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March 13th, 2013

3/13/2013

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I attended a meeting last night with a national activist who actually shouted for revolution and described the political system as too-corrupt-to-save.  It will take a mass movement of citizens to the streets to change this he says.  I also got him to state publicly the effects of this Pacific Rim Trade Deal that I have said steals the American people's ability to legislate by locking domestic law in all areas......workplace and labor, environment, taxation, and health care....to a global standard with no ability of the people to change these laws.  OR SO THEY SAY!!!  IT IS ALL ILLEGAL AND CAN AND WILL BE CONSIDERED A CRIMINAL ACT HOLDING NO LEGAL BOND.  Imagine having the workplace safety laws that OSHA oversees disappear because developing world countries do not have or want them so they will not be in America either.  Good-bye workplace regulations!!!!  Imagine food inspection and approval guidelines that keep American food safe disappear because developing world countries don't and won't do that.  Good-bye food safety regulations!!!  THIS IS WHAT THE PACIFIC RIM TRADE AGREEMENTS ARE DOING.  THEY THINK THESE LAWS WILL BE BINDING BUT ALL OF THIS LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF THE CONSTITUTION AND RULE OF LAW THAT PLACES THE CITIZEN'S RIGHT TO LEGISLATE AS A FOUNDING PRINCIPLE.  When you have Third Way corporate politicians who won't even acknowledge massive corporate fraud and a suspension of enforcement of law.....these guys could care less about following the Constitutional rights of others.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE AND RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE!!!!

Getting back to Zeitgeist the Global Movement sponsored by DAVOS and the 1%, I wanted to look more closely at a few of these organizations I support in principle but have no trust as regards capture by Wall Street.  They have taken good projects and they will make the outcome negative in the long-run. The Baltimore Time Bank is an old program from the 1960s that is co-op and grassroots.  There is no problem with time-sharing work in exchange for credits towards future work done for you.  Go grocery shopping for the elderly and later have someone help you till a small garden all with no money.  This is what poor societies all around the world do to survive and it is why DAVOS wants to model it here in the US.....it's that wealth inequity you know that they expect to be ever larger in a few decades.  In the 1960s we thought this idea was great as a system for people wanting to leave the capitalist machine.  What we never thought is that the entire economy should be based on this alternate economy.  People had the choice of career vs co-op.  WHAT DAVOS INTENDS IS NOT CHOICE BUT NECESSITY AS THE LOW-INCOME PEOPLE EXIST OUTSIDE THE ECONOMY FOR THE AFFLUENT.  Who will be included in this system?  Remember, in developing countries doctors, lawyers, teachers all live at subsistence and see those meager wages come and go at will so they would be living within this co-op system.  What we call the shareholder/Administrative class of the 5% would be apart of the regular economy.  THIS IS REAL-TIME THIRD WORLD LIVING IN THE USA. 

I did want to say that I really believe Baltimore Time Bank intends on addressing many of these larger concerns.  The gentleman behind the movement seems to still have the 1960s mindset of justice behind this project and indeed it can offer justice.  What we will be watching and shouting against is the systematic marginalization of the working-class into having no choice but to live in this system that will assure they remain in poverty.

You can look at the changes they are instating now to see the structural changes.  Suspension of Rule of Law is a must as all rights are being curtailed and the movement of money to the top by massive fraud created the wealth vacuum that allows these politicians to do as they please.  So, health care as health clinic and education as vocational training systems attached to businesses fits that model.  Trade agreements that eliminate quality of life issues surrounding work and environment do that as well.  If Microsoft and Apple are bringing their manufacturing back to the US because working in China is too hostile, where will all that toxic waste generated by computer building go?  How would they have employees working with this toxic material with current workplace protections?  The answer is .....they simply get rid of the protections and make people work with it just as they did Chinese labor earning not much more than those peasant workers.  You already see these labor conditions in the South with Right To Work states.  THE ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT IS TAKING WHAT WOULD BE ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES AND MAKING THESE THE ONLY CHOICE FOR MOST AMERICANS.  Impoverishment means no ownership and that means Tool Sharing Libraries, Car Sharing programs, and even work-sharing for needed assistance.  All of this is being built because social services/social safety nets will disappear and policing and prisons will make access to help from 'the system' impossible.  SOUND LIKE THE DREAM REPUBLICAN SOCIETY?  YOU BETCHA.  WHY ARE DEMOCRATS DOING IT?  THEY AREN'T DEMOCRATS THEY ARE THIRD WAY CORPORATE POLITICIANS THAT ARE REAGAN REPUBLICANS RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS. 

THEY WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT!!

Why can we no longer have a system of strong wages and benefits that allow people to live a middle-class lifestyle and strong social safety nets that keep the poor and elderly with a first world quality of life?  THE LOSS OF CORPORATE TAX AND TAX ON THE RICH MEANS NO TAX REVENUE TO SUPPORT THESE SOCIETAL MODELS.  Without retrieving that tens of trillions in corporate fraud and the wealth at the top.....no tax base will be generated.  This is the same society as with the middle-ages where the lower-class paid taxes to profit the rich......WHICH IS WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!!

DO YOU WANT YOUR GRANDCHILDREN LIVING A MEDIEVAL LIFE?  JUST RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES NEXT ELECTIONS AND WE WILL REVERSE ALL OF THIS.  MAKE THESE KINDS OF LIFESTYLES ABOUT  CHOICE AND NOT NECESSITY!!



Below you see a charismatic speaker and I agreed with just about everything he said.  Here's the problem the GetMoneyOut Movement....it places a lot of activism on something that is a lesser issue than the elephant in the room.....THESE POLS ARE IGNORING THE CONSTITUTION ALREADY....WHAT DOES AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION DO WITH A CROWD THAT IGNORES IT?

They are right to say that having this in place will be a good thing.  My problem is that the first priority needs to be getting politicians with integrity in office, especially as State Attorney General is VITAL.....IT IS VITAL FOR ANY OF THIS TO WORK.

Yet none of that was spoken of until I broached the question.  You know who started GetMoneyOut Movement?  Third Way corporate politicians like Cummings, Cardin, and Sarbanes .....the very pols that broke the Glass-Steagall Wall creating these mega-corporations and knowing they would rule.
Is it good activism to tie people to this issue as opposed to the one that will make real change.....VOTING YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE????  Although he failed to include the Pacific Rim Trade Agreement that completely nullifies anything GetMoneyOut will do, he was very vocal about the dangers of this trade agreement when I brought it forward.  Most organizations that are captured will not address it at all!!!

ANY ACTIVISM IS WELCOME AT THIS POINT AND DAVID IS A PASSIONATE SPEAKER!

Tuesday March 12th, 2013,  6:30 - 8:30 pm

DAVID COBB: 

‘Creating Democracy &
Challenging Corporate Rule’




Nationally known orator David Cobb brings his ‘Barnstormers Tour’ to Baltimore for the first time: a history lesson and inspiring call to action.  A leader and spokesperson of Move To Amend, a national coalition calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish “Corporate Personhood,” he explains how to use ‘ALL the tools in the toolbox’ to effect systemic change.

Tuesday, March 12th, 6:30 – 8:30 pm.  First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, 12 W. Franklin St., on the corner of Franklin & Charles Streets, Free of Charge, free street parking, or $4 parking lot across the street.

A graduate of the University of Houston Law School, David Cobb has sued corporate polluters, has been arrested for civil disobedience, and ran for Texas Attorney General pledging to revoke charters of law-breaking corporations.  He ran for President of the United States in 2004 on the Green Party ticket, and now serves as the National Projects Director of Democracy Unlimited.   Sponsored by www.GetMoneyOutMD.org and the Baltimore MoveOn.org Council.  View the flier.
_______________________________________________

WHEN I MENTIONED THE BALTIMORE PRIVATE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND ASKED IF THEY WOULD BE APART OF THIS COMMUNITY CAPTURE I WAS TOLD THEY KNEW OF THE CAPTURE AND THEY WOULD NOT ORGANIZE IN THAT WAY.........WE WILL WATCH TO SEE.  IT'S HARD TO DO IN AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE THE POWERS MAKE CAPTURE A MUST!!

WE WILL LOOK AT THE COLLECTIVE STRUCTURE TO SEE IF INDEED IT IS INCLUSIVE AND NOT TOP-HEAVY WITH COLLEGE VISTAS, NOT COMMUNITY MEMBERS!!


The motto below is tied to Baltimore Time Bank.  I like this idea of a non-profit without cash.  Remember before the professional non-profits these organizations had maybe a paid, elected Director and the community volunteered at all levels.  The professional non-profits have an appointed head with a layer of college-VISTAs that are taxpayer/grant supported whose only duty is the leadership rolls.  No community people at the top.  THIS IS DONE SO COMMUNITIES CANNOT BUILD LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZE....IT IS DELIBERATE!!!

Nonprofits Helping organizations to meet their needs... without cash!



The Baltimore Time Bank is a creative resource-sharing model for the Baltimore area.


We are a local organization committed to provide a well-crafted alternative currency system for the Baltimore Area. Here you will find all the necessary information about Time Banking as an “off-the-grid” resource sharing model, what the Baltimore Time Bank is doing for the local community, and how to become a partner. We look forward to your creative input.


Video courtesy of the Columbia Association

Who Can Join: 

Anyone and everyone is encouraged to join; from individuals and families, to small businesses and companies. The larger the pool of partners and resources, the more possibilities we have as a community. One of the greatest aspects of Time Banking is the opportunity to provide or receive services that are normally difficult to market in a formal monetary system. Everything from mothering advice to a simple ride to the airport becomes a potential service you can purchase with your Time Credits.

What Are the Benefits:

The Baltimore Time Bank is a community resource. The philosophy behind time banking is based on the notion of community sharing and human interaction. An elderly person, who knows how to bake wonderful cakes, can easily connect with a college student who is willing to do some housework. We will get you started with 5 FREE HOURS of time debt that you can use for any services.

Apart from fostering community development Time Banking allows neighborhoods to become less and less dependent on national and world economies. Time credits are not affected by inflation rates or world markets, and are always backed by a group of people whom you know and trust. Self-sufficiency is the best assurance of stability.

Where Time Banking Can Take Us:

Our unlimited imagination is the limit. As numerous individuals, agencies and organizations join the local Time Bank the opportunities available to them and their communities will multiply.  The Baltimore Time Bank is a collective project and everyone is encouraged to share their ideas, skills and time.

_________________________________________________
Now, if you notice the timing of the founding of this movement at 2008......right at the time of the financial collapse and the peaking of wealth inequity you can see it isn't the spontaneous global organization it wants you to think it is, it is DAVOS....the 1%.  Is it bad to rethink societal structure?  NO.  Is it bad to steal tens of trillions of dollars from the world's economy to create massive wealth inequity and then introduce a societal structural change to handle the resulting massive impoverishment of formerly first world country citizens?  YES!!!
That is what is happening here folks and it is creepy.  Choices are different than necessities caused by fascism!!


Mission Statement

Founded in 2008, The Zeitgeist Movement is a Sustainability Advocacy Organization which conducts community based activism and awareness actions through a network of Global/Regional Chapters, Project Teams, Annual Events, Media and Charity Work.

The Movement's principle focus includes the recognition that the majority of the social problems which plague the human species at this time are not the sole result of some institutional corruption, scarcity, a political policy, a flaw of "human nature" or other commonly held assumptions of causality.

Rather, The Movement recognizes that issues such as poverty, corruption, collapse, homelessness, war, starvation and the like appear to be "Symptoms" born out of an outdated social structure. While intermediate Reform steps and temporal Community Support are of interest to The Movement, the defining goal here is the installation of a new socioeconomic model based upon technically responsible Resource Management, Allocation and Distribution through what would be considered The Scientific Method of reasoning problems and finding optimized solutions.

This "Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy" is about taking a direct technical approach to social management as opposed to a Monetary or even Political one. It is about updating the workings of society to the most advanced and proven methods Science has to offer, leaving behind the damaging consequences and limiting inhibitions which are generated by our current system of monetary exchange, profits, corporations and other structural and motivational components.

The Movement is loyal to a train of thought, not figures or institutions. In other words, the view held is that through the use of socially targeted research and tested understandings in Science and Technology, we are now able to logically arrive at societal applications which could be profoundly more effective in meeting the needs of the human population. In fact, so much so, that there is little reason to assume war, poverty, most crimes and many other money-based scarcity effects common in our current model cannot be resolved over time.

The range of The Movement's Activism & Awareness Campaigns extend from short to long term, with the model based explicitly on Non-Violent methods of communication. The long term view, which is the transition into a new social system, is a constant pursuit and expression, as stated before. However, in the path to get there, The Movement also recognizes the need for transitional Reform techniques, along with direct Community Support.

For instance, while "Monetary Reform" itself is not an end solution proposed by The Movement, the merit of such legislative approaches are still considered valid in the context of transition and temporal integrity. Likewise, while food and clothes drives and other supportive projects to help those in need today are also not considered a long term solution, it is still considered valid in the context of helping others in a time of need, while also drawing awareness to the principle goal.

The Zeitgeist Movement also has no allegiance to a country or traditional political platforms. It views the world as a single system and the human species as a single family and recognizes that all countries must disarm and learn to share resources and ideas if we expect to survive in the long run. Hence, the solutions arrived at and promoted are in the interest to help everyone on the planet Earth.
_____________________________________________

Let's be clear......what this Zeitgeist Movement does is prepare people to live sustainably for what the 1% predict will be third world poverty for most.  What the people want is a return to first world quality of life with individuals choosing how they can contribute to environmental sustainability.  Remember, it is more the person than the corporation who can adapt to sustainable living.  These programs are an extension of US development strategy implemented for years in developing worlds.

What a first world democracy knows is that the people and the economy functions best when the wealth inequity is addressed and less when society is modeled for institutionalized inequity.  The American people want to return  to that domestic economy that places consumption in the hands of Americans and not overseas.

 THESE GUYS ARE NOT ENVISIONING COHESIVENESS, THEY ARE ENVISIONING HOW PEOPLE WILL LIVE WITHOUT.

All Will Benefit If More Are Secure

Jacob S. Hacker is a professor of political science at Yale University and co-author of "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class." Nathaniel Loewentheil is a third-year student at Yale Law School and a founder of the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network.

Updated October 19, 2012, 10:20 AM

In the wake of the financial crisis, an increasing number of thoughtful analysts are arguing that inequality threatens growth. Yet the biggest effects of rising inequality are probably not on growth itself, but on the ability of growth to translate into rising living standards, opportunity and security for the broad middle class.

And the most likely reason for these negative effects is that rising inequality distorts our politics — leading to weaker representation for the middle class and increased gridlock — so that sensible policy choices are more difficult.

Economic inequality creates political inequality, making it harder to increase middle-class living standards, security, opportunity and, yes, growth.

Let’s start with the facts. Over the last generation, less equal countries like the U.S. do not seem to have grown consistently faster. If rising inequality doesn’t lead to higher growth, then, by definition, it lowers middle-class income gains. In the United States, overall productivity has grown relatively strongly. The rewards of this growth, however, have gone mostly to the top.

Yet even this understates the problem. In addition to income growth, Americans also care about opportunity and security. And both have stalled or declined despite growing productivity. Long-term upward mobility has stagnated as inequality has grown. Intergenerational mobility — how kids do relative to their parents — is lower in the United States than in almost any other rich nation.

At the same time, economic security has eroded. Private health insurance is less common, income instability has risen, people’s private safety net of wealth has been decimated, and Americans are less well prepared for retirement.

These are not insoluble problems, and recent research and historical experience strongly indicate that tackling them would accelerate, not hinder, overall growth. As we have argued in a recent report titled, “Prosperity Economics,” such win-win policies include immediate investments in productive physical capital like infrastructure (which would put people back to work and increase future growth) as well long-term investment in pre-K and college education.

They would also include measures to tackle health costs and give workers (particularly in low-wage sectors) greater bargaining power and more professionalized career paths. And they would require a serious assault on special deals for industries like the financial and energy sectors that impose risks and costs onto our society for which they don’t have to pay.

The problem of course is the politics, and here we come to most fundamental means by which rising inequality has affected the economic lives of most Americans — for the worse.

As growing inequality has translated into rising political inequality, it has been harder and harder to act on sensible prescriptions that would increase middle-class living standards, security and opportunity, as well as overall economic growth. Ensuring that today’s economic winners don’t dominate our political process may be the most important way to improve the quality of economic life for all Americans.




__________________________________________


THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT WORKING FOR A GOOD CAUSE....THEY ARE NOT LOOKING FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL SENSE.  DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH DAMAGE TO THE ENVIRONMENT BUSINESSES DO THAT RUN COMPLETELY BY PROFIT-DRIVEN MODELS?  ENVIRONMENTAL LAW HAS ALL BUT DISAPPEARED.  SO SUSTAINABLE IN REGARDS TO THE ECONOMY IS THE SAME AS AFFORDABLE IS TO HEALTH CARE......WHAT ALLOWS THE MOST PROFIT FROM THE LEAST COST......


American Kleptocracy How fears of socialism and fascism hide naked theft.—By William Astore

| Tue Apr. 20, 2010 1:47 PM PDT5

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Kleptocracy— now, there's a word I was taught to associate with corrupt and exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the people. It's a word, in fact, that's usually applied to flawed or failed governments in Africa, Latin America, or the nether regions of Asia. Such governments are typically led by autocratic strong men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the fruits of extracted wealth, whether stolen from the people or squeezed from their country's natural resources. It's not a word you're likely to see associated with a mature republic like the United States led by disinterested public servants and regulated by more-or-less transparent principles and processes.

In fact, when Americans today wish to critique or condemn their government, the typical epithets used are "socialism" or "fascism." When my conservative friends are upset, they send me emails with links to material about "ObamaCare" and the like. These generally warn of a future socialist takeover of the private realm by an intrusive, power-hungry government. When my progressive friends are upset, they send me emails with links pointing to an incipient fascist takeover of our public and private realms, led by that same intrusive, power-hungry government (and, I admit it, I'm hardly innocent when it comes to such "what if" scenarios).

What if, however, instead of looking at where our government might be headed, we took a closer look at where we are -- at the power-brokers who run or influence our government, at those who are profiting and prospering from it? These are, after all, the "winners" in our American world in terms of the power they wield and the wealth they acquire. And shouldn't we be looking as well at those Americans who are losing—their jobs, their money, their homes, their healthcare, their access to a better way of life—and asking why?

If we were to take an honest look at America's blasted landscape of "losers" and the far shinier, spiffier world of "winners," we'd have to admit that it wasn't signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now. We'd notice our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the representatives of "the people." We'd see, in a word, kleptocracy on a scale to dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing act being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes.

Of Red Herrings and Missing Pallets of Money

Think of socialism and fascism as the red herrings of this moment or, if you're an old time movie fan, as Hitchcockian MacGuffins—in other words, riveting distractions. Conservatives and tea partiers fear invasive government regulation and excessive taxation, while railing against government takeovers—even as corporate lobbyists write our public healthcare bills to favor private interests. Similarly, progressives rail against an emergent proto-fascist corps of private guns-for-hire, warrantless wiretapping, and the potential government-approved assassination of U.S. citizens, all sanctioned by a perpetual, and apparently open-ended, state of war.

Yet, if this is socialism, why are private health insurers the government's go-to guys for healthcare coverage? If this is fascism, why haven't the secret police rounded up tea partiers and progressive critics as well and sent them to the lager or the gulag?

Consider this: America is not now, nor has it often been, a hotbed of political radicalism. We have no substantial socialist or workers' party. (Unless you're deluded, please don't count the corporate-friendly "Democrat" party here.)  We have no substantial fascist party. (Unless you're deluded, please don't count the cartoonish "tea partiers" here; these predominantly white, graying, and fairly affluent Americans seem most worried that the jackbooted thugs will be coming for them.)

What drives America today is, in fact, business—just as was true in the days of Calvin Coolidge. But it's not the fair-minded "free enterprise" system touted in those freshly revised Texas guidelines for American history textbooks; rather, it's a rigged system of crony capitalism that increasingly ends in what, if we were looking at some other country, we would recognize as an unabashed kleptocracy.

Recall, if you care to, those pallets stacked with hundreds of millions of dollars that the Bush administration sent to Iraq and which, Houdini-like, simply disappeared. Think of the ever-rising cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now in excess of a trillion dollars, and just whose pockets are full, thanks to them.

If you want to know the true state of our government and where it's heading, follow the money (if you can) and remain vigilant: our kleptocratic Houdinis are hard at work, seeking to make yet more money vanish from your pockets—and reappear in theirs.

From Each According to His Gullibility—To Each According to His Greed

Never has the old adage my father used to repeat to me—"the rich get richer and the poor poorer"—seemed fresher or truer. If you want confirmation of just where we are today, for instance, consider this passage from a recent piece by Tony Judt:

In 2005, 21.2 percent of U.S. national income accrued to just 1 percent of earners. Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population: 120 million people.

Wealth concentration is only one aspect of our increasingly kleptocratic system. War profiteering by corporations (however well disguised as heartfelt support for our heroic warfighters) is another. Meanwhile, retired senior military officers typically line up to cash in on the kleptocratic equivalent of welfare, peddling their "expertise" in return for impressive corporate and Pentagon payouts that supplement their six-figure pensions. Even that putative champion of the Carhartt-wearing common folk, Sarah Palin, pocketed a cool $12 million last year without putting the slightest dent in her populist bona fides.

Based on such stories, now legion, perhaps we should rewrite George Orwell's famous tagline from Animal Farm as: All animals are equal, but a few are so much more equal than others.

And who are those "more equal" citizens? Certainly, major corporations, which now enjoy a kind of political citizenship and the largesse of a federal government eager to rescue them from their financial mistakes, especially when they're judged "too big to fail." In raiding the U.S. Treasury, big banks and investment firms, shamelessly ready to jack up executive pay and bonuses even after accepting billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, arguably outgun militarized multinationals in the conquest of the public realm and the extraction of our wealth for their benefit.

Such kleptocratic outfits are, of course, abetted by thousands of lobbyists and by politicians who thrive off corporate campaign contributions. Indeed, many of our more prominent public servants have proved expert at spinning through the revolving door into the private sector. Even ex-politicians who prefer to be seen as sympathetic to the little guy like former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt eagerly cash in.

I'm Shocked, Shocked, to Find Profiteering Going on Here

An old Roman maxim enjoins us to "let justice be done, though the heavens fall." Within our kleptocracy, the prevailing attitude is an insouciant "We'll get ours, though the heavens fall." This mindset marks the decline of our polity. A spirit of shared sacrifice, dismissed as hopelessly naïve, has been replaced by a form of tribalized privatization in which insiders find ways to profit no matter what.

Is it any surprise then that, in seeking to export our form of government to Iraq and Afghanistan, we've produced not two model democracies, but two emerging kleptocracies, fueled respectively by oil and opium?

When we confront corruption in Iraq or Afghanistan, are we not like the police chief in the classic movie Casablanca who is shocked, shocked to find gambling going on at Rick's Café, even as he accepts his winnings?

Why then do we bother to feign shock when Iraqi and Afghan elites, a tiny minority, seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the majority?

Shouldn't we be flattered? Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery. Isn't it?

William J. Astore is a TomDispatch regular; he teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and served in the Air Force for 20 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He may be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.






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May 26th, 2012

5/26/2012

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AMERICAN CORPORATIONS MOVED OVERSEAS FOR LOWER COSTS WHICH MEANS NO ENVIRONMENTAL, WORKER'S RIGHTS AND SAFETY, AND MINIMUM PAY.  MEANWHILE, IN THE US, ALL THESE THINGS WERE BEING CHIPPED AWAY.  ONE OF THE FIRST THING A DEMOCRATIC SUPERMAJORITY ELECTED IN 2008 WOULD DO WOULD BE TO STRENGTHEN THESE PROTECTIONS, BUT AS WITH OTHER MIDDLE/LOWER CLASS ISSUES.....THEY DID NOTHING.  THAT IS WHEN WE REALIZED WE HAD ELECTED THIRD WAY DEMOCRATS RATHER THAN PROGRESSIVES.

OSHA (WORKPLACE SAFETY) HAS BEEN UNDER ATTACK FOR DECADES AND WORKPLACE DANGERS IN AMERICA ARE BECOMING THIRD WORLD.  THE SAME REASONS ARE THROWN AT US AS WITH THE BUSINESS FRAUD....CORPORATIONS WOULD MAKE IT TOO EXPENSIVE FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO PROSECUTE.  WELL......THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE.....MAKE IT EASY TO PROSECUTE!  MINERS DIED, OIL RIG WORKERS DIED, INDUSTRY WORKERS ARE EXPOSED TO TOXIC LEVELS OF CHEMICALS.....THIS MUST END.  THE DIFFICULTY INCREASES AS CONTRACTORS ARE ALLOWED TO SUBCONTRACT, WHICH IS THE PRIMARY PRACTICE NOW.  THE LAST ARTICLE SPEAKS TO MARYLAND......4 OF 5 WORKSITES HAVE OSHA VIOLATIONS.   THE STORY BELOW IS TYPICAL.

IF YOUR DEMOCRATIC OFFICIAL OR UNION LEADER IS NOT SHOUTING LOUDLY TO MAKE PROSECUTION OF CORPORATE CRIME EASY....
VOTE THE INCUMBANT OUT
!

Built for a Simpler Era, OSHA Struggles When Tower Climbers Die An OSHA investigator documents the helmet of fallen tower climber
.

Ryan Knutson, PBS Frontline, and
Liz Day, ProPublica May 24, 2012, 12:13 p.m.

This story was co-published with PBS Frontline [1].

Update: After a Tower Climber Falls, Stand Down Called for on AT&T Projects [2]

When federal lawmakers passed landmark legislation creating the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, they intended to protect workers by imposing clear, uniform rules on their employers.

The 1970
law [3] assumed that the relationship between companies and the people they hired for dangerous jobs would be straightforward, employer to employee.

No one planned for industries like tower climbing.

Tower climbers, the roughly 10,000 workers who build and maintain the nation’s TV, radio and cell towers, aren’t hired directly by the corporations that rely on their labor. They’re subcontractors, sometimes separated by a daisy chain of other contractors from the companies that ultimately pay for tower projects.

Experts say this tiny field is emblematic of a fundamental change in the way U.S. companies deal with risky work – and in OSHA’s ability to hold companies accountable when workers are injured or die.

Over the past decade, considerable attention has focused on the out-sourcing of U.S. jobs to foreign countries with lower safety standards and wages. Much less noticed has been the trend of companies out-sourcing their dirtiest, most perilous work within the U.S.

Since 2003, tower climbing has ranked among the most dangerous jobs in America, compiling an average annual death rate more than
10 times [4] that of construction work. Almost 100 climbers have been killed on the job, 50 of them on cell sites.

From their perch atop the contracting chain, carriers typically set many of the crucial parameters for work on cell sites, including deadlines, pay rates and even technical specifications, down to the exact degree an antenna should be angled. An analysis of
cell tower deaths [5] by ProPublica and PBS “Frontline” showed that tight timetables and financial pressure often led workers to take fatal shortcuts or to work under unsafe conditions.

“We’ve had a number of situations where we think that accidents were caused by companies trying to meet deadlines and … cutting corners on safety in order to meet those deadlines,” said Jordan Barab, OSHA’s deputy administrator.

But Barab said it’s difficult for the agency to hold cell companies responsible for safety violations involving subcontractors. In most cases, federal officials have interpreted OSHA regulations to mean that carriers can be held accountable only if they exercised direct control over subcontractors’ work or were aware of specific unsafe conditions.

OSHA has not sanctioned cell carriers for safety violations implicated in any subcontractor deaths on cell sites since 2003, a review of agency records by ProPublica and PBS “Frontline” found.

Failing to track tower deaths OSHA has made little effort to systematically connect the deaths of tower workers to specific carriers and had not known until ProPublica and PBS “Frontline” told them that there have been 15 fatalities on AT&T jobs since 2003 – more than at the other three major carriers combined over the same period.

Source: Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigations, ProPublica research

The agency attempted to fine a carrier just once and failed, losing a nearly three-year legal battle with a regional cell company in Kentucky. The agency has never taken on the four major carriers – Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint – even though there have been almost two dozen fatalities on jobs done for their networks.

Most of OSHA’s enforcement efforts have focused on a transient cast of small subcontractors, though they, too, typically have eluded significant penalties. Over the last nine years, the median fine levied for safety violations linked to a fatal tower accident was $3,750, an analysis by ProPublica and PBS “Frontline” showed.

OSHA has made little effort to connect the deaths of tower workers to specific carriers. Barab acknowledged that OSHA officials had not known until ProPublica and PBS “Frontline” told them that there have been 15 fatalities on AT&T jobs since 2003 – more than at the other three major carriers combined over the same period.

If that many of a company’s own employees suffered workplace fatalities, Barab said, it would be “exactly the kind of case” the agency would consider for its
Severe Violator Enforcement Program [6], which OSHA reserves for employers who show an indifference to safety. But because tower climbers are subcontractors, the agency examines each death separately, and does not connect them to the carriers whose cell networks they build.

“Generally, we can only cite employers when their employees are at the work site,” Barab said. “As you go up the line, it becomes much more difficult to actually hold the companies at the top responsible.”

Officials at the four major cell carriers declined requests to be interviewed for this story. In a
written statement [7], AT&T said its contracts require the companies it hires for tower work to adhere to OSHA safety regulations. Statements from Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint called subcontractors’ safety a priority.

“We have always maintained a strong safety policy and record for our employees, which we also expect from our contractors,” the T-Mobile statement said.

Some labor experts counter that OSHA’s limited enforcement authority gives companies like cell carriers a powerful incentive to avoid any role in worker safety. If those at the top bear no consequences, they said, unsafe practices by subcontractors will continue.

“Until there’s an incentive for the carriers to actually improve this they’re probably not going to,” said Catherine Ruckelshaus, legal co-director at the National Employment Law Project, a liberal group that advocates for worker rights. If regulators held carriers accountable for accidents involving contract workers, “they’re going to try to insure that the subcontractors that they engage are legitimate, above-board subcontractors with sophistication and good health and safety training.”

But Ed Reynolds, an industry consultant who was AT&T’s president of network services until 2007, said punishing carriers for tower-climbing accidents would not reduce fatalities.

“You can take the captain of the ship approach,” he said. “You can say that Randall Stephenson is responsible because Randall Stephenson’s the CEO of AT&T. But what impact … would [that] have on the eventual safety of future crews? I think that’s too far to connect.”

* * *

The use of subcontractors and temporary employees has been on the rise for several decades as businesses have sought flexibility, relief from union requirements, and savings.

An
analysis [8] of labor statistics by the Government Accountability Office found that the number of workers employed by contractors jumped nearly 25 percent from 1995 to 2005 and the total number of “contingent” workers – including contractors, temporary employees, self-employed workers, part-time workers and day laborers – totaled more than 40 million.

The trend toward subcontracting has changed the American workplace in ways unanticipated by the authors of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, said Judson MacLaury, who served as the Department of Labor’s historian from 1972 to 2006.

“Subcontracting was not a factor in the development of the Act,” he said. “It only became an issue for OSHA itself when it became an enforcement problem.”

The shift toward subcontracting has been most noticeable in high-risk industries such as
oil and gas [9], trucking [10], nuclear waste removal [11] and home-building. Though workplace injuries and deaths have decreased over OSHA’s 40-year lifespan, subcontract workers face greater risks than traditional employees, studies have shown. Contractors were injured or killed in eight of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s 10 worst workplace accidents [12] of 2010. In six of the accidents, no full-time employees died, only contractors.

To sanction companies for safety violations involving subcontractors, OSHA must meet the requirements of what it calls the
multi-employer citation policy [13]. It’s a directive spelled out in agency rules, rather than the law.

The policy, which dates to OSHA’s early days, was created with construction and manufacturing in mind, industries with centralized work sites at which the supervisors for the companies that own and operate the sites are more likely to be present.

The tower industry doesn’t function this way. Work is done on thousands of cell sites in remote locations all over the country for short periods of time. Carriers sometimes don’t own towers, leasing space for their antennas instead, and typically don’t have employees on site.

On paper, the multi-employer policy allows OSHA to cite companies that contract out work if they supervise a work site and can correct safety violations or require others to do so.

In some instances, courts and OSHA’s appeals commission have interpreted the policy more narrowly, ruling that if companies didn’t expose their own employees to danger or didn’t have specific knowledge of the conditions that caused harm, OSHA could not impose sanctions.

Business organizations, such as the National Association of Home Builders, have
argued [14] against penalties based on the multi-employer policy, contending that employers should be responsible only for their own employees, not those hired by subcontractors.

OSHA sometimes wins such battles. In 2009, for example, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Missouri
upheld [15] the agency’s citation against a general contractor for failing to ensure that a subcontractor used proper safety gear on a scaffold. But these victories often have been costly and time-consuming, playing out over years.

Some of the agency’s leaders have been skeptical about pursuing cases under the multi-employer policy. Charles Jeffress, OSHA’s top administrator from 1997 to 2001, said companies whose employees are not on site should not be held accountable for hazards created by subcontractors.

“You can’t sit in an office building thousands of miles away and direct the work,” he said.

Philip Colleran, who worked as a senior compliance officer at OSHA in Illinois for 17 years before leaving to start a private consulting firm in 1990, said the agency has become reluctant to initiate multi-employer cases without what it considers overwhelming evidence.

“The sad truth is the agency’s lawyers are still reluctant to prosecute even clear-cut controlling entities, such as general contractors,” he wrote in an email, “let alone nebulous relationships such as the type of ‘subcontractors’ you’re addressing.”

* * *

The one instance in which OSHA tried to sanction a carrier after one of its subcontractors died on a cell tower illustrates the legal hurdles the agency must clear.

The case began in May 2006, at a cell tower in rural Kentucky.

Michael Sulfridge, 22, died after a 380 ft. fall in 2006.

When Randy Gray, an investigator with Kentucky OSHA, arrived on the site, 22-year-old Michael Sulfridge was lying face up, eyes open, 380 feet below where he had been working. Sulfridge looked curiously unaffected by the fall aside from the blood streaked under his nose. His scuffed gray sneaker and work bag, holding only a pack of cigarettes, dangled from a barbed wire fence next to his body.

Sulfridge’s co-workers readily acknowledged that he had been free climbing – working without fall protection gear – and that this was pervasive on the job. They told Gray they routinely didn’t wear straps, known as lanyards, to clip themselves onto the tower.

“The lanyards were all in the back of the supervisor’s truck,” Gray said. “Some of them were even in new packaging, never opened up. The employees all confirmed the fact that that was just normal practice. That’s just the way they normally did things.”

Free climbing is strictly forbidden under OSHA regulations, but tower climbers sometimes do it to work more quickly. Gray cited Tower Services Inc., the subcontractor that employed Sulfridge, for several safety violations and proposed $143,000 in fines.

Then he went a step further, taking aim at Bluegrass Cellular, the cell company that had hired Tower Services.

In
his report [16], Gray said Bluegrass’ field operations manager, Daniel Combs, told him he regularly visited about half of the carrier’s towers when work was going on. Tower Services had worked on Bluegrass sites for at least two years, Gray learned. He concluded that Combs “could have detected” that Tower Services climbers weren’t taking proper safety precautions.

“It just seems logical that whenever the carrier was here, that they had the possibility to know that these people were not tying off with personal protective equipment,” Gray said.

Gray issued
citations [17] against the cell carrier for failing to conduct safety inspections and ensure the use of fall protection gear, proposing $7,000 in fines.

Bluegrass pushed back. In letters from its lawyers and affidavits from employees, the company said it had no responsibility for the safety of subcontractors.

“Bluegrass is convinced that only by exerting actual control over the work of an independent contractor could an owner ever have any duty to oversee the safety of a contractor's employees,” the carrier’s attorney wrote in a
2007 letter [18] to the assistant general counsel for the Kentucky Labor Cabinet. “Bluegrass has never exerted actual control over the work of an independent contractor doing construction work at any of its towers.”

Combs submitted an affidavit saying that he hadn’t visited half of Bluegrass’ cell sites, as Gray’s report had said, and only “sometimes” checked on their progress.

Ultimately, Gray couldn’t prove that anyone from Bluegrass had been on the site when Sulfridge fell or had witnessed the unsafe practices that led to his death. In 2009, OSHA dismissed the citations against the carrier.

Responders assess the work site after tower climber Michael Sulfridge's fatal fall.

Bluegrass and Tower Services declined to comment for this story. OSHA reduced Tower Services’ fine to $24,000 after the company promised to provide more training, require employees to use fall protection and facilitate random inspections of its sites.

Gray, who retired from OSHA in 2008 and runs a safety consulting company, came away frustrated with the outcome.

“The easiest and simplest way to avoid getting a citation is to do what Bluegrass did, and don’t go to the job site,” he said.

* * *

With the exception of the Sulfridge case, OSHA has mostly targeted small subcontractors for discipline when tower climbers were killed in accidents.

But even companies hit with multiple citations often received deep discounts on fines based on their size or lack of previous safety violations, OSHA records show. Some obtained additional reductions by appealing or found ways to sidestep penalties altogether. OSHA waived a $6,300 fine – issued after a tower climber sustained massive injuries in a 240-foot fall – when it could not find the company owner, Ryan Chapman, who had shut down his business and started a new one. Contacted by ProPublica and PBS “Frontline,” Chapman said he was unaware of OSHA's efforts to reach him.

“I figure if they want to talk to me, they’d find me,” he told a reporter. “I mean, you got my number.” (We tracked down Chapman’s phone number on an online industry message board.)

With about 800 tower-climbing subcontractors operating nationwide – many of them small and short-lived – it’s unlikely that pressing these companies will bring systemic safety improvements, said David Weil, a Boston University economics professor who studies subcontracting.

It’s “like the old game of Whac-a-Mole,” he said. “You can enforce your OSHA standards on that individual contractor and hit the mole. … But there are a lot of other contractors that are going to pop up.”

In 2006 – when 19 tower climbers died, 10 of them working on cell sites – OSHA tried a new approach to improve safety in the industry. It launched a
partnership [19] with the National Association of Tower Erectors, the trade group for tower companies, aimed at reducing injury and fatality rates and raising awareness of key worksite hazards. As part of the initiative, the agency offered discounts on regulatory fines and NATE members agreed to audit their own safety practices.

The early results looked promising: 85 NATE members joined in the first year, performing almost 600 self-audits and sending more than 1,000 workers for additional training.

“It was great,” said Gordon Lyman, a safety expert at WesTower, a large tower company, and a member of NATE’s OSHA relations committee. Jim Coleman, NATE’s chairman, said in a
written response [20] to questions from ProPublica and PBS “Frontline” that the partnership helped change the industry’s relationship with OSHA from adversarial to collaborative.

But there was a sticking point between the agency and the group, correspondence and email obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows.

NATE leaders wanted cell carriers, tower owners and general contractors to participate in the initiative. In a Dec. 20, 2006 e-mail to OSHA, Patrick Howey, then the executive director of NATE, said companies that hired subcontractors with poor safety records were “a major source of accidents.”

It’s unclear if OSHA or NATE formally invited the major cell companies to participate in the safety partnership, but they were welcome to join. None did. In its statement, AT&T said it strongly supported the partnership, which the carrier credited with “a dramatic improvement in worker safety,” but declined to say why it did not participate. T-Mobile did not respond to questions about the partnership. In an email, a Verizon spokesman said the company had no record of being invited to join. A statement from Sprint said the company did not participate because “we are not in the business of erecting towers.”

Rob Medlock, OSHA’s Cleveland area office director and an agency point man for the NATE partnership, said carriers had little incentive to get involved as they were already outside of regulators’ reach.

“It puts you in the ballgame, where right now you’re outside the park,” said Medlock, who left OSHA in 2010.

As cell companies raced to expand their networks in 2008, 12 climbers died, eight of them on cell towers. Three worked for companies enrolled in the OSHA-NATE safety initiative. The relationship between OSHA and NATE began to sour.

In a September 2008 conference call, OSHA officials told NATE leaders that the group needed to “step up” by hiring a safety specialist, conducting its own accident investigations and creating an accident database, agency meeting minutes show.

Howey fired back in a Dec. 4, 2008
memo [21], arguing that it was OSHA and the companies on top of the contracting chain who needed to step up.

Carriers and others who demand “unrealistic scheduling” or hire unsafe contractors are “one of the biggest factors in tower site fatalities and must be addressed,” Howey wrote. “OSHA needs to find a way to deal with these companies or accept that fatalities are going to continue.”

Medlock agreed, but knew OSHA didn’t have the muscle to follow through. “My thought was, ‘I wish we could,’” he said.

The partnership dissolved in November 2009.

* * * There’s much debate among federal regulators and industry experts on how OSHA should enforce safety standards more effectively in industries like tower climbing, which rely heavily on subcontracting.

Some, including several former OSHA officials, say Congress needs to change the law that created the agency more than 40 years ago to expand the definition of “employer” to include companies that contract out work.

“We have laws that are structured in a way that no longer look like the workplaces that they’re trying to regulate,” said Weil, the economics professor.

Medlock and others said OSHA could create rules to achieve the same goal administratively.

John
Henshaw [22], OSHA’s administrator from 2001 to 2004, said any attempt to broaden the agency’s authority would face stiff opposition from businesses, whose challenges could clog up the court system. Instead, he suggested that simply making it known which accidents are connected to which cell carrier would encourage companies to ensure that subcontractors address safety problems.

“The American public can put pressure on those cell carriers, and ultimately only do business with the ones who are doing it the right way,” he said.

For that to happen, OSHA would have to start systematically collecting information on contracting relationships when tower workers die. Barab said regulators faced obstacles in trying to do this.

“It’s a lot of work to try to trace things up to the ultimate owner,” he said. “We’re talking about sometimes multiple levels here.”

Still, ProPublica and PBS “Frontline” were able to obtain this data for fatalities since 2003, sometimes just by making a few phone calls, and Barab conceded that OSHA could do the same.

“It would probably not be a bad idea for us to do that,” he said.

Travis Fox of PBS “Frontline,” Robin Respaut and Kirsten Berg of ProPublica, Habiba Nosheen and Sam Roudman contributed to this report.

This is the second of a two-part series. Read the first, In Race For Better Cell Service, Men Who Climb Towers Pay With Their Lives [23], and watch the PBS "Frontline" program. [1]

Correction (12:45pm): A reference to the Kentucky Department of Labor has been corrected to the Kentucky Labor Cabinet.

________________________________________________
I have friends who tell me that construction safety is at an all time low because of a lack of oversight and a failure to enforce apprenticeship training programs.  Rather than wait for an employee to finish this program, an employer simply moves a desired new hire through the paperwork and on to the worksite.  Seasoned workers feel compromised by untrained, unskilled workers who are paid less.

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is the federal government agency tasked with investigating and issuing citations for alleged violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
Many injuries on a construction site occur due to OSHA violations.   2012

The laws OSHA enforces apply to all worksites. OSHA’s goal with respect to construction worksites is to protect construction workers, implement and enforce safety requirements and minimize injuries on the construction site. OSHA violations can expose a construction company to significant consequences, including work stoppages, fines, increased scrutiny by OSHA officials and other costs and liability for any injuries to workers.

When OSHA Issues a Citation When a work accident occurs on a construction site, OSHA violations are commonly to blame. The Occupational Health and Safety Act covers a wide variety of safety requirements for workers on the construction worksite, including the use of protective equipment such as hard hats and eye protection, standards for equipment and machinery, regulations for other safety precautions such as harnesses and scaffolding and the provision of water to construction workers.  If OSHA issues a citation to a construction company for a violation following an injury that has occurred at the construction site, the injured worker may have additional evidence to support a claim against the construction company or other responsible parties. OSHA violations can show that a construction worker was working in unsafe conditions when the accident or injuries occurred.

Common Types of OSHA Violations at the Construction Worksite Most construction sites are guilty of OSHA violations in one form or another. In fact, OSHA reports that four out of every five construction sites have OSHA violations.

Numerous OSHA violations may occur at a construction site, with the most common violations involving scaffolding and other types of fall prevention equipment. According to OSHA, more than 1/3 of all construction site fatalities in 2001 involved falls, and the most common fall hazard was scaffolding. As working from heights is one of the more dangerous aspects of construction work generally, it is no surprise that OSHA strictly regulates the maintenance and use of fall prevention equipment and scaffolding.

Another common OSHA violation at a construction site involves grounding of power lines. As construction workers tend to work near or around underground or overhead electric lines, they are at a great risk for electrocution. While construction companies are supposed to ensure that all such lines are de-energized and grounded, these procedures often simply do not occur. Additionally, the improper use and maintenance of portable tools has led to electrical hazards.

The third most common OSHA violation involves excavation work. The risk of fatality for excavation work is 112% higher than for general construction work. When companies fail to properly brace or ventilate trenches, workers face hazardous working conditions that can result in serious injuries or death.
____________________________________________________
YOU SEE A FEDERAL DIRECTIVE TO CHANGE A BUSINESS-FRIENDLY CULTURE IN MARYLAND
OSHA Enforcement in Maryland

By Edward Ranier, Esquire        2010 

At a recent MOSH inspection closing conference, at which I represented an inspected employer, I learned that Federal OSHA is urging OSHA state plan states, such as Maryland, to issue maximum penalties for all violations, to abandon "grouping" of related violation citations which, in the past, had resulted in reduced penalties, and is discouraging the reduction of penalties, subsequent to the issuance of a citation for violations, at employer requested informal settlement conferences. Clearly the federal OSHA perspective has shifted from hazard abatement to enforcement and penalty.




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    Author

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

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