Citizens' Oversight Maryland---Maryland Progressives
CINDY WALSH FOR MAYOR OF BALTIMORE----SOCIAL DEMOCRAT
Citizens Oversight Maryland.com
  • Home
  • Cindy Walsh for Mayor of Baltimore
    • Mayoral Election violations
    • Questionnaires from Community >
      • Education Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Housing Questionnaire
      • Emerging Youth Questionnaire
      • Health Care policy for Baltimore
      • Environmental Questionnaires
      • Livable Baltimore questionnaire
      • Labor Questionnnaire
      • Ending Food Deserts Questionnaire
      • Maryland Out of School Time Network
      • LBGTQ Questionnaire
      • Citizen Artist Baltimore Mayoral Forum on Arts & Culture Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Transit Choices Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Activating Solidarity Economies (BASE)
      • Downtown Partnership Questionnaire
      • The Northeast Baltimore Communities Of BelAir Edison Community Association (BECCA )and Frankford Improvement Association, Inc. (FIA)
      • Streets and Transportation/Neighbood Questionnaire
      • African American Tourism and business questionnaire
      • Baltimore Sun Questionnaire
      • City Paper Mayoral Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Technology Com Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Biker's Questionnair
      • Homewood Friends Meeting Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Historical Collaboration---Anthem Project
      • Tubman City News Mayoral Questionnaire
      • Maryland Public Policy Institute Questionnaire
      • AFRO questionnaire
      • WBAL Candidate's Survey
  • Blog
  • Trans Pacific Pact (TPP)
  • Progressive vs. Third Way Corporate Democrats
    • Third Way Think Tanks
  • Financial Reform/Wall Street Fraud
    • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau >
      • CFPB Actions
    • Voted to Repeal Glass-Steagall
    • Federal Reserve >
      • Federal Reserve Actions
    • Securities and Exchange Commission >
      • SEC Actions
    • Commodity Futures Trading Commission >
      • CFTC Actions
    • Office of the Comptroller of the Currency >
      • OCC Actions
    • Office of Treasury/ Inspector General for the Treasury
    • FINRA >
      • FINRA ACTIONS
  • Federal Healthcare Reform
    • Health Care Fraud in the US
    • Health and Human Services Actions
  • Social Security and Entitlement Reform
    • Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP Actions
  • Federal Education Reform
    • Education Advocates
  • Government Schedules
    • Baltimore City Council
    • Maryland State Assembly >
      • Budget and Taxation Committee
    • US Congress
  • State and Local Government
    • Baltimore City Government >
      • City Hall Actions
      • Baltimore City Council >
        • Baltimore City Council Actions
      • Baltimore Board of Estimates meeting >
        • Board of Estimates Actions
    • Governor's Office >
      • Telling the World about O'Malley
    • Lt. Governor Brown
    • Maryland General Assembly Committees >
      • Communications with Maryland Assembly
      • Budget and Taxation Committees >
        • Actions
        • Pension news
      • Finance Committees >
        • Schedule
      • Business Licensing and Regulation
      • Judicial, Rules, and Nominations Committee
      • Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee >
        • Committee Actions
    • Maryland State Attorney General >
      • Open Meetings Act
      • Maryland Courts >
        • Maryland Court System
    • States Attorney - Baltimore's Prosecutor
    • State Comptroller's Office >
      • Maryland Business Tax Reform >
        • Business Tax Reform Issues
  • Maryland Committee Actions
    • Board of Public Works >
      • Public Works Actions
    • Maryland Public Service Commission >
      • Public Meetings
    • Maryland Health Care Commission/Maryland Community Health Resources Commission >
      • MHCC/MCHRC Actions
    • Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition
  • Maryland and Baltimore Development Organizations
    • Baltimore/Maryland Development History
    • Committee Actions
    • Maryland Development Organizations
  • Maryland State Department of Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Public Schools
    • Algebra Project Award
  • Baltimore City School Board
    • Charter Schools >
      • Charter Schools---Performance
      • Charter School Issues
    • Public Schools >
      • Public School Issues
  • Progressive Issues
    • Fair and Balanced Elections
    • Labor Issues
    • Rule of Law Issues >
      • Rule of Law
    • Justice issues 2
    • Justice Issues
    • Progressive Tax Reform Issues >
      • Maryland Tax Reform Issues
      • Baltimore Tax Reform Issues
    • Strong Public Education >
      • Corporate education reform organizations
    • Healthcare for All Issues >
      • Universal Care Bill by state
  • Building Strong Media
    • Media with a Progressive Agenda (I'm still checking on that!) >
      • anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com
      • "Talk About It" Radio - WFBR 1590AM Baltimore
      • Promethius Radio Project
      • Clearing the Fog
      • Democracy Now
      • Black Agenda Radio
      • World Truth. TV Your Alternative News Network.
      • Daily Censured
      • Bill Moyers Journal
      • Center for Public Integrity
      • Public Radio International
      • Baltimore Brew
      • Free Press
    • Far Left/Socialist Media
    • Media with a Third Way Agenda >
      • MSNBC
      • Center for Media and Democracy
      • Public Radio and TV >
        • NPR and MPT News
      • TruthOut
  • Progressive Organizations
    • Political Organizations >
      • Progressives United
      • Democracy for America
    • Labor Organizations >
      • United Workers
      • Unite Here Local 7
      • ROC-NY works to build power and win justice
    • Justice Organizations >
      • APC Baltimore
      • Occupy Baltimore
    • Rule of Law Organizations >
      • Bill of Rights Defense Committee
      • National Lawyers Guild
      • National ACLU
    • Tax Reform Organizations
    • Healthcare for All Organizations >
      • Healthcare is a Human Right - Maryland
      • PNHP Physicians for a National Health Program
      • Healthcare NOW- Maryland
    • Public Education Organizations >
      • Parents Across America
      • Philadelphia Public School Notebook thenotebook.org
      • Chicago Teachers Union/Blog
      • Ed Wize Blog
      • Educators for a Democratic Union
      • Big Education Ape
    • Elections Organizations >
      • League of Women Voters
  • Progressive Actions
    • Labor Actions
    • Justice Actions
    • Tax Reform Actions >
      • Baltimore Tax Actions
      • Maryland Tax Reform Actions
    • Healthcare Actions
    • Public Education Actions
    • Rule of Law Actions >
      • Suing Federal and State government
    • Free and Fair Elections Actions
  • Maryland/Baltimore Voting Districts - your politicians and their votes
    • 2014 ELECTION OF STATE OFFICES
    • Maryland Assembly/Baltimore
  • Petitions, Complaints, and Freedom of Information Requests
    • Complaints - Government and Consumer >
      • Sample Complaints
    • Petitions >
      • Sample Petitions
    • Freedom of Information >
      • Sample Letters
  • State of the Democratic Party
  • Misc
    • WBFF TV
    • WBAL TV
    • WJZ TV
    • WMAR TV
    • WOLB Radio---Radio One
    • The Gazette
    • Baltimore Sun Media Group
  • Misc 2
    • Maryland Public Television
    • WYPR
    • WEAA
    • Maryland Reporter
  • Misc 3
    • University of Maryland
    • Morgan State University
  • Misc 4
    • Baltimore Education Coalition
    • BUILD Baltimore
    • Church of the Great Commission
    • Maryland Democratic Party
    • Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church
    • Maryland Municipal League
    • Maryland League of Women Voters
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Standard of Review
  • Untitled
  • WALSH FOR GOVERNOR - CANDIDATE INFORMATION AND PLATFORM
    • Campaign Finance/Campaign donations
    • Speaking Events
    • Why Heather Mizeur is NOT a progressive
    • Campaign responses to Community Organization Questionnaires
    • Cindy Walsh vs Maryland Board of Elections >
      • Leniency from court for self-representing plaintiffs
      • Amended Complaint
      • Plaintiff request for expedited trial date
      • Response to Motion to Dismiss--Brown, Gansler, Mackie, and Lamone
      • Injunction and Mandamus
      • DECISION/APPEAL TO SPECIAL COURT OF APPEALS---Baltimore City Circuit Court response to Cindy Walsh complaint >
        • Brief for Maryland Court of Special Appeals >
          • Cover Page ---yellow
          • Table of Contents
          • Table of Authorities
          • Leniency for Pro Se Representation
          • Statement of Case
          • Questions Presented
          • Statement of Facts
          • Argument
          • Conclusion/Font and Type Size
          • Record Extract
          • Appendix
          • Motion for Reconsideration
          • Response to Defendants Motion to Dismiss
          • Motion to Reconsider Dismissal
      • General Election fraud and recount complaints
    • Cindy Walsh goes to Federal Court for Maryland election violations >
      • Complaints filed with the FCC, the IRS, and the FBI
      • Zapple Doctrine---Media Time for Major Party candidates
      • Complaint filed with the US Justice Department for election fraud and court irregularities.
      • US Attorney General, Maryland Attorney General, and Maryland Board of Elections are charged with enforcing election law
      • Private media has a responsibility to allow access to all candidates in an election race. >
        • Print press accountable to false statement of facts
      • Polling should not determine a candidate's viability especially if the polling is arbitrary
      • Viability of a candidate
      • Public media violates election law regarding do no damage to candidate's campaign
      • 501c3 Organizations violate election law in doing no damage to a candidate in a race >
        • 501c3 violations of election law-----private capital
      • Voter apathy increases when elections are not free and fair
  • Maryland Board of Elections certifies election on July 10, 2014
  • Maryland Elections ---2016

August 18th, 2014

8/18/2014

0 Comments

 

NEO-LIBERALISM AND NEO-CONSERVATISM HAVE DECLARED WAR ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE US AND AROUND THE WORLD.  CLINTON AND OBAMA ARE THE FACE OF NEO-LIBERALISM AND CONGRESS IS CONTROLLED BY NEO-LIBERALS.  TAKE BACK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!


I will talk a few days about neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism and women.  Yesterday I shared a piece from an International Women's meeting in Europe--- for openDemocracy 5050  from the Nobel Women's Initiative conference.  I also want to remind people that Maryland League of Women Voters leaders knew all the candidates in Maryland's race for Governor ----Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur -----were neo-liberals.  It is critical to take back these organizations tasked with protecting labor and justice. 

If you listened to Tom Friedman and other neo-liberal economists over these few decades after Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism joined the Bush neo-conservatives you would have heard that US sweat shops in developing worlds were good for those poor peasants.  Now that US corporations are being pushed out of these developing worlds and coming back to the US under the guise of job creation----they will bring these same conditions.  Do you know that many low-wage workers in the US both domestic and immigrant do not bring home much more than the developing world's $10 a day after wage theft and fraudulent independent contractor status is laid on them?  Indeed-----and Maryland leads in these policies.


THIS IS NEO-LIBERALISM AND NEO-CONSERVATISM.....IT IS NOT DEMOCRATIC OR REPUBLICAN AND IT KILLS WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND FAMILIES.


If you are going to push women back into poverty and out of the workforce in a meaningful way the first thing to do in a formerly first world where women gained freedom and independence because they were able to work and graduate to high positions is pretend they are winning in the race to the bottom.  Women paid more in part time jobs as women become the majority of part time workers.  As job creation becomes service industry this means poverty jobs.  Just a quick look locally I have noticed a change in banks in Baltimore---it seems that the once abundance of women bank management behind desks now looks to be all men.  I seriously have seen no women in my M and T banks except as tellers.  When jobs are made scarce you will see that mentality that men need the jobs because they are the breadwinner come back and that is what is happening.  Is it bad to remove financial freedom from women in the US?  Well, let's look at the rate of domestic violence, rape, and sexual harassment growing in the US -----the growing sex traffic of women in the US to see abusing women comes with neo-liberalism.

  IF NO RULES/RULE OF LAW AND NO PUBLIC JUSTICE EXIST-----WOMEN LOSE.


This Is The One Area Where Women Earn More Than Men
  • Alison Griswold

  • Nov. 7, 2013, 9:28 AM


There's one area where the gender wage gap is irrelevant and even reversed. Women consistently earn more than men in part-time jobs, which women are also more likely to have.


_______________________________________________


Look below at the article written by Korean women rights groups to see the history of subjugation of women in that country to see where neo-liberalism is taking the US.  We are pummeled with news that women are graduating from college in higher numbers than men but we do not get the big picture.  First, college grads represent a large percentage of the 36% unemployed in the US and women more so than men.  So, women may be graduating in larger numbers but they represent those students with large student loan debts as well.

What we see is a gender change in careers that have been mostly female and paying the most to that of men.  Nursing and teaching are two careers that have paid well for women and these jobs are being taken more and more by men.  Then there comes the pay inequity within the same job categories.....women paid less.  What this all represents is the movement of women out of the workforce and into what will be increasingly part time or unemployed status....just as the Korean women state in the article below.  That is what neo-liberalism does----it marginalizes women and creates the poverty for women that dis-empowers.
  Now, Republicans have always pushed policy for women in the home----the problem is that with neo-liberals pushing 80% and more of Americans into poverty------women become trapped and abused----as in all third world countries. 
So, when neo-liberals place women pay equity on their policy stance as they knowingly push everyone into poverty with a loss of Rule of Law and Equal Protection and Trans Pacific Trade Pact moving US citizens to third world status----THEY ARE HANDING YOU PROPAGANDA. 


THAT IS WHERE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS ARE TAKING WOMEN AND THEY ARE SIMPLY PROVIDING STATS THAT MAKE IT SOUND LIKE WOMEN ARE DOING GREAT.


ALL OF MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.



Graduating to a Pay Gap: The Earnings of Women and Men One Year after College Graduation

(2012) AAUW

Foreword
Women are paid significantly less than men are in nearly every occupation.



Because pay equity affects
women and their families in all walks of life, it is not surprising that many women consider the issue
important. Many business leaders also believe that pay equity is “good business,” because it improves
morale and productivity. Yet progress in closing the gap between men’s and women’s pay has been slow
and, in recent years, has stagnated.
For more than 130 years, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) has advocated
for gender equity in education and the workplace. During this time, women have gone from a small
minority on college campuses to a majority of the student body. Today, women make up half the workforce,
but they continue to earn less than men do throughout their careers.

Why does this gender pay gap persist? This question is a focal point of AAUW’s research and advocacy
work. Graduating to a Pay Gap finds that women working full time already earn less than their
male counterparts do just one year after college graduation. Taking a closer look at the data, we find
that women’s choices—college major, occupation, hours at work—do account for part of the pay gap.
But about one-third of the gap remains unexplained, suggesting that bias and discrimination are still
problems in the workplace.
At AAUW, research informs action. As an organization of college-educated women, we believe that
the pay gap among college-educated workers and its ramifications—starting with higher student loan
debt burden immediately after college graduation—are of great importance. AAUW is proud to share
research that you can trust. We hope this report will inspire you to join us in taking action to eliminate
the pay gap.
_________________________________________

Keep in mind that the media presenting all of this news knows what the goal of neo-liberalism is---they know women will be targeted for impoverishment.  Yet, they pretend it is just that nasty stagnant economy!!!!  Neo-liberals pretend Republicans cause the stagnant economy ----Republicans pretend its the Democrats---when it is neo-liberals working with neo-cons deliberately creating the stagnant economy because they want US citizens to overwhelmingly become impoverished....third world.


Student Debt Weighs Down Women More. Blame The Wage Gap

by Jessica Glazer

April 06, 2014 5:18 AM ET NPR


When Kristine Leighton graduated from a private college five years ago with a degree in hospitality, she owed $75,000 in student loans. Each month, she paid the minimum amount of $450 and lived at home with her parents on Long Island, N.Y.

At first, she was working at a hotel for $10 an hour; money was tight. Even after she got a job in Manhattan making $75,000 a year, she still couldn't afford to move out. She funneled her earnings into car payments, credit card bills and debt, and a monthly commuter train pass. The loan payments left little extra money for things like an emergency fund.


______________________________________

Women are not choosing to stay home----they are being pushed out of the workforce and marginized into poverty careers and part time.


Global markets allow corporations to profit from a small number of very rich in nations around the world while keeping the majority of people in each nation in poverty.  That is what the Clinton Foundation has worked to do after his pushing of NAFTA and breaking Glass Steagall to grow global corporations and empire-colonialization.


You do not create an environment of suspended Rule of Law, corporate rule, and pervasive fraud and corruption, war and violence from poverty if you have good intentions.



The Mythical ‘Choice’ of the Stay-at-Home Mom

The fact that so much anger erupts at any perceived slight tells us many women are not truly choosing to be home with the kids



By Judith Warner @judithwarner  Time

The mood has shifted considerably on last week’s Ann Romney–Hilary Rosen fracas, with poll results showing that most women don’t really care about what Washington insiders have to say about Rosen’s word choice or, for that matter, how Romney chose to spend her time once she had children. Women are shrugging off political attempts to rekindle the tired old “mommy wars” debate, and are getting on with their busy and complicated lives.

I was shocked, nonetheless, by the degree of rage contained in some of the e-mails I received in response to my column last week. I was also deeply surprised this week when a readers’ panel I participated in on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show on the 1899 Kate Chopin novel, The Awakening, devolved, very quickly, back to Rosen-and-Romney talk once again.



The proximate cause: disagreement over the character of Edna Pontellier, a wealthy young New Orleans woman stifling within her loveless marriage and unstimulating, toil-free life (I believe I can say “toil-free” without unduly again stirring the pot: Edna’s children and home are cared for by ample domestic help), who, after experiencing an emotional and sensual “awakening” through infatuation, escapes her husband and children by taking her own life.

Some readers around the country, and I, distanced ourselves from Edna’s “selfishness” in abandoning her children. Others felt we owed much greater compassion to a woman who had such a stark lack of choices. All of which somehow looped back to Rosen and Romney, and maternal stay-at-home loneliness and despair. Diane Rehm, the radio talk-show host, and Jane Holmes Dixon, suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, recalled the stifling isolation they’d felt as mothers 50 odd years earlier; they could strongly relate to Edna, as could a number of listeners.

It quickly became clear that the link between this more-than-a-century-old fictional character and these moms writing or calling in to express their solidarity with Edna was simple: misery. It was feelings, current or remembered, of depression, of the sense of a vital loss of self and of a deep maroonedness. Rehm and Dixon, who have known each other for many decades, remembered how important it had been to be able to get together way back then and talk their way through all these feelings. It is still a great unifier of stay-at-home mothers today.

This reality, I think, fuels much of the anger, the desire for recognition, the demand for respect we’ve heard so often of late from this minority of mothers — only 30% of whom, in the U.S., are home full-time with children under 18. Recent research has shown that this group is considerably less happy than working mothers, and less contented than part-time working mothers in particular. Working moms are healthier and less depressed, the American Psychological Association reported late last year. Why they feel this way isn’t hard to imagine. Stay-at-home mothers give up their financial freedom, and with it many feel their sense of agency slip away. Their position of equality with their husbands is by necessity somewhat eroded. They lose the sense of strength that comes from knowing that, come what may, they can keep themselves and their children afloat economically. They lose intellectual stimulation (assuming that they were lucky enough to have it in their jobs anyway), the easy companionship and structure of the workplace, and recognition from the outside world. And if they don’t have the money to outsource domestic jobs, their freedom from paid work comes at the cost of repetitive thankless tasks — laundry, cleaning and the like — that test their patience and can chip away at their self-worth. The pleasure in this life of course is time with the children, but school-age kids leave a void that many find hard to meaningfully fill.


In the past, women lived constricted lives because society didn’t afford them much by way of choice. Today, our society in theory offers them a plethora of choices — so many, “that they’re overwhelmed by the stress of so many choices,” as Maureen Dowd said in her New York Times column this week — but in practice, far too many of these choices are false. A woman who ends up staying home with her kids because her work pays so badly that she can’t afford decent child care really has no choice. Ditto for a woman who has a special-needs child requiring constant medical visits and attention and whose husband earns more than she does, making her the natural, if not necessary, primary parent. The woman whose 55-hour-a-week job combines with her husband’s equally demanding career to produce a level of busyness that makes having a connected family life all but impossible unless one of them (the lower-paid one, of course) stays home isn’t really free in her choices either. How many women, after all — or men, for that matter — are in the enviable position of being able, like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, to leave work at 5:30 p.m. in order to make it home for a nice dinner with their kids? If more could, we’d probably see women’s workforce participation sharply increase — economy permitting.


If women were truly choosing to be home full-time, I think there would probably be a whole lot less emphasis on the hard work involved in doing so and a lot more talk about the privilege that choice would then clearly be. The fact that so much anger — masking so much unhappiness — erupts at any perceived slight to stay-at-home mothers’ efforts should tell us that the condition of full-time motherhood is one we should talk about a great deal more — not through Hallmark-worthy platitudes, but with concern and an eye toward change.

____________________
This is why neo-liberals and neo-cons are working hard to privatize all public agencies charged with oversight and accountability.  No data is being generated from US universities that now dismantle sociology and humanities that created this data.  In Maryland, all of our data is questionable as we find time and again that stats reported one year are found to be skewed and/or false a few years later.  Create the headline with faulty data say neo-liberals and then bury the fact that the data was found false.

Whether women in the military, women on college campuses, women in marriages, women being used in sex traffic----these are US women being attacked and it all has to do with increasing poverty and suspension of Rule of Law, Equal Protection, and Bill of Rights by neo-liberals and neo-cons.
When neo-liberals in Congress pretend to try to fund these programs but it is the 'republicans' that keep them from doing it ----tell them

TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD FROM LAST DECADE WOULD PAY OFF THE ENTIRE NATIONAL DEBT AND MAKE GOVERNMENT COFFERS FLUSH WITH MONEY-----JUST RECOVER THE FRAUD!



US: Soaring Rates of Rape and Violence Against Women
More Accurate Methodology Shows Urgent Need for Preventive Action December 18, 2008


The National Crime Victimization Survey, based on projections from a national sample survey, says that at least 248,300 individuals were raped or sexually assaulted in 2007, up from 190,600 in 2005, the last year the survey was conducted. The study surveyed 73,600 individuals in 41,500 households. Among all violent crimes, domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault showed the largest increases. Except for simple assault, which increased by 3 percent, the incidence of every other crime surveyed decreased.

"The numbers in this survey show an alarmingly high rate of sexual violence in this country,"
said Sarah Tofte, researcher for the US Program at Human Rights Watch. "This should serve as a wake-up call that more must be done to address the problem in the US."

The projected number of violent crimes committed by intimate partners against women increased from 389,100 in 2005 to 554,260 in the 2007 report. By comparison, the number of violent crimes against men by intimate partners went down.

"Domestic violence is often a hidden crime, and these numbers are a stark reminder of how serious and widespread this problem is," said Tofte. "The Obama-Biden administration should make prevention and protection against all forms of domestic and sexual violence a top priority."

The National Crime Victimization Survey is conducted every two years, with data gathered in phone calls made to a sample of households across the United States. Due to criticism from experts in the subject, the survey's methodology was adjusted in 2007 to capture more accurately the incidence of gender-based violence. The authors say in the report that the higher numbers may reflect the new, more accurate methodology rather than an actual increase. Two major shifts were to describe types of sexual assault to those being interviewed, and to replace "computer-assisted telephone interviews conducted from two telephone centers" nationwide with interviews "by field representatives either by telephone or in person."

"The new numbers
indicate that previously, the government significantly underestimated the number of individuals affected by domestic and sexual violence in this country,"
said Tofte. "Authorities should urgently adjust public policies, law enforcement, and provision of support services accordingly."

Human Rights Watch is currently investigating and monitoring the criminal justice response to sexual violence. The organization's recent work includes investigating the backlog in untested DNA evidence collected in rape cases in the US. In Los Angeles City and County alone, there is a combined total of at least 13,000 untested sets of evidence, known as rape kits, sitting in storage.

Human Rights Watch's national recommendations include:

  • The Obama administration should appoint a special adviser on violence against women in the US;
  • Congress should restore full funding to the Office on Violence Against Women;
  • The Department of Justice, through the National Institute of Justice, should authorize comprehensive studies that more accurately track sexual and domestic violence in the US, especially among individuals who are least likely to be surveyed by the National Crime Victimization Survey;
  • Congress should increase funding for sexual and domestic violence prevention, intervention, and treatment programs;
  • Congress should amend the federal Debbie Smith Act, a grant program designed to eliminate the rape kit backlog, but that states can and have used for other kinds of DNA backlogs;
  • The US should ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which obligates states to prevent, protect against, and punish violence against women.
________________

Below you can see what is coming to the US----Korea was taken neo-liberal after the Korean War in the late 1950s and shows the progression as it hit full-scale in the 1990s---Reagan/Clinton.  Koreans use the term 'irregular worker' for part time. This is long but please glance through because you will read in this history of Korea's takeover by neo-liberals exactly what is happening today.  It is women and children who's wealth fell the most in the last decade of corporate fraud---women are the majority of job losses----and the majority working part time in the US.  Indeed, women now make up a majority of the poor.  Given that women in the US make up a little over 50% of the population----the numbers in poverty are very high.

This is why you have women hitting the political races who are neo-liberals pretending to feel the pain of women driven into poverty by neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism.

HILLARY AND OBAMA REPRESENT THE TWO GROUPS KILLED BY NEO-LIBERALISM AND THAT IS WHY NEO-LIBERALS ARE PUTTING BLACK, HISPANIC, AND FEMALE FACES ON THEIR CANDIDATES.


Remember, less than 10% will be allowed to escape poverty as administrators of this global corporate mess.  Don't vote for a candidate because of race or gender!  Your chances of remaining in that 10% is slim to nothing.

NEOLIBERALISM THRHOUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN
Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi, PICIS*


There is no place on Earth where neo-liberalism has not poisoned. It has allowed a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize personal profit. It has poisonous effects especially in the Third World, where imperial powers continue to pirate natural and human resources to fill the pockets of transnational capitalists. Initiated by Reagan and Thatcher, for the last two decades, neo-liberalism has become the dominant economic and political trend for much of the leftist (so they identify themselves) governments as well as the right.

However, as women fighting against global capitalism and its new phase, as women yearning for a better world where we will not be exploited and abused, we must go a step further into looking into this 'neo-liberalism' through the experiences of women. And it is not just about how women linearly experience it - we must go into the depths to manifest how neo-liberalism operates in a very gender-biased way.

WOMEN WORKERS AS SCAPEGOATS


In Korea, the process of being absorbed into global capitalism began earlier than the economic crisis, during the economic 'hyper '-development era of military dictatorship of Park Jung-Hee, with quite a bit of help from the US. Fluctuating together with global economic crises, the Korean economy started to show signs of a recession from the early 90s, as rate of profit decreased. Thus, capitalists started to adopt policies of introducing flexibility to the labour market. It was 'experimented' on women workers first before taking full force on the entire working class at the end of the millennium.

Jobs where women were predominant started to be transformed in the 1980s, beginning in the form of dispatch labour and eventually expanding to generalisation of irregular labour. However, this process was mainly targeted at women workers and the male-oriented labour movement did not give much importance to it, even though women worker's movement consistently called for the address of the issue.

Although the incorporation of Korean economy into the global capitalist system had already started around a decade ago, Korean people came to experience its destructive nature during and after the economic crisis of 1997. The structural adjustment program of the IMF shook the labour market and massive lay-offs were implemented. In particular, women workers were laid off first, and the working conditions of women workers fell to the ground.

The methods that the management used was subcontracting or abolishing those production lines and business sectors where women were predominant. Women in these places were usually typists or clerical assistants, who were considered not important and cumbersome, and thus provided the logic and justification for the lay-offs. Many companies would lay-off these women, and instead employ workers from dispatch companies - thus providing the management with ways in which to decrease labour costs and evade provision of insurances and benefits. Or in the case of banks, the same worker would be reemployed, but on a contract basis as irregular workers, again to decrease labour costs. Another method of laying off women workers or transforming them into irregular workers, was targeting foremost women who were married to someone in the same workplace, and also those who were pregnant or were on their maternal leave. They provided the management with strong justifications based on patriarchal values of 'women's place is at home'. This process of unjust and discriminatory lay-offs at the onset of the economic crisis saw the deterioration of maternal protection and women worker's rights in general. The achievements that the women worker's movement had accomplished over the last couple of decades were undermined.

"FLEXIBILITY" OF WOMEN WORKERS


The massive lay-offs that occurred after 1997 was obviously not 'inevitable' on the part of the management,
but was a calculated process of increasing the rate of profit through flexibility of the labour market. Because the need for lay-offs did not come simply from decrease in production, workers who were laid off were re-employed, but as irregular workers. And because flexibility measures were implemented foremost on women, women were also absorbed again in masses into the labour market, but this time as irregular workers with low wages and low protection.

Attaining flexibility of women workers was backed up by the patriarchal ideology of 'male as breadwinner'1 . Through this ideology, women workers are considered not really as workers, but as 'assistant income providers', the ideology that contributes to devaluation of women's work. And this in turn provided the justification for the primary lay-offs of women and transforming women's jobs into irregular jobs - a justification that quelled the possibility of resistance from the working class. Recently, capitalist institutions and mainstream media elaborate that the rate of women's employment is increasing faster that the rate of men. On one hand, this is due to the increase in absolute number of jobs-irregular jobs for women, but also due to the fact that women do not have much choice than take up highly unstable jobs without any hesitation to earn a living, whereas men can afford to be more 'selective'.

Now, the percentage of irregular workers is risen to higher levels than regular workers. In analyzing a census on the economically-active workforce implemented by the Korean Statistical Office in August 2001, the Korea Labor & Society Institute (www.klsi.org) estimated the number of irregular workers to be 7.37 million, constituting 55.7% of the total workforce2.According to studies made in 2000, out of entire irregular workers, the percentage of women is higher than that of men at 53%, and within the entire women workforce irregular workers take up 70%. These official statistics exclude specially employed labour (for example, the type of jobs that capitalists characterise as self-employment) such as private tutors, insurance sales, golf caddies etc., so if these jobs are included, the rate of irregular women workers will definitely rocket.

Irregular work pertaining to capital's flexibility measures has brought deterioration of working conditions and impoverishment for workers of both genders. But it has affected women workers more severely. At the moment, most of irregular women workers are employed in small enterprises of less than 10 employees. It has driven women's work into the ditches and has also increased mental stress from lack of self-confidence and the fear of losing their jobs. One feminist scholar was interviewing irregular women workers and told of how the interviewees were in constant fear of being seen throughout the interview. Many social psychologists point out that the increase of irregular work and the mental stress that comes from it is becoming a serious social problem that is bound to affect the whole society.

Moreover, with the automation of production lines and transfer of factories in capital's constant search for cheaper labour, many women workers who had originally constituted a large proportion of the workforce in the manufacturing sector are now being absorbed into the service sector - in areas such as the so-called 'entertainment' businesses and as domestic workers. The service sector has rapidly expanded over the last few years in Korea, and many women are being employed as narrator models, telemarketers, and as servers and entertainers in bars. These jobs are not only unstable, low waged and physically strenuous, but they also enforce the use of 'femininity' and sexuality to raise sales, making women more vulnerable to possibilities of sexual abuse and exploitation. Also, because the service sector has always shared a very thin borderline with the sex industry, it is not very surprising that more and more women workers, both young and aged, are being drawn into the sex industry. For example, many married women in their 30's and 40's are employed in the so-called 'telephone rooms (jeon-hwa-bang)' and are forced to have phone sex with men. Many other married women were employed as 'pager women', who are paged to come to bars to 'entertain' men. This became a very heated issue when Daewoo Motors unionists went to a bar, paged women, and came face to face with familiar faces. When Daewoo workers were laid-off, the wives had to find jobs to sustain their families and the only ones available were as 'pager women'. The ruling elite and the conservative media are enthusiastically deploring the moral collapse of Korean women, but the reality is that it is the capitalist system that is corrupting the people.

The situation is not much different on the international arena. Neo-liberal globalisation has paved the way for increase in migrant women workers, international trafficking and enforced sex work in the Third World. In Korea, many women from the Philippines and Russia come to Korea as domestic workers and 'entertainers', and then are tricked into providing sexual services to Korean men and the US military.

WIDENING GAP BETWEEN WOMEN


Neo-liberal globalisation has also impeded the widening of gap between different classes of women. The living standard between women in the developed countries and those in the Third World is now incomparable, as is the situation inside Korea. Rich women of the bourgeoisie can afford to wear fur coats that cost tens of million won, shop in department stores in their imported cars, buy US produced baby food, send their children to expensive private English language schools so that they are reproduced as the minority elite who rule the world of globalisation, and employ women from South-east Asia as housemaids. This is how the minority of women in Korea live, and furthermore, they are not living on the wealth that they had accumulated themselves, but on the wealth accumulated by their husbands. And this in turn is the wealth accumulated from exploiting women workers in Korea and elsewhere in the Third World. In contrast to the minority of women who enjoy the outcome of neo-liberal domination in a good part of the world, majority of women cannot find a proper job no matter how hard they try, and when they do find a job, it is an unstable job in slave-like conditions that can get snatched away from them. They cannot afford domestic help or a nanny - they work for long tiring hours outside and then come home to find piles of dishes to be washed and children to be fed. Also, studies by women's organizations have found that domestic abuse has increased, as husbands and fathers who have lost jobs turn to expressing their anger at their daughters and wives, and resort to violence.

CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BACKLASH


To quell mass resistance against economic globalisation that has brought about increase in unemployment, decrement of public services, downfall in wages and deterioration of quality of life, the ruling elite has manipulated cultural conservatism to solidify its dominance over society.
Cultural conservatism in Korea is represented by Confucian patriarchy. The economic crisis of 1997 saw the rise of this ideology that came together with the capitalist form of 'male as breadwinner' model, and acted to cover up the oppression of women while highlighting the need for women to make more sacrifices for the sake of saving the crumbling economy. In the meanwhile, unemployment of men was highlighted as a serious social problem. Thus the role of women was limited to that of 'comforting' the suffering man in the family, while the sufferings of women both as wage workers and non-wage workers were ignored. The Korean mainstream media and the conservative ruling elite alike have neglected the seriousness of women suffering from sexual abuse on the basis that women should have perseverance, but has spotlighted those desperate women who left home after losing all hopes as destructors of family values. Women who had replaced their husbands as the breadwinners end up in the sex industry, after being rejected from any other type of work, but then are stigmatised as being morally corrupt. The severity of unemployment of male youths appear in the news everyday, whereas female students are not only ignored but are blocked altogether from the labour market. Many right-wing sociologists and economists actually suggested that marriage for women should be more emphasized by the government so as to block women from entering the labour market - and thus lowering the official unemployment rate. The media focuses evermore on the fantasies of marriage, and the 'marriage business' is now enjoying its 'Belle Epoque'.

A CRITIQUE OF KIM DAE-JUNG'S POLICIES ON WOMEN


Kim Dae-Jung's government has been portrayed as being democratic and pro-feminist in and outside of Korea. There were high hopes for this president with his long history of fighting for democracy, and from the beginning, many civil and women's organizations decided to give him 'critical' support. However, his promise of establishing a ministry specific on women's issues was replaced by the Special Committee On Women's Affairs with no legislative powers, much to the disappointment of women's groups. As his presidential term is coming to an end, he did launch the Ministry of Gender Equality during the first half of this year, with a prominent figure from a major women NGO seated as the Minister. However, the policies that the Ministry is adopting are those that will hardly benefit majority of women suffering at grassroot levels.

This was recently manifested in the revisions that were made to the maternity clauses in the Standard Labour Laws in June. The Ministry had announced that it will expand public childcare so as to decrease the burden on working women. With support from major women NGOs3, the Ministry proposed revisions to maternity-related clauses in the Standard Labour Laws, and the clauses were changed for the first time since 1953. There were basically two major improvements - maternity leave was increased from the present 60 days to 90 days, and prohibition on employment of women in hazardous workplaces was expanded. This may seem like a big step, but the fact of the matter is, these laws came in exchange for further flexibility of women's labour. In exchange for increase of maternal leave, the Ministry also agreed to abolish the clauses restricting overtime work and night work, paid familycare leave and menstruation leave.

In a situation where 70% (or perhaps even higher and ever increasing) of women workers are irregular workers, how many women workers will actually benefit from the revision? The majority of working class women are outside legal boundaries. The Ministry and women NGOs argue that they will fight for the application of the laws to irregular workers, but without questioning the neo-liberal characteristics behind the legislation, there is really no chance that this will actually take place. Many women activists had fought hard for these laws for the last decade and they are congratulating themselves in finally achieving their objective, but in the meantime, a vast majority of women workers have fallen into the ditches of irregular work and the demands of the majority have been neglected to benefit a few. Capitalists have learnt to 'sacrifice' a few laws for the sake of obtaining further flexibility. Despite the argument that these revisions will open new opportunities for women, without questioning the essence of Kim's government and its support for neo-liberalism, the revisions that were recently made will only expedite the flexible usage of women workers and thus further deteriorate the working conditions of irregular women workers. The Ministry and the NGOs do not realize that the laws, along with others that were made during the recent years4 , are all in compliance with neo-liberalism.

It has only been one year since the Ministry of Gender Equality took off, but those benefiting from it are middle-class, elite women, and only the minority of women workers who are lucky enough to be in a regular job. The presidential elections take place next year. Despite that the Ministry is conforming to neo-liberal policies and trying to confuse the workers about the essence of its policies, it does have some significance amidst the severely patriarchal political scene of Korea - which may well be undermined by any of the major right-wing political parties that take office - including the ruling New Millenium Democratic Party of Kim Dae-Jung, which still receive a lot of support from NGOs. This will merely lead to more lack of hope for state-led labour policies.

FIGHTING AND ORGANISING


Neo-liberalism was not something that hit Korea suddenly in 1997, but is a historical development of capitalism that has gradually taken form during the last few decades. It had been women workers who had felt the effects of globalisation first and thus were the first ones to resist. It was the women workers of Korea, who fought militantly during the 70s and early 80s for a democratic union and worker's rights. Women workers formed the foundation for the modern labour movement, although this fact often tends to be forgotten. During the late 80's, the Korean economy reconstructed itself into focusing on export-oriented heavy industries, whose workers were predominantly men, and women workers were left behind.

The onslaught of neo-liberal globalisation and the impoverishment that came with it was also felt first by women workers. Just after the economic crisis, the women worker's movement moved a big step forward when independent women's trade unions began to beformed5 . The unions came out of the need to address the specific issues of women workers that could not be properly dealt with in a general union -organising irregular workers, the unemployed, domestic workers and those women who worked in small companies where there are no unions. The percentage of women participating in unions still remain at a meagre 5%, due to the fact that general unions do not accommodate workers who are not regular workers. It was only in 1997, when the IMF enforced austerity measures and structural adjustment programs also affected male workers, that the people's movement in Korea fully realised the destructive nature of neo-liberalism. From then on, flexibility of labour has become the main target of struggle for the working class. Spotlight was finally thrown on the fact that neo-liberalism attack women workers foremost, but unfortunately the longtime demands and struggles of women workers are being put aside, as the struggles against 'irregular labour' is again being organised in a male-oriented fashion.

The establishments of these unions are very significant in the history of the Korean labour movement and also in the women's movement. Just as the strategies of capitalists change, the organisation of the working class also much change to resist effectively. The essence of neo-liberalism and its gender-bias cannot be resisted through the traditional method of organization concentrating on male, regular workers from big enterprises.

However, these newly formed women's unions still have further developments to make and many obstacles to overcome, in their struggles against national and international capital. The unions must question the role of neo-liberal globalisation and its strategy of incorporating flexibility measures into the labour market, for a full understanding of the situation of women workers and organizing of more radical struggles that go into the fundamental core. And at the same time, the worker's movement of Korea must go through structural changes to accommodate the ever increasing irregular workers, and must also make more effort into overcoming the patriarchal values that are still prevalent inside people's movement. Many women activists and unionists have started to address the issues of gender discrimination and sexual violence inside the people's movement, which up until now had been covered up. Over the years, many fervent and militant women activists have had to leave the movement because of discrimination and violence. It was always considered women's fault, or victimized women were forced to 'forgive' for the 'greater cause'. Many women activists, workers and unionists are uniting themselves and are calling upon the movement to tackle the problem of hierarchy, discrimination and violence.

TOWARDS ORGANIZING GLOBAL RESISTANCE OF WOMEN


As we have seen, neo-liberal globalisation affects all areas of society, to attain flexibility of the labour market solely for the interests of transnational capital. In the case of Korea, this process of enforcing structural adjustment and flexibility has devastated the lives of the people, especially women. Capitalist industrialisation has brought about the rise of the women's proletariat and neo-liberal globalisation has further feminised the proletariat while at the same time impoverishing the proletariat into the verge of slavery.

This is not a matter of women merely being affected 'more' - we must look at the mechanisms of neo-liberalism that operate in a gender-biased way. Indeed, neo-liberal globalisation itself feed upon gender discrimination and effectively use traditional patriarchal values to exploit women further. Patriarchal ideologies act to crush any attempts of women to politicize and form resistance.

However, the essence of neo-liberalism is slowly being manifested and women have begun to fight back. Feminisation of labour and feminisation of poverty signify increased exploitation of women, but precisely because of that, provide the possibility for organization and resistance, nationally and internationally. Women must now go forth as subjects in uniting the people in our fight against neo-liberal globalisation. Instead of being incorporated into a ready-made movement of men or middle-class elite women, instead of taking the problems of discrimination for granted, women workers, farmers, indigenous peoples, migrants and other grassroot peoples of the Third World must form a broad solidarity. We must analyse globalisation from women's perspective, plan strategies that conform with the particular needs of women, propose alternatives that include women as equal subjects, keep to the principle of internationalism, and unite with other oppressed groups in the mass resistance in the fight against neo-liberalism - and go beyond in creating a world based on equality.

* Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi are with the Policy & Information Center for International Solidarity (PICIS), Korea. This paper was presented at the International South Group Network (ISGN) Asian Workshop on Women and Globalisation, 22-24 November, Manila.

0 Comments

August 14th, 2014

8/14/2014

0 Comments

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


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


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

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

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



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


State Police, or Police State? --Nathan

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

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


_____________________________________________

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

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


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

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


Belong to the most formidable International NETWORK for Security Professionals

ISIO Demographics

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


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

* Bank Security

* Border Security

* Building Security

* Business and Commercial Security

* Cargo Security

* City Security

* Control Station Security

* Event Security

* Homeland Security

* Hospital Security

* Hotel, Casino & Landmark Security

* Military and Defense Security

* Industrial Security

* Law Enforcement Security

* Oil and Refinery Security

* Port Security

* Prison Security

* Rail/Tunnel and Subway Security

* Retail and Store Security

* School Security


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

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

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

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

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



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

Thursday, February 15, 2007

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

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

[....]

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


__________________________________________

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

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


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


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

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


Just How Corrupt is SAIC?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
0 Comments

August 13th, 2014

8/13/2014

0 Comments

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Jacob Fishman, Baltimore


_________________________________________


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

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

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

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



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


Water Privatization in Baltimore

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

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




The Dangerous Return of Water Privatization

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


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

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

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

It hasn’t always been this way.

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


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

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

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

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

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

________________________________________________

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


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

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




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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

______________________________________________



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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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




________________________________________________


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

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



Fracking Spreads Worldwide

By Nidaa Bakhsh and Brian Swint November 14, 2013


Bloomberg Financial

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

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



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

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

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


_______________________________________________

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

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


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

Contaminated freshwater systems caused by ‘fracking’

Friday, April 4, 2014 13:52

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


0 Comments

August 08th, 2014

8/8/2014

0 Comments

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

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

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


At Evergreen Health we put your health first.


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

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


______________________________________________

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

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


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

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


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

Evergreen faces challenges in delivering health insurance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I think we're well-positioned," Beilenson said. "We think we know what we're doing. And we think we have a really good product."
_____________________________________________



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


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


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


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


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

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


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

Doctor and PatientDr. Pauline Chen on medical care.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

ACA 5-Tier Drug List

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

About tiers

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

•Tier 1 — Preferred Generic Drugs •

Tier 2 — Non-Preferred Generic Drugs •

Tier 3 — Preferred Brand Name Drugs and some generics

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

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


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

0 Comments

July 15th, 2014

7/15/2014

0 Comments

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

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

Check out this Facebook page:   the movement is growing!

US Uncut
June 30 ·


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

Share to break corporate media's censorship.


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

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

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






Wednesday, Feb 19, 2014, 3:10 pm

UIC Faculty Rekindle Fight for Public Education With Historic Strike

BY Rebecca Burns

University of Illinois----Chicago



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

Wednesday, Apr 30, 2014, 8:10 pm

College Adjuncts Union Scores Victory at Maryland Institute College of Art

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

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


_______________________________________________


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

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


UPS, FedEx owned by most of the same monopoly banks


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


Nurses walk out at Quincy Medical Center

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


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

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

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

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

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

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


________________________________________________


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

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


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

PROTECTING UNION MEMBER'S WEALTH IS AS IMPORTANT.   

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

Friday, Apr 11, 2014, 1:01 pm

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


BY Jonathan Leavitt

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



BHS Students on the picket line beside their CCTA drivers.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

0 Comments

July 14th, 2014

7/14/2014

0 Comments

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

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

THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH UNEMPLOYMENT. 

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

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

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

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


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


Wednesday, Feb 5, 2014, 11:33 am


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


____________________________________________

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Web Only / Features » February 4, 2014

Angering Environmentalists, AFL-CIO Pushes Fossil-Fuel Investment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

THIS IS HOW THIRD WORLD SOCIETIES OPERATE!


Friday, Jun 6, 2014, 5:57 pm

Privatizing Government Services Doesn’t Only Hurt Public Workers

BY David Moberg Email Print

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


Features » April 1, 2014

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

BY Michelle Chen  Working In These Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



_____________________________________________

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

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

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

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


TPP: A Thoroughly Predatory Pact

by Ron Forthofer / July 12th, 2014 Dissident Voice

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

Media’s Failure to Inform

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

Why the Lack of Transparency?

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


Undue Corporate Influence on U.S. Negotiating Positions

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

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

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


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

Investor-State Dispute Settlements Threaten Sovereignty

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


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

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

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

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

More Financial Deregulation

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

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

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

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

Fast Tracking of the Agreement

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

Represent Public Interest, not Transnational Corporations

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




0 Comments

July 03rd, 2014

7/3/2014

0 Comments

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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


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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_________________________________________________

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

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

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

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



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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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


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


Troubles at Embark

July 3, 2014 By Ry Rivard  Inside Higher Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other universities are being paid back, if only gradually.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Harvard graduate program remains a client.

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

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

After the MRU bankruptcy filing, Khan and Garg quickly started another company, Education Investment and Finance Corporation, or EIFC, which manages and services private student loans and mortgage-backed securities.
______________________________________________

Bill and Hillary Clinton are the face of these global corporations and neo-liberalism.  They plan to win the White House in 2016 and are getting Hillary into all venues they had a hand in destroying.  High tuition and devastating student loan debt happened because the Clintons started the corporatization of US universities with the goal of creating US global corporate universities.  Bill and Hillary are the face of the 2008 economic crash that has left millions of US college grads without employment----they created these Wall Street banks by deregulating the financial industry and breaking Glass Steagall so these banks could grow to the global corporations knowing they would control the US government and economy.

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


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

Scrutiny for Hillary Clinton Speaking Fees at Colleges

July 3, 2014

Inside Higher Ed

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

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

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


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

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

Monday, May 26, 2014, 1:00 pm

Trafficked Teachers: Neoliberalism’s Latest Labor Source

BY George Joseph Working In These Times


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

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

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

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

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

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

Researchers estimate that anywhere from 14,000 to 20,000 teachers, imported on temporary guest worker visas, teach in American public schools nationwide. Such hiring practices are often framed as cultural exchange programs, but as Timothy Noah of the New Republic points out—in this case about Maryland’s Prince George County—“When 10 percent of a school district’s teachers are foreign migrants, that isn’t cultural exchange. It’s sweatshop labor—and a depressing indicator of how low a priority public education has become.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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








0 Comments

June 23rd, 2014

6/23/2014

0 Comments

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

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

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




Centralized government

From Wikipedia

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


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

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


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

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY FOLKS!

Mount Prospect Public LibraryPrivacy and Confidentiality of Patron Information Policy


October 2009

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


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



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



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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



Social Security
Open Government Initiative

Social Security Data

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

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


_________________________________________


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

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

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


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

AIS's Medicare and Medicaid Market Data: 2014

A valuable resource with information on rates, benefit designs, enrollment, contacts, trends and strategies on the Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D and managed Medicaid programs. Packed with practical data and strategic information, it tracks the enrollment trends, plan design information and market share statistics that are required for an effective strategic planning process.

Save Up to $150! Place your order through our secure shopping cart

Print version only Save $45!$398.00was $443.00 Print & CD versions Save $150!$1,135.00was $1,285.00
  • Call 800-521-4323
  • Print a form to fax or mail
AIS's Medicare and Medicaid Market Data: 2014 provides up-to-date enrollment data to help you develop strategic plans. AIS's Medicare and Medicaid Market Data: 2014 provides convenient access to up-to-date enrollment data so you can easily evaluate market share, make plan-by-plan or state-by-state comparisons, identify opportunities and develop strategies. Use it to stay on top of trends and data for:

  • Medicare Advantage (MA)/Medicare managed care, Medicare Part D and managed Medicaid enrollment and market share by state, by company and by region
  • Product offerings and enrollees by type of product
  • Directories of MA, Medicaid and Part D plans with key executive contact information along with a Special Needs Plan directory and directories of federal, regional and state regulators
  • Financial data, market expansion, merger and acquisition activity, and other company developments
  • Data on premium rates and star ratings, along with state-by-state summaries of dual-eligible and Medicaid initiatives
AIS's Medicare and Medicaid Market Data: 2014 is packed with all-new information on enrollment, benefit designs, company activity and business trends for the Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D and managed Medicaid programs. Order today!

CD Version Available for Easy Data Manipulation and Fast Searching! The CD version of AIS's Medicare and Medicaid Market Data is packed with Medicare and Medicaid data and analysis not contained in the print version. It provides:

  • Plan enrollment data at the national, state and county levels for both Medicare and Medicaid HMOs
  • Market data on numbers of eligibles — Medicare, Medicaid and duals
  • Data on premium rates, capitation, low-income subsidies, USPCCs
  • Historical data of Medicare and Medicaid managed care plans
  • Part D plans with benefit structure, cost-sharing and enrollment data
  • Mailing lists and all numeric data in convenient Excel spreadsheets
  • A complete user-friendly PDF version of the book for fast searching
  • Plus, all CD purchasers receive a free copy of the print version!
Exclusively in AIS’s Medicare & Medicaid Market Data CD version – easy-to-use spreadsheets of county-level enrollment and market share by company. Includes Medicare data for all 50 states plus DC and Puerto Rico as well as Medicaid data for 28 of the 37 states that offer Medicaid HMOs. This is the only resource where you can conveniently find this specific data in one place, ready to go for your detailed analysis.

Multi-user site licenses for AIS's Medicare and Medicaid Market Data: 2014 are also available to save you money while providing an accurate data resource for analysts throughout your organization. Call Sales Director Bailey Sterrett at 202-775-9008 x3034 to learn more.

_____________________________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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


What Is a Centralized Organizational Structure?




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


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

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

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

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

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

June 19th, 2014

6/19/2014

0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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



Pharmacists concerned about drug pricing, Affordable Care Act

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

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

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

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

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

One example he provided involved an anti-seizure medication.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hopes this struggle isn't permanent.

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


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

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

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

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



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

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

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


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

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

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




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

Drug Cost May Vary Greatly By State After Obamacare Implementation

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm scared that when I get a job my copay may be more than $1,500 a month," said Lusk. "I'll just be working to pay for my medications."
___________________________________________

So, the health market manipulation begins as Obama's Health Secretary says------she does not see the state health plans under ACA as FEDERAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAMS HELD TO FEDERAL PROTECTIVE LAWS.  So, bring the fraud and corruption on says the neo-liberal Sebelius-------lying, cheating, and stealing rules with the Affordable Care Act.

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Public Health

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

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

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

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




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

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

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




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

Court: Can drug companies pay to delay generics?

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

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

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

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

The justices will hear the argument Monday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The FTC called the deal anticompetitive and sued Actavis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



0 Comments

June 02nd, 2014

6/2/2014

0 Comments

 
PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH IS DRIVEN BY THE US AND IT IS ALL WRITTEN INTO THESE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACTS. THIS PACT WAS INITIATED BY BUSH AND CLINTON AND NOW OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS ARE OVERSEAS WITH US NEO-LIBERALS TRYING TO FORCE NATIONS ALL OVER THE WORLD TO SIGN A PACT THAT IS REALLY, REALLY, REALLY BAD FOR ALL CITIZENS INVOLVED.  WE HAVE A DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTROLLED BY NEO-LIBERALS AND SO DOES MARYLAND.  ALL THE CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND WILL EMBRACE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT AND THE DISMANTLING OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR IS PART OF THIS.

For those that believe the hype about bringing jobs, remember what NAFTA did----it decimated our economy and TPP be worse!


The You Tube video below shows a good view of the concerns for public health in the US.  You can see that Affordable Care Act is an extension of what this TPP requires of all nations.  I will take this week to look at all public sectors to see what TPP will do to our rights as citizens and how it moves the US from second world now to third world after TPP is installed.
  Keep in mind that protests like this are happening all over the world and in the US but in Maryland------

NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IS HAPPENING BECAUSE THE MEDIA AND POLITICIANS ARE ALL CAPTURED AND WORKING FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.



TPP protests hit Utah
www.youtube.com


Published on Nov 19, 2013

The lead negotiators for 12 countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership began meeting today in Salt Lake City, Utah. The TPP is a potential new trade deal that would open up markets among nations along the Pacific Rim. The negotiations have largely been secretive so far, but the agreement is expected to impact jobs, the environment, consumer safety and more. Last week, transparency organization WikiLeaks published leaked chapters of the TPP covering intellectual patents, and the organization's co-founder, Julian Assange, slammed the deal. Ameera David speaks with RT's Ramon Galindo, who is in Salt Lake City and attended demonstrations today against the TPP agreement.



This video is from 6 months ago.....Obama is traveling overseas to firm up this deal. If you think all of this buzz is hyperbole you need to learn about what TPP does. It sets US law in a way that gives corporations all the power of profit in all nations involved and the laws written and signed into affect by this treaty can only be changed by a global corporate tribunal.

IT ENDS OUR STATUS AS CITIZEN, OUR EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER LAW, OUR BILL OF RIGHTS AND THIS IS WHY WE ARE SEEING OUR WEALTH STOLEN, OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES AND RIGHTS OPENLY ABUSED....TPP IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION AS IT ASSAULTS OUR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS.

If your pol is not shouting this-----they are neo-liberals who intend on embracing TPP. Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland is the only candidate in the race that will use the governor's office to fight back and stop the TPP structures already being built in Maryland. We must return to a domestic economy. CONGRESS AND STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING....THIS IS WHY THEY ARE PRIVATIZING ALL THAT IS PUBLIC GIVING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS COMPLETE CONTROL IN OUR STATE AND CITY.

It's important to think about the fact that all of these TPP negotiations have taken place during all of Obama's terms in office and Congress knew these terms on health care because I KNEW THESE TERMS ON HEALTH CARE.....I AM JUST AN AVERAGE CITIZEN THAT DOES RESEARCH.  DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR POLS AT STATE AND NATIONAL LEVELS TELL YOU THEY WERE IN THE DARK.



TPP would make health care even more expensive, less accountable, less accessible

June 21, 2013 Green Party

Health Council of the General Welfare Branch

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a deal that is being secretly negotiated by the White House, with help from more than 600 corporate advisors, and Pacific Rim nations including Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Chile, Peru, Australia and New Zealand. While the TPP is being called a trade agreement, the United States already has trade agreements covering 90 percent of the GDP of the countries involved in the talks. Instead, the TPP is a major power grab by large corporations.

The text of the TPP includes 29 chapters, only five of which concern trade. The remaining chapters are focused on changes that multinational corporations have not been able to pass in Congress such as restrictions on internet privacy, increased patent protections, greater access to litigation and further financial deregulation.

So far, all that is known about the contents of the TPP is from documents that have been leaked and reports from non-governmental organizations and industry meetings. Unlike other trade deals, the White House refuses to make the text available to the public. In fact, the negotiators refuse to publish the text until four years after it is signed into law.

From the information available, one thing is clear about the impacts of the TPP on health care. The intention of the TPP is to enhance and protect the profits of medical and pharmaceutical corporations without regard for the harmful effects their policies will have on human health.

We know that the TPP will extend pharmaceutical and medical device patents and provide other tools to keep the prices of these necessities high. This will make medications and treatments unaffordable for millions of people and raise the costs of national health programs, including public health systems in the U.S.. At its worst, the TPP will provide a pathway to infect the world’s health systems with the deadly parasite of for-profit health corporations that plague the United States.

The major health threats posed by the TPP include:

  • Extensive patent protections. Through the TPP, pharmaceutical and medical device corporations are seeking extensive patent protections using a process known as ‘Evergreening.’ The TPP gives twenty years of patent protection for pharmaceuticals and medical devices; however, patents can be renewed for another twenty years each time there is a change in an indication or delivery. 
    • Doctors without Borders criticized this practice, stating that patent protections in previous trade agreements raised the price of life-saving medications and made them unavailable to people in poorer countries. Patents prevent the production of low cost generic forms of medications. 
    • Because of the negative impact on public health from patent protections in previous trade agreements, such as the Korea Free Trade Agreement, former President Bush rolled some of these practices back. Unfortunately, the TPP will move them forward again. In fact, the TPP goes farther to require patents on surgical techniques, medical tests and treatments.
  • Prevention of necessary innovation. Doctors without Borders also expressed concern that patent protections encourage innovation based on profit instead of on the needs of people, particularly those in poor nations. Corporations do not see it as in their financial interest to address health conditions more prevalent in poor nations which do not have the financial resources to buy their products. But it is often in these situations where treatment can have the greatest impact on quality of life.
  • Attack on public health systems. An area of great concern is language within the TPP concerning State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). These are institutions that are fully or partially owned by governments, which could include public health systems.
    • Corporate lobbyists are concerned that SOEs have ‘unfair advantages’ over private industry. These advantages include government subsidies, preferred tax status, low finance rates and access to capital. According to a leaked chapter, corporate lobbyists believe that there is a conflict of interest because SOEs have political considerations such as functioning to provide basic goods and services for their population and believe that instead SOEs should operate strictly as commercial entities.
    • The TPP requires SOEs to disclose any special advantages they receive and the government to give the same advantages to corporations. It also provides methods for corporations to sue governments if they believe that they are not being treated fairly.
    • Text from a section of the TPP called “Annex on Transparency and Procedural Fairness for Healthcare Technologies” was leaked in June, 2011. It reveals that medical industries are pushing on all fronts to keep their prices and prevent public health systems from negotiating to keep prices affordable. To medical industries, price negotiation is one of the ‘unfair advantages’ of public health systems. When a public health system negotiates a lower price, it is said to be exerting its market power. On the flip side, when a government extends patent protections to medical industries, this is not considered to be a use of market power by the industry.
  • Greater control over reimbursement. Medical industries are pushing for other concessions within the TPP to ‘level the playing field,” also known as forcing public entities to operate as market-based entities, such as factoring the cost of not just research, development and production of drugs and medical devices but also the cost of marketing them into what is considered to be a fair market price. And they only view prices negotiated without any government influence as fair. These provisions are significant because the TPP allows pharmaceutical corporations and others to challenge the legitimacy of any reimbursement decisions made by public health systems through the courts.
    • Patent and price protections for multinational pharmaceutical and medical device corporations based in the U.S. will benefit their bottom line and their investor’s pockets, but may bounce back and undermine public health systems in the U.S.. The leaked text indicates that the above provisions only apply to health authorities under the jurisdiction of the federal government. However, the loop holes are large enough that all of the U.S. public health systems, which include Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare and the Veterans Health Administration, can arguably be considered to be federal.
To solve the health crisis in the U.S., we must move away from privatization of health care and towards a public health system with a mission to improve and protect the health of the public.

Therefore, the Health Council of the Green Shadow Cabinet opposes provisions within the TransPacific Partnership that make profit more important than public health. We oppose all provisions that restrict access to necessary medications, medical tests and treatments. Rather than the expansion of patent protections, there should be increased sharing of medical knowledge to promote improved global public health.

~ The Health Council is led by Secretary of Health Dr. Margaret Flowers, serving within the General Welfare Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet.  This statement is one of over a dozen issued in support of the Green Shadow Cabinet's June 17th call for action against the TPP.

____________________________________________

Let's look locally to see how TPP drives Maryland health care reform.  Maryland is the only state in the nation that seeks exemption from Medicare and is given it.  This means that there is no Federal oversight or requirements that have to be met.  This is why Medicare is handled in Maryland as all health care----it is tiered rather than universal as the Federal program requires.  Maryland has spent these two terms under O'Malley dismantling public health and building private non-profit and corporate structures to handle public sector health care and it is building what is a clinic system for the lower/middle class that is modeled on third world clinic care.  Mind you, the working class and middle class that were driven into poverty from this massive fraud and now the capture of our economy with deliberate high unemployment has moved over 70% and rising of US citizens into or near poverty and they plan to keep pushing more into poverty.  So, this clinic care overage that is mostly preventative care will pertain to almost all US citizens.  Remember, public and private health plans are going to be sent to these state health systems as are Medicare and Medicaid and you will only received the amount of care your income category places you.  Medicare gives equal levels of care to all citizens because people pay their whole lives into Social Security and Medicare. 

TO PROTECT AGAINST THIS DISMANTLING OF OUR FEDERAL HEALTH PROGRAMS WE MUST MOVE FROM THIS PRIVATE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM TO EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL.  OTHER STATES HAVE ALREADY MOVED THIS WAY AND MARYLAND NEEDS TO AS WELL.

No matter how much they tell you all of this clinic care is going to make things easier and offer more access-----THEY ARE LYING.



The TPP’s Threats
to Public Health



The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an international trade and investment pact currently under
negotiation between the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico,
New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. It is also specifically intended as a “docking agreement”
that other countries would join over time, with Japan, Korea, China and others already expressing some
interest.
U.S. negotiators are pushing to complete the TPP as soon as possible.
NEGOTIATIONS ARE HEADED IN THE WRONG DIRECTION ON PUBLIC HEALTH


A roll back from the Bush administration. Leaked U.S. proposals for several chapters in the Trans-
Pacific Partnership reveal that U.S. trade negotiators have reversed hard-won reforms designed to
enhance access to affordable medicines that were made during the George W. Bush administration. In
addition to pushing for increased monopoly rights for drug companies,
the U.S. is also demanding new
rights for pharmaceutical firms to challenge pricing and other drug formulary policies used by many
countries to keep down health care costs.
PACT WOULD REDUCE ACCESS TO GENERIC MEDICATION BY EXTENDING DRUG PATENTS

Access to generic medicine is critical to saving lives. The first generation of HIV drugs has come
down in price from roughly $10,000 per patient per year to just $120 thanks to increased access to
generic medications. This reduction in price has helped to dramatically scale up the number of people
throughout the world who are now receiving treatment. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis
and Malaria, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, UNITAID and UNICEF all rely heavily on
access to quality generic medications. For millions of people throughout the globe, delaying access to
generic medications means delaying access to treatment.

The U.S. proposal would grant new monopoly patent rights, reducing access to generic
medicine.
If finalized and implemented, the leaked U.S. intellectual property proposal would roll back
access to generic medicine for people in
developing countries and throughout the
world. Specifically,
the U.S. proposal would
broaden the scope of patentability by making
it easier for pharmaceutical companies to
patent new uses and minor variations of old
medicines; slow the production of new
generics when patents expire by expanding
“data exclusivity” over clinical trials forcing
either the timely and costly replication of such
trials or an additional three-year delay
(beyond the current five) before such
“exclusivity” ends; constrict safeguards
against patent abuse by making it harder for
public health advocates to challenge
unjustified new patents; require new forms of
drug patent policing; and mandate that
countries allow patents on plants, animals
Trade Policy & Access to Medicine

and surgical methods. The U.S. is expected to also request extensions beyond existing 20-year drug
patents to “compensate” drug companies for time spent in regulatory approval processes.
International public health advocates are speaking out. According to Doctors Without
Borders/Medecins San Frontieres: “Access to affordable lifesaving medicines will be threatened where
they are needed most — in parts of the developing world — if the U.S. insists on implementing
restrictive intellectual property policies in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement... The leaked
USTR position paper, now available to the public, reveals that the U.S. is pushing its trade partners,
including developing countries, to effectively lower the bar for granting patents, limit the capacity to
challenge patents, and impose new forms of intellectual property enforcement — all measures that
delay the introduction of more affordable generic drugs.”
EMPOWERING DRUG COMPANIES TO ATTACK COST-SAVING DRUG FORMULARIES
Governments use cost-saving drug formularies keep drug prices in check. Governments use
formularies to control health costs by listing medicines approved for government purchase or
reimbursement, and negotiating with drug firms to obtain the lowest prices. Among the current TPP
countries, such formularies are most associated with New Zealand’s Pharmaceutical Management
Agency (PHARMAC) and Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), but they are also used by
other governments, including a number of federal and state-based programs in the United States.
The U.S. proposal seeks to restrict cost-saving drug formularies. The leaked U.S. proposal for a pharmaceutical pricing chapter restricts the use of such formularies, by requiring that countries set up
new administrative and judicial appeal systems to help determine whether government programs
“appropriately recognize the value” of drug patents in their reimbursement proposals.
In Australia, the only country yet to implement such systems under a trade agreement, the result has been higher drug
prices.


NEGOTIATIONS HAVE BEEN TAKING PLACE IN THE
SHADOWS

The Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations have not
been transparent. Access to medicine has received the
attention it has because the U.S. proposals for
intellectual property and pharmaceutical pricing chapters
for the pact have been leaked. Neither of these, nor any
other negotiating texts, has been officially released. This
is completely undemocratic, and also outside the norm
for many international negotiations, including those at the
World Trade Organization, where draft negotiating texts
are regularly published. This excessive secrecy makes it
extremely difficult for civil society to comment on the
negotiations in a productive way while the pact is still
under negotiation and such comments could be valuable.



Learn more & get involved: www.citizenstrade.org


_________________________________________

The Affordable Care Act specifically states that Medicare PHARMA will now be generic in many cases and as we read above TPP seeks to greatly limit generics.  So, if policy pushes seniors towards using generics at the same time policy works to protect Brand names from generics-----

YOU SEE WHERE THIS WILL LEAD.  MOST PEOPLE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD NAME BRAND AND THE NUMBER OF GENERICS WILL BE VERY LIMITED AND RESTRICTED TO THE OLDEST OF FORMULAS.


Below you see what ACA promises as all over the world we know the opposite is planned with TPP.  I have a friend already affectived negatively by having to leave a brand name drug for a generic that does not work as well.  This will be wide-spread and people will die from simple lack of access to common drugs.

SELLING THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

 Thousands in Savings by Providing Discounts in the Medicare “Donut Hole”
o More than 8 million seniors in 2007 hit the “donut hole,” or gap in prescription drug coverage in Medicare Part D. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will provide low and middle-income seniors a 50 percent discount on brand-name drug and biologic prices in the donut hole. It will also shrink the gap by $500 per senior for 2010.
 More Affordable Generic Drugs
o Some cutting edge drugs are simply too expensive for many seniors. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will create a pathway for the approval of generic biologic drugs to improve affordability of medications for seniors and all Americans.


Better preventative care for seniors and the poor!  Well, if all these groups will be able to access is preventative care -----will this be better?

OF COURSE NOT----THEY ARE SIMPLY BUILDING A STRUCTURE THAT A SUPER-MAJORITY OF AMERICANS WILL BE PUSHED TO.

Aren't neo-liberals just great allowing the American people the chance to buy yet another health insurance policy directed at long-term care?  The Social Security Disability program is being allowed to be gutted and emptied through fraud in the trillions of dollars and it will end.  Where will all those people with disabilities go?  Well, if you cannot afford yet another insurance policy you will see longevity fall steeply in America in just one generation.

IT TAKES A SPECIAL KING OF PERSON TO PUSH THIS AS POLICY ALL BECAUSE MEDICARE AND MEDICAID WAS GUTTED WITH FRAUD AND PROFITEERING AND NOW THESE HEALTH INSTITUTIONS NEED MORE PROFITS.


In Maryland the driver of these policies and in fact the institution writing these policies is Johns Hopkins University.  Mind you, they have made themselves a global health system through these massive frauds.


Preventive Care for Better Health

o Today, seniors must pay 20 percent of the cost of many preventive services. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will eliminate deductibles, copayments, and other cost-sharing for preventive care, and provide free annual wellness check-ups.

 Affordable Long-Term Care

o Sixty-five percent of seniors need long-term services at home, at an average cost of $18,000 each year. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will create a voluntary long-term care insurance program, which will provide a cash benefit to help seniors and people with disabilities obtain services and supports that will enable them to remain in their homes and communities.



_______________________________________________
The idea of the Affordable Care Act is to deregulate and dismantle all the public oversight of health care so that the industry can act with impunity just as banks do.  So, health care once controlled within the confines of medical professionals are now handed to private corporations acting as clinic care and of course this will be the only access for the middle-working class families not able to afford the Silver or  higher health plans.

That goal of deregulation takes the form of placing health care everywhere-----at the same time public justice and oversight and accountability is dismantled meaning the public never knows if care is happening or where the money went. I further devolves the US into this third world systemic fraud and corruption this time with our health care.  People will die because tons of money is misappropriated and stolen and people will not have equal access rights as people will be denied for any reason.  THAT'S WHAT LOSING EQUAL PROTECTION IS ALL ABOUT!


When you read that 30 million people will be entering the system it is mostly the people mandated to buy insurance with no protections on how high those insurance rates will go----and they will go high.

MANDATED TO BUY INSURANCE THAT ONLY ALLOWS YOU ACCESS TO PREVENTATIVE CARE AND THEN THOSE RATES CAN SOAR.....


PEOPLE WILL BE BANKRUPTED IN NO TIME AND LIVE IN POVERTY IF THEY TRY TO ACCESS ORDINARY MEDICAL PROCEDURES.

The Affordable Care Act Will Drive Retail Pharmacies To Higher Profits

Nov. 14, 2013 6:23 PM ET  |  Includes: ABC, CVS, ESRX, RAD, WAG Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More...)

It's been a good year for the three major retail pharmacy chains: YTD CVS Caremark (CVS) is up 31%, Walgreen Co. (WAG) is up 61%, and Rite Aid (RAD) has soared 286%. With more generic drugs coming to market and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) less than two months away, retail pharmacy chains are gearing up to welcome what is expected to be an onslaught of newly insured Americans. With the changes in healthcare, pharmacy chains are expanding their reach to become a one-stop healthcare shop for not just prescriptions, but for other medical needs such as flu shots and minor injuries. Soon these retail pharmacies will further encroach on an area where physicians once had the monopoly: managing chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma. This strategy should add to more revenue for the pharmacy chains with both CVS and Walgreen leading the way.

Adam J. Fein, a healthcare industry consultant who runs the Drug Channels blog, sees changes coming to the way people are currently treated. "Retail competition is coming to healthcare, and pharmacies are on the leading edge." According to the Congressional Budget Office, healthcare spending in America will balloon to 22% of gross domestic product in 2038, from 16.4% in 2011. That means that healthcare spending will account for more than a fifth of the economy, and retail pharmacies are looking for a larger piece of the pie as they move beyond filling prescriptions.

ACA -- Making Pharmacies A One Stop Shop


The government's ACA will bring in approximately 30 million newly insured customers into the healthcare system. Walgreen, CVS, and Rite aid recognize that the millions of people who stand to gain health insurance represent an opportunity for increased pharmacy business in all aspects of the store from drugs to personal products to acute medical needs. To insure a share of the new found customer base, the pharmacy companies have been working closely with the government in promoting uninsured customers to sign up for health insurance with the goal of having them visit the pharmacy clinic and load their baskets with front end merchandise.

____________________________________________
Raise your hand if you understand that policy with a goal of consolidating and deregulating the health industry combined with mandated purchase of insurance would lead to insurance industry capture of the American people!  EVERYONE

THESE POLS ARE NOT FIGHTING IT----THEY VOTED THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT INTO PLACE KNOWING THAT THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

It is just as when neo-liberals with Clinton broke the Glass Steagall wall and passed NAFTA killing the middle-class and creating unaccountable global corporations. 


THE SAME POLS IN OFFICE NOW DID THAT THEN AND WE KEEP VOTING THEM BACK INTO OFFICE!

In Maryland that is Cardin, Sarbanes, Cummings, Hoyer still in office from moving the US from first world to second world and now working to send the US to third world.


Remember, the Trans Pacific Trade Pact specifically states that any national law that interferes with corporate profit will be ignored by global corporations.  So, any law passed that supposedly controls cost will not legally stand when TPP is passed.
  A deregulated insurance industry will soak Americans for all they are worth.




'Powerful corporate interests want to use the TPP to:


- Offshore good-paying jobs to low-wage nations and undercut working conditions globally and further reducing wages in the United States

- Create new tools for attacking environmental, health, labor and consumer safety standards

- Expand the deregulation of banks, hedge funds and insurance companies


- Further concentrate global food supplies, displacing family farmers and subjecting consumers to wild price fluctuations

- Institute longer patents that restrict access to affordable, generic medications'


Health Insurance Premiums Are Soaring as Industry Profits Continue to Rise - Sen. Feinstein, Rep. Schakowsky, Maine Insurance Superintendent and State Insurance Experts Say Regulation Works to Hold Down Rate Increases

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 General News  MED INDIA

Who: Sen. Dianne Feinstein

Rep. Jan Schakowsky

Mila Kofman - Maine Insurance Superintendent

Harvey Rosenfield and Carmen Balber - Consumer Watchdog

What: Newsmaker Briefing: "How Health Insurance Rate Regulation Can Lower Premiums and Save Health Reform"

When: 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 11.

Sen. Feinstein and Rep. Schakowsky will open the briefing

Where: 116 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Constitution Ave and 1st St NE, Washington, D.C.

Join Sen. Feinstein and Rep. Schakowsky, Maine's top insurance regulator and state insurance experts to discuss spiraling health insurance rate increases and how regulation can hold down costs for consumers at a Consumer Watchdog briefing Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill.

Consumer Watchdog will also release a new report that examines health insurance rate regulation in the states, and finds that states that are instituting or strengthening laws requiring rate review and approval, including New York, Massachusetts and Maine, are seeing cost-control results.

Sen. Feinstein and Rep. Schakowsky introduced legislation in the 112th Congress to require HHS or the states to reject excessive or unjustified health insurance rates.

Maine Insurance Superintendent Mila Kofman has used that state's law to conduct comprehensive reviews of rate increases -- including public hearings, consumer intervenors and transparency requirements -- to protect consumers from millions in unnecessary rate increases.

Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield wrote California's model law for review and prior approval of property casualty insurance rates that has saved drivers $62 billion.

Consumer Watchdog Washington, DDCD director Carmen Balber will outline HHS regulations from the federal health reform law requiring review of unreasonable rate increases, and highlight regulatory successes and failures in other states.

Health insurance premiums increased 138% in the last decade while medical inflation rose just 31%. 1st quarter 2011 financial reports show health insurance industry profits are on track to beat last year's huge results. Consumer Watchdog's report finds that, if premium increases continue unchecked, health reform will fail in its primary goal of expanding access to health insurance.

CONTACT: Carmen Balber, +1-202-629-3043, cell: +1-310-403-0284, Judy Dugan, cell +1-213-280-0175

/PRNewswire-USNewswire -- May 10, 2011/

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog






0 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

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

    Archives

    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    Categories

    All
    2014 Economic Crash
    21st Century Economy
    Affordable Care Act
    Affordable Care Act
    Alec
    Americorp/VISTA
    Anthony Brown
    Anthony Brown
    Anti Incumbant
    Anti-incumbant
    Anti Incumbent
    Anti Incumbent
    Attacking The Post Office Union
    Baltimore And Cronyism
    Baltimore Board Of Estimates
    Baltimore Board Of Estimates
    Baltimore Development Corp
    Baltimore Development Corp
    Baltimore Recall/Retroactive Term Limits
    Bank Fraud
    Bank Fraud
    Bank Of America
    Bank Settlement
    Bank-settlement
    B Corporations
    Bgeexelon Mergerf59060c411
    Brookings Institution
    Business Tax Credits
    California Charter Expansion
    Cardin
    Career Colleges
    Career Colleges Replacing Union Apprenticeships
    Charters
    Charter School
    Collection Agencies
    Common Core
    Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
    Consumer-financial-protection-bureau
    Corporate Media
    Corporate-media
    Corporate Oversight
    Corporate-oversight
    Corporate Politicians
    Corporate-politicians
    Corporate Rule
    Corporate-rule
    Corporate Taxes
    Corporate-taxes
    Corporate Tax Reform
    Corporatizing Us Universities
    Cost-benefit-analysis
    Credit Crisis
    Credit-crisis
    Cummings
    Department Of Education
    Department Of Justice
    Department-of-justice
    Derivatives Reform
    Development
    Dismantling Public Justice
    Dodd Frank
    Doddfrankbba4ff090a
    Doug Gansler
    Doug-gansler
    Ebdi
    Education Funding
    Education Reform
    Edwards
    Election Reform
    Election-reform
    Elections
    Emigration
    Energy-sector-consolidation-in-maryland
    Enterprise Zones
    Equal Access
    Estate Taxes
    European Crisis
    Expanded And Improved Medicare For All
    Expanded-and-improved-medicare-for-all
    Failure To Prosecute
    Failure-to-prosecute
    Fair
    Fair And Balanced Elections
    Fair-and-balanced-elections
    Farm Bill
    Federal Election Commissionelection Violationsmaryland
    Federal Election Commissionelection Violationsmarylandd20a348918
    Federal-emergency-management-agency-fema
    Federal Reserve
    Financial Reform Bill
    Food Safety Not In Tpp
    For Profit Education
    Forprofit-education
    Fracking
    Fraud
    Freedom Of Press And Speech
    Frosh
    Gambling In Marylandbaltimore8dbce1f7d2
    Granting Agencies
    Greening Fraud
    Gun Control Policy
    Healthcare For All
    Healthcare-for-all
    Health Enterprise Zones
    High Speed Rail
    Hoyer
    Imf
    Immigration
    Incarceration Bubble
    Incumbent
    Incumbents
    Innovation Centers
    Insurance Industry Leverage And Fraud
    International Criminal Court
    International Trade Deals
    International-trade-deals
    Jack Young
    Jack-young
    Johns Hopkins
    Johns-hopkins
    Johns Hopkins Medical Systems
    Johns-hopkins-medical-systems
    Kaliope Parthemos
    Labor And Justice Law Under Attack
    Labor And Wages
    Lehmann Brothers
    Living Wageunionspolitical Action0e39f5c885
    Maggie McIntosh
    Maggie-mcintosh
    Martin O'Malley
    Martin O'Malley
    Martin-omalley
    Martin-omalley8ecd6b6eb0
    Maryland Health Co Ops
    Maryland-health-co-ops
    Maryland-health-co-ops1f77692967
    Maryland Health Coopsccd73554da
    Maryland Judiciary
    Marylandnonprofits
    Maryland Non Profits
    Maryland Nonprofits2509c2ca2c
    Maryland Public Service Commission
    Maryland State Bar Association
    Md Credit Bondleverage Debt441d7f3605
    Media
    Media Bias
    Media-bias
    Medicaremedicaid
    Medicaremedicaid8416fd8754
    Mental Health Issues
    Mental-health-issues
    Mers Fraud
    Mikulski
    Military Privatization
    Minority Unemploymentunion And Labor Wagebaltimore Board Of Estimates4acb15e7fa
    Municipal Debt Fraud
    Ndaa-indefinite-detention
    Ndaaindefinite Detentiond65cc4283d
    Net Neutrality
    New Economy
    New-economy
    Ngo
    Non Profit To Profit
    Nonprofit To Profitb2d6cb4b41
    Nsa
    O'Malley
    Odette Ramos
    Omalley
    O'Malley
    Open Meetings
    Osha
    Patronage
    Pension-benefit-guaranty-corp
    Pension Funds
    Pension-funds
    Police Abuse
    Private-and-public-pension-fraud
    Private Health Systemsentitlementsprofits Over People
    Private Health Systemsentitlementsprofits Over People6541f468ae
    Private Non Profits
    Private-non-profits
    Private Nonprofits50b33fd8c2
    Privatizing Education
    Privatizing Government Assets
    Privatizing-the-veterans-admin-va
    Privitizing Public Education
    Progressive Policy
    Progressive Taxes Replace Regressive Policy
    Protections Of The People
    Protections-of-the-people
    Public Education
    Public Funding Of Private Universities
    Public Housing Privatization
    Public-libraries-privatized-or-closed
    Public Private Partnerships
    Public-private-partnerships
    Public Transportation Privatization
    Public Utilities
    Rapid Bus Network
    Rawlings Blake
    Rawlings-blake
    Rawlingsblake1640055471
    Real Progressives
    Reit-real-estate-investment-trusts
    Reitreal Estate Investment Trustsa1a18ad402
    Repatriation Taxes
    Rule Of Law
    Rule-of-law
    Ruppersberger
    SAIC AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
    Sarbanes
    S Corp Taxes
    Selling Public Datapersonal Privacy
    Smart Meters
    Snowden
    Social Security
    Sovereign Debt Fraudsubprime Mortgage Fraudmortgage Fraud Settlement
    Sovereign Debt Fraudsubprime Mortgage Fraudmortgage Fraud Settlement0d62c56e69
    Statistics As Spin
    Statistics-as-spin
    Student-corps
    Subprime Mortgage Fraud
    Subprime-mortgage-fraud
    Surveillance And Security
    Sustainability
    Teachers
    Teachers Unions2bc448afc8
    Teach For America
    Teach For America
    Technology Parks
    Third Way Democrats/new Economy/public Union Employees/public Private Patnerships/government Fraud And Corruption
    Third Way Democratsnew Economypublic Union Employeespublic Private Patnershipsgovernment Fraud And Corruption
    Third-way-democratsnew-economypublic-union-employeespublic-private-patnershipsgovernment-fraud-and-corruptionc10a007aee
    Third Way/neo Liberals
    Third-wayneo-liberals
    Third-wayneo-liberals5e1e6d4716
    Third Wayneoliberals7286dda6aa
    Tifcorporate Tax Breaks2d87bba974
    Tpp
    Transportation Inequity In Maryland
    Union Busting
    Unionbusting0858fddb8b
    Unions
    Unionsthird Waypost Officealec3c887e7815
    Universities
    Unreliable Polling
    Unreliable-polling
    Van Hollen
    Van-hollen
    VEOLA Environment -privatization Of Public Water
    Veterans
    War Against Women And Children
    War-against-women-and-children
    Youth Works

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.