.  So, John Hopkins partners with an Indian health corporation which then comes to the US as a global corporations hiring health care workers and those workers would be brought from India and work under Indian law.  So, this will not be a win for those immigrants workers being brought thinking they will be apart of the American Dream....unless they are the few selected to higher positions.....they will toil here as they did in India.

Why is this bad for domestic workers just as it is immigrant workers?  IF YOU ARE A DOMESTIC WORKER NEEDING A JOB....YOU WILL AGREE TO WORK FOR THE TERMS THE IMMIGRANTS DO OR YOU WILL NOT HAVE A JOB.  So, the foreign corporation comes to your town with manufacturing jobs, brings immigrant workers to fill many jobs and offers some to the locals if they work for the same as the immigrants.  This will go for the high-skilled jobs as well.  

IT NEGATES ALL OF US LAW BY MAKING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS EXEMPT FROM ALL US LAW WHICH IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION.


'Domestic workers don't have to work there if they don't like the conditions say neo-liberals'.  See why unemployment has been left so high?


PATH TO CITIZENSHIP

—The estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally could obtain "registered provisional immigrant status" six months after enactment of the bill as long as:

(1) The Homeland Security Department has developed border security and fencing plans.

(2) They arrived in the U.S. prior to Dec. 31, 2011, and maintained continuous physical presence since then.

(3) They do not have a felony conviction or three or more misdemeanors.

(4) They pay a $500 fine.

—People in provisional legal status could work and travel in the U.S. but would not be eligible for federal benefits.

—The provisional legal status lasts six years and is renewable for another $500.

—People deported for noncriminal reasons can apply to re-enter in provisional status if they have a spouse or child who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, or if they had been brought to the U.S. as a child.

—After 10 years in provisional status, immigrants can seek a green card and lawful permanent resident status if they are up-to-date on taxes and pay a $1,000 fine, have maintained continuous physical presence in the U.S., meet work requirements, and learn English. Also the border triggers must have been met, and all people waiting to immigrate through the legal system as of date of enactment of the legislation must have been dealt with.

—People brought to the country as youths would be able to get green cards in five years, and citizenship immediately thereafter.
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Sign on to this letter calling for border justice and fair trade


This letter explains the relationship between ‘free’ trade agreements and militarization of the border. The struggle for immigrant rights includes opening borders, not locking them down, and creating fair trade for people and the planet, not corporate trade for profit with impunity. Please consider signing on to this letter (fill out the form below). Then also share this letter with individuals and organizations in your community that work for immigrant rights or that also might be willing to sign on, and encourage them to add their names. We can stop the TPP! The first step is to educate more people about the effects the TPP will have on our communities. Then together, we will flush the TPP.

July, 2013

Stopping the TPP is  Immigrant Rights

We write this letter out of concern regarding a looming humanitarian crisis. The prospect of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) along with a surge in border militarization will leave in its wake a trail of displacement and death. The TPP will continue destroying rural economies and uprooting workers in Mexico and elsewhere. More border militarization and criminalization will leave yet more bodies of the undocumented and their families abandoned and lifeless in the desert. We call on fair trade and immigrant rights activists to join together to stop the TPP and to demand real, just immigration reform.

Over 6,000 undocumented workers and their family members have died crossing the US-Mexico border since 1994, the year that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed. It was also when construction of the border wall began. NAFTA led to a 60% increase in migration across the Southern border–a forced migration of people desperately looking for jobs to feed their families. Because of border militarization the undocumented generally enter the US via its most sparsely populated and harshest desert terrains to avoid apprehension. Those who don’t make it die from dysentery, dehydration and exposure.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been called “NAFTA on Steroids”. If it passes, it will be the largest FTA in the world, including not only Mexico, the United States and Canada, but also Peru, Chile, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Obama administration is asking for “Fast Track” authority to negotiate the TPP. Fast Track would enable the President to circumvent Congress’ constitutional power to establish the parameters of US trade policy. It allows the President to sign an agreement before a Congressional vote, which must take place within 90 days of the signature and which prohibits the addition of amendments.

Immigration reform legislation is also moving forward. The proposed reform includes a “border surge” of militarization and related benchmarks that must go into effect before road to citizenship provisions kick in. This surge would include between $30 and $50 billion for “security”, including the construction of 350 to 700 more miles of the border wall. The number of agents on the border would be doubled to 40,000. The US-Mexico border would become one of the most militarized borders in the world.

It is no coincidence that the year 1994 saw not only passage of NAFTA, but the beginning of border wall construction. And it is no coincidence that the border surge is being considered at the same time the TPP is being negotiated. Also closely related is the proliferation of private prisons, especially immigration detention centers. Militarized borders and new prisons help manage social disruptions as well as political dissent resulting from FTAs. Criminalization of the undocumented creates a sub-class of workers denied basic labor rights while forced to work long hours for low wages. The ones who benefit are transnational corporations and agribusinesses.

If things were already bad under NAFTA and the current level of border militarization, a border surge and the TPP will make them worse. When NAFTA went into effect, Mexico was importing 30,000 tons of pork. By 2010, that had gone up to 811,000 tons. Mexico lost 4,000 hog farms and 20,000 farm jobs as a result. If we include indirect jobs dependent on the pork industry, as many as 120,000 jobs were lost. Likewise, corn imports rose from 2 million tons in 1992 to 10.3 million tons in 2008 and the cost of corn tortillas rose by 50%. This scenario was repeated in different sectors, such as wheat and sorghum production. By 2006, NAFTA had forced two million Mexicans out of farm work and some 28,000 small and medium sized businesses had been eliminated. Wages in maquiladora zones along the border had been driven down by 25%. A 2005 study for the Mexican government by the World Bank showed that rural poverty had risen from 35% between 1992 and 1994, to 55% between 1996 and 1998. By 2010, 53 million Mexicans were living in poverty, or half the population, and 20%, mostly in rural areas, lived in extreme poverty.

The TPP is being negotiated in secrecy. Only a few insistent Congress persons have seen it. However, some 600 corporate lobbyists have read the text and made comments on it. What few details have been leaked to the public reveal a document that guards the interests of big corporations even more than NAFTA, which at least includes a provision allowing countries to withdraw with only six months notice. Investor-State provisions will be strengthened letting foreign corporations sue a government over policies that provide environmental and community protection but curb private profits. Suits would be decided by a special court comprised from a rotating pool of corporate lawyers.

What will it mean if passage of the TPP is coupled with a border surge? We have already seen significant growth in border militarization. Whether it be because of this, or because the US is recovering from its own economic crisis, apprehensions by the border patrol have dropped by 50% since 2008. But at the same time, deaths in the desert of border crossers has risen by 27%. The National Foundation for American Policy has found that an undocumented immigrant is eight times more likely to die crossing the border today than ten years ago. With the TPP and a border surge, deaths will increase.

The fight to defeat the TPP is advocacy for immigrant rights, or better put, for the rights of Mexican and other workers and farming families to not be forcibly displaced. One of the central rights of any potential immigrant is the choice whether or not to migrate. Even more central is the right not to die crossing the desert in search of jobs. We must tell Congress: End border militarization, deny fast track authority and reject the TPP. What we need, what we require, is fair trade, not free trade, and border justice, not militarization and criminalization.


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The reason WYPR and Basu keep telling you the unemployment rate is 6.1% instead of 36% has to do with the Immigration Bill and the rates needed before green card workers take jobs.  Can you imagine 180,000 foreign high-skilled workers coming to the US each year when the US has STEM grads unemployed in great numbers?  It will flood the work force.  Not only are high-skilled workers coming.....but all that 'innovation' money that Maryland shouts is creating jobs but is used for marketing Maryland to these prospective foreign workers.....can be given to foreign immigrants to start new companies.  THESE GOES ALL THE MONEY FOR DOMESTIC CITIZENS WANTING TO SIMPLY BUILD A SMALL BUSINESS!

The good news is that all the figures are a lie and  TPP is illegal and a COUP against the American people and can be made NULL AND VOID with Rule of Law.  Neo-liberals cannot simply fail to enforce US law because a foreign treaty was signed....the point is that it was illegal for the US Trade Rep to sign this deal!




'The cap could go as high as 180,000 a year depending on demand and unemployment rate'.



HIGH-SKILLED WORKERS

—The cap on the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers would be immediately raised from 65,000 a year to 110,000 a year, with 25,000 more set aside for people with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. school. The cap could go as high as 180,000 a year depending on demand and unemployment rate.

—New protections would crack down on companies that use H-1B visas to train workers in the U.S. only to ship them back overseas.

—Immigrants with certain extraordinary abilities, such as professors and researchers, multinational executives and athletes, would be exempted from green-card limits.

—A startup visa would be made available to foreign entrepreneurs seeking to come to the U.S. to start a company.

—A new merit visa, capped at 250,000 a year, would award points to prospective immigrants based on their education, employment, length of residence in the U.S. and other considerations. Those with the most points would earn the visas.

—The bill would eliminate the government's Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which randomly awards 55,000 visas to immigrants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States, so that more visas can be awarded for employment and merit ties.


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Below you see the good points for the low-skilled workers given by the Tea Party.  These republicans are right....it is devastating to all domestic workers, but low-skilled especially.  Now, a republican has always been ready to enslave workers.......they want to get rid of the minimum wage for goodness sake, so they are simply playing good cop on an issue they really , really, want.

The national ID for immigrants will be the republican way of holding these workers in indenturement and deport anyone breaking these harsh rules.  You notice that nowhere are corporations going to be held accountable to breaking these laws as Rule of Law has been suspended.




LETTER WARNS: IMMIGRATION BILL WILL COLLAPSE MIDDLE CLASS AND INCREASE UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY

Posted by tomfernandez28 on January 9, 2014


LETTER WARNS: IMMIGRATION BILL WILL COLLAPSE MIDDLE CLASS AND INCREASE UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY

A group of House Republicans has written a letter to Barack Obama to warn that the immigration bill he supports will have an adverse effect on American workers. The immigration bill will, the letter writers say, lead to an increase in unemployment and poverty, help collapse the middle class, and decrease wages for American citizens.

“[W]e reject your call for the House to get an immigration bill to your desk that would permanently displace American workers,” the House Republicans write. “The Senate immigration bill, which the White House helped craft and which you personally endorse, would double the number of guest workers brought into this country at a time of crippling joblessness and falling incomes. On top of that, the Senate immigration bill would also add millions more permanent immigrant workers through green cards – handing out permanent residency to more than 30 million immigrants over the next decade. This represents a tripling of the normal green card rate.

CBO confirms that these immigrants will be mostly lower-skilled, and that wages for American citizens would fall while American unemployment would rise. Per-capita GNP would sink as well.

According to research from Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas, low-skilled immigration has, between the years 1980 and 2000, resulted in nearly an 8% wage reduction for US-born workers without a high school degree. Rapidly expanding unskilled immigration – at time when factory work and blue collar jobs are disappearing – would represent the final economic blow for millions of workers who have been struggling to gain an economic foothold.

This group of House Republicans, who say that are writing the president “on behalf of the 21 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job” and “on behalf of the 90 million Americans over 16 – including early retirees, college grads living at home, and those living on welfare – who are not part of our nation’s workforce,” warn that things will get worse if this immigration bill becomes law.

“According to research from Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas, low-skilled immigration has, between the years 1980 and 2000, resulted in nearly an 8% wage reduction for US-born workers without a high school degree. Rapidly expanding unskilled immigration – at time when factory work and blue collar jobs are disappearing – would represent the final economic blow for millions of workers who have been struggling to gain an economic foothold,” the letter writers say.

And it concludes: “Job number one for Congress should be to reduce the unemployment rolls, get families and communities out of poverty and government dependency, rebuild our deteriorating communities and collapsing middle class, and increase wages for American citizens. Your immigration proposals do the exact opposite on every count.”

The letter has been signed by 16 Republican members of Congress: Mo Brooks of Alabama, Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, Kerry Bentivolio of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Walter Jones of North Carolina, Phil Gingrey of Georgia, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, John Fleming of Louisiana, Steve King of Iowa, Ted Yoho of Florida, Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Steve Stockman of Texas, Lamar Smith also of Texas, Steven Palazzo of Mississippi, Mike Rogers of Alabama, and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina.

Here’s the entire letter, which is dated today:

Dear Mr. President:

We write to you today on behalf of the 21 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job. We write to you on behalf of the 6 million young Americans who are neither working nor in school. We write on behalf of the countless American workers whose wages today are lower than they were more than a decade ago. We write on behalf of the 90 million Americans over 16 – including early retirees, college grads living at home, and those living on welfare – who are not part of our nation’s workforce.

That is why we reject your call for the House to get an immigration bill to your desk that would permanently displace American workers. The Senate immigration bill, which the White House helped craft and which you personally endorse, would double the number of guest workers brought into this country at a time of crippling joblessness and falling incomes. On top of that, the Senate immigration bill would also add millions more permanent immigrant workers through green cards – handing out permanent residency to more than 30 million immigrants over the next decade. This represents a tripling of the normal green card rate.
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January 29th, 2014

1/29/2014

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FOLKS, IF YOU DO NOT HERE YOUR INCUMBENT POL SHOUTING LOUDLY AND STRONGLY AGAINST ALL THESE POLICIES AND TPP-------THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEED TO GO!  RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!

I want to take today through Friday to talk about why Obama and Congress are now ready to focus on domestic issues and why his mantra of helping the middle-class and poor is ridiculous......all the items on the Congressional agenda are tied to TPP and they intend to pass TPP in the near future.

The good news for US citizens is that TPP is illegal and a COUP against the US Constitution and American people and we can simply declare it NULL AND VOID when we reinstate Rule of Law. 

I'm starting with the environmental issues in Obama's speech and TPP because we have a corporate 'public' media outlet....WYPR with commentators who pretend to lament issues that they really support.


You may have seen the Huffington Post article on TPP and the environment but continue down to see how Maryland is one big TPP sesspool thanks to your neo-liberal!

ALL THE CANDIDATES RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND WILL CONTINUE TO PUSH THE TPP AGENDA!


In Maryland, labor and justice simply backs the worst of TPP neo-liberals even as they intend to make labor and justice just like Chinese workers and citizens.  WHY ARE THEY NOT RUNNING LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN ALL PRIMARIES!!!!!??????


Regarding Obama's domestic agenda that all involves passing TPP:

Basu's shout out for attention to global warming is a HOOT isn't it!  The US is the number one exporting now of all the raw materials that hasten global warming and Basu supports every one as this makes the rich richer in the US while it kills our environment.  TPP makes sure that all those silly US environmental laws won't get in the way of corporate profit and that is why we have XL Pipeline preparing to export the worst methane and carbon emitter TAR SAND OIL.  Basu is for building this pipeline....it creates jobs you know as he is in building a natural gas export right here in Maryland.  Fracking is a great methane/carbon emitter.  The US exports coal and raw timber all of which are great carbon emitters so all this talk of global warming by neo-liberals is only to sell windmill funding to make another source of profit for Wall Street investment firms.  YOU CANNOT BE A NET EXPORTER OF ALL THE MATERIALS CREATING CARBON AND METHANE EMISSIONS AND SAY YOU ARE AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING FOR GOODNESS SAKE.   All of Maryland pols are backing the natural gas terminal that will place fracking on steroids.

 NEO-LIBERALS WILL VOTE ON A TPP BILL THAT KILLS ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT AND THAT IS WHY WE HAVE SUCH A HIGH LEVEL OF ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION TODAY....OBAMA AND CONGRESSIONAL NEO-LIBERALS ARE ALLOWING FREE TRADE OF ALL OF US NATURAL RESOURCES.


You wouldn't know that Obama's entire agenda surrounds the legislation needed to pass the TPP and we all know that has nothing to do with making a strong middle-class and helping the poor.  Remember, there is no wealth inequality because tens of trillions of dollar in corporate fraud still needs to come back.

The reason we had a do-nothing Congress is that these few years your neo-liberal has been working on behalf of their state's global corporations in writing TPP and now that Obama's Trade Rep signed the TPP agreement Congress is ready to go full court passing all the domestic bills that are written just for TPP.

ALL OF MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS!!!!!

Let's look at each one to remember how they are attached to TPP and how they kill American workers and families.  THESE ARE EVIL DUDES YOU ARE ELECTING AND RE-ELECTING FOLKS!

So why are corporate NPR/APM and WYPR not connecting these TPP/environment dots?  More important, why are Maryland's environmental groups and 'progressive' action groups not sounding the alarm?  Maryland Progressives give Maryland Assembly strong marks on environment without ever shouting that TPP will knock the socks off of anything local.  Building windmills off of Maryland coast while exporting natural gas.....REALLY?


Let's look closer at what this environmental catastrophe means to labor and justice.  First, look at the Incinerator project everyone is fighting here in the Baltimore area.  Why would you build something like this with all kinds of 'green language' when we all know it is bad news for health and climate?  THE INCINERATOR IS PART OF A GLOBAL CORPORATION THAT RUNS THESE AROUND THE WORLD -------VEOLA ENVIRONOMENT OWNED BY JOHNS HOPKINS.

Remember, VEOLA is a global corporation and is TPP is passed we will not have all those air quality standards met as all this hampers corporate profit!!!!!




 WikiLeaks Exposes What Obama's Secret Trade Deal Would Do To The Environment


Posted: 01/15/2014 12:22 pm EST  |  Updated: 01/25/2014 4:01 pm EST


WASHINGTON -- WikiLeaks published a leaked draft of the environment chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Wednesday, and environmental groups are lining up to take a swing.

The leaked documents come from a meeting of the trade deal's chief negotiators held in Salt Lake City, Utah, from Nov. 19 to 24, 2013. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) includes 12 countries –- the United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei –- and would govern a number of international environmental and trade issues.

The draft indicates the pact will include a number of promises on the environment, but will lack strong enforcement tools. "When compared against other TPP chapters, the Environment Chapter is noteworthy for its absence of mandated clauses or meaningful enforcement measures," wrote WikiLeaks in its release. The chapter is intended to deal with issues like overfishing, trade of wood products, wildlife crime, and illegal logging. But most of the measures in the chapter are voluntary, rather than binding, and do not include penalties or criminal sanctions for violations. Compliance is largely left to the respective countries.

Enviros offered similar criticism. "The lack of fully-enforceable environmental safeguards means negotiators are allowing a unique opportunity to protect wildlife and support legal sustainable trade of renewable resources to slip through their fingers,” said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, in a statement.

The leaked document from November is only a draft, but if the trade pact's final environmental chapter looks like it, it would make the Obama administration's environmental trade record "worse than George W. Bush’s," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “This draft chapter falls flat on every single one of our issues -- oceans, fish, wildlife, and forest protections -- and in fact, rolls back on the progress made in past free trade pacts.”

According to a report from the chairs of the TPP Environmental Working Group drafting the chapter, also released by WikiLeaks, there remains significant disagreement among the parties on many of the pact's provisions. The chairs wrote that Vietnam, Peru and Malaysia object to a provision calling for countries to "rationalize and phase out" fossil fuel subsidies "that encourage wasteful consumption." They also noted that the United States and Australia object to the climate change portion of the pact as it is written.

Negotiation of the pact has been underway since 2010, but all discussions take place entirely outside of public view. The Obama administration has already received backlash for leaked portions of the pact that indicate it would grant greater rights to corporations to challenge national laws in private courts.

Efforts to fast-track the trade deal met resistance from Democrats in Congress this week.


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VEOLA ENVIRONMENT IS OWNED BY HIGHSTAR WITH JOHNS HOPKINS AS ITS MAJOR SHAREHOLDER AND THIS IS WHY O'MALLEY AND RAWLINGS-BLAKE ARE PUSHING THESE PLANTS IN MARYLAND.  

It has nothing to do with greening or environmentalism.....it simply moves all public waste and recycling to this Hopkins' owned business VEOLA.  As this happens, communities around it will see all kinds of health effects and the air quality already bad in Maryland will get worse------THAT'S A DOUBLE WIN FOR JOHNS HOPKINS AS ASTHMA IS THE NUMBER ONE HEALTH PROFIT FOR MARYLAND HOSPITALS!!!!

Just imagine how likely having a global health corporation like Hopkins owning and running the disposal of medical waste.....their major expense.  Remember, in China there are no environmental laws and that is why all kinds of hazardous dumping and leeching has made China an industrial dump.


This policy is not only disgusting......but O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake and your Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City Hall neo-liberals are tying the funding of public schools to this Johns Hopkins business that kills the environment.  If you look at who supports these incinerators--------Baltimore museums and many Maryland public school districts.  The public sector tied to yet another corporation.




VEOLA ENVIRONMENT
Incineration Services

If you’re looking for an efficient way to destroy hazardous organic compounds and deal with a wide variety of waste materials, no other method matches the effectiveness of high-temperature incineration. Veolia Environmental Services provides the most environmentally compliant, safe and cost-effective incineration service in the industry. And, once incinerated, the resulting ash and other residue is stabilized and placed in permanent land disposal.
Safely Incinerate without Burning Through Your Budget

Our incineration services provide benefits such as:

    Destruction of hazardous waste at a cost-effective price
    Access to our network of incineration facilities, strategically located across the U.S. and fully permitted to meet all applicable regulations and requirements
    The security of complete cradle-to-grave services, from collection and transportation of your hazardous waste materials, through the final disposal of any ash or other residue in a secure land disposal facility
    A full-range incineration system that includes both rotary kilns and fixed-hearth incineration technology for the ultimate in flexibility for handling your most difficult hazardous wastes
    The ability to handle bulk or drummed wastes, eliminating the expense of special containers or special packaging of your wastes
    In many areas, access to the efficiencies and cost savings of rail transportation



Medical Waste Disposal

Manage all your medical waste disposal needs with a partner that can ensure your staff’s safety and your company’s regulatory compliance. Medical waste treatment can take place at Veolia facilities, if the waste is both medical and RCRA, or at audited and approved third party partner facilities. We also provide SHARPS+PAK® medical waste disposal services via U.S. mail, which is mainly designed for businesses with smaller waste quantities.
Medical Waste Disposal Services Customized for You

First, we conduct an initial medical waste review and breakdown analysis to help your company reduce waste and minimize your costs. Once your unique needs are determined, our partners train your staff on waste stream segregation, procedures and safety. Services offered include:


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Keep in mind Maryland's Governor O'Malley led the way for exporting natural gas while leading the Governor's Association because, of course, O'Malley is a raging Wall Street pol.  Mike Miller has said this will happen as as all Maryland neo-liberals keep voting him as leader.....they will vote for it as well.

The infrastructure funding bill by Congress and by Maryland Assembly would fund the construction of this project.  That is why they want this BOLIS OF MONEY as Clinton investment banker turned pol Dulaney moves forward.


ISN'T IT AMAZING THAT YOU NEVER HEAR ANY OF THIS FROM MARYLAND MEDIA OR WYPR AND MARYLAND ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS ARE MOSTLY SILENT TO SOMETHING THAT WILL HAVE DEVASTATING ENVIRONMENTAL AFFECTS ON THE STATE???

I want to add that it is Frosh that heads the judiciary committee that vets judicial appointments and if you liked Maryland's court decision that MERS was not criminal.....you can expect that Frosh placed  pro-global corporates judges in Maryland courts.  See why we do not want Frosh as Maryland Attorney General?  Wonder why Maryland labor groups are backing him?


Court Considers Natural Gas Exports From MD Terminal  

Mon, 01/13/2014 - 11:02am
MAX EHRENFREUND, The Washington Post  

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The future of a massive, controversial construction project on the Chesapeake Bay for exporting natural gas could depend on one poorly written sentence.

Attorneys for the Sierra Club were in court last week fighting the $3.8 billion proposal by Dominion Resources to renovate its terminal in Calvert County so the facility could send domestic gas overseas. The case — which turns on several words in a contract first signed in 1972 and rewritten over the years — is pending in the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

Labor and business leaders argue that construction would bring a huge influx of capital to a state still recovering from the financial crisis. But environmentalists say that the project would worsen global warming, and residents are concerned about the effects on traffic and property values in the sleepy coastal community of Lusby about 60 miles southeast of the District.

"We are all following it really closely," Kelly Canavan, president of a local community organization, said of the dispute between the Sierra Club and Dominion.

Canavan's group, the Accokeek, Mattawoman, Piscataway Creeks Communities Council, opposes Dominion's plans. She said the court case "is one of the strongest possibilities for actually stopping the project."

The case also demonstrates how radically the global energy economy can change in just a few years.

Dominion's Cove Point terminal, which began operating in 1978, was built to receive imported natural gas. But recently, few tankers have come through as the new drilling techniques commonly known as "fracking" have produced an unexpected glut of domestic shale gas.

Dominion now proposes to use Cove Point for export instead of import. But natural gas must be cooled into a liquid before it is loaded onto a tanker. Dominion will have to build cooling facilities at Cove Point — a project that would require three years and thousands of workers.

Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club — which aims to decrease the country's reliance on naturalgas — worry that allowing the exports would encourage domestic drilling, damage the ecology of the bay and ultimately hasten climate change.

Whether the project proceeds could depend on how the court interprets the contract, which curtails how the site can be used. The facility's original owner, Columbia Gas, initially signed the agreement with the Sierra Club and another environmental group. Relations between business and the environmental movement were friendlier then than they are today, and Columbia wanted to avoid a legal dispute.

Sierra argues that the most recent version of that agreement, which Dominion signed in 2005, a few years after acquiring the property, precludes the company from exporting natural gas from Cove Point by sea.

The agreement provides that Dominion can use the site for "receipt by tanker and the receipt or delivery bypipeline" of natural gas in its various forms.

According to the environmental group's lawyers, that phrase means that Cove Point can receive shipments of natural gas by sea or overland via pipeline, and that it can deliver gas to domestic customers, also viapipeline. Delivering gas to outgoing vessels is not permitted, they argue.

A lower court ruled against the Sierra Club last year. Circuit Judge James Salmon agreed with Dominion that the facility could make a "delivery by pipeline" to the pier where deep-water tankers dock.

The offshore pier, just over a mile from the coast, is indeed connected to land by an insulated pipeline along the bottom of the bay.

The Sierra Club appealed the decision.

The parties to the contract in 2005 did not anticipate that Dominion would ever need to export natural gas. During arguments Wednesday, appeals court judges questioned attorneys for both sides on economic and technological aspects of shipping gas at that time, trying to reconstruct a world that already seems far in the past.

Dominion has signed contracts with importers in India and Japan, who agreed to buy capacity at Cove Point for 20 years. The company asked the court to rule quickly on the case, citing the volatility of the global market for fossil fuels.

For those who live near the facility, the debate about Cove Point is much more than a disagreement over the meaning of "receipt or delivery."

Carolyn Hart, president of the Calvert County Chamber of Commerce, said her group's members are eager for the jobs and people they expect construction to bring to the area. "I can tell you, we're waiting," she said. Hart lives a quarter of a mile from the terminal, and she and her husband own a nearby wine shop.

Dominion said they are among many people who think the project will benefit the community. "The support for this kind of a project is extremely broad and very deep," said Chet Wade, a spokesman for Dominion.

Others worry about the risk of an industrial accident.

"We feel like Dominion is transferring environmental and health risks to their neighbors, and we're not getting compensated," said Sue Allison, who can see Cove Point's storage tanks from her kitchen window and made the trip to the courthouse in Annapolis to demonstrate her opposition to the project.

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Do you know that selling the coal fire- power plants with the deal with Exelon is an environmental greenhouse disaster and your Maryland Assembly pol voted for this merger deal that could have required these power plants be shut down?  O'Malley handed them to Exelon who simply handed them to a connected figure and Maryland still has coal-fired power plants all by a governor who Maryland press labels a friend of the environment!!!!

I NEVER HEAR BASU TELLING US ALL THIS AS HE LAMENTS GREENHOUSE GAS LEVELS AND GLOBAL WARMING.....HE WILL SHOUT OUT TO BUILD WINDMILLS, BECAUSE THAT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE WITH ALL THIS OTHER BAD ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IN MARYLAND!

Know where the windmills will be built?  I know, Maryland pols said this was a job creator.....yet, very few Maryland workers  will be involved.  IT'S ABOUT CHANNELLING FEDERAL AND STATE FUNDING TO CAMPAIGN DONORS YOU KNOW!

Look below to see yet another foreign global corporation coming into the US to build manufacturing.  Remember, TPP gives global corporations a pass on all US labor and justice laws if it cuts into profits.......TPP will allow Siemens to bring workers from around the world to work in Kansas and if Kansas citizens want a job.....they will work for the same third world wages these immigrants get...... THIS IS WHAT GREEN TECHNOLOGY BUSINESSES BRING TO THE US.....AND YOUR FEDERAL AND STATE TAX MONEY WILL SUBSIDIZE THE BUILDING OF THESE PLANTS BECAUSE.....AFTER ALL.....THEY CREATE JOBS!

See why WYPR does not connect the dots......see why public media was taken corporate?



Siemens will Build Wind Turbine Production Facility in the U.S.
05.05.2009 · Posted in Wind Energy

 
Additional capital investment in green technologies – 400 new jobs to be created

Erlangen, Germany, May 05, 2009

Siemens intends to build a new production facility for wind turbines in the state of Kansas. Initially, 400 new jobs are expected to be created in the new wind turbine production facility in Hutchinson, Kansas. When production begins at this facility, Siemens will be able to even more effectively meet the strong demand for wind turbine equipment in North and South America in the future.

75px Siemens AG logo.svg Siemens will Build Wind Turbine Production Facility in the U.S.“The United States already is and will continue to be one of the world’s fastest growing wind energy markets. We are thus intensifying our commitment to this green technology to further expand our leading global position in this field,” stated Peter Löscher, CEO of Siemens AG. “We are already the leading green infrastructure giant. And by making these investments, we will become even greener.” With revenues totaling EUR19 billion in fiscal year 2008, Siemens now has the world’s largest portfolio of environmental technologies.

Construction of the 300,000-square-foot nacelle production facility is scheduled to begin in August 2009. A nacelle is mounted on top of the tower and supports the rotor. It houses a wind turbine’s major components for electric power generation, including the gearbox, the drive train and the control electronics.

The nacelles to be produced in Kansas will weigh 90 tons and the first nacelle is expected to be shipped in December 2010. All nacelles produced in Hutchinson will be used in the company’s reliable 2.3-MW wind turbine product family. Initially, the factory’s planned annual output is approximately 650 nacelles – or 1,500 megawatts (MW).

“Just two years ago we opened a rotor blade manufacturing facility in Fort Madison, Iowa. By expanding our investment in Kansas, we are strengthening our presence in the U.S. and, at the same time, we are increasing the proximity to our U.S. customers. This new location will enable us to serve them more rapidly and cost-effectively,” said René Umlauft, CEO of Siemens Energy’s Renewable Energy Division.

Hutchinson is near the geographic center of the continental United States and offers a viable workforce and excellent transportation logistics. The factory will include direct loading onto rail, which will provide easy access to project locations throughout the Unites States and Canada. Shipments can also be made utilizing the barge facilities at the port of Catoosa, located 250 miles from the plant. Kansas also has excellent wind conditions. In terms of wind energy potential, this centrally located state ranks third in the U.S.

Since entering the wind industry in 2004, Siemens has greatly expanded its worldwide manufacturing network. In addition to opening and consequently expanding the wind turbine blade manufacturing facilities in Fort Madison, Iowa, USA, and Engesvang, Denmark, the Danish facilities in Brande and Aalborg have been expanded and a new R&D center in Boulder, USA, was established. Siemens’ global wind power business has grown from approximately 800 employees in 2004 to more than 5,500 today, which equals an increase of approximately 650 percent.

Wind power is an important feature of Siemens’ environmental portfolio. In 2008, revenue from the products and solutions of Siemens’ environmental portfolio was nearly EUR19 billion, which is equivalent to around a quarter of Siemens’ total revenue.
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December 23rd, 2013

12/23/2013

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I am returning to the issues of TPP and Immigration Bill which ties perfectly with the labor action we had in Maryland this weekend.  This is an ongoing campaign at the BWI Airport with most businesses tied to the airport.

Why are Congress and the President taking up things like health care reform, education reform, and seeming to ignore all Rule of Law on public justice since the crash?  THEY ARE ACTING AS IF TPP IS ALREADY LAW!  But wait-----our pols are already shouting they weren't part of these negotiations and yet, in a neo-liberal state like Maryland the laws that come with TPP have been operating since the crash. 

YOUR POL NOT ONLY KNOWS ABOUT TPP-----BUT HAS BEEN NEGOTIATING FOR BUSINESSES IN MARYLAND IN THESE DEALS.


How is the labor and justice situation below like the TPP and Immigration Bill passed by the Senate?  Let's look what is happening.

TPP says any nation in this trade agreement must not allow its laws to effect a global corporation's ability to earn profit, so a labor law that protects an employee that will cost a global corporation money will not be enforced.  Categorizing workers as independent contractors when they are just employees of a corporation is illegal but with TPP that global corporation will claim those US laws hinder its ability to earn profit.

THIS IS WHAT TPP DOES....ALLOWS ALL GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO CIRCUMVENT ALL OTHER NATION'S CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS.

Remember, the 1% now no longer look at the world as nations but markets and the TPP does that.  The 1% in all of these countries signing on do not care that their Constitutions are usurped-----they are the ones with global corporations reaping profits from this treaty!  So, Obama has signed on to this TPP with the knowledge he is working to end US sovereignty and that is a COUP against the US Constitution and American people.  THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF FOLKS!  This is why we did not received any public justice as all of our wealth was stolen through corporate fraud and it is why corporations are controlling all public policy-writing in Baltimore.  Johns Hopkins is that global corporation thinking it has overthrown the US Constitution......but it hasn't.

THIS ENTIRE ACTION IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION AND CAN BE REVERSED AS SUCH.  THE TREATY JUST NEEDS TO BE DEEMED ILLEGAL WHEN RULE OF LAW IS REINSTATED.....EASY PEASY!


JUST RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES AND WE CAN REVERSE THIS!


So, these workers being exploited by a French corporation is an example of what is to come if TPP is enacted.  You will notice that all of the infrastructure development that will come as a stimulus next year will involve these global corporations which bring in immigrant labor and tie them to these same kinds of contracts as has happened with these African immigrants tied to VEOLA through Super Shuttle at BWI.  This is happening all over the country!


VEOLA brings these African immigrants to the US to work for their corporation with the idea that working in the US is a great thing and VOILA----these workers are calling themselves slaves-----and they are!  That will happen on these infrastructure jobs as well.  Notice every time an immigrant is brought to do these jobs a domestic worker is not employed and notice that these transportation jobs used to be public sector jobs with employees paid well and having good benefits!  SEE WHY WE NEED TO FIGHT FOR STRONG PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS? 


ALL OF MARYLAND'S PUBLIC WORKS ARE NOW BEING DONE WITH EXPLOITED IMMIGRANT LABOR OR PRISON LABOR.  SOUND THIRD WORLD TO YOU? 

The Immigration Bill passed by the neo-liberal Senate was never about justice for immigrants.....it was always about bringing these immigrants over with global corporations doing work in the US and allowing them to work.  This is what is happening to these African workers and it is happening with our Hispanic workers as well.  THINK THIS IS NOT COMING TO MIDDLE-CLASS WORKERS---this is what is happening in Johns Hopkins as office workers are now a victim of this same independent contractor scheme.  After they get the same treatment as these Super Shuttle employees, the Hopkins' office workers are earning almost nothing as well. 

THIS KIND OF EMPLOYMENT IS PERVASIVE IN MARYLAND AND ALL NEO-LIBERAL STATES.  SO, IT IS NOT THE TEA PARTY THAT IS KILLING LABOR-----IT IS THE NEO-LIBERALS!


'The TPP foreign investor privileges would provide foreign firms greater "rights" than those afforded to domestic firms.


This includes a "right" to not have expectations frustrated by a change in government policy. Claiming such radical privileges, foreign corporations have launched cases against environmental, energy, consumer health, toxics, water, mining and other non-trade domestic policies that they allege undermine their "expected future profits."


Learn more: http://bit.ly/HRIWYp'
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Why You Should Be Outraged About the TPP TRADE, 16 December 2013

by Luke Bacon - NewMatilda

Openness in negotiation is a key component of democratic politics. Without it, the public can’t make sound decisions. The anti-democratic nature of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

As governments and corporations push to finalise negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), people who support wide participation in policy development should increase the pressure for open discussion.

Relegating the TPP to a “special interest” issue for online activists is a success for secrecy. Opposition to the TPP is actually in the broader interest of individuals and organisations working in health, education, human rights, journalism, ecology, welfare, workers rights and other related areas.

Its stated goals are “economic integration” and increasing “market access” but the TPP deal covers far more than trade. There are sections on labour, the environment, e-commerce, intellectual property, foreign investment, financial services, telecommunications, Investor State Dispute Settlement and more. The treaty prescribes how member states will legislate in these areas.

Negotiations started in 2010 and there is pressure to finalise the text as soon as possible. The 2013 deadline was missed this week and negotiations have been extended into January.

Only a handful of representatives from each member state are allowed access to the negotiation text. No one else, not even elected representatives outside of the negotiation team, are allowed to know what’s on the table. The negotiations themselves are “off the record”, though roughly 700 lobbyists (“advisors“), mostly representing corporate interests, do have access.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have spoken out demanding public scrutiny of public policy, signing petitions and attending protests.

Last week, Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson successfully passed a motion requesting the final treaty text be made available to the public “well before it is signed.” Since then, the Senate’s request has been refused by the Coalition who say its release would “damage Australia’s standing”.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz made a damning assessment of secrecy in democracies for his 1999 Oxford Amnesty Lecture:

“Meaningful participation in democratic processes requires informed participants. Secrecy reduces the information available to the citizenry, hobbling their ability to participate meaningfully… voters have to be informed: they have to know what alternative actions were available, and what the results might have been.”

As far as the TPP is concerned, US trade representative Ron Kirk says secrecy from the public is needed to “preserve negotiating strength and to encourage our partners to be willing to put issues on the table they may not otherwise”.

Stiglitz addresses this position:

“The argument that public discussions — including discussions of uncertainties and mistakes — will undermine the authority of public institutions is one of the most corrosive of democratic processes. It is akin to the kinds of arguments that authoritarian regimes conventionally use. I would argue, on the contrary, that were governments to deal honestly with their citizenry, confidence in government and public institutions would increase, not decrease.”

Unfortunately, in our society, arguments for secrecy are commonplace. Immigration and asylum seeker policy, locked down under Operation Sovereign Borders, is just the most recent example of a situation where basic information must be smuggled out, so the public can see the detail of policies enacted on their behalf.

Another common defence of the TPP’s secrecy is that “this is just the usual process for trade agreements” and that negotiators are conducting private consultations, in which affected stakeholders (public interest advocates in addition to the lobbyists) can voice concerns.

Instead, as Stiglitz says, the real effect is that “the quality of decision making is thereby weakened… With more mistakes, public officials become more defensive; to protect themselves, they seek even more secrecy, narrowing in the circle still further, eroding still further the quality of decision-making.”

Public Health Lecturer Deborah Gleeson points out that, “since those being consulted don’t have much information about what’s in the agreement and aren’t permitted to view the text, meaningful input is difficult. Indeed, it’s farcical to be consulted about the details of text you haven’t seen!”

On 6 December Stiglitz published an open letter to TPP negotiators criticising the secretive nature of the negotiations, he warned that “The TPP proposes to freeze into a binding trade agreement many of the worst features of the worst laws in the TPP countries, making needed reforms extremely difficult if not impossible.”

On 13 November Wikileaks published the Intellectual Property (Rights) Chapter of the agreement, this is the secret draft negotiation text with annotations for the positions of nations on individual clauses. For the first time, we can see what is on the table and the stance our representatives are taking.

The leaked negotiation text includes clauses to expand the scope of patents to cover medical procedures, force your ISP to police your internet usage, and increase opportunities for multi-nationals to sue governments through investor-state dispute settlements. This is just the intellectual property chapter — the rest of the agreement remains in the dark.

Since the leak, Australia’s Trade Minister Andrew Robb has said “the Government will not permit any outcome in its trade negotiations which undermines the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme or Australia’s health system more generally.” However, regardless of Robb’s claims, Australia will be held to the ratified text of the TPP and in its current form it would raise the price of medicine by slowing the process to generic manufacturing.

In these negotiations — where the biggest economy in the world is playing hard-ball —how does it help our bargaining power for all negotiations to be secret? If you were really concerned with the public interest, wouldn’t you want the public there to back you up?

It proves the vital relevance of people like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Jeremy Hammond, and of Wikileaks, that the only way we could discover the deals being made on our behalf is by concerned people on the inside passing us information.

Many are already speaking out against the contempt for participatory democracy visible in the TPP negotiations. Doctors Without Borders have long recognised the effect the TPP will have on the lives of people they work with. A new website has launched with suggestions for what you can do.

Everybody has a role in opposing this attack on the public interest — even something small broadens the group involved. Support whistleblowers who risk everything so that we can know what’s going on; demand a say in the direction our laws drive us. Already the public outcry has prompted someone brave on the inside to pass out the crucial draft chapter.




Regarding ending slavery in Maryland/US:


Below you see a very important labor action you will of course not hear about on main stream media but it is significant because Hispanic language media, always there to coverage labor and justice events, is helping our local justice organizations to get the word out about the state of the state of Maryland to Hispanic families across the country. I have spoken about the Hispanic immigrants having their wages stolen and workplace abuses openly by private contractors denying immigrants the labor rights that are Constitutional rights in America. I have spoken of corporations like Johns Hopkins using Temporary Services illegally categorizing their employees as independent contractors, exploiting and stealing their wages and leaving these employees impoverished. As you read below remember this.....this describes what neo-liberals are doing in Congress with the Immigration Reform bill. These immigrants are being recruited by French VEOLA to come and work in America and as we see to be exploited labor. This immigration policy is not good.....it is very, very, very, bad and all Maryland pols backing this Immigration Bill this treatment of labor!

DO YOU HEAR ANY MARYLAND POLS SHOUTING OUT AGAINST THIS ABUSE? YET, THEY SAY THEY ARE PROGRESSIVE BECAUSE THEY ALLOW IMMIGRANTS TO COME TO MARYLAND-------TO BE EXPLOITED!




REMEMBER, ALL OF THIS IS ILLEGAL.....LAWS ARE BEING BROKEN AND STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL GANSLER, THE HEAD OF THE DLLR, Leonard J Howie, III. ASK THESE TWO MEN AND YOUR INCUMBENT NEO-LIBERAL WHERE RULE OF LAW IN MARYLAND WENT!!!!


Super Shuttle employee:

'I need more help to speak out and let the whole world know slavery is still practiced in USA today by a company called super shuttle owned by France multibillion dolars called Veolia'.



Hispan Tv Coverage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__cO21K27A
EEUU: protestan contra la esclavitud moderna
www.youtube.com
Trabajadores de una empresa que brinda servicios en los aeropuertos de EE.UU. denuncian prácticas de "esclavitud moderna" por parte de la corporación VEOLIA....

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

VEOLA is known worldwide for exploitation and labor abuse so why is Governor O'Malley and the Maryland General Assembly and Baltimore City Hall handing them all of our public transportation system? THESE POLS LOVE TO EXPLOIT MARYLAND CITIZENS!

Many of these BWI Super Shuttle employees are African immigrants------OH, THAT'S RIGHT, THEY ARE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS----and must pay $35,000 in initial operating fees payable over ten years at 15% interest. Remember, they are being told this is a business they can grow just as a McDonald's franchise when in fact they are simply employees of Super Shuttle owned by VEOLA. So, each driver is paying operating expenses, airport fees, dispatch fees, insurance fees to VEOLA owned Super Shuttle. Additionally, they are paying lease payments and franchise fees TOTALING $1,200 - 2,100 EACH WEEK. The employees are paying the cost of VEOLA being in business at the BWI AIRPORT. On top of that, O'Malley and the General Assembly and Baltimore City Hall buy many of VEOLA's vehicles with taxpayer money pretending these deals are public private partnerships.

As you see below VEOLA is being used across the nation to privatize public transportation and bust public sector unions and they do it in mostly neo-liberal states like Maryland. Labor unions are organizing and we thank the local UFCW for taking up this effort on behalf of BWI Super Shuttle employees! Denver Super Shuttle employees have CWA fighting this battle and Boston labor union CWA sends their support below.




Airport Super Shuttle Drivers Join CWA after 2-Year Battle

Oct 27, 2011

After a two-year fight for a union, Super Shuttle drivers at Denver International Airport voted overwhelmingly last week for CWA representation.(*)

Overcoming two years of hostility, harassment and coercion, 94 Super Shuttle drivers at Denver International Airport finally got the chance last week to vote for a union. In a resounding victory, they voted 77-4 for representation with CWA Local 7777, which also represents 300 Union Taxi drivers at DIA.(*)

The mostly African immigrant group filed their original petition for a union election in December 2009. Attempting to frighten its drivers and derail the vote, Super Shuttle management claimed the workers were independent contractors and therefore ineligible, terminated a driver on the organizing committee, and committed numerous other unfair labor practices.(*)

_____________________________________________


BWI Super Shuttle van drivers ‘fired’ for speaking out about working conditions

By Bill Hughes · December 22, 2013
·


Activists came out Saturday to support the BWI super shuttle van drivers, who some claim they have been fired for speaking out about poor wages and working conditions.

The drivers are “low wage workers – making minumum wages after working 18 and even 24 hours a day,” according to a statement put out from Workers Assembly.



Veolia, international corporation, (which operates at other airports on the East coast), is not treating the employees “fairly,” Workers Assembly said.

To learn more about why the activists and the workers staged a “Caravan for Justice,” at the site of the rally, and through BWI, go to their Facebook page.
Speaking on camera: Sean Collins, Sharon Black, Amy Millard


***********************************************
Support from Boston School Bus Driver USW Local 9751

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=745169772178681&set=vb.100000569962368&&theaterSupport from Boston School Bus Driver USW Local 9751 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=745169772178681&set=vb.100000569962368&&theater


Denver CWA prevailed in seven ULPs it filed against management, with the NLRB eventually directing the election. It further ordered Super Shuttle to refund the drivers $65,000 in franchising fees, which the company had collected as retaliation for their union activities.(*)

District 7 Organizing Coordinator Al Kogler said Local 7777 organizer Abdi Buni, a former Union Taxi driver at DIA, did an "incredible job" of holding the Super Shuttle drivers together, and local President Lisa Bolton provided critical support.(*)


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

Remember Obama appointed Maryland's DLLR from Maryland Tom Perez to National Labor Department? See why? Neo-liberals need people in positions of accountability who allow all kinds of lying, cheating, and stealing to occur and when Rule of Law is reinstated, who will be charged with Aiding and Abetting these crimes? These black and Hispanic leaders. This is why they have these jobs right now......they are the fall guys.

We all understand that it is people of color overwhelmingly feeling this abuse but as the middle class has been gutted by these massive corporate frauds everyone is now the target of abuse.
We want to shout loudly to Mr Howie and Doug Gansler that they need to do their jobs as the face of PUBLIC JUSTICE and enforce labor law and US Constitutional protections.


DO YOU HEAR YOUR DEMOCRATIC POL SHOUTING OUT AGAINST THIS----IT IS THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM YOU KNOW! IF NOT, YOU HAVE A NEO-LIBERAL RUNNING AS A DEMOCRAT!


LEONARD J. HOWIE III, Esq., Secretary of Labor, Licensing, & Regulation


Proposed, Emergency & Final Regulations
Unemployment Insurance
Occupational & Professional Licensing
Labor & Industry
Workforce Development & Adult Learning
Financial Regulation
Racing
Governor's Workforce Investment Board
Maryland Workforce Exchange
Services


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


Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler

About the Office of the Maryland Attorney General

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
The Attorney General is the chief legal officer of the State. The Attorney General's Office has general charge, supervision and direction of the legal business of the State, acting as legal advisors and representatives of the major departments, various boards, commissions, officials and institutions of State Government. The Office further represents the State in all cases pending in the Appellate Courts of the State, and in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower Federal Courts.





__________________________________________
PLEASE KNOW THAT FLOODING THE US LABOR MARKET WITH IMMIGRANTS AND NO ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR AND JUSTICE PROTECTIONS IS AS BAD FOR IMMIGRANTS AS IT IS DOMESTIC LABOR.  THIS IS NOT A 'I HATE IMMIGRANTS STANCE' AS PROGRESSIVE WORRY-----WE WANT IMMIGRANT WORKERS PROTECTED NOW!

These laws are written in such a way that these immigrants like the Super Shuttle workers would have to stay employed consistently or be exported.  Well, look at what they are now exposed to.  These Shuttle drivers would lose their ability for citizenship by speaking out and risking getting fired.....which is the point of how these laws are written.  It traps immigrants into abusive situations like these at Super Shuttle.


IT IS NOT PROGRESSIVE TO ALLOW THESE BILLS TO PASS WHEN ALL PUBLIC JUSTICE IS SUSPENDED. 

We do not want to deny any immigrant the right to a better life, but as the current situation shows, neo-liberals do not intend to give immigrants a better life.  As progressives we need to rebuild our Rule of Law and democratic structures, ESPECIALLY THOSE PROTECTING IMMIGRANT WORKERS and wait until we can have a CITIZENSHIP NOW VOTE IN CONGRESS.  Remember, the goal with neo-liberals and neo-cons is to create a workforce in the US like they had in Asia....that is the only goal. 


IMMIGRATION JUNE 27, 2013

Why Liberals Should Oppose the Immigration Bill It's about low-wage American workers BY T.A. FRANK  New Republic

  The consensus among decent people in favor of the immigration bill making its way through Congress is so firm that expressing dissent feels a bit like taking the floor to suggest we chop down the Redwood National Park. People don’t want to hear it, and they also think you’re a nut. That makes this article one of the hardest I’ve ever had to write. It’s not that I’m afraid people will get angry; it’s that I can’t imagine anyone on my side (liberal) is open to persuasion. And, despite the vastness and complexity of the issue, I have to be brief: the Senate hopes to be done with things this week.

Sometimes, though, you just have to embrace futility.

The country I want for myself and future Americans is one that’s prosperous, cohesive, harmonious, wealthy in land and resources per capita, nurturing of its skilled citizens, and, most important, protective of its unskilled citizens, who deserve as much any other Americans to live in dignity. This bill threatens to put all of that out of reach, because it fails to control illegal immigration. The problem is not that it provides 11 million people eventual amnesty (I don’t object to that, in theory); the problem is that it sets in motion the next waves of millions. 

High levels of low-skill immigration are good for wealthy Americans and bad for poor Americans.

That is not a fashionable concern, of course. Worrying about illegal immigration today is a lot like worrying about communists in government in 1950.  It’s not that the problem isn’t legitimate or serious (there actually were, we now know, a lot of Moscow loyalists working for the U.S. government). It’s that expressing your concurrence links you to a lot of demagogues and bad actors. 

Most of America’s college-educated elites are little affected by illegal immigration. In fact, it’s often a benefit to us in terms of childcare, household help, dinners out, and other staples of upper-middle-class life. Many therefore view the problem as akin, in severity, to marijuana use—common but benign, helpful to the immigrants and minimal in its effects on Americans or anyone else. I know, because it used to be my own view.

There’s no short way to argue why I was misguided or explain how my views evolved. Oddly enough, an early important realization came to me in Hong Kong during the SARS crisis of 2003. I thought about how Hong Kong had created a flawed but remarkable city in which even low-skilled laborers such as these men and women, who were wearing masks and wiping down railings, lived far better than similar laborers on the other side of the border. I also realized that only a wall (and I didn’t much like walls) prevented millions of people on the People’s Republic of China side of the border from coming over to take these lowly jobs for a fraction of the current wage. (Hong Kong had no minimum wage at the time.) I knew I wouldn’t want these unskilled street cleaners to lose their adequate standard of living to such unbridled competition.

But if that was how I felt about protecting Hong Kong’s working class, why shouldn’t I feel that way about America’s?

Worldviews evolve slowly, of course. I read a lot research and studies. I familiarized myself with more of the literature: both immigration-skeptical work by people like Harvard’s George J. Borjas and Cornell’s Vernon Briggs and immigration-boosterish work by people like U.C. Berkeley’s David Card and U.C. Davis’s Giovanni Peri, to name a few. I read lots blogs and news stories. I started reporting on California and wrote articles that concerned immigration.  I came to believe that the boosters had many more vulnerabilities and flaws in their arguments than the skeptics. I found the theories of people like UCLA’s Ruth Milkman—who posits, for example, that illegal immigration had little to do with the decline of wages and working conditions in Los Angeles’s trucking, garment, and janitorial industries because “de-unionization…provokes native-born workers to abandon no-longer-desirable jobs, at which point immigrants then fill the vacancies”—to be unpersuasive.

I also noticed that a lot of immigration-boosterish studies—most of them, I’d say—contain telling caveats that undermine their case. For instance, buried on page 20 in Appendix Two” of this pro-legalization report touted by the Center For American Progress—trumpeted in a press release with the headline “How Immigration Reform Would Help the Economy”—is an estimate that if half of the current unauthorized labor force were deported the wage of a low-skill U.S. worker would rise by $399 a year. By contrast, legalization would raise that worker’s wage by less than half that much—and that’s assuming no further illegal immigration.   

All in all, I became convinced that high levels of low-skill immigration are good for wealthy Americans and bad for poor Americans.  Far more important, high levels of illegal immigration—when you start to get into the millions, as we have--undermines unions and labor standards, lowers wages, heightens social tensions, strains state budgets, widens income inequality, subverts the rule of law, and exacerbates class divides. The effects go far beyond wages, because few undocumented workers earn enough to cover anything close to the cost of government services (such as education for their children) they require, and those services are most important to low-income Americans. In short, it’s an immense blow to America’s working class and poor.

Most labor unions support the current legislation, of course, but few of them seem to acknowledge the possibility of a mass influx of a future illegal workforce.  In part, that’s because the SEIU and many other unions have thousands of undocumented members, and raising a fuss about enforcement or opposing the current bill would alienate their own members. It’s probably also that they believe, unrealistically, that the bill would be effective at controlling the border in the future.

And a lot of Democrats have also convinced themselves that even if there’s a wage loss to low-skilled workers, the massive new voting bloc of mostly left-leaning immigrants will ultimately help the little guy. But if millions of new Democratic voters oppose strict immigration control, then there will no Democratic support for meaningful immigration control. And generous social benefits cannot coexist with an open border.  (Nor can a more egalitarian society.)

I know that unauthorized immigrants are for the most part good, decent people. Deploring illegal immigration is not a condemnation of the immigrants themselves, anymore than deploring traffic is a condemnation of drivers. The rhetoric about hard workers trying to support their families is true, and in a perfect world we could invite everyone in without any tradeoffs. But the United States cannot take in millions upon millions of impoverished workers and hope to provide its own low-income citizens with lives of dignity or economic security.

Most of the enthusiastic endorsements I’ve read of the current Senate bill seem to assume that the problem of illegal immigration will be solved once the legislation is passed. (Chuck Schumer recently promised on the Senate floor, “illegal immigration will be a thing of the past,” a remarkable performance even by Schumer standards.) But the Congressional Budget Office projects no such thing. It sees only a 25 percent reduction in current levels.

That’s because, for all the ambitious measures listed on paper, the current bill grants near-immediate legalization in exchange for future enforcement.  That deal is okay, except that failure to enforce the law in the future would not lead to loss of legal status. In fact, the only penalty I can detect in the bill is that failure to secure the border in five years would lead to the creation of a “Border Commission” with the power to—make recommendations.  (If you care to see Marco Rubio’s defense of it, you can read it here and see if you’re convinced.) It is a large-scale replay of what we tried in 1986, when legalization was followed by lax enforcement and a much larger wave of unlawful migration. Enforcement capacity must be demonstrated before legalization is made permanent.

Enforcement of immigration law is not all that hard. Illegal immigration can never be reduced to zero, of course, but it can be brought down to levels that we had in the 1950s and 1960s, and with very little outright force.  There are plenty of means: enhanced fencing and patrolling at the southern border, E-Verify for all hiring, strict penalties for employers who hire illegally, a biometric entry/exit system, and punishment (and deportation) for entering the country illegally. Ron Unz of The American Conservative has proposed that a $12-an-hour minimum wage plus strict sanctions would greatly reduce the magnet of sweatshop employment. None of these methods could work singly, but used in concert they would bring illegal immigration down to negligible levels.  An analogy might be made to crime in Manhattan: it will never go to zero, but the rate has become so low as to cease to be alarming.

The trouble has always been political will. Every interest group has an argument against one enforcement mechanism or the other.  Farmers and small businesses and the SEIU oppose E-Verify as a “job killer;” the ACLU contends it has “enormous privacy and security risks.” Environmentalists oppose a border fence because of migrating wildlife, and the 2006 Secure Fence Act never led to completion on the ground.  Employer sanctions are unpopular with employers, who often are political donors and “job creators,” and plans in 1986 to start levying them never came to proper fruition. The biometric entry/exit system is “too expensive.” So we’ve historically compromised and done none of the above. That’s why all the “tough” measures being put into the current bill are simultaneously overblown and unserious. The Senate just voted to spend almost $40 billion on securing the southern border, when almost half of unauthorized immigrants are visa over-stayers. So why not spend a mere $5 billion to help roll out E-Verify?  Or $25 billion to implement a biometric entry/exit system?

Now politicians also seem to have become frightened of potential new voters. Calls to enforce the law, they fear, have come to be seen as anti-immigrant or xenophobic.  If that’s the state of affairs now, what is it likely to be when 11 million new beneficiaries of lax border enforcement and their families and descendants become voters? This is why the New York Times editorial page, back in 2000, when it was more cold-eyed on the subject, warned, “Illegal immigration of unskilled workers induced by another amnesty would make matters worse.”

If we intend to offer amnesty, however, we should at the very least place the burden of proof on those proposing to fix the problem. The way to do it is not by granting “provisional legal status” that can’t be revoked but, rather, by granting to all of today’s unauthorized immigrants what Obama has granted to those who were brought here as children: deferred action. Create a window of time—five or ten years—during which to implement all the current proposed border enforcement measures without any existing (non-criminal) residents having to fear penalties or deportation.  It would be a time-limited period of legalization equivalent to a temporary visa. If future illegal immigration is reduced to set agreed-upon levels (50,000 a year should be the high end), then Congress could vote to upgrade “deferred” immigrants to permanent legalization and allow them to commence a path to citizenship. If not, then they would revert to their present unauthorized status. There must be measurable benchmarks of results rather than absurd outlays, and genuine consequences must be attached to them.

Certainly, many people would resist this plan, but if so that is precisely because they know—or at least strongly suspect—that the enforcement measures in the current legislation are meaningless. So let’s make them meaningful instead.

If I have a plea to my fellow liberals more broadly, it’s that they focus more of their empathy on fellow Americans being left behind. Because we increasingly live in bubbles, many of us are at best only abstractly aware of how cruelly circumstances of unskilled Americans have deteriorated over the past few decades.  Even as these Americans have lost their well-paid manufacturing jobs, Washington has looked the other way while millions of low-skilled unauthorized immigrants have competed with them for low-skilled service jobs. The insouciance of privileged Americans toward the effects of this on life among less-privileged Americans is, in my view, a betrayal of citizenship. 

If we are to have any hope of regaining any control over our own immigration policy—which is to say, our destiny as a nation—then we must ensure that everyone has an incentive to follow the laws on who gets to be here and who does not.  Otherwise, we will shred the few remaining safety nets we have, and the dream of dignity for all American citizens will slip farther and farther, perhaps permanently, out of reach.  No matter how magnificently Chuck Schumer claims the contrary.

T.A. Frank, a frequent contributor to The New Republic, is a writer and editor in Los Angeles.





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Here is some good union news.....these contracts will allow for a real Living Wage for casino workers!  TPP WILL NOT ALLOW THIS!  What will happen with TPP is this casino will be sold to a global corporation that then claims these wages cut profits.


Living Wage Ruling Gives Queens Casino Workers a Fighting Chance

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Sandra Charles, a security officer at the Resorts World Casino in Queens, had her salary double after a labor arbitrator ruled that the casino management had to pay workers a living wage.

By RACHEL L. SWARNS Published: December 22, 2013

For the fast-food workers who demonstrated across the country this month, it is only a dream. For many economists and policy makers, it is the subject of intense debate. But there is nothing hypothetical about the living wage for Sandra Charles, a security officer and single mother. For her, it is real, tangible and gloriously life-changing.


In October, Ms. Charles and 1,374 of her colleagues at the Resorts World Casino in Queens took an unexpected leap toward the middle class when a labor arbitrator ordered the casino management to pay them a living wage, issuing a ruling that doubled their average paychecks.

Overnight, the average annual salaries of the cooks, parking attendants, slot machine workers, security guards and other low-wage staff members shot up from about $20,000 to nearly $40,000. By 2016, according to the new three-year contract signed by the casino management and the workers’ union, most employees at Resorts World will earn $60,000 a year.

You heard that right: Sixty thousand dollars a year.

In a city that boasts of its appeal to billionaires, this might not sound like much. But for the hundreds of casino workers, many of whom had relied on food stamps and second and third jobs to get by, it is nothing short of staggering. Ms. Charles still weeps when she describes how her life has changed. For her, this is a season of miracles.

“This gives us a breakthrough that no one ever dreamt of,” said Ms. Charles, 47, who no longer spends sleepless nights worrying about paying rent.

Her oldest daughter, who had dropped out of college to work, plans to enroll in classes come January. Her youngest daughter, whose prescription for eyeglasses expired nine months ago, has a brand new pair.

In the spring, Ms. Charles plans to move with her girls into a two-bedroom apartment. For the first time, she says, she will sleep in her own bedroom, not on the couch. “I can pay my bills,” she marveled. “I can save. I can take care of my kids.”

The push for a living wage has gathered steam as some unions, states and municipalities move to help struggling workers. But of the more than 130 localities that have approved living wage laws, precious few have increased salaries so drastically, said Stephanie Luce, an associate professor of labor studies at the City University of New York, who testified on behalf of the union in the arbitration hearing.

New York City’s living wage law, for instance, requires companies that receive $1 million or more in city subsidies to pay at least $10 an hour with benefits or $11.50 an hour without benefits. The casino workers, by contrast, now earn on average $20.50 an hour, plus benefits. Few campaigners are pushing for that level of pay, given concerns among some city officials and company executives about the cost of higher wages.

But Resorts World, which has been spectacularly successful, did not dispute its ability to pay the salaries sought by the union, the Hotel Trades Council. The casino, which opened two years ago in southeastern Queens, attracts 35,000 visitors a day. It posted revenues of $696.5 million in the year ended in March and its electronic slot machines averaged $432 each a day in September, considerably more than slot machines in Atlantic City, Connecticut or Las Vegas.

The contract between the casino and union went to arbitration when the two sides reached an impasse on wages and other issues. The accord is certainly singular. But it shows how a real living wage — one that allows workers to support themselves and their families without government assistance — can transform lives.

Taliea Holmes, 26, who works the slot machines and racked up thousands of dollars in debt after surgery to remove gall stones, can go to the doctor without going broke now that she has health benefits.

Craig Caras, a 42-year-old parking attendant, won’t have to moonlight as a bus driver anymore. He plans to rent a flute so his daughter can finally play an instrument at school.

Given the high cost of living in New York City, many employees will still be categorized as near poor, particularly during the first year of the agreement.

“It’s not making you rich,” Mr. Caras said. “It’s just giving you a fighting chance.”

It is also giving the Charles family a holiday like no other. In the past, the only presents under the Christmas tree have come from relatives. This year, there are gifts from Ms. Charles under the evergreen, which glimmers with stars and angels.

“When you go into the living room,” Ms. Charles said, “you feel that it’s Christmas.”


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November 12th, 2013

11/12/2013

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GLOBALIZATION IS IN DECLINE AND THE 1% HAVE THIS POLICY OF LYING, CHEATING, STEALING BECAUSE THEY ARE TRYING TO CORNER WHAT IS LEFT OF THE WEALTH.  DO NOT ALLOW THE 99% TO BE MADE THIRD WORLD IN THIS ATTEMPT------THAT WILL BE THE OUTCOME IF WE DO NOT FIGHT FOR A RETURN TO FIRST WORLD DEMOCRACY!!!!


Wonder why with all the work that is being done for the public sector why, with all the problems in finished work do we continue to go with private contracting of public work?  The intent is to privatize all that is public.  As global markets die the 1% are pressed to lay claim on as much wealth they can get and that is what you have witnessed this last decade.  Labor losses when public sector unions are privatized and busted by public private partnerships and private unions thinking they are going to get the work are finding all the jobs given to immigrant workers. 

The good news is that global corporations are going to shrink and are being forced to move back to the US for business.  This means we can rebuild a domestic economy that uses US labor as consumer to fuel the economy rather than having global corporations worried about building a middle-class overseas.  So, the elements of our former economy centered on domestic consumerism is there.  The bad news is that the 1% do not care if we have a strong economy domestically because they have all the money and can just limp along forever.  This is what is happening as neo-liberals fight to keep wealth and profit at the top and pass laws like the TPP that undermines the US Constitutional rights of citizens as legislators.  We must fight hard to stop this descent into third world autocracy by taking back the democratic party from the neo-liberals and reinstate Rule of Law and democratic principles-----we have a chance to move back to the US of 1950----strong economy and middle-class and first world quality of life. 

WAKE UP AND GET MOVING------CREATE COMMUNITY ACTION GROUPS AND SHAKE THESE BUGS OUT OF THE RUG!!!


We are sitting listening to corporate NPR tell us that we need to dismantle more regulation in order for private contractors to take more of public sector work even as what they say has already failed in Europe.



UK government auditor questions reliance on big contractors

By Christine Murray

LONDON Tue Nov 12, 2013 12:08am GMT

Margaret Hodge, Labour Party Member of Parliament and chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), poses for a portrait after speaking to Reuters about corporate taxation, in Westminster, central London April 24, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Andrew Winning

(Reuters) - A review of Britain's use of big companies to run services from prisons to hospitals raised questions about whether the rise of a few major contractors was in the public interest, the National Audit Office (NAO) said on Tuesday.

And it said transparency on profit made from government contracts was limited, with firms' tax affairs hard to understand, setting the agenda for a parliamentary grilling of some of the state's biggest suppliers next week.

Two NAO reports on government contractors, based largely on information from Capita (CPI.L), G4S (GFS.L), Serco (SRP.L) and Atos (ATOS.PA), will form the basis of two Public Accounts Committee hearings later this month, one with representatives from the four firms, and another with government officials.

  "I asked the NAO to carry out this work after looking at case after case of contract failure ... in each case we found poor service; poor value for money; and government departments completely out of their depth," Margaret Hodge, the lawmaker who chairs the PAC said. "These reports together raise some big concerns". 

SOUND FAMILIAR?????

The political spotlight is firmly on Britain's 187 billion pound public sector contracting market after a series of high-profile contract failures.

There are currently eight reviews of the industry, including a criminal investigation into G4S and Serco's botched prisoner tagging contracts launched earlier this month.

A Serco spokesman pointed to the firm's corporate renewal program, announced in October to rebuild its relationship with its largest customer, as evidence of its improved transparency.

A spokeswoman for Atos said it had been open and transparent with the NAO, whilst balancing its ability to compete for future work.

The NAO added that the Cabinet Office, which is currently deciding whether G4S and Serco can work for government again, should develop a more "mature" approach to dealing with its biggest suppliers.

It said a balance must be struck between short-term savings, which have mostly come from fierce contract renegotiations, and innovation and investment.

Until the austerity-focused coalition came into power in 2010, suppliers like Capita and Serco enjoyed double-digit revenue growth for two decades.

In some markets, such as private prisons, child custody and medical assessments, there are only a few large providers which the NAO said could be considered "too big to fail".


Some 3 billion pounds of the 40 billion spent by central government each year on suppliers is with the four firms in the report.

Capita said in a statement that all its businesses seek to ensure value for money in an open, fair and transparent way.

A spokeswoman for G4S said it was a strong believer in partnerships with customers and it fully supported NAO's work.

The government said earlier this month that 10.5 percent of all government business went directly to small and medium-sized enterprises in 2012/13, up slightly from 10 percent in the previous year. It has a target of 25 percent for that figure by 2015.



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As Congress and Obama race to build global corporations sending all US Treasury wealth and all spending expanding global markets we know that the global market is dying .......

We need to get rid of global corporate pols wasting our wealth on the status quo and bring corporations  back to small and regional businesses. 


ALL OF THIS REQUIRES THAT THE US WORKER EARNS ENOUGH TO BE MIDDLE-CLASS CONSUMERS.  IT IS BAD POLICY TO KEEP LABOR IMPOVERISHED AS NEO-LIBERALS ARE DOING!


TRUST IN GOVERNMENTS, CORPORATIONS AND
GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS CONTINUES TO DECLINE


Global Survey ahead of World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
in Davos shows ‘trust deficit’ deepening

Geneva, Switzerland, 15 December 2005 – A global public opinion survey carried out for the World Economic Forum in 20 countries, interviewing more than 20,000 citizens, paints an alarming picture of declining levels of trust. The survey, carried out by GlobeScan, shows that trust in a range of institutions has dropped significantly since January 2004 to levels not seen since the months following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. The poll also reveals that public trust in national governments and the United Nations has fallen the most over the past two years.

Since signalling the importance of trust in world affairs by making it the theme of its Annual Meeting in 2003, the World Economic Forum has been monitoring public trust levels and today presents the most recent responses to a set of questions asked of representative samples of citizens around the world since January 2001. The research, conducted by GlobeScan Incorporated, shows that:

• Public trust in national governments, the United Nations and global companies is now at its lowest level since tracking began in January 2001. • Since 2004, trust in government has declined by statistically significant margins in 12 of the 16 countries for which tracking data is available. The only national government with increased trust is Russia’s, continuing its upward trend since 2001. • The United Nations, while continuing to receive higher trust levels than other institutions, has experienced a significant decline in trust from 2004 levels in 12 of the 17 countries for which tracking data is available, suggesting an impact of the scandal over the Oil-for-Food Programme. • Public trust in companies has also eroded over the last two years. After recovering trust in 2004 to pre-Enron levels, trust has since declined for both large national companies and for global companies. Trust in global companies is now at its lowest level since tracking began. • NGOs remain the leaders in trust, but they also have to contend with some decline. In 10 of 17 countries for which data is available, trust in NGOs has fallen since 2004, in some cases sharply (e.g., Brazil, India, South Korea).
These findings are based on a global public opinion poll involving a total of 20,791 interviews with citizens across 20 countries (n=1,000 in most countries), conducted between June and August 2005 by respected research institutes in each participating country, under the leadership of GlobeScan. (A full list of participating institutes, with contact details, is available at: www.weforum.org.) Each country’s findings are considered accurate to within 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The survey asked respondents how much they trust each institution “to operate in the best interests of our society”. Identical questions were asked in most of the same countries in January 2004, August 2002 and January 2001. Net trust levels are presented here – the difference between the percentage of respondents who express trust and those who express no trust in a given institution.

A full report, including charts illustrating all findings, is available at: http://www.weforum.org/trustsurvey.




NOTE: The 14 countries that were tracked are: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the USA.

Declining trust in governments across the world Of all the institutions examined, national governments have lost the most ground over the past two years. In 12 of the 16 countries for which data is available, public trust in the national government has declined by statistically significant margins, leaving only 6 of the tracking countries today with more citizens trusting their national government than distrusting them.

Trust in government has fallen the most in Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Canada and Spain, followed closely by Argentina and the USA. The case of Nigeria is also noteworthy, where trust in the national government fell by 13 points while trust in all other institutions rose. Even in countries such as Great Britain and India, where trust remains positive, it has suffered its biggest fall since tracking began in 2001. Only in Italy, Indonesia and France has trust in the national government held steady, although polling was completed prior to the recent riots across France. The Russian government is now the only institution in any country polled to have consistently increased trust since 2001.




For complete results across all countries, please see the additional charts available on http://www.weforum.org/trustsurvey.



Changing patterns of trust in global companies While trust in global companies has not fallen everywhere, statistically significant declines have occurred over the past two years in 10 of 17 countries for which tracking data is available, and the overall trust level for global companies is the lowest since tracking began. After global companies had rebounded in 2004 to pre-Enron trust levels, these latest findings will be discouraging for business leaders. Perhaps most worrying for corporate executives are the sharp drops in trust in Spain, the USA and Canada, where net trust in global companies has turned negative for the first time. Trust in global companies is strongest in China, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia and India.




In commenting on the poll’s findings, Ged Davis, Managing Director, World Economic Forum, said: “The Annual Meeting in Davos in January will be held under the theme “The Creative Imperative” and it is clear from these figures that to regain the trust of the general public in institutions and governments we must find new and effective ways to reconnect with citizens and tackle the public trust deficit. If not, the very institutions that govern our world will be increasingly under threat.”

Doug Miller, President of GlobeScan, offered the following perspective: “If Francis Fukuyama was right when he described trust as the necessary glue of any properly functioning society, then these poll results suggest we’re in danger of becoming unstuck – especially when values-driven organizations like non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations are losing trust almost as quickly as large companies. It’s time for all organizations to better understand how to earn the public’s trust.”



Each national survey was based on a representative sample of about 1,000 adults and was conducted in-home or by telephone between June and August 2005 as part of the annual 20-nation GlobeScan Report on Issues and Reputation. Individual country findings are accurate within +/- 3%, with 95% confidence. Multi-country results were calculated using the one nation/one vote method.

Notes for Editors:
A fuller document detailing all the survey’s findings is available at www.weforum.org/trustsurvey
For more details on the report’s findings please contact Doug Miller, President of GlobeScan at doug.miller@GlobeScan.com


_____________________________________________
Just look at this indicator having global shipping in decline.  Obama and states are pushing port dredging and expansion to accommodate global tankers and this is where tens of billions are heading.......Baltimore being in this mode.  Remember, it is the HighStar investment firm with Ivy League universities as major shareholders that are being given public ports all across America. 

This is particularly bad policy for Baltimore because having global tankers chugging up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore is the most environmentally damaging policy anyone could pass.  All of the invasive species coming from ship hulls will kill the Bay habitat and for what?  A DECLINING GLOBAL SHIPPING MARKET!!!!

GET RID OF NEO-LIBERALS BY RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!



Global shipping industry in danger of decline


Report released today into the global shipping industry warns of oversupply and high pricing constraining performance   The shipping trade could be entering rough waters

1 12 Aug 2013 Joseph Wilkes  
Supply Chain Digital

A report into the global shipping industry has been released today, warning of decline.

Online market research store Research and Markets has released the Global Shipping Industry 2013 – Forecast, Trends and Opportunities, report from Taiyou Research company, which provides analysis and overview of the entire industry as well as individual elements such as ownership and prices.

The report states that in the coming years, the global shipping industry is expected to decline by five to 10 percent.


Oversupply and high bunker oil prices will eventually lead to a constraining of performance.

The report said: “A sustained oversupply of vessels combined with high bunker oil prices will pressure margins in most shipping segments. The dry-bulk and crude oil tanker segments are likely to have the largest supply-demand gap in 2013, complicating these sectors' ability to meaningfully improve their earnings.

“The tanker market has also been affected by the oversupply of vessels in the near term aided by lower OPEC production levels; though the outlook for the product tanker segment is more favorable since demand growth is likely to outpace supply during 2013, leading freight rates to rise by the end of this year. Box freight rates for the container segment have rebounded since March this year.

“However, strong improvement in earnings should not be expected for the full year in this segment. This reflects sustained high bunker oil costs and pressure on container rates stemming from recent increases in deployed tonnage of box ships.”

But Japanese conglomerates could be affected to a lesser extent by the negative market trends that will damage other global shipping trends. This is due to the scale of the Japanese conglomerates, their diversification, (including their liquefied natural gas, or LNG, fleets) and strong relationships with customers, said the report.

The report includes analysis of 35 major shipping companies such as AP Moller Maersk, China COSCO, China Shipping Development, D/S Norden, Golar LNG, Kawasaki Kisen, Hyundai Merchant Marine.

AP Moller Maersk, Nippon Yusen, Kawasaki Kisen, Mitsui OSK Lines, China COSCO and Evergreen Marine are some of the top players in the industry, the report suggested.


___________________________________________

GLOBALIZATION TOOK A HIT WHEN THE 2008 ECONOMIC COLLAPSE REVEALED AN ENTIRE NETWORK OF US CORPORATE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION  BUT THE SNOWDEN WHISTLE BLOWING WILL SHUT GLOBAL MARKETS DOWN AND THE US KNOWS THIS.

The American people are under assault for their wealth because the 1% know they will have no more markets to build and wealth will decline.  WE NEED TO STOP THE LOOTING AND FIGHT FOR A RETURN TO DOMESTIC CONSUMERISM FUELING THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY.  As global corporations are forced to move back to US they intend to make Chinese sweat shop workers of US labor-----


GET RID OF NEO-LIBERALS WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT!!!


Mistaking Omniscience for Omnipotence: A World Without Privacy

Tuesday, 12 November 2013 09:55 By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch | News Analysis

Protesters rally against mass surveillance during an event organized by the group Stop Watching Us in Washington, DC on October 26, 2013. via Shutterstock)" height="400" width="400">(Image: Protesters rally against mass surveillance during an event organized by the group Stop Watching Us in Washington, DC on October 26, 2013 via Shutterstock)Given how similar they sound and how easy it is to imagine one leading to the other, confusing omniscience (having total knowledge) with omnipotence (having total power) is easy enough. It’s a reasonable supposition that, before the Snowden revelations hit, America’s spymasters had made just that mistake.  If the drip-drip-drip of Snowden’s mother of all leaks -- which began in May and clearly won’t stop for months to come -- has taught us anything, however, it should be this: omniscience is not omnipotence.  At least on the global political scene today, they may bear remarkably little relation to each other. In fact, at the moment Washington seems to be operating in a world in which the more you know about the secret lives of others, the less powerful you turn out to be.

Let’s begin by positing this: There’s never been anything quite like it. The slow-tease pulling back of the National Security Agency curtain to reveal the skeletal surveillance structure embedded in our planet (what cheekbones!) has been an epochal event.  It’s minimally the political spectacle of 2013, and maybe 2014, too. It’s made a mockery of the 24/7 news cycle and the urge of the media to leave the last big deal for the next big deal as quickly as possible. 

It’s visibly changed attitudes around the world toward the U.S. -- strikingly for the worse, even if this hasn’t fully sunk in here yet. Domestically, the inability to put the issue to sleep or tuck it away somewhere or even outlast it has left the Obama administration, Congress, and the intelligence community increasingly at one another’s throats. And somewhere in a system made for leaks, there are young techies inside a surveillance machine so viscerally appalling, so like the worst sci-fi scenarios they read while growing up, that -- no matter the penalties -- one of them, two of them, many of them are likely to become the next Edward Snowden(s).

So where to start, almost half a year into an unfolding crisis of surveillance that shows no signs of ending? If you think of this as a scorecard, then the place to begin is, of course, with the line-up, which means starting with omniscience. After all, that’s the NSA’s genuine success story -- and what kid doesn’t enjoy hearing about the (not so) little engine that could?

Omniscience

Conceptually speaking, we’ve never seen anything like the National Security Agency’s urge to surveill, eavesdrop on, spy on, monitor, record, and save every communication of any sort on the planet -- to keep track of humanity, all of humanity, from its major leaders to obscure figures in the backlands of the planet. And the fact is that, within the scope of what might be technologically feasible in our era, they seem not to have missed an opportunity.

The NSA, we now know, is everywhere, gobbling up emails, phone calls, texts, tweets, Facebook posts, credit card sales, communications and transactions of every conceivable sort.  The NSA and British intelligence are feeding off the fiber optic cables that carry Internet and phone activity. The agency stores records (“metadata”) of every phone call made in the United States. In various ways, legal and otherwise, its operatives long ago slipped through the conveniently ajar backdoors of media giants like Yahoo, Verizon, and Google -- and also in conjunction with British intelligence they have been secretly collecting “records” from the “clouds” or private networks of Yahoo and Google to the tune of 181 million communications in a single month, or more than two billion a year. 

Meanwhile, their privately hired corporate hackers have systems that, among other things, can slip inside your computer to count and see every keystroke you make. Thanks to that mobile phone of yours (even when off), those same hackers can also locate you just about anywhere on the planet.  And that’s just to begin to summarize what we know of their still developing global surveillance state.

In other words, there’s my email and your phone metadata, and his tweets and her texts, and the swept up records of billions of cell phone calls and other communications by French and Nigerians, Italians and Pakistanis, Germans and Yemenis, Egyptians and Spaniards (thank you, Spanish intelligence, for lending the NSA such a hand!), and don’t forget the Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, and Burmese, among others (thank you, Australian intelligence, for lending the NSA such a hand!), and it would be a reasonable bet to include just about any other nationality you care to mention. Then there are the NSA listening posts at all those U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, and the reports on the way the NSA listened in on the U.N., bugged European Union offices “on both sides of the Atlantic,” accessed computers inside the Indian embassy in Washington D.C. and that country’s U.N. mission in New York, hacked into the computer network of and spied on Brazil’s largest oil company, hacked into the Brazilian president’s emails and the emails of two Mexican presidents, monitored the German Chancellor’s mobile phone, not to speak of those of dozens, possibly hundreds, of other German leaders, monitored the phone calls of at least 35 global leaders, as well as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and -- if you’re keeping score -- that’s just a partial list of what we’ve learned so far about the NSA’s surveillance programs, knowing that, given the Snowden documents still to come, there has to be so much more.

When it comes to the “success” part of the NSA story, you could also play a little numbers game: the NSA has at least 35,000 employees, possibly as many as 55,000, and an almost $11 billion budget.  With up to 70% of that budget possibly going to private contractors, we are undoubtedly talking about tens of thousands more “employees” indirectly on the agency’s payroll. The Associated Press estimates that there are 500,000 employees of private contractors “who have access to the government's most sensitive secrets.” In Bluffdale, Utah, the NSA is spending $2 billion to build what may be one of the largest data-storage facilities on the planet (with its own bizarre fireworks), capable of storing almost inconceivable yottabytes of information.  And keep in mind that since 9/11, according to the New York Times, the agency has also built or expanded major data-storage facilities in Georgia, Texas, Colorado, Hawaii, Alaska, and Washington State. 

But success, too, can have its downside and there is a small catch when it comes to the NSA's global omniscience. For everything it can, at least theoretically, see, hear, and search, there’s one obvious thing the agency’s leaders and the rest of the intelligence community have proven remarkably un-omniscient about, one thing they clearly have been incapable of taking in -- and that’s the most essential aspect of the system they are building. Whatever they may have understood about the rest of us, they understood next to nothing about themselves or the real impact of what they were doing, which is why the revelations of Edward Snowden caught them so off-guard.

Along with the giant Internet corporations, they have been involved in a process aimed at taking away the very notion of a right to privacy in our world; yet they utterly failed to grasp the basic lesson they have taught the rest of us. If we live in an era of no privacy, there are no exemptions; if, that is, it’s an age of no-privacy for us, then it’s an age of no-privacy for them, too.

The word “conspiracy” is an interesting one in this context.  It comes from the Latin conspirare for "breathe the same air." In order to do that, you need to be a small group in a small room. Make yourself the largest surveillance outfit on the planet, hire tens of thousands of private contractors -- young computer geeks plunged into a situation that would have boggled the mind of George Orwell -- and organize a system of storage and electronic retrieval that puts much at an insider’s fingertips, and you’ve just kissed secrecy goodnight and put it to bed for the duration.

There was always going to be an Edward Snowden -- or rather Edward Snowdens. And no matter what the NSA and the Obama administration do, no matter what they threaten, no matter how fiercely they attack whistleblowers, or who they put away for how long, there will be more.  No matter the levels of classification and the desire to throw a penumbra of secrecy over government operations of all sorts, we will eventually know. 

They have constructed a system potentially riddled with what, in the Cold War days, used to be called “moles.” In this case, however, those “moles” won’t be spying for a foreign power, but for us. There is no privacy left. That fact of life has been embedded, like so much institutional DNA, in the system they have so brilliantly constructed. They will see us, but in the end, we will see them, too.

Omnipotence

With our line-ups in place, let’s turn to the obvious question: How’s it going? How’s the game of surveillance playing out at the global level? How has success in building such a system translated into policy and power? How useful has it been to have advance info on just what the U.N. general-secretary will have to say when he visits you at the White House? How helpful is it to store endless tweets, social networking interactions, and phone calls from Egypt when it comes to controlling or influencing actors there, whether the Muslim Brotherhood or the generals?

We know that 1,477 “items” from the NSA’s PRISM program (which taps into the central servers of nine major American Internet companies) were cited in the president’s Daily Briefing in 2012 alone. With all that help, with all that advanced notice, with all that insight into the workings of the world from but one of so many NSA programs, just how has Washington been getting along?

Though we have very little information about how intelligence insiders and top administration officials assess the effectiveness of the NSA’s surveillance programs in maintaining American global power, there’s really no need for such assessments. All you have to do is look at the world.

Long before Snowden walked off with those documents, it was clear that things weren’t exactly going well. Some breakthroughs in surveillance techniques were, for instance, developed in America’s war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. intelligence outfits and spies were clearly capable of locating and listening in on insurgencies in ways never before possible. And yet, we all know what happened in Iraq and is happening in Afghanistan.  In both places, omniscience visibly didn’t translate into success. And by the way, when the Arab Spring hit, how prepared was the Obama administration? Don’t even bother to answer that one.

In fact, it’s reasonable to assume that, while U.S. spymasters and operators were working at the technological frontiers of surveillance and cryptography, their model for success was distinctly antiquated. However unconsciously, they were still living with a World War II-style mindset. Back then, in an all-out military conflict between two sides, listening in on enemy communications had been at least one key to winning the war. Breaking the German Enigma codes meant knowing precisely where the enemy’s U-boats were, just as breaking Japan’s naval codes ensured victory in the Battle of Midway and elsewhere.

Unfortunately for the NSA and two administrations in Washington, our world isn’t so clear-cut any more. Breaking the codes, whatever codes, isn’t going to do the trick. You may be able to pick up every kind of communication in Pakistan or Egypt, but even if you could listen to or read them all (and the NSA doesn’t have the linguists or the time to do so), instead of simply drowning in useless data, what good would it do you? 

Given how Washington has fared since September 12, 2001, the answer would undoubtedly range from not much to none at all -- and in the wake of Edward Snowden, it would have to be in the negative. Today, the NSA formula might go something like this: the more communications the agency intercepts, the more it stores, the more it officially knows, the more information it gives those it calls its “external customers” (the White House, the State Department, the CIA, and others), the less omnipotent and the more impotent Washington turns out to be.

In scorecard terms, once the Edward Snowden revelations began and the vast conspiracy to capture a world of communications was revealed, things only went from bad to worse.  Here’s just a partial list of some of the casualties from Washington’s point of view:

*The first European near-revolt against American power in living memory (former French leader Charles de Gaulle aside), and a phenomenon that is still growing across that continent along with an upsurge in distaste for Washington.

*A shudder of horror in Brazil and across Latin America, emphasizing a growing distaste for the not-so-good neighbor to the North.

*China, which has its own sophisticated surveillance network and was being pounded for it by Washington, now looks like Mr. Clean.

*Russia, a country run by a former secret police agent, has in the post-Snowden era been miraculously transformed into a global peacemaker and a land that provided a haven for an important western dissident.

*The Internet giants of Silicon valley, a beacon of U.S. technological prowess, could in the end take a monstrous hit, losing billions of dollars and possibly their near monopoly status globally, thanks to the revelation that when you email, tweet, post to Facebook, or do anything else through any of them, you automatically put yourself in the hands of the NSA. Their CEOs are shuddering with worry, as well they should be.

And the list of post-Snowden fallout only seems to be growing. The NSA’s vast global security state is now visibly an edifice of negative value, yet it remains so deeply embedded in the post-9/11 American national security state that seriously paring it back, no less dismantling it, is probably inconceivable. Of course, those running that state within a state claim success by focusing only on counterterrorism operations where, they swear, 54 potential terror attacks on or in the United States have been thwarted, thanks to NSA surveillance. Based on the relatively minimal information available to us, this looks like a major case of threat and credit inflation, if not pure balderdash. More important, it doesn’t faintly cover the ambitions of a system that was meant to give Washington a jump on every foreign power, offer an economic edge in just about every situation, and enhance U.S. power globally.

A First-Place Line-Up and a Last-Place Finish

What’s perhaps most striking about all this is the inability of the Obama administration and its intelligence bureaucrats to grasp the nature of what’s happening to them. For that, they would need to skip those daily briefs from an intelligence community which, on the subject, seems blind, deaf, and dumb, and instead take a clear look at the world.

As a measuring stick for pure tone-deafness in Washington, consider that it took our secretary of state and so, implicitly, the president, five painful months to finally agree that the NSA had, in certain limited areas, “reached too far.” And even now, in response to a global uproar and changing attitudes toward the U.S. across the planet, their response has been laughably modest. According to David Sanger of the New York Times, for instance, the administration believes that there is “no workable alternative to the bulk collection of huge quantities of ‘metadata,’ including records of all telephone calls made inside the United States.”

On the bright side, however, maybe, just maybe, they can store it all for a mere three years, rather than the present five. And perhaps, just perhaps, they might consider giving up on listening in on some friendly world leaders, but only after a major rethink and reevaluation of the complete NSA surveillance system. And in Washington, this sort of response to the Snowden debacle is considered a “balanced” approach to security versus privacy.

In fact, in this country each post-9/11 disaster has led, in the end, to more and worse of the same. And that’s likely to be the result here, too, given a national security universe in which everyone assumes the value of an increasingly para-militarized, bureaucratized, heavily funded creature we continue to call “intelligence,” even though remarkably little of what would commonsensically be called intelligence is actually on view.

No one knows what a major state would be like if it radically cut back or even wiped out its intelligence services. No one knows what the planet’s sole superpower would be like if it had only one or, for the sake of competition, two major intelligence outfits rather than 17 of them, or if those agencies essentially relied on open source material. In other words, no one knows what the U.S. would be like if its intelligence agents stopped trying to collect the planet’s communications and mainly used their native intelligence to analyze the world.  Based on the recent American record, however, it’s hard to imagine we could be anything but better off. Unfortunately, we’ll never find out.

In short, if the NSA’s surveillance lineup was classic New York Yankees, their season is shaping up as a last-place finish.

Here, then, is the bottom line of the scorecard for twenty-first century Washington: omniscience, maybe; omnipotence, forget it; intelligence, not a bit of it; and no end in sight.



0 Comments

August 21st, 2013

8/21/2013

0 Comments

 
Regarding the Baltimore Indy race on Labor Day weekend:

Small business owners are saying all over the downtown area....THIS CITY HALL DOES NOT SUPPORT US! Indeed, this car race isn't about bringing in tourists to fuel the economy in the city.....it isn't about building a sustainable event for which the city can be known....IT IS SIMPLY TO PROVIDE A VEHICLE FOR INVESTORS TO MAKE MONEY AND THE CITY TO GET ON ESPN.

We know this......the city reduced considerably the amount of money this operation pays up front so rather than taking millions of dollars in loses because the race fails to pay its bills to the city.....the city simply does not charge the race and the public loses revenue. Just about every vendor.....just about every race employee from ticket sales to customer service...from bleacher assembly to media consultant comes in from out of town. Even the city's poor that try to sell water bottles and local vendors with permits that usually sell in this area are pushed out to make way for out of town vendors. The gulag fencing gives the local bars and restaurants the ambiance of WW2 Poland. Ticket sales.....they will be like last year we are told...NOTHING.

I went to both days of the race and spent the entire time walking the perimeter and inside the race areas to see what this race brought to Baltimore. Most people around the track were employees of the race or its contractors....thousands of people....all working the race and from out of town. The bleachers were empty throughout and the people coming locally to the race seemed to be government employees given tickets to the race as a perk. When the city and race officials had been embarrassed by the lack of crowds in the bleachers....they told the race employees to go and sit in the bleachers and act as fans.

CITY HALL IS SELLING THE CITY.....TO ANYONE OTHER THAN THE PEOPLE ALREADY LIVING IN THE CITY. This city really hates working/middle class people....small businesses and grassroot workers trying to earn a living. They want the BEST OF THE BEST SAYS RAWLINGS-BLAKE. The problem for Baltimore is that we have the WORST OF THE WORST MAKING ALL OF THE PUBLIC POLICY DECISIONS AT CITY HALL AND BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION. The kind of policy that comes from these people would make Chinese politburo members proud.

I was talking to a new resident to the city who lived over on Hartford Rd in Baltimore....he was glad to see my community garden. We talked of what was being planted in the city and he spoke of an incident that says it all about development in Baltimore. He said....you know, they are planting Maple trees along the sidewalks in our community and no one wants maple trees....everyone knows those trees have roots that come to the surface and ruin sidewalks...why would they plant those trees there? I said....the same reason they drop big burlapped trees along city streets in July and August and then never water them.....half of which die and they do that over and over again. It's the same reason the city pays a private contractor to maintain a city park or playground that looks like a vacant lot because no one comes to take care of it. The Baltimore Public Works gives contracts to large development/management corporations who for example have an over abundance of maple trees from another project and save money by dropping those trees into holes whenever they have a chance. Coming back to replace them again and again allows the nursery selling them to earn great profits....SO IT CREATES JOBS! Just not in any areas that have to put up with all this garbage service.

So, the Indy race is about sustaining this tourism policy where hotels are filled with people being forced to be migrant laborers brought from one town to the next by a business that no one wants. These out of town employees are temporary and nomadic and fill downtown hotels and eat at these national chain restaurants and have little money to spend outside of that. THIS IS A DELIBERATE ATTEMPT AT AN ECONOMY THAT IMPOVERISHES THE WORKERS AND FAMILIES...IT WEAKENS LABOR FROM ORGANIZING AND WORKERS FROM PROTECTIONS OF LABOR ABUSES AS THEY WORK FROM ONE STATE TO ANOTHER. It brings little tax revenue to the city so if the goal of Baltimore Development is to starve government coffers and enrich corporations....this is exactly the kind of city development you want....


ERGO.....AN INDY RACE NO ONE WANTS!

What we are seeing is an attempt to make the American worker into what has been immigrant labor all over the world.  Moving labor all around the country.,....and if these TPP deals continue.....moving many families overseas for work creating an impoverished and disconnected citizenry.  LOOK AT THIS INDY RACE.....LOOK AT LOCAL PUBLIC WORKS BIDDING THAT BRINGS WORKERS FROM OTHER STATES TO WORK IN BALTIMORE.....it is just the same as third world immigrant labor.

Anyone looking for a job in the 21st century needs to read this article.

Transient Servitude and Work in the 21st Century


 

By Richard D. Vogel

Copyright © 2011 by Richard D. Vogel
at http://combatingglobalization.com

Permission to copy granted

Transient servitude and FTZ labor

The future faced by increasing numbers of workers in the developing world is employment in a FTZ, transient servitude, or no work at all.

Work in free trade zones is provisional and unprotected.  In these "workshops within nations" the duration of jobs, wages, and working conditions are controlled by transnational corporations through local contractors, FTZ administrators, private security forces, and charro unions viii -- the existence of democratic labor unions is all but impossible.  Consequently, prevailing wages in FTZs are held at subsistence levels and work is often dirty, dangerous, and demeaning.

For working people in developing countries, transient servitude, in both legal and extralegal forms, offers a poor, but often the only, alternative to work in FTZs.  Generally, legal work contracts and visas are short term (3 year contracts are the norm), without benefits, and renewable only at the request of employers.  Although work contracts formally recognize workers' rights and employers' responsibilities, enforcement of those rights and responsibilities is problematic.  In the case of labor disputes the labor-sending countries which should be the guarantors of their citizens' rights usually side with employers and officials in the labor-receiving countries.  This contradiction plagued the Bracero Program and prevails in most modern temporary labor programs.

At best, transient servitude offers minimum short-term relief for workers and, at worst, provides a political safety valve for governments that are willing to act as labor brokers for transnational capitalism.

The neoliberal agenda that dictates government and international policy severely limits the political actions available to the working classes of developing nations.  The key challenge to neoliberal globalization will come from within the developed nations where employment opportunities are plummeting and the social conditions of working class communities are continuing on a downward spiral.

Work in the developed world

Today, the future faced by increasing numbers of workers in the developed world is low-paying service jobs, casual employment in the informal economy, military service protecting the assets and investments of the transnational corporations, or lifetime unemployment without a social safety net.  The United States, which 30 years ago was the workshop of the world, has been reduced to the level of a failing state that does not offer a future to an increasing proportion of its youth nor care for the welfare of its citizens at large.  The USA, once a dynamic democracy, has been subverted by a government dominated by neoconservative politicians and hordes of corporate lobbyists.


Keep in mind that Congress is close to passing infrastructure funding in the hundreds of billions for city sewers and water pipeline so you can bet that the companies forming now are all the ones that will be soaking all of this Federal funding for all it is worth. THIS IS THE TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD THAT NEEDS TO COME BACK TO GOVERNMENT COFFERS. Simply reinstating Rule of Law will pay the entire $16 trillion in national debt.....state and local as well.

Here is a commenter with a good idea of what is happening:




Nilson is just making $#!+ up. Just because the DWSD (Detroit Water Sewer District) suspension was reversed doesn't mean it was never suspended. Also Maccob County still has an active civil suit against Inland for breach of contract to the tune of $25.5Mill. Baltimore bidding rules should have precluded it from being awarded with such litigation still pending for violating exactly the kind of contract it is seeking from this city. Inland's settlement with bankrupt Detroit ($4.5Mill settlement of a $380Mill suit) was a sweetheart deal by a desperate-for-cash-now bankrupt and sinking ship of state. To call Inland's bidder re-instatement by the criminally run, now non-existent DWSD an un-indictment is laughable. Even the most piss-poorly run municipal infrastructure authority with its back against a wall, even they called the company what it was..."a non-responsible bidder" once evidence of extortion, financial mismanagement, and fakery started piling up against primary contract Inland in federal court. The fact that the Baltimore board had to invent fabrications of these facts inorder to try and preserve their selection of Inland is on its face evidence that they are being motivated to flagrantly disregard their own rules by something other than the citys best interest.



Baltimore Brew Stirring up News and Views in Baltimore Maryland

Inside City Hall: $269M in sewer contracts approved over protests


A detailed look at two contracts awarded this week by the Board of Estimates. Mark Reutter August 16, 2013 at 4:18 pm

Baltimore’s spending board awarded a contract to a Detroit company connected to the racketeering convictions of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

For a glimpse at the murky world of Baltimore municipal contracting, consider these two contracts that came before the Board of Estimates this week.

They were SC 877 (“Enhanced Nutrient Removal Process at the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant”) and SC 907 (“Improvements to Sanitary Sewers in East Baltimore Region of the High Level Sewershed”).

Collectively they are worth $269 million.

Both came under vigorous protest from rival bidders but were approved by the spending panel.

This despite the failure to comply with the city’s bid-change initializing rule by the company awarded SC 877 – and the involvement of the company winning the second contract in the recent racketeering and extortion convictions against former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

To begin with the award of $263 million to Archer Western Contractors to build facilities to denitrify incoming sewage at Back River.

A rival bidder, American Infrastructure/PC Construction, accused Archer Western of altering the original forms of a minority contractor by “whiting-out” the subcontract amount and inserting in a new number.

Attorney Eliot Schaefer submitted a copy of the disputed document – page 64 of the Archer Western bid, which Thomas Corey, chief of city’s minority opportunity office, agreed seemed to be altered.

But Corey said his office could not determine whether the document was altered before or after the bid was submitted to the City Comptroller’s Office.

The subcontract price on upper left was apparently whited out and changed without required initials, as noted (in capital letters) at the bottom of the document.

Missing Initials

Harriette Taylor, clerk of the board, said the company’s vice president signed the bid document on June 11, but a typed-out notation, reading “as of 10:30 AM 6/12/13,” also appears on the bid sheet.

At the bottom of the document is the city’s warning (in capital letters) that “Any changes to the information on this form must be initialed by both parties.” But there were no initials reflected on the document, said attorney Schaefer.

Because of this infraction of the rules, he asked the spending board to reject the Archer Western bid and award the contract to American Infrastructure/PC.

When his request was met with silence by the board, Schaefer asked that the award be deferred for a week.

Called up to testify, Rudolph Chow, chief of the water bureau, said he would not recommend a one-week deferment.

“We are already in danger of non-compliance,” Chow said, with a December 2016 deadline to complete the project – a statement that’s technically correct, even though Chow recently told The Brew that he fully expects the completion date (set by the Environmental Protection Agency) to be pushed back until 2019.

CORRECTION: The above deadline is “part of a whole series of state-Chesapeake Bay deadlines and guidelines related to the flush tax,” not to the EPA consent decree, says Kurt Kocher, spokesman for DPW.

If Chow’s opposition was not enough, the disclosure that the American Infrastructure/PC bid was $15 million higher than Archer Western’s appeared to convince the board to unanimously reject the protest and award the contract to Chicago-based Archer Western.

The American Infrastructure/PC team gather in front of the Board of Estimates Wednesday to protest a $263 million award to a rival. To left is DPW director Alfred Foxx and City Council President Jack Young. (Photo by Mark Reutter)

Ab Initio


In the second matter, a protest over a $5.3 million contract was thwarted by ab initio, the Latin term for treating a legal action as invalid “from the beginning.”

Am-Liner East protested the award of the SC 907 repair contract to Inland Waters Pollution Control Inc. because the company had failed to disclose that it had been suspended by the Detroit Water and Sewage Department. (The city requires disclosure of legal actions taken against a bidder or its principals.)

But George Nilson, the city solicitor, countered that the Detroit agency had lifted its suspension after Inland agreed to pay a $4.5 million settlement. Countering the claims of Carol O’Riordan, Am-Liner’s attorney, Nilson said Inland had no obligation to disclose the suspension to Baltimore City because it was void ab initio or “never existed.”

The Kilpatrick Connection

Inland’s suspension stemmed from a much bigger issue – the federal indictment of former Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick and other city officials that led to Kilpatrick’s March 2013 conviction on 24 charges, including racketeering and extortion.

The convictions involved a raft of sewer contracts, some that involved Inland, as well as the supply of private planes for trips to the Bahamas for Kilpatrick and his family by the then-majority owner of Inland, according to Crain’s Detroit Business. The newspaper said Inland was identified as “Company I” in the federal indictment.

Inland also was the general contractor on a sinkhole repair contract that was rife with inflated and fraudulent invoices, according to a related lawsuit filed by the Macomb Interceptor Drain Drainage District that is still pending in federal court. Among the lawsuit’s charges is that the contract ballooned from $29 million to $54 million due to fraud and mismanagement.

These matters were not brought up at the board meeting.

After rejecting the protest by Am-Liner, all five board members – Nilson, Public Works Director Alfred H. Foxx, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Comptroller Joan Pratt and City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young – awarded the $5.3 million sewer contract to Inland.



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We need to be aware of the positioning happening before the next election.  Both O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake are being taken to national positions in the neo-liberal caucus because they have totally disassociated themselves from the citizens they serve by protecting and augmenting this systemic corporate fraud by Wall Street and national corporations.  Both of these pols are guilty of Aiding and Abetting fraud in the policy decisions they pushed and the appointments they make to public oversight boards that are silent as all of the fraud and corruption unfolds.  O'Malley just proposed a former energy executive for the Maryland Public Service Commission for goodness sake as Exelon prepares to soak citizens for all capital investments and operating costs.  O'Malley says he is making that appointment for Maryland families.




Obama is of course ground zero for Aiding and Abetting.  It would have been Hillary if she was elected...the point is that the DNC is controlled by neo-liberals working only for wealth and profit.  Corporate fraud is simply profit after all!  The last thing these crooked pols want is for citizens to actually elect people who want to hold all this crime and corruption accountable so Obama and Clinton are sending their political machines in to state and local positions to make sure the candidates in the next election are all suffering from  3 MONKEY SYNDROME...see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.  We see Obama attached to Baltimore where much of the fraud and corruption occurs in Maryland and Obama attached to Anthony Brown....the clone of O'Malley ready to keep all of the current corporate protections in place at the state level.  It seems that these neo-liberals think that all black voters are still thinking black candidates will work for them.  I think that ship has sailed but there is a farm team waiting to work to maintain the status quo.




Maryland has captured labor and justice organizations that promote the very candidates that harm middle/lower class citizens the most.  We encourage everyone....we are all workers and people seeking public justice....to make sure your organizations are led by people working for people.  Make sure you are running candidates against neo-liberal incumbents in all elections!


Baltimore Brew Stirring up News and Views in Baltimore Maryland

Obama operative appointed mayor’s chief spokesman Washingtonian Kevin Harris replaces Ryan O'Doherty.

Brew Editors August 6, 2013 at 1:24 pm


Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has appointed an Obama loyalist and Democratic Party operative to replace Ryan O’Doherty as her chief spokesman and speechwriter.

Kevin R. Harris, 29, will become director of the Mayor’s Office of Policy and Communications on September 3.

Harris has served as a campaign spokesman for the Democratic National Committee (where Rawlings-Blake was recently appointed secretary) and as a political appointee in three federal agencies.

He got his start as a grassroots organizer during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Following his boss’ election, Harris came to Washington and took jobs at U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, White House Office of Legislative Affairs and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. He is currently communications director for Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.).

Has “Fond Memories” of Baltimore

In a press release today, Mayor Rawlings-Blake said, “Kevin will play an important role as we continue to look for new and better opportunities to keep our communities safe, provide economic opportunity for all and build more sustainable neighborhoods free of blight. Kevin has spent his entire adult life in public service, and I welcome him to our great city.”

In his prepared statement, Harris said, “I am truly humbled by this opportunity to serve the citizens of Baltimore under the leadership of Mayor Rawlings-Blake. I have fond memories of my time in Baltimore over the years, and I have the fondest respect for the character of the city and its citizens. Baltimore is a city that is on the move.”

During the 2012 campaign cycle, Harris oversaw messaging activities for the DNC in 15 states and also helped coordinate constituency press outreach, according to today’s release.

A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Harris received a B.A. in journalism from Howard University and an M.A. in government from Johns Hopkins University.

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For those wanting a smaller military budget we are seeing yet again smoke and mirrors in this sequestration that neo-liberals toted as holding the military responsible for paying down the debt.  What we are seeing is civilian military losing their jobs while private military contractors become the majority of the US military.  We are seeing military troops with wage and benefits cuts and VA health care being turned into a Medicaid program financed by charities.  As this article suggests.....we are seeing the further consolidation of all business to the mega-corporations as small businesses are dying on the vine from lack of Federal funding and crushing monopolies that kill competition.

THIS IS HAPPENING IN ALL AREAS OF BUSINESS....AS IN BALTIMORE ALL BUSINESS IS BEING DIRECTED TO LARGE CONTRACTORS WHO ARE PUTTING LOCAL BUSINESSES OUT OF BUSINESS AND SUBJECTING WORKERS TO EXPLOITATION.


Military worried small business suppliers will disappear during sequestration

Friday - 3/1/2013, 6:10am EST

By Jared Serbu

More Reports

Jared Serbu, DoD reporter, Federal News Radio Download mp3

Under the sequestration cuts that will slice away indiscriminately at the federal discretionary budget starting today, DoD leaders have said that the first big impact to the military will be a crisis in the readiness of the armed services; acquisition programs will survive for some time before they begin to suffer major harms. But that's not necessarily true when it comes to small businesses. While sequestration and the broader defense drawdown will no doubt have a broad impact on the defense industrial base eventually, the Pentagon is not worried about defense contracting giants such as Northrop Grumman or Raytheon going out of business anytime soon. Those firms have seen the writing on the wall for some time and have begun streamlining operations, downsizing workforces, building up cash reserves and mining other sources of revenue in preparation for a downturn.

Lt. Gen. Charles Davis, military deputy for acquisition, Air Force

But acquisition leaders in each of the military services say they're very worried about the fate of small businesses who either contract directly with DoD or serve as second, third or fourth tier suppliers to the large prime contractors. "It does not take long for a small business to get in trouble very quickly," said Lt. Gen. Charles Davis, the Air Force's military deputy for acquisition. "They do things like building the fuses for most of our weapons. It's a challenging thing and it's an underappreciated thing, but it's the one thing that will cause the reliability of our weapons to fail instantly. They're not necessarily the leading edge on our weapons systems, but they provide things we can't execute these programs without."

Falling behind on small business goals

Even before sequestration really kicks in, this year's budget problems already have hurt some of DoD's ability to meet its small business contracting goals. The operation and maintenance accounts that fund military training, civilian salaries and a host of other functions, also pay for small contracts issued by individual bases or military commands.

Davis said as each military service has scoured those accounts for savings in order to pay for immediate wartime and training needs, those contracts have been pared back already.

"Anything across our bases and installations, just the most routine services, those are generally all set aside for small businesses," he said. "A very large chunk of that goes to small businesses to do maintenance on buildings, to do military construction, which we have virtually no money for. We know we're already $170 million behind on our small business contracting goals compared to this point last year. That's because base commanders have started pulling back their obligations on O&M because they know what's coming, just to be able to keep our squadrons flying at a certain level."

But the lasting effect of sequestration may not be the short-term cuts or delays, but the long-term loss of key suppliers.

For the last two years, DoD has been building a sector-by-sector, tier-by-tier map of its industrial base so that it can avoid surprise failures of firms that build "must-have" products or services and potentially intervene in the marketplace where necessary to keep the most critical firms afloat.

But that task becomes more difficult in an environment in which the Pentagon itself is more or less clueless about its budget for the next few months, let alone the next few years, said Heidi Shyu, the Army's assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology.

"Due to the instability of the budget, it's very difficult for even the prime contractors to do any kind of planning, let alone determining the impacts to the lower tiers. This is the biggest concern we all have across the board," she told the House Armed Services Committee Thursday. "My fear is that we can't tell these companies who provide a niche capability what they need to do to survive the downturn. We don't have any visibility in terms of what the gap is."

Survival of some vendors in jeopardy

Even before sequestration, the federal budget limbo has had a significant impact on small businesses. Since continuing resolutions have recently become commonplace in each budget cycle for at least part of the year, agencies have had to delay awards for new-start contracts for at least the first few months of each fiscal year.

Sean Stackley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition

Sean Stackley, the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said this year's CR already has begun to jeopardize the survival prospects of some small companies the service can't do without. "The Department of the Navy is extremely unique in terms of some of our platforms like nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. We build them at very low rates and nobody else builds them at all, and the components that go into these platforms are made largely by small business," he said. "It's almost a cottage industry that builds small numbers of critical items. We have to work that small business base directly to ensure its long term viability, come all of the ebb-and-flow of the budget cycle."

The same is true in the Navy's aviation programs, Stackley said.

"There's one small business manufacturer in the entire country that's responsible for forging and machining most of the rotor heads for all of our rotary-wing aircraft," he said. "That's a single point of failure, and in fact, he's struggling at this particular time."

If the military begins to lose small businesses that provide critical services, it will have to look for ways to rebuild those capabilities down the road once the federal budget cycle returns to normalcy. It will also have to rework its plans for each of its procurement programs to cope with the 9 percent reduction sequestration will take from each of them, officials said.

The Army's Shyu said her service will try to recover later what it will lose this year as a result of sequestration, but building those plans right now is next to impossible.

"You can only recover if you have a full understanding of the limitation of the cuts and what's going to happen next," she said. "If we had a budget for this year and had some understanding of what's going to happen in future years, we could at least begin to do that detailed planning. But right now, it's hard to judge what the impacts are without knowing what's going to happen. I have some significant concerns about that."

The broader impacts of this year's sequestration cuts on big military acquisition programs won't all be immediately apparent this year, Davis said, and won't be known until future years, by which time most programs will have been delayed to some degree, and after the procurement workforce has had to break apart each of their programs to determine how or whether they can survive under immediately-reduced funding levels.

"We ask our acquisition folks and program managers to navigate the most complex, chaotic, overregulated and overseen process in the world. And as they come to us, we can't tell them any of the most basic questions all of that activity demands," he said. "We can't tell them what baseline to begin their program from, we can't tell them what the changes will be or whether the continuing resolution will allow them to move money from one program to another. What we are able to tell them is that everything they've produced, sent up for review and put on the books until now is basically invalid, and they have to go back, do all the what-if drills and restructure those programs all over again. And when we send them back, we're telling them that they probably are going to take a 20 percent pay cut for the rest of the year."


0 Comments

August 16th, 2013

8/16/2013

0 Comments

 
It is absurd to watch as a whole class of citizens in America become so impoverished by public policy that we watch the US fall into a third world society of crime and corruption.  People at the top committing Visigoth levels are corporate fraud on government coffers and individuals leading to starving social programs and stagnant economies with no job growth forcing those in the lower class to turn to crime to support themselves.   That is what we are watching each day in the news and we watch as our fellow citizens are deliberately left with no other choice then to become criminal just like those at the top of the income ladder creating this mess.

Simple return to Rule of Law would have our public justice system at the Federal, STate, and local level bringing back tens of trillions of dollars to government coffers and individuals rebuilding social society and correcting wealth inequity brought by this massive corporate fraud.  The voters in Maryland must get rid of these crony and corrupt politicians....neo-liberals and republicans....and run and voter for labor and justice candidates.  It is not a democrat vs republican problem.....it is a corporate politician problem at all levels of government that if left unchanged will have this crime and violence excel and these corporate pols have only policing and incarceration as the solution!



Thieves nab copper wire, equipment from Verizon; reward offered Thieves cut holes in fences to gain access

By Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun 8:34 p.m. EDT, August 15, 2013

After a recent spree of thefts targeting $300,000 worth of copper wire and equipment from its facilities throughout the state, Verizon is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the thieves.

Thieves have taken copper wire and laptops from Verizon work centers in Bel Air; Brooklyn; Churchville; Edgewood; Fork; Hampstead; Jarrettsville; North East; Owings Mills; Parkton; Randallstown; Sparks; and Taneytown from May through August, Verizon officials said Thursday.

In the early hours of July 23, thieves cut a hole in the fence at Verizon's facility at 1820 Forest Drive in Annapolis and drove a white van in through the hole, filling it with stolen drills, test meters, miscellaneous testing equipment and splicing machines, Verizon officials said. Equipment including hand tools and fiber installation was also stolen from thieves at facilities in Rockville and Lanham.

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Roland Park Shooting Linked to Robbery Spree Maj. Kimberly Burrus believes Wednesday's shooting is linked to a spate of recent robberies in North Baltimore.

Posted by Adam Bednar (Editor) , August 15, 2013 at 11:30 AM


Sharon Guida, of Charles Village, speaks with Maj. Kimberly Burrus, commander of the Northern District, during a National Night Out event. 28102The shooting of a 36-year-old man in Roland Park happened during a robbery, and police believe it’s part of a larger crime spree in North Baltimore.

According to Baltimore police, at 1:42 a.m. Wednesday, in the 4000 block of Roland Avenue the man was shot twice in the upper torso after two to three juveniles attempted to rob him.

"We also experienced two additional robberies after the shooting which suggest to me that these guys lack remorse, so someone else could get hurt until capture," Northern District commander Maj. Kimberly Burrus wrote in an email to community members.

Burrus, in her message to residents, said she believes the latest incident is connected to a spate of robberies where between two and four juveniles have used different stolen cars to target people walking or jogging in the early morning hours in North Baltimore.

A handful of similar robberies have been reported by police in the last few weeks. 

Robbers using a car to find targets and getaway robbed two men in Charles Village. According to Baltimore police, on Aug. 6, at 2 a.m., the robbers approached the men after getting out of a vehicle in the 2900 block of St. Paul Street, and pulled out a black handgun.

On Aug. 2, at 7:30 a.m., in the 3400 block of Beech Avenue, the robbers approached a man after getting out of a car and took his iPhone.

That same day, about a half hour before, a woman was jogging in the 5500 block of North Charles Street when robbers got out of a car, stole her pepper spray, pointed it at her, and took her iPhone. 

At about 6:15 a.m. that day, a woman was attacked in the 4800 block of Roland Avenue, and had her cellphone stolen. She told police that she believed one of the robbers, who got out of a car, was holding what she thought was a Taser.  
 
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People already under the strain of poverty are having yet more community assets/support taken and this gives us the crime and violence that is growing all around the country.

Remember, this sequestration was not necessary.....tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud and tax evasion would pay all the government debt and fund recovery. Obama and neo-liberals want to starve government instead.


Sequestration damages our community

Monday, 10 June 2013 10:52 By Freddie Allen NNPA Washington Correspondent 0 Comments Almeta Keys

WASHINGTON (NNPA) –The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that nearly 140,000 low-income families could lose rental assistance and "thousands of other low-income families using vouchers could face sharp rent increases because of sequestration."

Sequestration, the automatic federal budget cuts, was implemented on March 1.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, sequestration will slash $2 billion from housing assistance and community development programs funded through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Blacks received 43 percent of housing vouchers to supplement housing costs. Whites received 36 percent of housing vouchers. Without the vouchers, these families would see those costs skyrocket. Other families will lose counseling services that help distressed homeowners navigate foreclosure proceedings.

"Due to sequestration, 337,000 victims of domestic violence, child sexual abuse, adult sexual assault, and other crimes will lose critical support and services they receive through the Crime Victims Fund to help them recover from the heinous crimes committed against them," wrote Eric Stegman, the manager of the Half in Ten initiative at the Center of American Progress, a non-partisan education and research group.

The Victims of Crime Act, shelters victims from prohibitive costs associated with seeking justice, including sexual assault services, crisis intervention and investigation and prosecuting of child and elder abuse.

States could lose more than $37 million to fund these services and victims could lose their right to justice.

After reauthorizing the hotly contested Violence Against Women Act, legislation that assists victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, Congress left the funding of the programs to the mercy of the sequester. More than 100,000 may be turned away.

Black women account for a disproportionate number of domestic violence victims.

According to a report by the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community at the University of Minnesota: "Black women comprise 8 percent of the U.S. population but in 2005 accounted for 22 percent of the intimate partner homicide victims and 29 percent of all female victims of intimate partner homicide."

The institute also found that intimate partner violence among African Americans is related to economic factors.

"Intimate partner violence among Blacks occurs more frequently among couples with low incomes, those in which the male partner is underemployed or unemployed, particularly when he is not seeking work, and among couples residing in very poor neighborhoods, regardless of the couple's income," stated the report.

Programs that benefit children are also reeling as a result of sequestration. Head Start, a government funded program that promotes school readiness for poor children, lost an average of 5 percent at each of its local affiliates. Twenty-eight percent of Head Start enrollees are Black and 41 percent are White.

"Sequestration cuts are forcing Head Start programs across the country to drop children from their ranks, despite research showing that every $1 invested in Head Start brings $9 in benefits to society," wrote Sally Steenland, director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

Experts estimate that 70,000 children will be forced out of those programs.

Some programs are holding lotteries for available slots, juggling budgets and wait listing families. Others have proposed the elimination of transportation to the programs.

"Head Start is a safe haven for parents," said Almeta Keys, executive director of the Edward C. Mazique Parent Child Center, Inc. in Washington, D.C. "The best that we can do is give our parents referrals to possible programs that they can go to and in some cases, it's going to mean them being out of childcare. That's the rude awakening."

Children will not only loss educational services provided through Head Start, but also nutritional and social programs and comprehensive health services.

"The parents are going to be left to fend for themselves, said Keys. "A lot of our parents are young parents and they need that extra guidance that we are giving them in Head Start."

Families that depend on neighborhood food pantries for groceries every month may have to fend for themselves, as well. Because of the downturn in the economy, food banks that supply neighborhood food pantries, have also suffered a decrease in donations.

According to Feeding America, a domestic hunger-relief charity, 25.1 percent of Black households live with hunger compared to 11.4 percent of White households that are also food insecure.

"Food banks are struggling across the nation, because we're not receiving the donations from the community," said Brian Banks, director of public policy and community outreach for the Capital Area Food Bank. "Many food banks have to go into their operating budgets to purchase food to put on their shelves to get food out into the community."

Banks said that hurts their bottom line. The more money food banks spend on food, the less they can spend on other services like nutritional programs, community outreach, and advocating for better safety net programs.

"If there's less funding to support the staff in doing that work, it's going to make it more difficult for us to put a dent in this problem and end hunger in this country," said Banks.

In April, the White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill drew the ire of non-profits that service low-income populations, when they stepped in to help airports and air travelers inconvenienced by the sequester, but not others.

In April, Congress acted to help air travelers, that were experiencing flight delays because of the sequester, by passing the Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013. The bill allowed the Federal Aviation Administration to shift money in its current budget to pay air-traffic controllers that were forced to take unpaid leave, because of sequestration.

Keys and others challenged Congress to act just as quickly for those that don't have the support of well-financed lobbyists to stand up for them.

"The same vigorous movement that we saw when the air traffic controllers went back to work, that's what Congress needs to be doing when it comes down to cuts that the Head Start program has received," said Keys. "Congress needs to be focusing on our future and our children are our future."

Amelia Kegan, senior policy analyst at Bread for the World, agreed.

"Low-income families who are really struggling in this economy don't have the resources to mount a huge campaign to bombard Capitol Hill," said Kegan. "They are most likely to be left out of any legislative attempts to mitigate the impact of sequestration. Congress needs to replace sequestration and deal with the entire thing and take a much more balance approach."

Kegan added: "We don't want to see a situation where those who are the most vulnerable are the ones left bearing the brunt of deficit reduction."



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In Baltimore there is an open policy of reducing and almost eliminating low-income housing from Enterprise Zones pushing ever more people with poverty concerns into surrounding neighborhoods rather than addressing the problems head on.  So, instead of solving housing and poverty, in Baltimore more and more neighborhoods are now being engulfed in crime and violence.

To make matters worse, a deliberate attempt to deny employment to poor city residents no doubt trying to force them to leave has created such a level of homelessness and desperation that people's anger and outrage will not be contained. 



THESE POLICIES NOT ONLY ENDANGER COMMUNITIES OF COLOR.....IT WILL AND IS OVERFLOWING INTO ALL NEIGHBORHOODS AND ALL OF THIS IS BECAUSE OF BAD PUBLIC POLICY!


Dispersing Poor People in Cities Doesn't Disperse Crime
Shutterstock
Emily Badger, The Atlantic Cities
Aug 5, 2013

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the federal government shifted the way it subsidizes housing for the low-income. Out were mega-public housing projects like St. Louis' Pruitt-Igoe and Chicago's Cabrini-Green. In were housing vouchers and tax credits designed to disperse people in need of housing help out of these infamous pockets of poverty.

Crime rates in cities across the country happened to be falling around this same time. But many communities far from places like Cabrini-Green feared that a program designed to disperse the poor would also disperse crime associated with them – and straight into more pristine neighborhoods. This idea has persisted for nearly 20 years. And it's prominent among the objections often raised to adding subsidized housing into new neighborhoods and suburbs (see also: the schools will get overcrowded! The traffic will get worse! Everyone's property value will fall!).

"Crime and violence-based fear is something that’s certainly been used very, very effectively for decades in this country," says Michael Lens, an assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA. "And many of our cities are certainly the worse for it in terms of land use and equitable neighborhood opportunity."

In theory, there are two logical outcomes to this change in housing policy. One suggests that traditional public housing concentrates crime "hot spots," enabling police to more effectively monitor them. Scatter the people and you not only scatter the criminals; you also make it harder for law enforcement to keep track of them, driving citywide crime rates up. A widely read 2008 story in The Atlantic by Hanna Rosin argued this hypothesis in the city of Memphis.

The second narrative proposes instead that traditional public housing concentrates poverty, creating the environments – places without opportunity, good schools, employment – that drive crime. Disperse the people, and you break up that concentration, theoretically reducing crime.

A growing stack of research now supports the second hypothesis that housing vouchers do not in fact lead to crime. Lens has just added another study to that literature, published in the journal Urban Studies. He looked at crime and housing data in 215 cities between 1997 and 2008 – controlling for national and regional crime trends, demographic and income variables, employment rates and more – and found "virtually no relationship" between the prevalence of Housing Choice Voucher Program households and higher crime at the city level or in the suburbs. In previous research, Lens and colleagues had investigated the same question at the neighborhood level.

"Although communities with a higher prevalence of voucher households appear to be higher in crime," Lens writes, "there is no evidence that this is due to voucher households increasing crime."

Lens adds, over the phone, that he was hardly surprised by that result.

"There has never really been a lot of empirical evidence for the idea that people that live in subsidized housing commit a fantastically higher amount of crime," he says. "Nor is there really much evidence that there’s this crime spillover into surrounding neighborhoods."

As the voucher program has expanded, however, with a corresponding decrease in public housing units, more communities are encountering the prospect of these households in their midst. Today, about 50 percent of voucher households are in the suburbs.


The decline in national crime, as seen alongside the rise in housing vouchers and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. From "The Impact of Housing Vouchers on Crime in US Cities and Suburbs" by M. Lens in Urban Studies.

It's probably overly optimistic to think that this evidence will disarm bitter local controversies over the need for subsidized housing. But Lens puts it like this: "The main thing is that a very small percentage of poor people commit any sort of crimes at all. So the idea that the random five or 10 low-income households that might move into your large neighborhood are going to impact your life in a negative way is fairly unlikely."

"But I understand that cities have been grappling with this for years, decades," he says. "That’s how we came to be a country of very segregated land use when it comes to economics and income."



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Besides massive corporate fraud raiding our Treasury it is the failure to pay Living Wages that are tearing our working-class and poor communities apart!

Case for $15 and a Union for Low Wage Workers

Carl Gibson Reader Supported News / News Analysis Published: Thursday 15 August 2013

These fast-food joints like to argue that if they were to pay everyone a living wage and give them the right to collectively bargain with their bosses on an even playing field, they would go out of business. Post a Comment Resize Text + | - | R Plain Text Print SHARE Email Pete is a Domino’s driver in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who makes $4 an hour. Even with tips, he still averages about minimum wage at the end of the day. Giovanni, a Pizza Hut worker in Milwaukee, makes minimum wage while living with his mother to help pay rent. He says a roughly $300 paycheck per week is not even enough for a month’s rent on top of all the other costs of living. Pete, Giovanni, and roughly 1,000 other fast-food and low wage workers recently staged a one-day strike in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, protesting poverty wages while working for companies raking in billions in profits.

“I’m not just doing this for myself, I'm doing it for my mom, too,” Giovanni says. “It’s impossible to make it just on $7.25.”

McDonald's makes $27 billion in annual revenue, which makes them the 90th largest economy in the world. Their CEO, who made $8.75 million last year and pays their US employees right around the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, recently made a budgeting guide showing McDonald's hourly employees how they can survive on the poverty wages their company pays them. The sample budget included income from a second job (because there are so many out there) and budgeted just $600 for rent, $20 for healthcare, $250 for car payments and insurance combined, and $0 for heating costs. Even McDonald's, one of the most profitable food service companies in the history of the world, acknowledges that the workers who make their skyrocketing profits possible can't survive solely on the income McDonald's pays them. The gap between salaries of McDonald's workers and the CEO is fairly typical. The incomes of the bottom 90% of Americans grew by roughly $59 in the last 40 years, while the incomes of the top 10% rose by an average of $116,071.

These fast-food joints like to argue that if they were to pay everyone a living wage and give them the right to collectively bargain with their bosses on an even playing field, they would go out of business. However, Australia's minimum wage is twice as high as ours, yet a Big Mac costs roughly the same. Australia's economy, unlike ours, weathered the last financial crisis and survived a meltdown due to their strong, well-paid consumer base, which has enough pocket money to spend and keep businesses open. Minimum wage workers in Canada also make $3 to $4 more an hour compared to their American counterparts. And McDonald's is still far from going out of business. Unlike what detractors say about the movement of one-day strikes from Seattle to Milwaukee to New York, paying low wage and fast-food workers more money doesn't kill jobs. Rather, more people with more money in their pocket greatly boosts the economy over the long term.

This story by CNN Money demonstrated how even just a $9 minimum wage would affect consumer demand and job growth. Without demand, businesses can't make enough to pay employees, and layoffs are inevitable. A lack of demand is the natural result of austerity economics, which are aimed at firing public workers and privatizing public assets to further enrich those who are already far wealthier than a vast majority of the population. The workers aren't endangering the economy by asking for a fair wage and a union – their employers are, by denying it to them.

Some critics of the Fight for 15 campaign are the same ones who see employees as a cost, rather than an investment. McDonald's franchises, which have to pay royalties to the corporate parent for use of the golden arches and Ronald McDonald, say "labor costs" are roughly one-third of current revenue intake, even at the present poverty wages those employees are paid.

These arguments entirely miss the point and purpose of having a labor force to make sure the company's profits are stable. If all the workers choose to strike because of poverty wages, the restaurant has to shut down, and that franchisee's earnings are affected as well as the corporate parent's profits. Also, the corporate profits of McDonald's would only be mildly affected by doubling workers' wages. A Big Mac would only cost $0.68 more, or McD's corporate HQ could allow franchisees to keep more of the royalties they have to pay to the corporate parent.

Also, a union for employees is as "free market" as any ideal espoused by executives. Ensuring there's an even playing field for the employees and bosses to freely negotiate as equals is the definition of a free market, in which no one entity has an inherent advantage over any other party. A boss who says he believes in "free markets" but not unions doesn't know the definition of a free market. A workplace where one boss has more of a say than all of the workers combined is a monopoly on workers' rights. But in a truly free market setting, employees could voice their concerns about their pay to their boss without fear of retaliation, and without the restaurant losing out on valuable revenue due to a worker strike, since the restaurant's profits aren't possible without the effort from workers. A union works out better for both the employees and the company. A free market is simply an agreement that all involved parties freely enter.

Some detractors argue that fast-food and low wage workers are all young, or lack the appropriate education level for other jobs, which is patently false. This NBC story cites numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing not only that fast-food workers older than normal, but that 42% of employees over age 25 have some college education. One McDonald's in Massachusetts even required a college degree for a cashier job. The job market is very unstable for recent college grads, many of whom end up moving back home with their parents and working fast-food jobs despite having a 4-year or even a post-graduate degree. Besides, even if they are of a certain age bracket or educational level, that doesn't mean they should be denied a share in the profits they make possible for their employer. It's immoral for an executive to make more in an hour than an hourly employee makes in a month. Workers deserve a living wage, and their work is valuable. Without these fast-food workers, who would provide Americans with their morning coffee or bagel, or their midday snack, or serve you food when you have a car full of hungry kids and no time to cook them a homemade meal?

Yet another argument is that $15 an hour is too high a demand. But the costs of food, healthcare, housing, and other basic living expenses are going up while wages are stagnating. If the minimum wage had the same buying power today as it did when it was first enacted, it would be roughly $11 an hour. Senator Elizabeth Warren has pointed out that if the minimum wage had kept up with worker productivity, it would now be $22 an hour. CEOs aren't working 380 times harder than their hourly employees; they're just taking in way more pay than they should for the work they do. $15 an hour is a great starting point. If their employer agrees to unionize employees but raise wages from $7.25 an hour to $12.50 an hour, that's still a vast improvement from the status quo. And a union ensures that employees will be able to negotiate for more in the future, and do so on an even playing field.

In fact, it would even be a good business decision for McDonald's and all the other leading fast-food chains to announce that they're doubling workers' pay, because those workers make it possible for such restaurants to remain profitable and successful. If McDonald's poured some of their millions dedicated to advertising to make this point clear, I think most Americans would pay another dollar or two for a Big Mac, knowing the person making it was being paid enough to feed her children and keep her lights on. Workers would regain their dignity and be proud of their job, and be more productive at work as a result. And those fast-food employees would have more money to cycle back into their local economies, keeping demand up and other businesses open. $15 an hour and a union isn't just best for these hard workers who deserve it, but best for all of us.



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PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO VOICE WILL GET HEARD ONE WAY OR ANOTHER!

We know what is happening to cause these problems....globalization allowed US corporations to leave.....global corporations became too powerful to hold accountable.....people were impoverished as safety nets were defunded....and Hispanic families fleeing from drug violence in Latin America found gangs creating the same mess in their new homes.


Large Cities All Over America Are Degenerating Into Gang-Infested War Zones

By Michael Snyder, on January 6th, 2013

       Large U.S. cities that the rest of the world used to look at in envy are now being transformed into gang-infested hellholes with skyrocketing crime rates.  Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Camden, East St. Louis, New Orleans and Oakland were once bustling with economic activity, but as industry has fled those communities poverty has exploded and so has criminal activity.  Meanwhile, financial problems have caused all of those cities to significantly reduce their police forces.  Sadly, this same pattern is being repeated in hundreds of communities all over the nation.  The mainstream media loves to focus on mass shooters such as Adam Lanza, but the reality is that gang violence is a far greater problem in the United States than mass shooters ever will be.  There are approximately 1.4 million gang members living in America today according to the FBI.  That number has shot up by a whopping 40 percent just since 2009.  There are several factors fueling this trend.  Unemployment among our young people is at an epidemic level, about one out of every three U.S. children lives in a home without a father, and there are millions of young men who have come into this country illegally and have no way to legally support themselves once they arrive in our cities.  Gangs provide a support system, a feeling of "community", and a sense of purpose for many young people.  Unfortunately, most of these gangs use violence and crime to achieve their goals, and they are taking over communities all over America.  If your community is not a gang-infested war zone yet, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate.  If nothing is done about this, the violence and the crime that is fueled by these gangs will continue to spread, and eventually nearly every single community in the United States will be affected by it.


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This is why our communities are starved for money.....the complete suspension of Rule of Law..and excuses no one believes!


FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS PAY FOR THEMSELVES....AS THE FBI AND AG HOLDER KNOW THE HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS IN POSTAGE STAMP SETTLEMENTS SHOULD HAVE BEEN USED TO REBUILD THE WHITE COLLAR CRIMINAL AGENCIES AND PUSH A WAR ON FRAUD.  JUST RECOVERING TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN FRAUD PAYS FOR ITSELF!


FBI Warns Sequestration Will Hamper All Their Hard-Hitting Wall Street Investigations

Posted: 03/04/2013 4:40 pm EST  |  Updated: 03/05/2013 12:14 am EST HUFFINGTON POST


WASHINGTON -- More than four years after the financial crisis, not a single Wall Street executive has been jailed for playing a role in the creation of the toxic financial products that fueled the real-estate bubble, which were in some cases designed simply to fail.

That track record may make it difficult for the Department of Justice to earn the sympathy of the public as it warns that spending cuts will hamper its ability to investigate Wall Street fraud. The Federal Bureau of Investigations told lawmakers in a recent letter that across-the-board cuts resulting from sequestration "will cause current financial crimes investigations to slow as workload is spread among a reduced workforce. In some instances, such delays could affect the timely interviews of witnesses and collection of evidence."

Investigations yet unseen may also be harmed. "In some instances, such delays could affect the timely interviews of witnesses and collection of evidence. The capacity to undertake new major investigations will be constrained," FBI Director Robert Mueller III wrote in the letter, addressed to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The warning closed with the type of reasoning that critics of the lack of investigations would readily support. "Left unchecked, fraud and malfeasance in the financial, securities, and related industries could hurt the integrity of U.S. markets," Mueller offered. That boat has sailed..."In addition, the public will perceive the FBI as less capable of aggressively and actively investigating financial fraud and public corruption, which would undercut the deterrence that comes from strong enforcement." Are these people real?  How much do all of America have to shout that no investigations/justice are happening

During President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address, he announced the formation of a task force to investigate Wall Street in a meaningful way. He decided not to mention the unit, which had little to show for itself, in his address a year later.


Former Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), a Wall Street critic who was passed over to lead that unit, was unpersuaded by the DOJ complaint. "Are they worried that because of sequestration the FBI will interview critical witnesses three years after the statute of limitations has expired instead of just one year? Financial fraud investigations were already under a 'do not resuscitate' order and unresponsive to deep stimulation," Miller told HuffPost. "It's hard for me to worry that DOJ will now be less 'aggressive.'"



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June 20th, 2013

6/20/2013

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I can't write much today as I have meetings all day but I wanted to get out the importance of labor and unions along with communities supporting them in returning this country to first world status.  We are seeing citizens completely ignored and policy that is killing people....regulations disappearing and dismantled that have protected families and communities.

DO NOT ALLOW THIRD WAY CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS TEAR DOWN OUR NEW DEAL AND WAR ON POVERTY PROGRAMS AND HAND ALL CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT TO CORPORATIONS.....



Philadelphia Parents, Lunchroom Staff Begin Fast for Safe Schools

Posted by Kyle Schafer on June 17, 2013 Fasters encamp on steps of Governor’s Philadelphia office; call for Commonwealth and City act.  Unite Here

A group of Philadelphia public school parents and lunchroom staff today launched a fast for safe schools. The elimination of more than 1,200 student safety staff from schools across the district, including those on the federal “persistently dangerous” schools list, places Philadelphia’s students in danger. The group has encamped on the steps of Governor Tom Cobertt’s Philadelphia office, where the fast will continue without food or juice until the Commonwealth and City act to prioritize school safety.

“I care about my daughter and grandson,” said faster Earlene Bly, mother of a 9th grade student and grandmother of a soon-to-be 1st grader in PSD. “I am making this sacrifice to make sure they have safe schools.  I am fasting to show my family and the city how serious this situation really is.”

SUPPORT THE FAST, SEND AN EMAIL TO GOVERNOR CORBETT!

The School District of Philadelphia announced the layoff of over 3,700 employees on June 7th. Student safety staff make up the largest group slated to be cut. Employed in school hallways and lunchrooms across the district, they are often the first workers to defuse tensions, maintain order and deescalate conflicts between students.

In the next two weeks, the Pennsylvania state legislature and Philadelphia City Council will decide whether to supplement school funding, which could allow student safety staff and other school employees to return in the Fall.

“I am fasting for the children,” said faster Patricia Norris, a food service worker at Cayuga Elementary.  “When the children won’t go to the principal, when they won’t go to their teacher, they go to the student safety staff.  They give them love and knowledge.  Without them, school would be a disaster waiting to happen.”

“They want us to succeed, because we are the future,” said Shakur Miller, 17, a Junior at Mastbaum High School. “I support the fast because our student safety staff talk to us, which is something we need to be safe and to succeed.”

- See more at: http://www.realfoodrealjobs.org/2013/06/phillyfastlaunch/#sthash.mGmHd8qB.dpuf
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What we are seeing in both of these articles from Philadelphia are simple examples of what are happening in cities all across America, especially in Baltimore. Large chunks of the cities are being bought and handed to these Wall Street investment firms and then allowed to sit until the area is blighted all the while filled with dangerous housing and and lost services.  SOUND FAMILIAR?  YOU CAN BET BALTIMORE IS IN THE SAME SHAPE!

Met this guy across from Philly City Hall. Think his name is Greg. Said he's outraged the only person being prosecuted by the city is the African American worker who was operating the equipment. Says he's going to be in front of the courthouse with his sign on Wednesday, June 26 at 9am, when Sean Benschop appears before a judge. Benschop was just following orders as a worker. The Contractor Griffin Campbell was clearly unqualified to do this type of demolition. Government officials reluctant to regulate business and enforce safety standards must be considered as a contributing factor. But the the wealthy property owners are ultimately responsible for the disaster: STB Investments Corps. The properties being demolished next to the crushed building were owned by STB, whose officers are Richard Basciano, Scott Wexler, Frank Cresci Jr. and Anthony Trumbetta, based in New York City at 300 W. 43rd St.

Who wants to join Greg and me on June 26th?



Philly: Inspector said collapse 'wasn't my fault


By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated PressPosted:   06/14/2013 03:26:31 PM MDT

PHILADELPHIA—A building inspector who had visited a demolition site before a brick wall collapsed onto an adjacent thrift store, killing six people, left a cellphone video message before his apparent suicide this week saying the collapse "wasn't my fault," the mayor's spokesman said. However, inspector Ronald Wagenhoffer also said he wished he'd been more diligent, spokesman Mark McDonald told The Associated Press on Friday.

Wagenhoffer inspected the downtown site before and after demolition work began in February and visited an attached, related job site on May 14 following a complaint.

A four-story brick wall collapsed at the site June 5, burying 19 people inside a one-story Salvation Army thrift shop next door. Besides the six people who died, 13 were injured.

Wagenhoffer, a veteran inspector, was found dead in his truck Wednesday night, hours after finishing his last shift. Police said they believe he shot himself in the chest.

According to McDonald, Wagenhoffer first secured his cellphone on the dashboard and made two brief videos, each 20 to 30 seconds long. The first was for his wife and young son, McDonald said, and the second described his thoughts on the collapse.

"He says that he can't sleep," said McDonald, who said he viewed both videos Friday afternoon. "He says that he was devastated by the deaths and injuries at the scene."

McDonald said Wagenhoffer then says briefly on the videos he "wished that he'd been; more diligent." "He wished that he'd gotten out of a truck at some point in time," he said, "but it's not connected to any particular event. There's no mention of May 14. And he never says that he never inspected the site."

McDonald said Wagenhoffer used the words: "It wasn't my fault."

The demolition site included three attached storefront buildings, all owned by Richard Basciano, once dubbed the pornography king of Times Square.

Records from the Department of Licenses and Inspections state that Wagenhoffer visited the site on May 14 over a complaint that the contractor's permit wasn't visible.

However, a resident has said his complaint alleged far more serious problems about the safety of the demolition work underway. And another person took a video on June 2, a Sunday, that shows workers using equipment to pull down the facade and bricks spilling down on the sidewalk, which remained open and has a staircase to an underground transit stop.

Demolition subcontractor Sean Benschop, accused of being impaired by marijuana and painkillers while operating heavy equipment just before the collapse, has been charged with six counts of involuntary manslaughter. He also had his right hand in a cast, but his lawyer has said he was fit to work.

Demolition contractor Griffin Campbell also was onsite, and Basciano was believed to be there. Basciano's lawyer has declined to comment. Campbell's lawyer has said Benschop was supposed to be taking the wall down by hand, to protect the Salvation Army store.

Wagenhoffer started working for the city as a carpenter in 1997 and worked his way up to his post as an inspector, earning just over $60,000 a year, city records show. He was nominated for a top safety award in the Department of Licenses and Inspections in 2011.

His family did not immediately return a message seeking comment Friday.


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We are glad for the energizing but what we are seeing are unions backing different candidates.  This same thing happened in Los Angeles and all they had running were Third Way corporate democrats......

GET LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN THESE PRIMARY RACES AND NOT THE SAME FACES!


Energized by Bloomberg's Exit, Labor Chiefs Try to Sway Race:
[Metropolitan Desk]HernÁNdez, Javier C. New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast) [New York, N.Y] 19 June 2013: A.1. Turn on hit highlighting for speaking browsersAbstract (summary)Translate Abstract

Unions across the city, after years of low morale and stalled contract negotiations, are roaring back to life this election season, excited by the prospect of installing a friend of labor in City Hall when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg leaves office at the end of the year. Public officials across the country, including Mr. Bloomberg, a political independent, have cast doubt on their motives, and pushed back against demands from municipal workers for retroactive raises and more generous health benefits.

After more than a decade of sitting out the fiercest race in town, leaders of the United Federation of Teachers are plotting a comeback.

They have so much polling data that they can pinpoint the views of Puerto Ricans and Chinese immigrants alike. They can tailor messages based on brands of toilet paper voters buy. Normally busy handling complaints from teachers, they are now scouring financial records and questioning candidates about $4,000 restaurant bills.

And on Wednesday, the union will throw its sophisticated political machine behind a candidate for mayor of New York City.

Unions across the city, after years of low morale and stalled contract negotiations, are roaring back to life this election season, excited by the prospect of installing a friend of labor in City Hall when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg leaves office at the end of the year.

Some groups, like the teachers' union, are expected to spend several million dollars on the race. Several labor leaders are weighing advertising blitzes aimed at the broader public. Political organizers are training callers, social media activists and door-to-door canvassers.

"Politics in the city are shifting," Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers' union, said. "It's not a pipe dream. We're going to be a force."

Labor leaders face several challenges as they seek to reassert themselves as political heavyweights in a city that has not elected a Democrat for mayor since 1989. In a crowded field, they are split over whom to endorse, causing concern that they might cancel one another out.

At a time of declining union membership and lingering economic turmoil, the strength of organized labor is unclear. Public officials across the country, including Mr. Bloomberg, a political independent, have cast doubt on their motives, and pushed back against demands from municipal workers for retroactive raises and more generous health benefits. And a new pro-business group in New York is preparing to spend millions on City Council races.

Still, political experts say there is potential for organized labor to sway the mayoral election. Analysts expect only modest turnout -- around 650,000 voters, or about one-fifth of registered Democrats -- in the Democratic primary in September. A runoff election is widely expected, raising the stakes.

Each of the city's large unions can be valuable to different candidates. Unions representing lower-paid service workers might be able to deliver black and Latino voters for candidates who will rely more heavily on them, like William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller, and Bill de Blasio, the public advocate. The teachers' union, whose membership is more middle-class, says it has a database of 171,000 teachers, retirees and their relatives.

"Unions know their membership and can motivate them," said Edward F. Ott, a lecturer at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at the City University of New York. "The impact may be reduced and spread across a lot of candidates, but they'll definitely have an impact."

Exactly how much the unions will spend in the mayoral race depends on several factors, including whether they face competition from other unions or from political action groups seeking to dampen the influence of organized labor.

"It could be the wild, wild West," said Neal Kwatra, a Democratic strategist whose clients include unions, "or it could be business as usual."

The teachers' union endorsement is considered a prize because of its politically engaged work force, a treasury of at least $2.5 million and a team that has refined its political operations after years of bitter feuds with Mr. Bloomberg.

The seven leading Democratic candidates for mayor are mostly in line with the union's ideology, backing its calls to reduce testing and offer more support to failing schools. In recent days, some have stepped up their efforts to court the union's leaders.

Mr. Thompson, a former president of the city's Board of Education, recently announced a plan to give each teacher a $200 budget for classroom supplies. On Tuesday, he picked up the support of the principals' union, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators.

Mr. de Blasio, another leading candidate for the teachers' union's endorsement, stood with Mr. Mulgrew last week to denounce high-stakes testing.

The union last made an endorsement for mayor in 2001, when it selected Mark Green, a Democrat, over Mr. Bloomberg, then a Republican. It did not enter the contests in 2005 and 2009, wary of Mr. Bloomberg's vast financial resources. Some union officials regretted the decision to skip the 2009 race, after Mr. Thompson, then the Democratic nominee, came within striking distance of Mr. Bloomberg, who spent more than $100 million of his fortune on that race alone.

When Mr. Mulgrew became the union's president in 2009, he set out to modernize its political operations. In the past, he said, candidates were chosen based on personal relationships. Now union officials look to polls and focus groups, tossing around terms like "burn rates" and "propensity models."

The union has become adroit in scrutinizing public spending records to gauge which candidates are more efficient stewards of campaign money. It can examine, for instance, how much a candidate earns at a fund-raiser relative to how much he or she spends on catering, entertainment and facilities.

With a trove of data on the table, conversations between the candidates and Mr. Mulgrew have turned into cross-examinations. He has set benchmarks for each of them, asking them to prove they could build support among crucial demographic groups, like Hispanic voters in Upper Manhattan.

"It's all about a path to victory," he said.

On Wednesday, Mr. Mulgrew will recommend a candidate to union delegates, who are expected to approve the choice that day. He is said to be focusing on two candidates -- Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Thompson -- though he has also expressed admiration for Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker. He faces pressure from Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, the city's largest union, which has lobbied him to create a broad labor coalition by following its lead and endorsing Mr. de Blasio. Another influential union, District Council 37, has endorsed John C. Liu, the city comptroller.

A central part of the union's strategy for this election is to use tools more common in national campaigns. It has put together a database of its members, and bought access to information like the purchasing history of people who use chain-store rewards cards. For example, the union might focus calls and mailings on people who buy top-shelf brands of toilet paper or other products, which typically suggest that a person has a higher income and is more likely to vote. It could also use the information to tailor advertisements to certain groups of voters, like placing a container of Cherry Garcia in an ad directed at people who buy Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

This year, public sector unions are bolstering their political operations after several years of failed negotiations. More than 282,000 unionized workers are without a contract, representing 95 percent of the city's work force. Workers are seeking as much as $7.8 billion in retroactive raises for the time they have been without a contract. Mr. Bloomberg has said the city does not have the money.

In response, union leaders representing those workers are letting the clock tick as they build political support. Several unions joined together to produce a $200,000 advertising campaign recently. A radio ad said in part: "The people who keep this city running: hard-working, middle-class New Yorkers. They count. They vote."

Harry Nespoli, leader of a committee of unions representing municipal workers, said they wanted a mayor who would work with unions to find savings in the city budget to pay for wage increases.

"We don't expect the new mayor to give away the store," he said. "We expect the new mayor to recognize the fact that we are the city and that we should have negotiations in good faith."

Even if the city's labor leaders do not coalesce around one candidate, Mr. Nespoli said, they are united in their frustration with Mr. Bloomberg, who on Monday compared the endorsement of the teachers' union to the "kiss of death."

Union officials now have their own retort. They have taken to repeating three numbers, 12-31-13, a reference to the mayor's final day in office.


_____________________________________________

WHILE THEY PRETEND THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY IS STAGNANT THEY ARE EXPANDING OVERSEAS LIKE CRAZY AND IT IS ALL CAUSED BY PUBLIC POLICY WRITTEN AND ENFORCED BY THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS!


The US is struggling economically because we have had tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud moved offshore out of our economy and that is enough to stall any economic growth.  We have waited for 4 years for the Justice Department to bring back these tens of trillions but we are dealing with suspended Rule of Law in America..that's right, a former first world allowing it Treasury be looted!

Add to that the Fed policy that gives away free money to corporations so they can make billions playing the market rather than actually working/hiring and you have stagnation.  Public policy could not have been implemented to stagnate the economy more!  The objective is to simply hold the domestic economy captive to high unemployment and low wages for the long term as corporations use all that money from the Fed on expanding globally as this article says.  Now, if you are going to keep American workers poor to maximize profits then they cannot be the consumers needed to grow the economy..we all know that.  It is the policy of impoverishing workers and feeding free money to corporations allowing them to expand globally that is creating the mess we have in America today.  It is all policy and it is now being dealt out by Third Way corporate democrats.  Thought it would go away went you voted democrat?  Not with these neo-liberals..



RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE NEXT ELECTIONS!


Retailers expanding globally turn to developing markets


Lorraine Mirabella 7:30 a.m. EDT, June 17, 2013

Retailers plagued by slow sales might want to seek customers outside the U.S. -- places, for instance, such as Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.

Those countries top a 2013 ranking of developing countries for retail investment by consultant A.T. Kearney.

"South America is blossoming," the report says, thanks to increased consumer confidence amid a strong and growing middle class, controlled inflation, sustained economic growth and continued economic and political stability.

Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Yves Saint Laurent, Emporio Armani and Calvin Klein opened or have plans to open stores in Uruguay. Gap opened its first store in Uruguay in December, the report says.

The global retail development index, published each year since 2002, ranks the top 30 developing countries based on 25 macroeconomic and retail-specific variables. The study found that while developed markets have weak or stagnant growth potential, opportunities lie in developing markets.

Turkey, the sixth-ranked country, is luring international retailers with a growing economy and favorable consumer demographics. Apple is opening its first store in Istanbul this year.

In Mexico, which rose by seven rankings to land at 21st, Payless ShoeSource will open 41 stores though a Mexican franchiser in the next three years. Apparel chain H&M has opened its first Mexico City store.

And sub-Saharan Africa continues to build momentum, with Botswana and Namibia in the rankings.

Because five of the 12 most populous countries will be in Africa by 2100, "there is no doubt that this continent is a dramatic retail opportunity for those that can navigate the business and political risks," the report says.

For luxury retailers, some up-and-coming hubs are on the horizon. Small-population countries with wealth and a focus on consumers were ranked highly, among them Uruguay; ranked third, Mongolia, seventh; Georgia, eighth, and Armenia, 10th.

The index also found examples of global retailers reversing course after aggressive expansions, including in China, where "many are scaling back plans for new stores and choosing sites more carefully," the report says.

Meanwhile, in Latin America and Central Asia, more retailers are opening in smaller countries before deciding whether to enter larger markets.

lorraine.mirabella@baltsun.com


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

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