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February 12th, 2014

2/12/2014

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Regarding Ruppersberger and Fort Meade policy:

Here we go down the rabbit hole with Alice in Wonderland as MR NSA HIMSELF.....MR. PRIVATIZE ALL MILITARY AND END PUBLIC MILITARY FACILITIES TO THE DETRIMENT OF ALL MILITARY PERSONNEL......cries foul over legislation designed to protect American civil liberties and end DEATH TO AMERICA chanting as the NSA and Wall Street enrage the world with its illegal activities that undermine sovereignty including the US.  Nothing makes the US more prone to attack from enemies than the actions of Wall Street and their NSA!

Here we are with republicans being the protector of US Constitutional rights and public justice. Meanwhile, it is MD neo-liberals making the Ft Meade NSA central. Remember, it was George Bush and neo-liberals who started this and are the face of the hedge funds running it. So, this is a neo-con/neo-liberal problem.

DO NOT ALLOW REPUBLICANS SHOUT THAT DEMOCRATS ARE THE PROBLEM.....NEO-LIBERALS ARE NOT DEMOCRATS!



BREAKING: Maryland Legislators Move To Kill NSA Headquarters
benswann.com
ANNAPOLIS, Md., February 10, 2014-- It's lights our for the National Security Agency (NSA). State lawmakers in Maryland have filed...


____________________________________

As Dutch Ruppersberger knows the US lost trillions of dollars over just a few decades to defense industry fraud, billions each year.  Much of it is used to bribe, used to promote fraudulent development abroad, to buy alliances that later fall apart and amount to nothing.  Profiteering in the defense industry is rampant and it is public malfeasance and duplicity when politicians charged with serving the public allow all of this to happen without public justice.  What Ruppersberger supports is an NSA run by Wall Street and not a system designed to oversee Wall Street and stop the fleecing of American taxpayers with defense industry fraud.

Dutch doesn't want to stop there.....he wants to privatize all that is public support of Veterans at bases like Fort Meade and reduce the Veteran's Administration to private corporate non-profits with no oversight and known not to be doing the business of aiding Vets.  

NOTICE ALL THE CHARITY ORGANIZATIONS CREATED TO BEG FOR MONEY FOR VETERANS?  THAT IS WHAT RUPPERSBERGER HAS WORKED TO DO FOR VETERANS BY PRIVATIZING ALL PUBLIC SERVICES FOR VETS!  WHAT A GUY!!!!!!!

But wait, Dutch is fighting against cuts to veterans benefits you say!!!  Recovering defense industry fraud would pay off much of the national debt and remove this fake deficit and debt!  DO YOU HEAR DUTCH SHOUTING FOR THIS??????  No, Dutch is busy passing laws that allow the US military to expand its mercenary military to non-citizens overseas because we have to protect US global corporate interests while these corporations are fleecing Americans and ignoring all Rule of Law.  HOW DOES RUPPERSBERGER KEEP GETTING RE-ELECTED YOU SAY!  

RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES TO SHAKE THE NEO-LIBERAL BUGS FROM THE RUG!!!!!

 Do you know that Manning downloaded and gave to Wikileaks defense industry data on just these defense industry expenditures just so international investigative journalists could do the research that shows where all this defense industry fraud is and where it is going?  See why Manning was tried as aiding the enemy------WHO ARE OBVIOUSLY YOU AND I!




Encyclopedia of White-Collar & Corporate Crime


Lawrence M. Salinger, Ph.D.

Pub. date: 2005 | Online Pub. Date: September 15, 2007 | DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412914260 | Print ISBN: 9780761930044 | Online ISBN: 9781412914260 | Publisher:SAGE Publications, Inc.

Defense Industry Fraud

John Walsh Ph.D.

THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY comprises the development, production and sale of weapons and weapons-support systems. In some cases, components or substances that are not themselves weapons may be classified as being part of the defense industry if it is believed that they may be used in the creation of weapons. The defense industry is characterized by oligopolistic conditions, in which a small number of large firms compete for a small number of orders from governments. Success in the industry relies upon, to a considerable extent, economies of scale from research and development departments, large-scale production facilities and good network contacts with relevant government officials, both domestically and internationally. Many overseas sales are characterized by corruption and bribery and Transparency International has listed defense, along with the public works and construction industry, as being the sectors in which bribery is most rife. The very high value of products also provides an incentive ...

________________________________________________
There's Bernie Sanders shouting loudly to use defense industry fraud to pay down the national debt.  The trillions recovered from a few decades of fraud would end all cuts to public services and programs tied to the military.  

As Bernie says......IT IS THE PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC MILITARY WORK THAT MAKES GOVERNMENT COFFERS FEEDING TROUGHS FOR CORPORATE FRAUD!  You won't hear Dutch shouting this!




Lawmakers push Defense fraud, waste report to influence supercommittee cuts

By John T. Bennett - 10/23/11 06:53 PM EDT  The Hill Blog

Liberal lawmakers will soon send the congressional deficit panel the details of a Pentagon report that shows defense firms over the last decade ripped off the military to the tune of $1.1 trillion, Democratic sources told The Hill.

Pro-military lawmakers from both parties have warned the supercommittee to avoid Pentagon spending cuts beyond the $350 billion ordered by the August debt deal.

But several Senate Democrats want the panel to keep in mind that dollars sent to the Pentagon are often lost to fraud and waste, even as some conservatives raise the possibility of retroactively exempting the Pentagon from the $600 billion cut that will be triggered if the supercommittee fails.


Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last week highlighted what he called a “shocking” internal Pentagon report that concluded defense companies defrauded the military by $1.1 trillion.

“The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money,” Sanders said in a statement. “With the country running a nearly $15 trillion national debt, my goal is to provide as much transparency as possible about what is happening with taxpayer money.”

More than $250 million “went to 54 contractors convicted of hard-core criminal fraud in the same period,” Sanders said, summarizing tables included with the DoD report. “Of that total, $33 million was paid to companies after they were convicted of crimes.”

The Pentagon revealed defense behemoth Lockheed Martin paid $10.5 million in 2008 to settle fraud charges related to the Titan IV rocket program. Northrop Grumman paid $62 million three years prior to settle allegations it was involved in a fraud scheme.

And the list of contractors linked to waste goes on, the DoD tables show, ranging from the other largest defense firms to smaller companies.

Yet most continued to receive massive contracts.

And that does not sit well with Sanders and several other liberal lawmakers, Democratic sources say.

Sanders “believes numbers like these are very relevant for the supercommittee when some are talking about cutting social programs,” an aide to the Vermont liberal told The Hill on Friday.

“The supercommittee also should see the extent to which these companies committed fraud on behalf of the government,” the Sanders aide said. “We will get this to the supercommittee, at least at the staff level.”

Another Democratic aide said his boss intends to highlight the DoD fraud report as the special panel ramps up its search for $1.5 trillion in federal cuts. It must finish its work by Nov. 23 or automatic triggers will be enacted, including $600 billion in cuts to security spending.

“As debate goes forward, I’m sure you’ll see a number of Democrats on the left use that report and others like it. There’s a movement on the right to go back and exempt defense spending from the trigger if the supercommittee fails,” the Democratic aide said Friday. “That’s going to be unacceptable to [liberals who are] likely to use reports like this as proof that there is room to cut Defense spending without harming security.”

The Aerospace Industries Association, a leading defense industrial lobbying organization, declined to comment on the report.

But one prominent defense analyst and industry consultant blasted the Pentagon’s findings.

“Sen. Sanders is correct in stating the report is shocking — it's shockingly wrong. The report confuses isolated cases of wrongdoing with the dominant culture in the defense industry, which is the most heavily regulated and audited industry in the nation,” said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute.

“Critics of Defense spending like Sen. Sanders routinely make sweeping allegations of malfeasance in military contracting while ignoring far worse behavior in major entitlement programs like Medicaid,” he said.

What’s more, the yearly waste within the military largely comes from “decisions by legislators and policymakers that disburse funds to unnecessary projects” and mandate “superfluous tests, reports and contracting procedures,” Thompson told The Hill. “That's where the real waste occurs in military contracting, but Sen. Sanders would prefer to focus on the handful of cases of malfeasance that more closely match his ideological leanings.”

But one government watchdog group called the findings “mind-boggling.”

“The amount of money given to these companies is staggering, but what is really mind-boggling is the willingness of the DoD to provide additional taxpayer dollars to the same bad actors again and again,” Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) said in a Friday statement.

“Despite the report’s findings, the DoD’s over-reliance on contractors may hinder reform,” Amey said. “Taxpayers are unlikely to see any changes until DoD holds contractors more accountable, especially those defrauding the government.”

______________________________________
George Bush sent trillions in profit to all of Cheney's Halliburton and hedge funds became Blackwater USA as our public troops were ghettoized with the super-sized wages these private military contractors paid private employees with the same US taxpayer money.  The intent was to move the best public troops over to private contractors as the public military structures were dismantled.  On came Obama and Hillary who as neo-liberals placed this process on steroids with the movement of troops and war to Afghanistan.  Now, government watchdogs say that over 70% of US military is private contractors and the fraud and corruption is rampant.  US private military behave so illegally that nations do not want them in their countries.  Human rights abuse is systemic.

What we are seeing in the build-up of the US police state is the coming home of these private military contractors and employees to become city and state police.  We in Baltimore know what this police state will look like.  Police here act with impunity here just as they do overseas.  SEE WHY PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD ARE SHOUTING 'DEATH TO AMERICA"?

DO YOU HEAR MARYLAND POLS TALKING ABOUT THIS?????  THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFITS!



Christian Science Monitor
Opinion

A lesson from Iraq war: How to outsource war to private contractors

During the Iraq war, private defense contractors providing security and support outnumbered troops on the ground at points. Contractors can enhance US military capacity but also entail risks. US experience with private security contractors holds several key lessons.

By Molly Dunigan / March 19, 2013

A helicopter owned by Blackwater USA, a private security contractor, flies over central Baghdad, Iraq, Feb. 7, 2007. Op-ed contributor Molly Dunigan says 'the United States must protect its interests and ensure that the contractors it employs are carefully vetted and well trained. It should also continue to work toward a commonly accepted means of holding contractors accountable for their behavior.'

Ten years after it began, the Iraq war might best be remembered as America’s most privatized military engagement to date, with contractors hired by the Pentagon actually outnumbering troops on the ground at various points.

This might come as a surprise to many, since the sheer number of contractors used in Iraq was often overshadowed by events. By 2008, the US Department of Defense employed 155,826 private contractors in Iraq – and 152,275 troops. This degree of privatization is unprecedented in modern warfare.

One of the most important lessons of the Iraq war is that this military privatization is likely to continue in future conflicts. This could be a good thing, as contractors can enhance US military capacity. But any large-scale use of private military contractors also entails risks. Recent US experience with private security contractors, in particular, holds several critical lessons for the future.

OPINION: After US withdrawal from Iraq, a tallying of the balance sheet

Of course, private contractors are not new to war zones. They supported all the major US conflicts of the late 20th century, including in Vietnam, the Balkans, and Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. But in these cases, they mainly provided logistical and base support.

Now, the US military has developed a growing dependence on private contractors – and for a wide range of functions traditionally handled by military personnel. The Army spent roughly $815 million ($163 million per year, or about $200 million per year in 2012 dollars) to employ contractors under its Logistics Civil Augmentation Program between 1992 and 1997. But between 2001 and 2010, that expenditure grew to nearly $5 billion per year. Of course, this latter cost coincides with US involvement in Afghanistan as well as Iraq.

A more pertinent question – and what truly sets the Iraq war apart – concerns the role of these private civilian contractors. Throughout the war, the majority (61 percent) of contracted jobs continued to be base-support functions. The next-largest group (18 percent) of Department of Defense contractors were security contractors. They provided security services, such as guarding installations, protecting convoys, or acting as bodyguards.

Moreover, this outsourcing trend continued in Afghanistan, where there were 94,413 contractors in 2010, compared with 91,600 US troops.

Military outsourcing in this vein developed as a result of an increased supply of private military services combined with increased demand. The boom in supply was borne out of larger privatization trends in both the US and Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, which spread over into the military arena. The increased demand was due to the strains that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan placed on the US military.

___________________________________
As I wrote before....Maryland was sighted as having the worse VA services with a failing grade for the Baltimore VA center because all of it has been privatized to private non-profits taking the taxpayer money under the guise of running programs that VETs will tell you are not happening.  Indeed, talk was to get rid of the VA building itself.  THAT'S DUTCH FOR YOU.....WORKING FOR DEFENSE INDUSTRY AND CORPORATE PROFITS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE CITIZENS WHO VOTE FOR HIM!!!

SHAKE THE NEO-LIBERAL BUGS FROM THE RUG BY RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!



    
Friday, January 28th, 2011 | Posted by Dale R. Suiter


VA / Privatization = Loss for Vets

Don't give up on these guys!
New folks in the House of Representatives say they are looking to “cut spending” and reduce the size of government. There is a movement to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

There is mention to of privatizing some government health care services. What’s all this mean for Vets?

If you love what Halliburton did for the trrops, yuo’ll love what privatization will do for veterans.

October 15, 2010 (rushlimbaugh.com) then candidate Sharron Angle was critical of Senator Reid. Senator Reid reportedly said: “She (Ms. Angle) wants to privatize the Veterans Administration.” Mr. Linbaugh continues: “What’s wrong with privatizing the VA…? Somebody tell me where its working. Somebody tell me where anything the federal government is running is working… Privatize the Veterans Administration.!”

Including the military:
1. 10th mountain Division – great outfit
2. 1 Bn 119th FA MIARNG – excellent – well trained cannoneers
3. United States Marine Corp (especially 3/9 and 1/3)*
4. United States Air Force
5. United States Army
6. United States Coast Guard
7. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
8. Departments of Motor Vehicles in 50 states and all the territories
9. Local, state and federal judicial systems – that due process item we kinda like and wanna keep
10. Open meeting acts around the country

Privatization come with a heavy price tag. Many traditional military mainenance and support roles have been privatized. Many line grunts report few hot meals “… at the front …” (O.K. no hot food up front is as old as warfare). Military units are challgenged to repair and maintain vehicles, equipment, aircraft and weapons systems. (In one case – an Army 88M’s Dad – sent his son a needed tool kit so he and his truck partner could repair the trucks they were assigned to. Also as old as the history of warfare. Key point is the troops could not get the support they needed in theater.)

FACT SHEET
GAO Issues Report on Hlliburton Troops Support Contract In Iraq (Minority Staff Committe On Government Reform U.S. House of Representatives Juy 21, 2004)

This GAO report documented serious shortfalls with the government contract with Halliburton. Problems included:
* Planning for troops delayed until “Afther the Fall of Baghadad.”
* Planning for Support Services “Ineffective”
* Halliburton’s uncontrolled costs (Halliburton costs grew from $5.8 billion to $8.6 billion between September 2003 and January 2004.)

The report “higlights a pattern of contractor management problems. Including:
* Inadequate cost control
* Difficulties meeting schedules – Halliburton did not provide some services required, including “water production”
* Inadequate control over purchases
* Inadequate control over subcontractors

The report notes too inadequate control and oversight of Halliburton as follows: “… essentially military officials do not understand their role … regarding their roles and responsibilities.”

Dana Hedgpath, Washington Post (3011098) wrote: “KBR Faulted on Water Provided to Soldiers”. The article includes: “U.S. Soldiers at a military base in Iraq … provided with … untested water for … two years by KBR … and may have suffered health problems … KBR inappropriately distributed chlorinated wastewater to 5,000 U.S. troops at Camp Q-West … north of Baghdad… KBR disagreed with the report.”

Many Vets depend on the VA. Privatizing it will turn Vets worlds upside down. One thing our government can not do well is track massive contracts with private industry and contractors. There many examples of troops running into wall after wall after wall trying to get day to day military tasks completed – and being frustrated with civilians who do not respond to the military. The so called reduction of the military dating from the 1990′s is a myth. The funds and tasks have been redirected into private industry – at a loss to the military and increased danger to our troops. Privatization of the VA would be another disaster.

Regards

Dale R. Suiter

* Corp as in Marine Corp – the Corp is pronounced – core – folks. Often mispronounced by those who have not had the honor of Marine Corp service.

Note: Author does not support or approve of the Affordable Care Act. It is (my opinion) of something the government can not do well. Read the act and determine for yourself the many implications for the VA.
________________________________________

This is what neo-liberals have reduced all public services to....charity.  Rather than have Medicare and Medicaid or VET health programs.....we will see if corporations and other will donate to charities for even more tax write-offs rather than simply pay taxes!

DUTCH------I DO NOT HEAR YOU SHOUTING AGAINST ALL OF THIS....BUT YOU LOVE YOUR NSA COMPLEX DON'T YOU?????



Veterans Charities Ratings


The American Institute of Philanthropy recently released a report rating various veterans charities on how well they support the causes they were created to support.

We were surprised at some of the ratings in this report; not at others. Before you donate your hard-earned dollars to any charitable organization, check it out to see how much of its revenues actually go to support its charitable purpose, and how much goes to administrative expenses, salaries, and fundraising. You may be surprised!

Letter grades were based largely on the charities' fundraising costs and the percentage of money raised that was spent on its charitable activities.

The charities that received failing grades are in red type.

The charities that received grades of A or better are in bold blue type.

Here are the December 2007 veterans charities ratings, by the AIP:


Veterans Charities Ratings

Air Force Aid Society (A+)

American Ex-Prisoners of War Service Foundation (F)

American Veterans Coalition (F)

American Veterans Relief Foundation (F)

AMVETS National Service Foundation (F)

Armed Services YMCA of the USA (A-)

Army Emergency Relief (A+)

Blinded Veterans Association (D)

Coalition to Support America's Heroes (F)

Disabled American Veterans (D)

Disabled Veterans Association (F)
Notice the similarity of the name to Disabled American Veterans

Fisher House Foundation (A+)

Freedom Alliance (F)

Help Hospitalized Veterans/Coalition to Salute America's Heroes (F)

Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund (A+)

Military Order of the Purple Heart Service Foundation (F)

National Military Family Association (A)

National Veterans Services Fund (F)

National Vietnam Veterans Committee (D)

Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society (A+)

NCOA National Defense Foundation (F)

Paralyzed Veterans of America (F)

Soldiers' Angels (D)

United Spinal Association's Wounded Warrior Project (D)*
     * See update on Wounded Warrior Project

USO (United Service Organization) (C+)

Veterans of Foreign Wars and Foundation (C-)

Veterans of the Vietnam War & the Veterans Coalition (D)

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (D)

VietNow National Headquarters (F)

World War II Veterans Committee (D)


Read the complete AIP veterans charity watchdog report and veterans charities ratings.

Do you have questions about specific veterans charities?

First, check the list of veterans charities reviewed by Military-Money-Matters.com. If the charity you're interested in is not listed there, then check the references listed below the stars & stripes bar to look up information.

If you can't find the answer to your question in any of those sources, ask your questions about specific veterans charities. For ease of answering your questions, please make a separate submission for each different charity you wish to inquire about, and make the title of your submission the name of the charity. Thanks.

0 Comments

November 15th, 2013

11/15/2013

0 Comments

 
PLEASE STOP ALLOWING ALL PUBLIC SERVICES BE CAPTURED BY PRIVATE NON-PROFITS.  IT DOES NOT WORK.  EVEN IF YOU LIKE THE IDEA OF DONATING MONEY TO A DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION THAT HELPS YOUR COMMUNITY----WE LOSE SO MUCH MORE MONEY ON FRAUD AND CORRUPTION THEN IF WE HAD STRONG PUBLIC SECTOR AGENCIES. 

Baltimore has a history of fraud and corruption.  The citizens are fleeced by the wealthy in the city and by the City Hall staff that know its a free-for-all.  So, government has become an anathema.  Reverse this situation!!

IT ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE AND WON'T BE IF YOU HAVE OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY!  WORK ON THAT!!


WHEN GREENING ISN'T GREENING------SPINNING THE GREENING ISSUE.

When I hear that Baltimore City does not have the resources to monitor it thousands of empty lots but we have Hopkins' East Baltimore and Harbor East with billions of dollars in public money invested-----you see why communities in Baltimore are mad as heck with money flow.  The level of disinvestment is amazing.  We have no city oversight of anything and the public sector has been gutted to skeleton crews with private non-profits running everything.  Those private non-profits are funded by the same people getting all of the development money.  So, instead of our city government buying real estate to create parks and green spaces, it holds it with the intent to give it to a developer as soon as one comes by.  As citizens living in an area you have no ability to affect these decisions.  WE HAVE THE POWER AND MONEY I am told by private non-profits.  Indeed, they do.  My tax revenue pays for their Master Plan.

The problem is not greening-----the problem is the idea of public land.  When parks are seen as assets to be sold or handed in public private partnerships a community does not have a sense of public property.  THIS IS THE DAMAGE BEING DONE IN BALTIMORE AS ALL PUBLIC LAND IS NOW PRIMED TO BE HANDED TO PRIVATE DEVELOPERS AT ANY TIME.  Our government does not work for the community----it works to hand public land to connected people.  Even huge long-established parks are being slated for business parks as residents are told to shut up.  Having private non-profits doing what is public sector work----public greening, leads to so much waste of funding and resources that it ultimately hurts the greening efforts.

In Baltimore, because we have few public employees working to maintain existing green areas these private non-profits dole out money to people with good intentions who inevitably abandon green projects and they go to seed.  OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER......MONEY GOES INTO PROJECTS WITH NO LONG-TERM MAINTENANCE.  What these greening non-profits are doing is replacing public sector workers who would be on the city payroll and paid to maintain these green spaces for the long-term AS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE.  So, you have a citizen employed by the Parks Department that keeps these green spaces going with or without community volunteers. 

IT IS INSANE TO SEND GREEN MONEY TO THESE PROJECTS THAT DO NOT LAST OR ARE BOOTED OUT IN SHORT TIME!

So, we have a broken system of greening on the community level and we have a corrupt system of greening by businesses that use it simply to cheapen the costs of their own projects and we have a LEEDS oversight system by the Federal government that everyone knows is riddled with fraud.



What we are seeing in Baltimore and in MD is the rise of private non-profits that allow corporations not paying taxes to 'donate' money to 'green' projects that are really simply extensions of their own developments.  In other words, they are getting tax breaks for their own projects.  So, all of these parks that are going along the waterfront right outside of corporate headquarters -----not just part of this corporate development?  OF COURSE IT IS FOR GOODNESS SAKE.  It is not greening, it is simply landscaping your own corporate complex.  Meanwhile, Patterson Park, a real public green space is threatened to become a business development even as residents shout loudly that they bought their homes because of this great big green space.
What we see in Baltimore is the use of 'temporary' greening projects used just to make a community attractive but, because the land is privately owned and not kept public, these spaces are all slated to have great big developments on them once homes are sold around the green space.  Neo-liberals are using greening to maximize profits for developers.  Is it greening to allow young people to build a community garden that all love and leave them fighting for existence beyond the few years it takes to fill houses with homeowners?  Of course not....it is a marketing ploy and this is the basis for most greening in Baltimore.


If corporations simply paid taxes or the State/City Attorney went after corporate fraud and corruption in Baltimore we would have government coffers flush with money to build public parks and maintain them.  We do not want public policy and development dictated to citizens by corporations refusing to be good corporate citizens.  Let them landscape their own corporate complexes so permanent greening on public land happens in the greater communities!



Corporate conservation takes root in South Baltimore Industrial sites around Middle Branch spruce up, capture runoff

1/10 By Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore Sun 5:00 a.m. EST, November 14, 2013

A sprawling paint factory in industrial South Baltimore might be the last place you'd expect to attract hummingbirds.

But Sherwin-Williams might now start drawing nectar-loving birds and more with native wildflowers, American beautyberry and pine trees it's planting at its manufacturing complex on Hollins Ferry Road. The effort is aimed at creating a more pleasant workplace, enhancing the neighborhood and helping clean up the harbor.

Sherwin-Williams is one of a handful of companies — some with checkered environmental records — that have signed on to spruce up their properties, part of a new initiative to enlist businesses, nonprofits and government agencies there in helping to boost the city's anemic tree canopy, attract more wildlife and restore its degraded urban waters.

The Second Harbor project focuses on greening industrial lands in the lower Gwynns Falls, which flows into the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, the less developed, grittier adjunct to the Inner Harbor.

"What we're trying to do is enlist particularly the industrial properties in the Middle Branch ... to look at how they can manage their lands to improve wildlife habitat as well as to address stormwater quality issues," said J. Morgan Grove, a research scientist in the U.S. Forest Service's Baltimore field station.

The effort is a partnership between the Forest Service, Baltimore's Parks & People Foundation and the Wildlife Habitat Council, a national nonprofit based in Silver Spring that encourages corporations to undertake voluntary conservation projects on their properties and in adjoining communities.

The habitat council, which is holding its annual symposium in Baltimore this week, sees the effort as a potential model for environmental restoration in other urban areas.

"Once we start working in Baltimore, we can reiterate this in Denver, Philadelphia and Miami and other areas that have similar conditions," said Jeff Popp, the council's land restoration manager.

Other companies involved include:

•Maryland Chemical Co., which is creating rain gardens at its Childs Street site, and planting trees and other vegetation to attract bees and butterflies.

• Vulcan Materials, a producer of stone, sand and gravel, plans to put floating wetlands in a stormwater pond bordering its Middle Branch compound, to provide wildlife habitat and reduce the flow of sediment into the harbor.

• Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. is planting shrubbery and creating a butterfly garden along the Middle Branch at its Spring Gardens complex, where the company once manufactured and stored gas for heating the city's homes and businesses.

•The Baltimore Community Toolbank, a nonprofit "lending library" for tools, plans to install rain gardens around its building on Wicomico Street and a cistern to capture rooftop runoff.

Some of the companies have had toxic legacies in Baltimore.

BGE spent tens of millions of dollars to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater discovered in the 1980s at its Spring Gardens site.

Maryland Chemical had operated at the South Baltimore site where a casino is now under construction. The Maryland Department of the Environment has approved the developer's plan to cover contaminated ground there with new buildings, pavement and clean soil. The state ordered the developer to install a system for venting any vapors from the ground that might enter the casino building.

Sherwin-Williams has paid $600,000 to federal and state regulators in the past two years to settle waste-storage and air-pollution violations at its Baltimore plant.

The Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing what might be done to clean up groundwater beneath the plant that was contaminated decades ago with toluene and other petroleum compounds.

Mike Levitsky, the plant's manager, said the company considers those issues behind it and has joined this effort because "it's the right thing to do," not to comply with any regulatory mandates.

"It's a great thing," he said, "not only for the neighborhood but for the employees, to come into a plant that's green." He said he hopes the plant's 118 workers will take breaks outside and use the hiking trail planned along the back of the 23-acre tract.


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Raise your hand if you understand that any justice issue given to a profit-making venture will not lead to the results intended!!!!  When I asked Maryland environmental groups to stop the fraud of greening money so we can use more money for actual greening----they admit the fraud and refuse to speak out.

WE DON'T NEED GREENING INDUSTRY-----WE NEED PEOPLE EMPOWERED TO CREATE THEIR OWN ENVIRONMENTS WITH THE IDEA THEY WILL STAY THERE AND REAP THE REWARDS!!!

The greening of capitalism?
By Heather RogersIssue #70: Features
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This article is adapted from a talk at the Northeast Socialist Conference in October 2009 in New York City.

>>>>>>

Green capitalism’s bottom line is that it promises a growing economy that uses less from the biosphere. We don’t have to have a slow-growth or no-growth economy to save the planet. To prove this point, the authors of Natural Capitalism recount the success story of DuPont, the chemical company. In the late 1990s, DuPont voluntarily adopted the goals of the Kyoto Protocol, which meant they would cut their greenhouse gas emissions to less than half of 1991 levels. This led to a net savings of $6 for every ton of carbon dioxide that DuPont shed. Natural Capitalism uses this example to say, “Look, it works.” Hawken and the Lovinses go on to point out, “America could shed $300 billion a year from its energy bills using existing technology. The Earth’s climate can thus be protected, not at a cost, but at a profit.” This is the strand of thinking that others, including Thomas Friedman, have picked up on. It sounds really good to a lot of powerful people, powerful corporations, and powerful politicians beholden to those corporations.

But when you think it through—it’s not that complicated, I’m not an economist--what does DuPont do with the money they save? They put it right back into making more chemicals. They put it back into growing their business because that’s what you have to do in capitalism. That’s the logic of the market. You have to grow or you lose out to the competition. (So we get more chemicals—wonderful!) Other questions spring from this. If corporations have slightly greener methods of producing whatever it is they make, isn’t that better? It could be, except that these energy savings aren’t retired. Whatever energy Wal-Mart forgoes in its more efficient stores and delivery trucks nevertheless gets used by the company. That energy, and more, is consumed by the next Wal-Mart that’s built and the next.

Now I’m going to talk about how this applies to the research I’ve been doing. For my new book, Green Gone Wrong, I traveled around the world to explore how green capitalism is working on the ground. The book takes a broad look at the basic things we need to live, including food, shelter, and transportation. Today I’m going to cover organic farming and biofuels.

Green capitalism tells us that by serving not just profits, but also people and the planet—known as the “triple bottom line”—we’ll fix the market and thereby remedy the Earth’s ills. We’re told that we can use environmental realities to change how the market works, but what green capitalism seems to foster is a reshaping of environmental crisis to the market’s ends.

To look at organic farming, I went to upstate New York and spent some time on small farms. These growers are doing amazing work cultivating rich biological gene pools, outsmarting bugs and weeds without chemicals, fertilizing the soil using nutrients generated on the farm, not in some factory a thousand miles away. Most people would agree, this kind of small nonconventional farming is environmentally sound; the hitch is that it’s not economically sustainable.

I spent time on a farm that sells greens for $40 a pound—I’m not exaggerating— and a dozen eggs go for $14. The farmer earns about $7 an hour. He couldn’t afford to buy the very produce he grows and sells. A big problem is that his fixed costs are high. The farm is located about sixty-five miles from New York City. The land has become so valuable and his property taxes have gone up so much that he can’t keep up. Local farmers get no special status when their property value is assessed; they’re liable for the same fees as developers who carve the countryside into parcels and install McMansions. Unconventional farmers lack institutional infrastructure and support for their work. Despite the heroic image of the local organic grower selling produce at the farmer’s market, these people struggle hard to do their work, and not all organic farms survive.

In terms of locally grown food being a remedy to environmental troubles, other important questions need to be answered. Can you really feed a city of 8 million people through local farms? There are some romanticized notions of using local farming to overtake agribusiness that need to be interrogated. For now, I’m looking at it from this economic framework.

Then I went to South America to look at globally produced organic foods, particularly those grown in the Global South for export to the United States. This has been happening as smaller organic food companies have been bought up and consolidated by large corporations, including Kraft, General Mills, and Heinz. The big processors need supplies year round and they need a lot of them, so they purchase inputs from outside of the U.S.— Chile, China, and Paraguay, to name a few. I went to Paraguay, to one of the largest organic sugar plantations and mills on the planet. It produces one-third of the organic sugar consumed in the United States, supplying General Mills for Cascadian Farm and its other organic brands, and Silk soymilk sold by Dean Foods.

At this plantation I found that the company is clearing native forests for organic cropland because the organic market is increasing at such a rapid clip and the firm wants to cash in while shoppers are buying. Since margins are higher on organic foods, unconventionally raised goods present a great opportunity to ratchet up profits. Instead of growing the sugarcane in a way that protects biodiversity, the plantation is essentially a large monocrop. It also uses factory farm poultry manure as fertilizer—from the kind of place that administers antibiotics to keep infections from spreading inside tightly packed houses, and arsenic to encourage rapid growth (the birds’ legs can easily snap beneath all the weight). The plantation is fundamentally relying on industrial farming methods to make organics work.

Even more disturbing is that they supplement their supply by buying cane from small campesino farmers. Despite being registered organic and fair trade, the farmers I talked to don’t always get the higher price because if the mill isn’t buying (because it’s gotten enough from other farmers or its own fields) then they can’t sell at the higher premium. Even though they’re registered organic and fair trade, there’s no guarantee that the mill will buy their cane. Nonetheless, the mill gets to stamp its packages with “fair trade” and “organic.” According to the Fair Trade Labeling Organization, of all fair trade production globally, only 20 percent is actually sold as fair trade. The producers are only able to sell 20 percent of what they grow at fair-trade prices. “Trust marks” such as “organic” and “fair trade” create the idea that we’re doing the right thing, but these practices are really complicated on the ground. These farmers can’t afford to pay for fair trade or organic certification so they have to rely on the mill to pay for it—and if they don’t sell to that mill then the campesinos don’t get the higher income. Since the certification doesn’t belong to the farmers, the power dynamics that created an unfair and ecologically taxing system are not remade. If you’re not dealing with the structural workings of the system, you’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

In terms of biofuels, I went to Borneo in the rainforest and, as many of you may have heard, there is a food crisis there and a lot of deforestation going on. Indonesia is the world’s third-largest carbon dioxide emitter largely because of deforestation. A lot of what’s driving the deforestation is the growing of palm oil tree plantations and the palm oil growers are really driving the deforestation with the help of the government. Indonesia doesn’t have factories or a financial market, it has plantations—that’s the motor of their economy. What I found in indigenous villages in the rainforest is that the palm oil companies are coming in and taking advantage of unclear land ownership, as happens the world over. Although communities have lived there for hundreds of years, they have no title deeds so palm oil plantations can move in more easily, clear-cutting and burning the rainforest as they go. It’s bitterly ironic that companies are destroying some of the biggest carbon stores in the name of making the green fuel mostly for Western markets.

And as a lot of us know, corn-based ethanol is a total disaster. We have to ask, why do we have these biofuels? Biofuels made from used cooking grease is a great idea, but when you deploy that in the context of the market you get speculation, food crises, and greater pressure on the environment. One of the Borneo plantations I went to—where we actually caught an illegal chainsaw crew in the act—sells its palm oil to Wilmar, which is partially owned by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). This all links back to the biggest, most powerful corporate interests. Cargill also has substantial plantations in Borneo and is an increasingly influential player in biodiesel. The biofuels system we’re currently building up allows companies such as ADM and Cargill to maintain their political and economic position so they like it.

As these examples, and others in the book, flesh out, the market has a distinct inability to solve environmental crises because it can’t adequately value nature. That doesn’t mean great methods and technologies for balancing out the trauma of the biosphere don’t exist—they do. We don’t see more of the solutions that work, including superefficient architecture and transportation systems, as well as biomimicry and service leasing, because as yet these options aren’t profitable enough. Instead of our greater environmental consciousness transforming the way business is done, what we more often see is the market contorting ecological problems so they fit into some sort of profitable framework. To bring about change we must experience ourselves as political actors and not simply shoppers who are supposed to vote with our wallets.


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Below you see what is a great idea for any greening in urban areas------these people want to see greening and community gardens succeed.  They work hard and do good things.  Yet, they are connected with organizations like Homewood Development Corporation which is an arm of Hopkins Development so, the land they support and protect will not stand against any Hopkins' development plans.  It is selective protection.

I work a long developed community garden ----one of the first to get that designation.  A few years ago Hopkins development came into that space with plans of their own and my garden didn't have a leg to stand on.  I was told the 'community garden' designation no longer means anything.  Indeed, locals trying to do just what this organization promotes can go through the Baltimore City Hall program for greening designation and have the city sell the land right from under it with 2 weeks notice.  As I said earlier, some greening gardens are on land owned by private individuals that know the land will be developed.  So, unless you are a corporation using greening to landscape your real estate, there is no way for most people in the city to know that their gardens will remain public and protected.
 

GETTING GREENING TAX CREDITS FOR LANDSCAPING DEVELOPMENTS YOU ARE BUILDING NOW OR TO ENHANCE SALES OF PROPERTY AROUND IT IS NOT A PUBLIC ASSET.

Land Security for Green Spaces

There are about 17,000 vacant lots in Baltimore City, of which 6,650 are owned by City government. With so much vacant land, it’s not surprising that residents transform vacant land into community gardens, pocket parks, and much more. Some of these urban oases are on City-owned land, some are on abandoned
property, and some are created with permission from the owner.  Understandably, it’s hard for City government to keep track of which “vacant” lots are actually community assets. For example,
while about 750 lots have been adopted by residents, not all of the projects work out. Some projects are meant as temporary uses. And some are on abandoned properties.  That’s where Baltimore Green Space comes in. We collect information about Baltimore’s community-managed open spaces.
When we tell the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) about these lots, the land is not offered for sale – at least not without investigation and thought. Why?
Because community-managed open spaces make neighborhoods more attractive to prospective residents.  We also like to learn about community-managed open spaces for other reasons: to connect the residents who care for the sites with
services they may need; to inform studies about how community greening is improving Baltimore; and to connect new volunteers with green spaces.
Unfortunately, we don’t know about all the green spaces – and in the past year, there have been some sad cases. For example, about 20 years ago public funds were used to landscape a lot across
from Pimlico Race Track so that it could be a buffer. Now those investments will most likely be lost. This could have been avoided had Baltimore Green Space reported the lot to HCD. A second site has had a happier resolution. A lot from Sunflower
Village, a lovely garden in Poppleton, was included in a sales contract. Fortunately, HCD was able to substitute another parcel, as Poppleton has no lack of other vacant land.


On Tuesday, June 19, 6 to 8 pm, Baltimore Green Space will present a workshop, Land Security for Community Open Spaces.

We will cover the basics of land preservation (for the greatest
Community Space Spotlight:
Govans Urban Forest
The Govans Urban Forest is approximately
one third of an acre in the 5200 block of
York Road. Baltimore City required that it
be preserved when a business was built
on the same parcel of land. Yet while it
had been officially preserved, it received
very little care and had become trashy and
overrun with invasive vines.
In 2012, the York Road Partnership started
to manage the forest, with help from
neighborhood volunteers, the Loyola
University rugby team, and the Friends
School. Volunteers have removed trash
and invasive plants, planted trees where
needed, and created a lovely sign.

800 Wyman Park Drive, Suite 010 • Baltimore MD 21211 • 443-695-7504


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WE ARE STARVING EXISTING BUSINESSES AND WATCHING AS CITY COMMUNITIES BECOME BLIGHTED WITH LOST SMALL BUSINESS EMPLOYERS AS THESE INNOVATION CENTERS IN TECHNOLOGY ARE FUNDED.  WE NEED BALANCE IN BUSINESS AND GREENING.


Do you know that the Baltimore Board of Estimates working for the Baltimore Development Corporation killed more small business contractors in two decades by handing public work to connected large corporations and that all we have to do is reverse this.  Send away the piggyback policies that hand all business to Montgomery County firms winning state bids......send away the awards to global corporations that have only nefarious profiteering on the mind.  Send away immigrant firms enriched from stealing workers wages and using abusive workplace laws to maximize profits.....and VOILA-----you have a return to small business in Maryland/Baltimore.

Did you know that Santoni's Grocer closed his doors because his business was going to be used to subsidize downtown corporate tax breaks?  Do you know the war on convenience liquor stores is more about handing alcohol sales to national chain stores so won't reduce alcohol sales only who gets them?  Do you know that the Enterprise Zones have filled development with national chain restaurants and retail that make all US cities look the same.....all owned by the same few corporations?  Does sound like good policy does it?  So, why the emphasis on tech small startups especially since they seem to all be swallowed into these global corporations as soon as they prove marketable?  Could it be that taxpayer money is  being used yet again to pay the cost of global corporate R and D? 

That is indeed what is happening.  As Wall Street's MarketPlace Money decried startups across the country are simply dying on the vine because there is no money in the economy to spend and/or they simply are taken over by larger firms.  Does a model for these startups that look overseas for growth right away because US citizens are impoverished seem a good one especially when it is these same impoverished workers paying the taxes used in these startup projects that bring no jobs?  OF COURSE NOT.....THERE IS NOTHING GOOD ABOUT THESE CORPORATE POLICIES BROUGHT BY MARYLAND NEO-LIBERALS!

We need the youth who are being steered to this gimmicks to think long term and see that global markets are dead and any startup depending on domestic economy will not fly until domestic workers are brought back to middle-class.  Why not work on getting rid of neo-liberals by running labor and justice candidates in all primaries so small businesses across the board can thrive in Baltimore and Maryland!!!



Locust Point-based retrievRE Launches to Help Small Businesses Find Office Space
In Business, Locust Point, Real Estate / By Kevin Lynch / 11 November 2013

  Technology and real estate have been grabbing a lot of business headlines around Baltimore of late. Now, Alex Kopicki and Jeff Jacobson of Locust Point’s Solstice Partners have come up with a new online service, retrievRE, which combines both of these surging industries.

Best known locally as the developers of the upcoming 900 E. Fort Ave. project, it was Kopicki and Jacobson’s experience looking for their own office space that led them to create a website catered toward small businesses in search of office space of their own. ”If you are looking for residential properties, you have websites like Zillow and Truilia,” said Jacobson, co-founder of Solstice Partners. “But for office and retail space, there is no reliable system to gather information. We were looking for space and thought the system was broken, and we are in the real estate business.”

This search process led to the creation and development of retrievRE, which Kopicki and Jacobson launched in October. retrievRE is a completely free website for landlords and brokers to post available office and retail listings and for businesses to post their office needs and search for suitable locations.

The website provides information such as property owner, gross square footage, year built and more for 10,000+ buildings in Baltimore City and Baltimore County. Users can then provide listings and supplemental building information to create a comprehensive, crowd-sourced database. Properties in Howard and Anne Arundel County will be added to the database by the second quarter of 2014.

“95% of all commercial lease transactions in the region involve less than 20,000 square feet of space,” said Jacobson in a recent press release. “These relatively small leases can become lost in the shuffle by the larger, more visible requirements. In reality, these smaller spaces generate the highest per square foot rents. This is a powerful tool for landlords and brokers to fill in the gaps.”


“Priorities for business location are more and more about commute times, walkability and nearby amenities,” Jacobson continued. To address this, retrievRE integrates Yelp, Walkscore.com and Transitscore for each building to provide a digital map of nearby restaurants, businesses, transportation systems and shopping. 


retrievRE does not get involved with the actual lease negotiations or transactions, but will gain income through pre-negotiated rates with preferred vendors to help with the nuances of leasing new space including design, space planning, construction build-out, moving, furniture, insurance, banking and tele-data systems. retrievRE also hopes to offer premium listings in the future.


Kopicki and Jacobson anticipate expanding into the Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia markets in the near future.




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November 13th, 2013

11/13/2013

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'The social media meme for Veterans Day------22 veterans commit suicide every day because they cannot get help'

BELOW YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING ACROSS THE US-----VETERAN'S ADMINISTRATION IS BEING DISMANTLED AND MADE INTO PRIVATE NON-PROFITS JUST AS WITH ALL PUBLIC HEALTH.  ALL FEDERAL AND STATE FUNDING FOR VETERANS ARE DIVERTED FROM THE VA MEDICAL CENTERS TO THESE UNACCOUNTABLE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS. 

THE VA REPRESENTS ONE OF THE LARGEST OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND THEY ARE PRIVATIZING IT----do you really think neo-liberals plan to keep ENTITLEMENTS?

In Maryland we have no oversight and 1/2 of social service funding is stolen through fraud so when you build a system that takes public to private as is happening with the VA------all this fraud and corruption becomes harder to follow-----THINK COMPLEX FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT BY WALL STREET.

You see an endless list of charities and non-profits helping veterans.  These people are not necessarily bad-----but they should recognize the value of a centralized care system and understand that statistics are showing veterans are not getting the health care these institutions claim is happening.  I refer to the Medieval Ages often because what is happening is a rise of Catholic Charities for example as where people go to get help with the wealthy patrons----sending charity as they feel free.  They did not pay taxes to support public systems----they did just as is happening in Maryland now.

People cannot be citizens if they are tied to charity for public service.  Paying taxes just to get charity when you need help is Medieval.

STOP ALLOWING NEO-LIBERALS TO CONTROL THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY-----LABOR AND JUSTICE IS 80% OF THE DEMOCRATIC BASE----RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE TO TURN THIS AROUND!



Too many veterans charities fail to support ex-army staff ...


Baltimore VA office worst in nation for processing disability claimsOffice that handles claims for Maryland is slowest and makes most mistakes
Robert Fearing, who served in the Air Force for 20 years, with… (Barbara Haddock Taylor,…)January 26, 2013|By Yvonne Wenger, The Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore office of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is the slowest in the country in processing disability claims for servicemen and servicewomen — averaging about a year — and makes more mistakes than any other office.

The failures locally are a symptom of a national breakdown: Across the country, more than 900,000 veterans wait an average of nine months for the agency to determine whether they qualify for disability benefits, according to the VA.

Even as the VA says it is working to fix problems in Baltimore and nationwide, Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, calls the situation "shameful."

"You have to think about that young veteran in Baltimore who has just come back from his third or fourth tour," he said. "They are stuck in limbo, and our veterans deserve better than that."

Officials with the VA acknowledge as much. A spokeswoman for the agency called the delays "unacceptable" and said the VA is focused on clearing its backlog and getting veterans the benefits that they have earned and deserve.

Yet meanwhile, the delays continue.

Robert Fearing, a combat veteran of the Iraq war and a Bronze Star recipient, has been hospitalized three times for paranoia and anxiety caused by post-traumatic stress disorder since he filed his disability claim with the Baltimore office 21/2 years ago. He's still waiting for his benefits.

"I have gone through war fighting the enemy and now I need to fight my own government for the benefits I deserve," said Fearing, who was an Aberdeen resident when he filed his claim but now lives in Stafford, Va. "It is absolutely frustrating and despicable."

Fearing said the base where he was stationed, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, was attacked by mortar rounds more than 150 times in the six months he served there from 2004 to 2005.

The trauma left him with paranoia, a belief that he's being investigated and followed, a feeling "you can't shake out of your head," said Fearing, 44, who is married and has two daughters at home. Fearing, who retired from the Air Force in 2007 after serving for 20 years, earned a master's degree while he was in the military to further his career in counterintelligence. But he said the work now triggers debilitating anxiety and he is seeking an early retirement from his government job.

"The real issue with it is, I want someone to acknowledge the fact that I've got it. I've had to acknowledge it and I have to live with it. What more do they need? Me to be hospitalized again?" he said.

The backlog, lag time and error rates at the VA have been the focus of congressional hearings, a cause for outrage by military advocacy groups and the subject of repeated media investigations. Yet the situation has grown significantly worse.

The VA has acknowledged that the problems at the Baltimore office, which serves all of Maryland, are severe enough to warrant additional training and quality checks.


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Leaked Memo: Afghan ‘Burn Pit’ Could Wreck Troops’ Hearts, Lungs
  • By Spencer Ackerman
  • 05.22.12
  • 5:00 AM

For years, U.S. government agencies have told the public, veterans and Congress that they couldn’t draw any connections between the so-called “burn pits” disposing of trash at the military’s biggest bases and veterans’ respiratory or cardiopulmonary problems. But a 2011 Army memo obtained by Danger Room flat-out stated that the burn pit at one of Afghanistan’s largest bases poses “long-term adverse health conditions” to troops breathing the air there.

The unclassified memo (.jpg), dated April 15, 2011, stated that high concentrations of dust and burned waste present at Bagram Airfield for most of the war are likely to impact veterans’ health for the rest of their lives. “The long term health risk” from breathing in Bagram’s particulate-rich air include “reduced lung function or exacerbated chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, atherosclerosis, or other cardiopulmonary diseases.” Service members may not necessarily “acquire adverse long term pulmonary or heart conditions,” but “the risk for such is increased.”

The cause of the health hazards are given the anodyne names Particulate Matter 10 and Particulate Matter 2.5, a reference to the size in micrometers of the particles’ diameter. Service personnel deployed to Bagram know them by more colloquial names: dust, trash and even feces — all of which are incinerated in “a burn pit” on the base, the memo says, as has been standard practice in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade.

Accordingly, the health risks were not limited to troops serving at Bagram in 2011, the memo states. The health hazards are an assessment of “air samples taken over approximately the last eight years” at the base.

The memo’s findings contradict years of U.S. military assurances that the burn pits are no big deal. An Army memo from 2008 about the burn pit at Iraq’s giant Balad air base, titled, “Just The Facts,” found “no significant short- or long-term health risks and no elevated cancer risks are likely among personnel” (.pdf). A 2004 fact sheet from the Pentagon’s deployment health library — and still available on its website — informed troops that the high particulate matter in the air at Bagram “should not cause any long-term health effects.” More recently, in October 2010, a Pentagon epidemiological study found “for nearly all health outcomes measured, the incidence for those health outcomes studied among personnel assigned to locations with documented burn pits and who had returned from deployment, was either lower than, or about the same as, those who had never deployed” (.pdf).

Over the years, thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have experienced respiratory and cardiopulmonary problems that they associate with their service. Some have sued military contractors for exposing them to unsafe conditions. For months, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) has urged the military to create a database of vets suffering neurological or respiratory afflictions, a move that’s winding through the legislative process. But the military has argued it doesn’t have sufficient evidence to associate environmental conditions on the battlefield with long-term health risks — and it argued that months after this memo is dated.

“As recently as April, in correspondence with the Defense Department and in discussions with my staff, the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs both continued to maintain that research has not shown any long-term health consequences due to burn pits,” Akin tells Danger Room. “They also maintained that remaining burn pits in Afghanistan were away from military populations to reduce exposure. It is disturbing to discover that at least at Bagram the military concluded that burn pits posed a serious health risk.”

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) has collected “hundreds” of anecdotes from vets complaining of health problems connected to serving near burn pits. “It’s good to see someone in the military is acknowledging there are going to be long-term problems with burn pits, but it’s disturbing that this memo is more than a year old and it doesn’t seem like the military has done anything about it,” says Tom Tarantino, IAVA’s deputy policy director, who deployed to Iraq in 2005 as an Army captain. “I lived next to a burn pit for six months at Abu Ghraib. You can’t tell me that was OK. That was pretty nasty. While I was there everyone was hacking up weird shit.”



Any visitor to the sprawling Bagram airfield knows the burn pit — if not by sight, then by smell. It’s an acrid, smoldering barbecue of trash, from busted furniture to human waste, usually manned by Afghan employees who cover their noses and mouths with medical breathing masks. Plumes of aerosolized refuse emerge from what troops refer to as “The Shit Pit,” mingle with Parwan Province’s already dust-heavy air, and sweep over the base. In February, that was where soldiers at the nearby Parwan detention facility accidentally incinerated the Koran.

At the time of the memo’s issuance, it noted that the affected population on the base contemporaneously was “40,000 Service Members and contractors.” Hundreds of thousands have cycled through the giant base since the U.S. seized it in 2001. Bagram is a major transit and logistics hub for the Afghanistan war, and one of the first bases the U.S. took and continuously operated during the war. Millions more have served in Iraq and Afghanistan near similar burn pits.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, studies conducted on the effects of breathing in Particulate Matter 10 and 2.5 have determined “a significant association between exposure to fine particles and premature mortality.” The Army memo reports that Bagram’s air had twice the amount of Particulate Matter 10 than the federal National Ambient Air Quality Standard, and more than three times the amount of Particulate Matter 2.5 as the standard.

Burn pits remain in use across Afghanistan. And although a study by the Institute of Medicine and sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs found last October that there is insufficient data to correlate those pits with health risks, troops’ cardiovascular problems are clearly on the rise: There were 91,013 cases reported in 2010, up sharply from 65,520 in 2001. A 2010 study found half of a small sample of soldiers who struggled to run two miles had undiagnosed bronchiolitis. Hundreds of troops have sued the pits’ contractor operators after experiencing chest pains, asthma and migraines. For years, the U.S. government has pled ignorance about the causes of those veterans’ ailments. And unless the military formally acknowledges that the burn pits pose a long-term health risk, it will be difficult for veterans to receive long-term health care for associated respiratory and cardiopulminary ailments from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“The acknowledgement that air-sampling data is now indicating that burn pits may pose a risk of chronic illness to our servicemen and women validates the need for the national burn pit registry that I have proposed,” Akin says. Tarantino backs him up: “We don’t want another Agent Orange scenario, where it takes 40 years for the military to admit the stuff was bad and then has to spend all this effort tracking down affected servicemembers.”

The U.S. Army and the NATO military command in charge of the Afghanistan war did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Even casual visitors to Bagram know that the air is a menace. Within days of my most recent reporting trip there, in August 2010, I developed a disgusting, productive cough that kept me from sleeping comfortably. Airmen and soldiers joked with me about catching “Bagram Lung.”

But for at least a year, the U.S. military has known that “Bagram Lung” won’t stay at Bagram. There’s a significant chance that it will plague a generation of Afghanistan veterans for the rest of their lives.


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Do you know that Maryland/Baltimore requested that a lead paint poison lawsuit won by Baltimore residents be paid for with HUD funding for section 8 housing and low-income housing vouchers?  These funds would of course be where you go to push for safety in housing for lead paint for example.  It is also where money for homeless vets goes. 

WHEN I SPEAK WITH THE HOMELESS MEN ON THE STREETS IN BALTIMORE MANY TELL ME THEY ARE VETERANS AND HAVE BEEN DENIED ACCESS TO HOUSING FROM BALTIMORE HUD.

There is a concerted effort to divert funds from HUD away from low-income housing and it is all illegal.  When neo-liberals like Cardin and Mikulski pretend to be sending money or help-----they are not telling the truth. 

THERE ARE TOO MANY VETERANS ON THE STREETS IN BALTIMORE BEING HARASSED BY POLICE AND DENIED SUPPORT.


RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU KNOW THAT MUCH OF THIS MONEY IS LOST TO FRAUD AND CORRUPTION?  EVERYONE!!!
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Housing Grants for Veterans in Maryland

By Serena Cassidy

Housing Grants for Veterans in Maryland thumbnail   
Maryland housing grants help veterans find or adapt housing.

Federal and private organizations provide housing grant funding to military veterans who live in Maryland. The grants cover closing costs, adaptations or modification to housing for veterans with a disability, housing vouchers for homeless veterans and funding to support organizations that provide services for veterans.

    U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

        The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development`s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program provides grant funding to Maryland's public housing authority in the form of housing vouchers. The funding supports the transition of up to 50 homeless Maryland veterans to permanent housing units. To receive funding, veterans must have a referral to a Maryland public housing authority that has HUD VASH vouchers available. The vouchers cover up to 70 percent of a veteran's rent.
    U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

        The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides grant funding via home modification programs designed to support veterans. The Specially Adapted Housing grant provides up to $50,000 in funding to veterans who have disabilities related to service to modify or adapt an existing home to increase wheelchair accessibility and enable their independence. The Special Home Adaptation grant supports veterans in modifying or adapting their home for increased mobility. The maximum grant amount is $10,000. The Home Improvements and Structural Adaptations grant provides assistance to veteran`s with disabilities, service-related or otherwise, for home improvements. Eligible improvements include modifications that allow a veteran to continue to receive treatment in his home, and adaptations to bathrooms to make them accessible. To apply, a veteran must have a medical statement from his physician stating that adaptations or modifications are necessary to remain in the home.


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Do you know that the Baltimore VA is the worse run in the nation because funding cuts make it unable to operate as it should?  Do you know that substance abuse treatment is part of the VA?  So, why do we have cuts in funding for the VA but we have funding for private non-profits for VA?  Do you know that there is a lack of  public transparency with non-profits, so why would we do this?

THIS IS THE PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH -----WE DO NOT WANT THIS!!



Nonprofit to Open $2.3M Facility for Homeless Veterans
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 Related

  A nonprofit is building a center to treat homeless veterans with drug or alcohol addictions in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore.

The center at 1611 Baker St. will cost the Baltimore Station $2.3 million to build and acquire the property, executive director Michael Seipp says.

The west Baltimore site currently houses a former Catholic Rectory and two rowhomes. The 16,800-square-foot Baker Street Station will be the nonprofit's second treatment center.

Funding for the center comes from four sources: the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Abell Foundation, and the France-Merrick Foundation.

The Baltimore Station is also hosting a fundraiser April 14 in Federal Hill's Cross Street Market to raise money for the new center.

Many military troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are being asked to serve multiple tours of duty, which puts them at a higher risk of getting post-traumatic stress disorder, Seipp says. And many of these men turn to alcohol or drugs, which, in turn, can lead to homelessness.

Veterans represent about one-quarter of all homeless people, twice that of the civilian population, according to the center's statistics.
The Baltimore Station employs 28 and has a $2 million annual operating budget.

Writer: Julekha Dash
Source: Michael Seipp, Baltimore Station


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Do you really think every time Obama or neo-liberals in Congress and the Maryland Assembly say they are sending funding to help veterans that it actually gets to the veteran????  Not with these private non-profits all working with no oversight and no history of performance.  We need professionals working in this field and not only good will and charity!!

THE ONLY TIME YOU HEAR THESE NEO-LIBERALS TALK ABOUT CARING FOR THE VETS IS WHEN MEDIA BREAKS ON HOW BAD IT IS FOR VETS!!!!!


Suicides Highlight Failures in Veterans’ Support System

Are local vets getting the help they need? by Aaron Glantz — March 24, 2012, 10:55 a.m.0


Francis Guilfoyle, a 55-year-old homeless veteran, drove his 1985 Toyota Camry to the Department of Veterans Affairs campus in Menlo Park early in the morning of Dec. 3, took a stepladder and a rope out of the car, threw the rope over a tree limb and hanged himself.

It was an hour before his body was cut down, according to the county coroner’s report.

“When I saw him, my heart just sank,” said Dennis Robinson, 51, a formerly homeless Army veteran who discovered Guilfoyle’s body. “This is supposed to be a safe place where a vet can get help. Something failed him.”

Guilfoyle’s death is one of a series of recent suicides by veterans who live in the jurisdiction of the Department of Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. The Palo Alto V.A. is one of the agency’s elite campuses, home to the Congressionally chartered National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The poor record of the Department of Veterans Affairs in decreasing the high suicide rate of veterans has already emerged as a major issue for policy makers and the judiciary.

On Wednesday, the V.A. Inspector General in Washington released the results of a nine-month investigation into the May 2010 death of another veteran, William Hamilton. The report said social workers at the department in Palo Alto made “no attempt” to ensure that Hamilton, a mentally ill 26-year-old who served in Iraq, was hospitalized at a department facility in the days before he killed himself by stepping in front of a train in Modesto.

The Bay Area was also shocked by the March 14 death of Abel Gutierrez, a 27-year-old Iraq war veteran, who the police said killed his mother and his 11-year-old sister before shooting himself. Two weeks earlier the Gilroy Police Department intervened to ask the V.A. to help Gutierrez.

An examination of each case reveals faulty communication inside the V.A. system, which missed opportunities to help the veterans.

“I know people at the V.A. care a lot and work hard, but it’s a pattern that’s disturbing,” said Representative Jerry McNerney, a Democrat from Pleasanton who serves on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “It doesn’t look good.”

Last May, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit accused the department of “unchecked incompetence” and ordered it to overhaul the way it provides mental health care and disability benefits.

Noting that an average of 18 veterans commit suicide every day, Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote, “No more veterans should be compelled to agonize and perish while the government fails to perform its obligations.” The department appealed, and Judge Reinhardt’s opinion has been temporarily vacated, pending a ruling from a an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit.

Gordon Erspamer, a San Francisco lawyer representing the two groups that brought the suit, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, said it was “incredible that this sorry record of ineptitude and lack of procedures for emergency cases continues even under the watchful eye of the Ninth Circuit.”

Two weeks before Gutierrez’s death, his family called the Gilroy Police Department and asked for officers to come to their home “to get him some help,” according to Sgt. Chad Gallacinao, a spokesman for the police department. Sergeant Gallacinao said a police officer who was also a military veteran was dispatched to the house and took notes.

Two days later, Sergeant Gallacinao said, the officer returned to the Gutierrez home with a representative of the Community Veterans Project, a nonprofit organization that trains law enforcement officials in interaction with psychologically wounded veterans.

“They made contact with the V.A. specifically to obtain services for Gutierrez,” Sergeant Gallacinao said.

Dave Bayard, a V.A. spokesman in Los Angeles, confirmed that a call had been placed to the Vet Center in Santa Cruz, but said the request was mild. “It wasn’t like ‘This guy is really in need of mental health,’” Bayard said.

The V.A. said Gutierrez had briefly received care at a department facility in Washington State, where he was a National Guardsman, but never visited a department campus in California.

In an e-mail, Kerri Childress, spokeswoman for the V.A. Palo Alto Health Care System, said that despite the intervention of the Gilroy Police Department in Gutierrez’s case, “We had no way of knowing he was even in the area.”

Shad Meshad, a Vietnam War veteran and former combat medic who heads the National Veterans Foundation, was unpersuaded. “It’s about time that they don’t make excuses,” Meshad said. “Why would you say it’s not serious when the police called?”

Meshad said the responses of Bayard and Childress were typical of the “finger-pointing” exhibited by the department when tragedy strikes.

Before Hamilton killed himself, he said he saw demon women and regularly talked to a man he had killed in Iraq. He had been admitted to the Palo Alto V.A.’s psychiatric ward before on nine separate occasions. Three days before he died, Hamilton’s father brought him to a community hospital in Calaveras County, which, according to hospital records obtained by The Bay Citizen, tried to transfer him to three V.A. hospitals, including the one in Palo Alto. But at 4:39 p.m., a department social worker wrote that day in his notes, the Palo Alto facilities “would not accept a transfer of a veteran for admittance this late in the day.”

Later that night, Hamilton was admitted to David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force base in Fairfield. That Sunday, the medical center discharged Hamilton. Within hours, he was dead.

V.A. officials have said they have no record of Hamilton being denied care and that their records do not show any telephone calls between the Calaveras County hospital and the Palo Alto V.A. But the inspector general’s report revealed that the Palo Alto hospital had no method of tracking incoming calls and that “no outgoing calls were recorded” from any Veterans Affairs Medical Center extension.

During the investigation into Hamilton’s death, the inspector general learned of yet another incident, in May 2011, when the doctor on duty refused to accept a veteran for treatment. According to the report, the psychiatrist said, “We don’t accept patients for transfer at night.”

In an e-mailed response to questions, Dr. Stephen Ezeji-Okoye, deputy chief of staff of the Palo Alto V.A., said that since Hamilton’s death his network had “revised our tracking mechanism so we are better able to analyze the disposition of any cases referred to the V.A. Palo Alto Health Care System.” Dr. Ezeji-Okoye said the Palo Alto V.A. had always accepted psychiatric patients 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Childress, the agency spokeswoman, said the Palo Alto V.A. was committed to improving the quality and availability of mental health care. The hospital is building a new 80-bed inpatient mental health center, she said, which is scheduled to open in June. It will have “patient access to enclosed, landscaped gardens” and “ample use of natural light to all internal patients,” she said, with a color scheme “specifically selected to support the healing process.”

This article also appears in the Bay Area edition of The New York Times.



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Most of the private non-profits below are Baltimore's reason the VA is defunded-----they all have INC after the names and many are national private non-profits receiving billions of Federal and State funding all over America with no results given.

WHY WOULDN'T ALL THESE SERVICES SIMPLY COME FROM A CENTRAL VA ADMINISTRATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND?

I heard a Maryland pol say that selling the VA building was next-----getting rid of public assets!


Neo-liberals really hate public wealth!!

AID OUR VETERANS INC - Baltimore, MD

Welcome to Homeless Persons Representation  

Boot Camp for Homeless Veterans--- Baltimore's Veterans Center (MCVET)

MD Homeless Military Veterans Salem Veteran Unemployment

Maryland - National Coalition for Homeless Veterans  

 Project PLASE Support Our Homeless Vets

Nonprofit to Open $2.3M Facility for Homeless Veterans 

Maryland Center For Veterans Education And Training - Day ...

Veterans Programs - Maryland WorkFORCE Promise

USDOL / VETS Programs for Maryland Veterans 

National Coalition for Homeless Veterans  Program gives homeless veterans shelter, food, health care, job


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"These grants are reducing the number of homeless veterans in Maryland, and one day we will see this travesty end," said HUD Regional Administrator Jane C.W. Vincent. "These vouchers put us one step closer to reaching that goal."

'The grants announced today are part of $75 million appropriated for Fiscal Year 2012 to support the housing needs of approximately 10,500 homeless veterans.  VA Medical Centers (VAMC) provide supportive services and case management to eligible homeless veterans. This is the first of two rounds of the 2012 HUD-VASH funding.  HUD expects to announce the remaining funding by the end of this summer'.


Maryland Receives Resources to House Homeless Veterans, People Living with AIDS

Posted on April 16, 2012 by mdhousing Washington –

Homeless shelters in six different jurisdictions will receive more than $1.6 million to supply permanent housing for more than 180 veterans across Maryland, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced. Learn more.

The resources come through HUD’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program as the nation works to significantly reduce the number of veterans living on the streets.

HUD also awarded $1.4 million in grants to provide permanent housing for extremely low-income Marylanders living with HIV/AIDS through the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program. Read the release.

Governor O’Malley has pledged to make homelessness a rare and brief occurrence by 2015. In January 2011, there were an estimated 7,747 individuals in Maryland – a two percent decline, according to HUD’s most recent point-in-time survey. That count included more than 1,033 homeless families and 592 veterans, HUD reported.


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Below you see the kinds of opportunities citizens of Baltimore have------students, veterans, volunteers do the work of public sector employees.  As with students volunteering, there is little sign that all this volunteering gets people jobs. 

Oliver is slated for affluent development and as such it is typical of the Enterprise Zone -----lots of fraud and corruption in who gets what real estate.  The bottom line is that this community next to Hopkins was starved of funding and resources.....it is blighted because people were not employed to keep these communities up.  At the same time billions of dollars went to East Baltimore and Hopkins over a few decades.....residents here could not get a job or if they worked at Hopkins, they were not paid enough to support themselves.  THE MONEY WAS THERE TO EMPLOY PUBLIC EMPLOYEES TO KEEP THESE COMMUNITIES FUNCTIONING----BUT THE GOAL WAS TO GENTRIFY TO AFFLUENT SO HIGH-UNEMPLOYMENT AND BLIGHT DOES THAT.

Now, as you see the same groups needing jobs are doing the work of public sector employees as volunteers and VISTAs.


If you look at the Board of the Oliver Community Assoc you will see all O'Malley/Rawlings-Blake connected friends who no doubt benefit from this association.  They are as well the Baltimore Democratic Party people-----THE SOURCE OF CRONY IN BALTIMORE!!!

So, what I see for veterans in Baltimore is a lot of money flowing to private non-profits and lots of veterans telling me they are not getting helped.  The statistics from national research show this is true----

Oliver, Baltimore

From Wikipedia

Oliver is a neighborhood in the Eastern district of Baltimore, Maryland. Its boundaries are the south side of North Avenue, the east side of Ensor Street, the west side of Broadway, and the north side of Biddle Street. This neighborhood, adjacent to Johns Hopkins Medical Campus and minutes from the Inner Harbor, lies east of the historic Greenmount Cemetery.


More than 1400 volunteers have been mobilized in Oliver from various student, veteran, and nonprofit groups. More than 54 tons of garbage has been removed from streets and alleyways. Two large murals have been painted. More than 50 trees and shrubs have been planted. Forests of weeds have been knocked back. One resident has been enrolled in a job retraining program and dozens have been given day labor opportunities. Boys were given the opportunity to participate in service learning and to attend special events. Weekly community walk-arounds have been conducted making more than 100 reports to the city.


Paving the way
for a better future.

About Maryland Center for Veterans Education & Training

Although relatively new as an agency, MCVET has already received a great deal of attention from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. On May 7, 1997, HUD declared that MCVET was the "National Model" for seamless services to homeless veterans.

Incorporated on February 25, 1993, the Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Corporation designed to provide homeless veterans and other veterans in need with comprehensive services that will enable them to rejoin their communities as productive citizens.



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October 22nd, 2013

10/22/2013

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TODAY'S BLOG WILL BE LONG BUT I THINK YOU WILL BE INTERESTED.  THOSE OF YOU NOT FROM BALTIMORE SHOULD KNOW THE SAME THING IS HAPPENING IN YOUR CITIES!

KNOW WHO IS GOING TO GET MASSIVE PROFITS FROM AN INFRASTRUCTURE STIMULUS FROM CONGRESS----$1 TRILLION IS THE SUGGESTION SO FAR.  See why US cities allowed the infrastructure to decline even as last decade profits for government soared! 

Hopkins was building its global corporate campus


For those that do not know that all that is development in Baltimore is Johns Hopkins then this blog will clear that up.  We need to be clear.....all these development decisions that most citizens in the city hate.....all of their tax revenue used to advance these development plans...ALL END UP IN MASSIVE PROFITS FOR JOHNS HOPKINS AND PLACES THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE IN THE HANDS OF THIS CORPORATION IN EVERY WAY.....WE WILL BE OWNED BY THE COMPANY STORE!

What we have here is a tangled web of investment that starts with the AIG involvement in the massive mortgage fraud that brought down the economy.  Now, AIG made hundreds of billions of dollars selling insurance CDS for toxic mortgage loans everyone knew were bad.  All these CDS centered in mostly this one insurance corporations because Wall Street needed the public to be forced to bail it out so all the banks would be paid 100% on the dollar for those bad loans.  So, massive amounts of profit for AIG in selling CDS for fraudulent loans and a complete bailout when co-conspirators declared it TOO BIG TO FAIL.  Below you see a spin-off of this fraud fueled AIG----Highstar Capital.  All of AIG's wealth was allowed to be dismantled and rebuild as separate corporations and Highstar Capital was one of them.  Why is this corporation of interest in Baltimore?  IT HAS AN INTIMATE CONNECTION WITH JOHNS HOPKINS THROUGH A CEO AS ALUMNI TO BOARD MEMBERSHIP -----THEY ARE DEEPLY CONNECTED.  If you look at AIG Highstar before the 2008 crash it was loaded with Ivy League university endowments that were soaring in profits from this massive fraud.  After the collapse and the independence of this corporation-----along come all that wealth to invest in future projects.

Now, the goal of the massive fraud was to cripple government at all levels with municipal debt.  They wanted to appear to force governments to privatize all that is public and in Maryland, Hopkins had their old friend and former mayor O'Malley in the governor's office.  If you look at what the Baltimore Development Corporation has done in partnerships and deals.....it is not to be overlooked that Highstar Capital has been given all of the deals involving the public sector assets in Baltimore.

No, I have already spoken about Hopkins' involvement in SAIC as a security corporation.  I have also alluded to Hopkins as MedStar partners expanding across America.



Medstar Health Corporate Office & Headquarters 5565 Sterrett Place,5th Fl. Columbia MD 21044


Now I am looking at something that will shock and awe as Hopkins becomes the investor to profit from the Port of Baltimore, Veola Energy, Advanced Disposal, and Talyst, a health biomedical corporation that sells Hopkins' research patents.

O'Malley and now Rawlings-Blake are committed to privatizing trash collection, transportation, water and sewage, and the Port and in each case Highstar owns the corporations linked to this privatization.  Keep in mind this is happening across America as these same corporations take public assets and services.  Remember, the endowments attached are Ivy League universities like Harvard in Boston, NYC, and Stanford in San Francisco.....remember Oakland, Calif as piloting the SAIC surveillance? 

So, it appears that these Ivy League schools are taking the money made by the AIG fraud and now are trying to own all public assets for massive profits.

VEOLA is one corporation of which I speak as privatizing public transportation.  It appears that VEOLA sold controlling interest in VEOLA ENERGY and WASTE to Highstar and in exchange they were given the rights to privatize public transportations in all the above cities.  That is why we see VEOLA taking MTA bus routes all over the state, disability transport, taxis, and BWI transport.  At the same time Highstar's ownership of the Energy and Waste division is giving them Baltimore's/Maryland's public  Waste Management Water Management business.  So, this is why we are now paying for trash pickup and seeing all these Board of Estimate awards that make no sense as they control the water infrastructure development.

Keep in mind that Highstar has connections with another AIG spinoff-----in Houston Texas with the natural gas/oil pipeline corporation Kinder Morgan.  See why Maryland will be a port for exporting natural gas?  They are involved in the pipelines down the mid-west from Canada.  Have you noticed we have been getting a lot of Texas consultants and businesses coming to Baltimore to do business?

The Port of Baltimore was given to this Highstar group by O'Malley.  They own all the Ports we hear in the news with striking labor unions-----we know how much Johns Hopkins hates unions and paying anything other than poverty wages.

It is important to see the future with this kind of private ownership of an entire city by one corporation----Johns Hopkins.  It is why we are flooded with quasi-governmental organizations, private non-profits all working to circumvent the government coffers and launder corporate money into public policy written by corporations in Baltimore.

WE CAN REVERSE THIS EASY-PEASY!!!!! JUST VOTE ALL HOPKINS NEO-LIBERALS OUT OF OFFICE.....ALL MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL ELECTIONS.      If you do not fight now this will become the Hopkins City State ruled by a global corporation that we know is not benevolent!!!


ARE ALL HOPKINS DOCTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS SHAREHOLDERS IN ALL THIS?  OF COURSE!!!!

AIG spin-out Highstar Capital looking at $2bn close for latest fund

AIG Highstar Capital

AIG Highstar, the New York-based private equity partnership with a focus on infrastructure-related businesses, has closed its latest fund, AIG Highstar Capital III, on $3.5bn.

Over 90 per cent of the fund’s capital commitments were sourced from non-AIG-affiliated investors, principally from a group of pension plans, endowments, financial institutions and family investment offices, according to a statement.



This table is intended to portray Highstar Capital PrivCo-covered market activity.

Click below for Deal Details and Private Company Reports.

DateTargetTarget IndustryDeal TypeTotal Deal AmountStatus


Nov. 2012Veolia ES Solid Waste Inc.Waste Management ServicesAcquisition
Add-On$1,909,000,000CompletedDetails

Jun. 2012Link_A_Media Devices CorporationMemory ChipsAcquisition$248,000,000CompletedDetails

Jun. 2009Xanodyne PharmaceuticalsPharmaceuticalsFunding$38,000,000
CompletedDetails

Jun. 2008InterGen N.V.Energy & Utilities (Traditional)Acquisition$1,100,000,000CompletedDetails

May. 2008Talyst, Inc.Health & Medical Software
Labels & Tags Manufacturing
Other Packaging & ContainersFunding$20,000,000CompletedDetails

Apr. 2008Link_A_Media Devices CorporationMemory ChipsFunding$22,000,000CompletedDetails

Apr. 2007AMPORTS, Inc.Marine TransportationAcquisition
Leveraged Buyout (LBO)UnspecifiedCompletedDetails

Jul. 2006Advanced Disposal Services Inc.Waste Management ServicesAcquisition$470,000,000Completed


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Lee is a Hopkins graduate but even more important is the Board membership between Hopkins the university and all of these investment arms.  The connection to Texas with another AIG spinoff has a trade in contracts and profit.

Christopher Lee Christopher H. Lee is the Founder and Managing Partner of Highstar Capital (Highstar)

, an independent, fourth generation fund manager with over five billion dollars of assets under management. Mr. Lee is a leader in infrastructure investments, with particular expertise in public private partnerships (PPP's). Since the 1980's Mr. Lee has worked on PPP's in Asia, Latin America and the United States. He has co-authored an Op Ed for Politico with Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley on Ports America's recent 50 year PPP in the Port of Baltimore and has appeared on CNBC's 'Street Signs'. Mr. Lee is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Johns Hopkins University where he graduated in 1974 with a BA in History. Sold!
www.southernstarcentralcorp.com, 11 July 2005 [cached]Commenting on the sale, AIG Highstar Capital Managing Director Christopher Lee stated, "Since our acquisition of the pipeline, AIG Highstar Capital and the Southern Star management team have established an independent brand for this company and significantly strengthened Southern Star's service, safety and customer focus. AIG buys port operations
www.waterindustry.com, 12 Dec 2006 [cached]"We have identified the marine terminals sector as a key element in our infrastructure investment strategy, and we believe that [P&O] is one of the leading operators in this sector in the United States," said Christopher Lee, AIG's managing director. AIG Global Investment Group ...
iwon.ccbn.com, 11 Dec 2006 [cached]AIG Global Investment Group Managing Director, Christopher Lee, stated, "AIG Global Investment Group and its affiliates have been a leader in acquiring strategic, regulated infrastructure businesses and assets.

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One does not have to imagine too long to see that this will be the vehicle to marketing Hopkins' health patents coming from research paid for by you and me!  It complements the DRONE business.


Talyst, Inc.
Private Company Ticker Symbol™: (TALYSTP) Next Actions on Talyst, Inc.:
 Business Summary Talyst, Inc. is a privately-held, venture capital backed healthcare solutions company engaged in providing easy-to-use, automated medication management systems that helps pharmacies manage the flow of medications in hospitals and clinics. Talyst automates the process of tracking drug inventory, package barcode store and filling prescriptions using smart management software and a touch-screen kiosk interface. Talyst was founded in 2002 and is based in Bellevue, Washington.



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This is Hopkins' connection to exporting natural gas and oil from the mid-west pipeline. As you can see they are behind all that we environmentalists hate.....this while they call Baltimore the Sustainable City.

On August 28, 2006, Kinder Morgan

announced that it would be taken private in a management-led leveraged buyout totaling approximately $22 billion. Outside participants in the transaction include Fayez Sarofim, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and Highstar Capital (then owned by American International Group).[3]

Kinder Morgan is the largest midstream and the third largest energy company (based on combined enterprise value) in North America. We own an interest in or operate approximately 80,000 miles of pipelines and 180 terminals. Our pipelines transport natural gas, refined petroleum products, crude oil, carbon dioxide (CO2) and more. We also store or handle a variety of products and materials at our terminals such as gasoline, jet fuel, ethanol, coal, petroleum coke and steel.

In most of our businesses we operate like a giant toll road and receive a fee for our services, generally avoiding commodity price risk. Our customers include major oil companies, energy producers and shippers, local distribution companies and businesses across many industries. We invest billions of dollars each year to build new energy infrastructure and expand existing assets, as well as on integrity management programs to operate our assets safely.

The Kinder Morgan family of companies has four publicly traded entities:
Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE: KMI), Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE: KMP) (one of the largest publicly traded pipeline master limited partnerships in America), Kinder Morgan Management, LLC (NYSE: KMR) and El Paso Pipeline Partners (NYSE: EPB). Combined, the Kinder Morgan companies have an enterprise value of approximately $110 billion.


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


·  7/27/2012



Bought:  Star Atlantic Waste Holdings II bythe private equity firm Highstar Capital based in New York, also acquired Interstate Waste Services in 2006, according to Highstar spokeswoman Cassie Winn. After …

·  4/27/2007

AIG subsidiary buys Amports A subsidiary of AIG Highstar Capital has agreed to buy Amports Inc. from a private equity fund run by Lincolnshire Management Inc. Terms of the deal, involving Highstar Harbor Holdings II Inc …

·  8/25/2006

Solid waste company sold Private equity firm AIG Highstar Capital has closed on a $470 million deal to buy solid waste company Advanced Disposal Services Inc. Negotiations began in April, Advanced Disposal CEO Charles …

Advanced Disposal Services, Inc. Key Developments Advanced Disposal Services, Inc. Announces Executive Changes Aug 24 12 Advanced Disposal Services, Inc. has announced its senior leadership team, effective when the company closes its acquisition of Veolia ES Solid Waste. Charles Appleby, president and CEO of Advanced Disposal, will be chairman and CEO. Richard Burke, Veolia president and CEO, will be president. Scott Friedlander, general counsel of Interstate Waste Services, will be general counsel.

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


Below you see an announcement about expanding the policy of handing public assets and services to corporations for profit.  Look at who thinks this is a win for Maryland.  Keep in mind the public is treated with distain and have to be dragged from public meetings trying to voice their opinions....


Ballard Spahr, Hines, KPMG, Skanska USA, Goldman Sachs

Ballard Spahr, Ballard Spahr is a national firm with more than 500 lawyers in 14 offices in the United States. 

Setting the standard in real estate the world over. Hines is a privately owned, international real estate firm that has provided the highest level of quality, service and value to its clients and investors for more than 50 years.

Skanska.comwww.skanska.com 
Global. Skanska is a world leading project development and construction group.


The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational investment banking firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment ...
 
As principal of Apgar & Company, Inc. (ACI), I recently co-led the transformation of a local government agency to a private enterprise with a public purpose, ...



Notice that the people meeting with them are the governor of Pennsylvania and Anthony Brown in lieu of O'Malley.  Local government transposed to a private enterprise with purpose says Agbar.  It is clear they intend to make everything that is public private and those global players are on the boards and shareholders of all of the other global corporations. 

IT IS A VERY, VERY SMALL WORLD FOR PROFIT-MAKING WITH THESE PEOPLE!


Maryland’s New P3 Legislation Maryland’s New Public-Private Partnerships Legislation


Maryland’s newly passed P3 Legislation sets the stage for Public-Private Partnerships to increase investment in the state. This is the best and first
chance to hear about Maryland’s new P3 law from people who know what this means for Maryland’s economy. The panel, moderated by Ballard Spahr, includes leaders from the public and private sectors with extensive P3 experience in commercial
and institutional development, as well as infrastructure projects. Keynote speakers include Maryland’s Lt. Governor Anthony Brown and former Pennsylvania
Governor Ed Rendell. Plan to join us on May 9 at the BWI Hilton. We will be announcing the panel in
the near future, so check baltimore.uli.org for details and updates. Featured Speakers:

· Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown
· Ben Stutz, State of Maryland
· Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell

Moderator: Brian Walsh, Ballard Spahr
· Chuck Watters, Hines
· Andy Garbutt, KPMG
· Leif Dormsjo. Acting Deputy Secretary, MDOT
· Chris Guthkeltch, Skanska USA
· Tom Rousakis, Goldman Sachs

Master of Ceremonies:
· Sandy Apgar, Apgar Company

_______________________________________________
 


Highstar Capital Agrees to Buy Veolia Unit for $1.9 Billion ...
www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-19/highstar-capital...   Cached [Jul 19, 2012]
 
Highstar Capital, a U.S. infrastructure fund, agreed to buy Veolia Environnement SA’s U.S. waste-management business for about $1.9 billion.~

Highstar Capital Agrees to Buy Veolia Unit for $1.9 Billion

 By Jeffrey McCracken & Sonja Elmquist - Jul 19, 2012 3:07 AM ET Stock Chart for Veolia Environnement SA (VIE) Highstar Capital, a U.S. infrastructure fund, agreed to buy Veolia Environnement SA (VIE)’s U.S. waste-management business for about $1.9 billion.

The transaction will cut Veolia’s net debt by $1.8 billion, the Paris-based world’s biggest water company said today in a statement. After the deal it will have completed 60 percent of its 5 billion euro ($6.1 billion) divestment plan, it said.

Enlarge image Highstar Capital Agrees to Buy Veolia Unit for $1.9 Billion Veolia via Bloomberg

Veolia ES Solid Waste Inc . has more than 300 locations that provide hazardous and non-hazardous waste management and industrial cleaning services, the company said on its website.

Veolia ES Solid Waste Inc . has more than 300 locations that provide hazardous and non-hazardous waste management and industrial cleaning services, the company said on its website. Source: Veolia via Bloomberg

Highstar, the infrastructure-focused private equity firm once affiliated with American International Group Inc. (AIG), beat bids from buyout firm Madison Dearborn Partners LLC and Brazilian conglomerate Estre Ambiental SA, said people familiar with the matter prior to the announcement.

Veolia is shedding the unit as it tries to cut debt by 20 percent to 12 billion euros by the end of next year. Chief Executive Officer Antoine Frerot said last month he wants to focus on “promising” countries and will pursue asset sales in the U.S. and U.K.

“The transformation of Veolia is progressing as planned,” Frerot said in the statement.

Veolia shares rose as much as 4 percent to 9.58 euros in Paris. The shares traded at 9.50 euros at 9:04 a.m. local time.

Cost Cuts Veolia plans to cut operating costs by 120 million euros in 2013 and narrow its geographic reach. On June 28, Veolia sold its U.K. regulated-water business to Infracapital Partners for 1.2 billion pounds ($1.9 billion).

The deal “will create a strong company with compelling growth prospects,” Highstar Capital Founder and Managing Partner Christopher Lee said in a separate statement. Highstar’s U.S. waste business will operate in 20 states with annual revenue of about $1.4 billion, it said.

Veolia ES Solid Waste Inc. has more than 300 locations that provide hazardous and non-hazardous waste management and industrial cleaning services, the company said on its website.

Highstar already operates U.S. waste management businesses Advanced Disposal Services Inc. and Interstate Waste Services Inc, according to the New York-based company’s website.

Deutsche Bank AG and Macquarie Group Ltd. advised Highstar on
0 Comments

July 29th, 2013

7/29/2013

0 Comments

 
Please take the time to listen for the disinformation and do not be apathetic!  If we do not get our media back to being free press holding power accountable....we will not be a democracy.  Public media has always been the people's voice and it is now corporate and Wall Street.  Fight against public funding of that programming.  Comment and send letters to the editor to these news journals and stations that just repeat what politicians and people in power say!

RUSS FEINGOLD SHOUTED OUT AND ACTUALLY LEFT THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE IN THE SENATE BACK IN EARLY 2000s BECAUSE AS HE SAID THEN.......THE PATRIOT ACT GOES TOO FAR IN VIOLATING CIVIL LIBERTIES AND WITH HIS FIGHT AGAINST BIG BANKS AND AGAINST GLASS STEAGALL AND WALL STREET BAILOUTS.....HE WAS UNSEATED. 

RUSS FEINGOLD IS THE CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IN 2016 FOR PROGRESSIVES AGAINST WHAT IS NOW A COMPLETELY NEO-LIBERAL LIST OF CANDIDATES!


LET RUSS FEINGOLD KNOW YOU WANT HIM TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2016!


The NSA scandal is a good chance to see where your elected democrat stands....neo-liberal or progressive. Nancy Pelosi, the Clinton's, and all of Maryland's politicians are fighting to save it and are silent about the abuse to civil liberties....they vote for it at every stage. These are neo-liberals who stand with republicans in all but a few social issue policies. We have heard Wyden, Russ Feingold, and Bernie Sanders shouting out against this for years...decades. These are progressive, social democrats and pols.

IF PEOPLE DO NOT MAKE CLEAR IN THEIR MINDS THAT THE CURRENT DNC IS CONTROLLED BY NEO-LIBERALS CREATING THE SAME SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT THAT DEMOCRATIC VOTERS ARE FIGHTING AGAINST.....AND RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE AGAINST THESE POLS IN PRIMARIES....WE WILL BECOME AN AUTOCRATIC SOCIETY!


With NSA revelations, Sen. Ron Wyden’s vague warnings about privacy finally become clear

Charles Dharapak/AP - “If we don’t take a unique moment in our constitutional history — in our political history — to fix a surveillance system that [is] just off the rails, I think we’ll regret it,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said.

By David A. Fahrenthold, Published: July 28

  It was one of the strangest personal crusades on Capitol Hill: For years, Sen. Ron Wyden said he was worried that intelligence agencies were violating Americans’ privacy.

But he couldn’t say how. That was a secret.

The big story

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has told a Russian official that the United States will not seek the death penalty for Edward Snowden.

Wyden’s outrage, he said, stemmed from top-secret information he had learned as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But Wyden (D-Ore.) was bound by secrecy rules, unable to reveal what he knew.

Everything but his unhappiness had to be classified. So Wyden stuck to speeches that were dire but vague. And often ignored.

“I want to deliver a warning this afternoon: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry,” Wyden said on the Senate floor in May 2011.

Two years later, they found out.

The revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden — detailing vast domestic surveillance programs that vacuumed up data on phone calls, e-mails and other electronic communications — have filled in the details of Wyden’s concerns.

So he was right. But that is not the same as winning.

To change the law and restrict domestic spying, the low-key Wyden still must overcome opposition from the White House and the leaders of both parties in Congress.

“If we don’t take a unique moment in our constitutional history — in our political history — to fix a surveillance system that [is] just off the rails, I think we’ll regret it,” he said in a telephone interview Friday.

Now, in the aftermath of Snowden’s disclosures, Wyden is pressing his case on two fronts.

One uses Congress’s power to ask questions. Wyden has sought to force spy agency leaders to clarify — in public — the nature of their intelligence-gathering on Americans.

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. responded to a letter co-authored by Wyden with new details.

Clapper said the government was not using its authority under the Patriot Act to collect bulk data on Americans, beyond two programs already disclosed. One gathers data on phone calls. The other, now shut down, gathered data on electronic messages. Clapper also conceded that there had been “compliance problems,” in which the NSA had not met the terms of secret-court orders that allowed the data-gathering.

In addition, Wyden is seeking legislative change, including an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

“It’s the most one-sided legal process in the United States,” Wyden said in an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” that aired Sunday. “I don’t know of any other legal system or court that really doesn’t highlight anything except one point of view.”

He said later that lawmakers should seek to “diversify some of the thinking on the court.”

‘The right questions’

Wyden, 64, is not possessed of a troublemaker’s personality. He has been an earnest, cordial presence in Congress since 1981. Before that, he got his political education as an activist with the Oregon chapter of a group known as the Panthers — not Black, but Gray. As a 20-something, Wyden was a leader of the Gray Panthers, an activist organization for seniors.


____________________________________________

Regarding WBAL TV ---NBC's local news CEO and his opinion piece:

There is a meme on Facebook that is going viral that has a Community Chest character hitting the jackpot with a caption that says " It's not a recession......it is robbery"! It is a Visigoth raiding of the Treasury by the 1%.

When we have media heads coming on with the evening news programming making statements like......beware the fate of Detroit coming to Baltimore.....we have the exact same media that gave us the Bush Administration buildup for war with Iraq and the fake claims of weapons of mass destruction....SAME THING. We have this situation with media because we elected what we thought was a progressive President because he campaigned as one who turned out to be neo-liberal and to the right of Bush in his policies. Therefor we have the same corporate media....not a reformed one.

Detroit is nothing like Baltimore. Detroit has much larger infrastructure problems and no anchor institutions to stabilize the city. Baltimore's financial situation is tied directly to the Master Plan created in the city in the 1980s and the massive amounts of fraud and corruption that empties government coffers. It is all avoidable if we had public justice organizations and Rule of Law. Detroit's problems would be mitigated as well if those same issues were resolved. What the WBAL CEO was trying to do is to set the stage for what he calls 'austerity' reasoning with the citizens who are outraged that it is for our own good. This is City Hall's approach as well and of course both this CEO and City Hall work for the city's 1%. There is no threat of bankruptcy that is not a deliberate public policy cause. We have politicians who are deliberately setting the stage for municipal collapse through outsized debt and open channeling of city revenue legally and illegally into the pockets of the rich. THAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH DEBT AT ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT AND ESPECIALLY IN BALTIMORE! The solution is simple.....simply reinstate Rule of Law, rebuild white collar criminal agencies and government oversight, end all of the privatization of public services that are rife with fraud.....and VIOLA.....NO THREAT OF BANKRUPTCY AND IN FACT....THE CITY IS IN THE BLACK! Recover all the fraud from these few decades and we have surpluses and fully funded programs and services and a first world quality of life.....RULE OF LAW does that!

So fear-mongering on Baltimore local media means that citizens must get active and organize for change. We want to see community forming Democracy Now groups separate from the O'Malley/Rawlings-Blake community organizations headed by people who simply move the 1% policy through all communities. RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES AND SEND INCUMBENTS AND THEIR FARM TEAM PACKING! DON'T ALLOW A NEO-LIBERAL DNC CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES!



Planning, austerity measures will solidify Baltimore's future Baltimore can avoid bankruptcy route, unlike Detroit

UPDATED 10:45 AM EDT Jul 25, 2013 WBAL -TV



BALTIMORE —Baltimore last faced a bankruptcy scare and city leaders halted street cleaning to balance the budget in 1867.

As city leaders across the country watch Detroit, the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, it is a sign that times have changed.

Once bustling American cities swelling in population and wealth have experienced a slow but steady decline. The flight of industry overseas, residents to the suburbs and high rates of poverty and violent crime have depleted city coffers, including Baltimore.

Simply put, fewer taxpayers mean there is less money to fund city services.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake started righting the ship when she took office in 2010. Once a major center for steel and shipbuilding, Baltimore is now a hub for health care, biomedical research and the federal government, which has provided some stability.


The mayor's 10-year plan to control costs and increase revenue require difficult decisions to put the city on a sustainable path. Some of the changes are frustrating to citizens and employees, but planning and austerity measures will ensure Baltimore does not end up like Detroit.


__________________________________________
This is a good look at how the private non-profit industrial complex creates all of the policies that have captured democracy and defunds all public justice and it has totally captured Baltimore's government and public non-profits.


The first article shows an organization for women of color making it known in the 1960s that these private non-profits were not working for them.....the second article is from Utne....a solidly middle-class white journal stating the same thing today!

It is simply the 1% gathering control at the local level and it empties government coffers and allows corporations to circumvent public routes for funding that are open and transparent!  All of the policies I shout out against are directed by this PRIVATE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX......work to be rid of it!

If your incumbent is not shouting out against these institutions.....they are not working for you and me!




  Left Turn Magazine's issue on The Revolution Will Not Be Funded.)

“I’m very much afraid of this ‘Foundation Complex.’ We’re getting praise from places that worry me.”
- Ella Baker, June 1963



"I want us all to be real creative about our tactics and strategies to dismantle the empire."- Joo-Hyun Kang, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded Conference, 2004 In 2004, along with women of color at UC Santa Barbara, INCITE! organized the conference: "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex." This conference drew in hundreds of organizers and activists searching for a space to address the ways in which the non-profit/NGO structure often obstructs radical movement building. At this conference, speakers and attendees addressed the following questions:

  • What is the history of the non-profit model? What drove its development? How did it impact the form and direction of social justice organizing?

  • How has reliance on foundation funding impacted the course of social justice movements?

  • How does 501(c)3 status impact social justice organizations' relationship to the state?

  • How does non-profit status allow the state to co-opt and control our movements?

  • Are there ways the non-profit model can be used subversively to support more radical visions for social change?

  • What are the alternatives for building viable social justice movements? How do we resource our movements outside the non-profit structure?

  • What models for organizing outside the NGO/non-profit model exist outside the U.S. that may help us?


WHAT IS THE "NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?"The non-profit industrial complex (or the NPIC) is a system of relationships between:

  • the State (or local and federal governments)

  • the owning classes

  • foundations

  • and non-profit/NGO social service & social justice organizations

that results in the surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political movements. The state uses non-profits to:

  • Monitor and control social justice movements;


  • Divert public monies into private hands through foundations;


  • Manage and control dissent in order to make the world safe for capitalism;


  • Redirect activist energies into career-based modes of organizing instead of mass-based organizing capable of actually transforming society;


  • Allow corporations to mask their exploitative and colonial work practices through "philanthropic" work;


  • Encourage social movements to model themselves after capitalist structures rather than to challenge them


WHAT DOES INCITE! THINK ABOUT THE "NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?"In 2004, INCITE! learned the hard way that the revolution will not be funded. When we began in 2000, we took a stand against state funding since we perceived that antiviolence organizations who had state funding had been co-opted. It hadn't occurred to us to look at foundation funding in the same way.

However, in a trip to India (funded, ironically, by the Ford Foundation), we met with many non-funded organizations that criticized us for receiving foundation grants. When we saw that groups with much less access to resources were able to do amazing work without foundation funding, we began to question our reliance on foundation grants.

Our suspicions were confirmed when, in February 2004, INCITE! received an e-mail from the Ford Foundation with the subject line "Congratulations!" and an offer of "a one-year or two-year grant of $100,000" to cover our general operating expenses in response to a grant proposal the Ford Foundation had solicited from us. We committed to two major projects (SisterFire multimedia tour and Color of Violence III conference in New Orleans) based on this funding. Then, unexpectedly on July 30, 2004, the Ford Foundation sent another letter, explaining that it had reversed its decision because of our organization's statement of support for the Palestinian liberation struggle.

INCITE! learned firsthand the dangers of relying on foundations for our movement building. But we also learned that social justice organizations do not always need the foundation support they think they do. Strapped with this sudden loss of funding but committed to organizing two major projects, INCITE! members started raising money through grassroots fundraising -- house parties, individual calls, T-shirt sales, and so on -- and we were able to quickly raise the money we lost when the Ford Foundation rescinded their grant offer.

This story is not an isolated incident. The NPIC has a long and complicated legacy. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded anthology reviews this history and political context, but offers no simple answers. The contributors are a multigenerational assembly of organizers working inside and outside the NPIC from a variety of -- even conflicting -- perspectives. However, we hope the book and conference continues a conversation about how to think beyond state-proctored models like the non-profit syste
m for organizing political projects for social change.

MORE RESOURCES & DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (NPIC)
__________________________________
YOU ARE BEING FORCED TO WRITE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS FOR GRANT MONEY RATHER THAN SIMPLY WRITING GRANTS TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES....NOW THEY ONLY SEND GOVERNMENT GRANT MONEY TO THESE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS WHO THEN DECIDE IF YOUR PROJECT MEETS THEIR GUIDELINES!

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded It’s time to liberate activists from the nonprofit industrial complex

from the book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
March-April 2009

This article is part of a package on rethinking charity in the economic crisis. For more, read Giving When It Hurts; Ladling Soup, Raising Hell: Nonprofit Insider Robert Egger Is Out to Reform Charities from Within; and Tips for Practical Giving: Where to Give, What to Ask, and the Lowdown on Emerging Philanthropic Trends.

The nonprofit system has tamed a generation of activists. They’ve traded in grand visions of social change for salaries and stationery; given up recruiting people to the cause in favor of writing grant proposals and wooing foundations; and ceded control of their movements to business executives in boardrooms
.

This argument—that reformers have morphed into cogs in the nonprofit industrial complex—is explained and explored in the fiery anthology The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, edited by the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence collective (South End, 2007).

One piece of the puzzle: “Foundations provide tax shelters for wealthy families and thereby take away tax income that could be used for social programs and entitlements,” Andrea J. Ritchie, an INCITE! member, told Make/shift. “And then [the foundations] dole out little bits of money for nonprofits to replace the services that the government no longer funds.”

The book brings together 21 experienced radical activists to explore the shortcomings of nonprofits as movement makers; here are excerpts from three chapters. —The Editors

 

Adjoa Florência Jones de Almeida

Sista II Sista Collective, Brooklyn, New York

What has happened to the great civil rights and black power movements of the 1960s and 1970s? Where are the mass movements of today within this country? The short answer: They got funded. Social justice groups and organizations have become limited as they’ve been incorporated into the nonprofit model. We as activists are no longer accountable to our constituents or members because we don’t depend on them for our existence. Instead, we’ve become primarily accountable to public and private foundations as we try to prove to them that we are still relevant and efficient and thus worthy of continued funding.





0 Comments

April 11th, 2013

4/11/2013

0 Comments

 
I am using examples from across the country because here in Maryland our media and literally all social organizations who would be talking of this are captured by the elite institution that would be the brunt of negative press.  I speak of the cost of this corporate takeover of universities as it moves public and student money towards corporate profits.....that is of course why corporations are now most profitable in history.  Let's look at the social impact this attempt by Third Way corporate democrats has on the greater society.

We know that labor and justice is being crushed under a corporate democratic party.  Law schools are dropping these legal directions from their curriculum and the public's ability to used these public university law clinics goes with that.  Below is an example of the extreme of this culture of destruction of US social values.

As I write about the corporatization of public universities and K-12 I want to remind people of how that directly affects society beyond the obvious. This article speaks of a true hero who used his academic position for social good.....just as universities have always done. He was fired because he used students and the classroom for actions that worked against the corporate and criminal environment that is Northwestern today. University of Chicago and Northwestern used to be solidly labor and justice in its approach to law....David Protess was one of the last remnants of Illinois as anything other than naked capitalism. See why we have Obama, Rahm, and Dick Durbin as Third Way Illinois?


Below you'll see how public policy is being corrupted at all levels of the socioeconomic ladder and schools are ground zero for this corruption.  We have plenty of college grads in STEM so why do they insist we have a shortage?  They want policy change and they are manufacturing a climate for change.  THIS WILL UNDERMINE WORKERS AT ALL LEVELS AND UNDERMINES DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES AS WELL AS A LARGER NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE WORKFORCE ARE NOT CITIZENS.....THEY HAVE NO RIGHTS AND WILL WORK IN WAYS THAT DO NOT RECOGNIZE THOSE RIGHTS!!!!


On the Firing of David Protess
  • Posted by Liliana Segura
  • March 18, 2011
  • 2:04pm
CHICAGO TRIBUNE/WILLIAM DESHAZERDavid Protess, of the Innocence Project at Medill School of Journalism

This story originally appeared on Liliana Segura's blog and is reposted here with her permission.

Days after the death penalty was abolished in Illinois, one of the key people who helped prove the innocence of men on the state's death row — thus setting into motion the political action that led to abolition — has lost his job.

David Protess, a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism for 29 years, was dismissed this week, reportedly for no official reason. As the head of Northwestern's Innocence Project, Protess devoted himself to teaching journalism students investigative skills that, literally, had life-or-death impact. Under his direction, students uncovered evidence that saved five men from death row and at least another six from prison. While he will retain his position at the Innocence Project, his expulsion from the journalism school is a travesty — and a major loss for the countless students inspired by the work he pioneered.

The firing seems to have been rather cold for a professor who attracted so much admiration for his work. According to the Daily Northwestern, "Medill Dean John Lavine told Protess about the decision in an e-mail Monday, Protess said. No reason was given, and there have not yet been any conversations about the future, he added."

For well over a year, Protess and his students have been in the crosshairs of the Cook County DA's office, which, forced to grapple with the fallout of Protess's investigations when it would have preferred to keep its role in sentencing innocent people to die in prison under wraps, finally decided to begin an intimidation campaign against Northwestern. According to a long feature in Chicago Magazine, when confronted with the prospect of admitting to the innocence of Anthony McKinney, a man who has sat in prison for more than 30 years for a murder he did not commit, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez "turned the tables on Protess, challenging the motives and ethics of him and his students."

In a court filing, her office has given voice to deeply unflattering, sometimes personal accusations: that some students may have paid a witness to recant; that other students "flirted" with witnesses, in effect, to persuade them to make incriminating statements; and that students may have been so driven to get an A that they twisted or suppressed evidence to suit their cause of freeing McKinney.

Former students have jumped to the defense of their old professor. One is my friend and former colleague Ari Berman, who wrote this in 2009:

I took Protess's class in the spring of 2004 and worked on McKinney's case. The experience became the highlight of my time at Medill. My team and I were just twenty-one and twenty-two at the time, thrust into unfamiliar environs on the South Side of Chicago and elsewhere, trying to ferret out the facts of a murder that occurred before any of us were born. David's class, more than any other, taught me how to be a reporter, how to make make difficult decisions in a quick and decisive manner and how to always strive for justice and empathy in my work.

I was never a student of Protess. But I have known his name for years. His work made me want to be a journalist — and I remember writing to him to say so. (I would love to post his response, but it was back in my Hotmail days, which I no longer have access to.) While ultimately the people who stand to lose the most from his departure are the prisoners whose innocence claims might go uninvestigated, there is no way to know how many young people who may have been inspired in his classroom — or like me, from afar — will lose out. Just as we need journalists devoted to the cause of truth-telling, we need teachers devoted to the cause of justice. Northwestern just lost one, and it lost big.

Editor's note: David Protess was the 2003 recipient of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, which is an annual $100,000 that is awarded each December by The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation, given to an individual who has challenged the status quo through distinctive, courageous, imaginative and socially responsible work of significance. Ari Berman is a fellow at The Nation Institute.


Liliana Segura is an independent journalist with a focus on social justice, prisons, and harsh sentencing. She was, most recently, a writer and editor at AlterNet, where she was in charge of their Rights & Liberties section; prior to that, she worked at The Nation Institute.

    • Liliana Segura's full bio »
      _______________________________________________

    Below you see how the policy of immigration at the lower income reflects what is intended at the higher income levels.  In each case you have organizations recruiting people of color to take the lead in the exploitation so even what should be justice organizations are now tools of this Banana Republic policy.



  • Regarding Texas and immigrant criminal fraud:

    We know of course that the NPR report on practices in Texas mirror what is happening in Maryland and especially Baltimore.  NPR didn't present this info to inform us of something bad....it presented it as a way to understand why Congress and Maryland legislatures are working the way they are.  When you heard of the active avoidance of everything that is tax....payroll, state and local taxes that comes with criminal hiring of undocumented you get the idea that tons of money has been lost to the entitlement and Social Security Trusts as a huge swath of America and the workforce isn't paying into it.  This is why you hear Obama and Third Way corporate democrats trying to sound as if there is a shortfall.  We do not blame the undocumented worker of course, the crime is with the people hiring them and knowingly allowing law to be skirted.  Most importantly the blame is with the justice department and its stance of watching as laws are broken.  So, this money isn't lost....it simply needs to be retrieved from corporations who profited through this fraud.  I spoke at length about this concept of 'independent contractor' that does not meet the definition even as Maryland legislators try their hardest to write law that makes it all legal.  REMEMBER, MARYLAND IS A THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATIC STATE...YOUR INCUMBENT IS WORKING FOR CORPORATE PROFIT AGAINST WHAT IS BEST FOR SOCIETY!  

    As I said, we do not want undocumented workers to pay for the crimes of their bosses.....we want policy that makes undocumented workers paid as everyone else taking away the need to hire to exploit.  We won't make those changes without changing our political class.  Why does a media outlet refer to a pol like Doug Gansler for example as Attorney General when he is the anti-justice league?  You know your media outlet is captured when none of this is headline!!!



As we listen to how immigrant workers in Texas and Maryland among other states are openly exploited as Rule of Law is suspended in the US let's look at how the immigration policy Third Way corporate democrats are trying to implement is intended to work.  If you look at this Foundation you will see the Foundations that support this privatization and capture of US workforce through these attempts at immigration law.  Whether the Gates Foundation or as with this article, the Kauffman Foundation, these are corporations writing policy that makes for more profit at the expense of the American people.  Also note that these same foundations are highlighted as backers of public media.....American Public Media and National Public Media.  You will never hear a negative report on these education policies now that public media is bought by corporate trusts!!


Education, Entrepreneurship and Immigration:

America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part II While the contribution of skilled immigrants to America's technology and engineering startups has been recognized for the past decade as critical to the emergence of many of America's most entrepreneurial companies and huge, new industries, little has been known about the backgrounds of these immigrant entrepreneurs. What types of education have these technology and engineering entrepreneurs received? Why did they come to the United States?

A report released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation that tracked the educational backgrounds of immigrant entrepreneurs who were key founders of technology and engineering companies from 1995 to 2005 shows a strong correlation between educational attainment (particularly in science, technology, engineering and math) and entrepreneurship.

The study shows that 96 percent of immigrant founders of technology and engineering companies held bachelor's degrees and 74 percent held graduate or postgraduate degrees. Seventy-five percent of the highest degrees among immigrant entrepreneurs were in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Moreover, 53 percent of the immigrant founders of U.S.-based technology and engineering companies completed their highest degrees in U.S. universities.

Conducted by researchers at Duke University and the University of California, at Berkeley, the study is a follow-up to a report released in January that showed that in 25.3 percent of technology and engineering companies started in the United States from 1995 to 2005, at least one key founder was foreign-born. Nationwide, these immigrant-founded companies produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005. The majority of these immigrant entrepreneurs came from India, United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, Japan and Germany.

The study was based on a series of in-depth interviews with:

  • 144 immigrant company founders on their educational attainment, degree types, reasons for entering the United States and other factors related to their entrepreneurial activities;
  • 87 Indian, 57 Chinese and 29 Taiwanese company founders to ask where they received their undergraduate education, and;
  • 1,572 companies in 11 technology centers to determine whether a key founder was foreign-born and the founder's country of birth.
Among the findings:

  • More than half of the foreign-born founders of U.S. technology and engineering businesses initially came to the United States to study. Very few came with the sole purpose of starting a company. Almost 40 percent of immigrant founders entered the country because of a job opportunity, with only 1.6 percent entering the country with the sole purpose of entrepreneurship. They typically founded companies after working and residing in the United States for an average of 13 years.
  • Immigrant founders were educated in a diverse set of universities in both their home countries and across the United States. No single U.S. institution stands out as a source of immigrant founders. Similarly, those who received their undergraduate degrees in India or China graduated from a diverse assortment of institutions. Even the famed Indian Institutes of Technology educated only 15 percent of Indian technology and engineering company founders.
  • Immigrant entrepreneurs tend to move to cosmopolitan technology centers. The regions with the largest immigrant population also tend to have the greatest number of technology startups. On average, 31 percent of the engineering and technology companies founded from 1995 to 2005 in the 11 technology centers that were surveyed had an immigrant as a key founder. This compares to the national average of 25.3 percent.
  • Technology centers with a greater concentration of immigrant entrepreneurs in their state averages include Silicon Valley (52.4 percent), New York City (43.8 percent), and Chicago (35.8 percent). Three technology centers had a below-average rate of immigrant-founded companies: Portland (17.8 percent), Research Triangle Park (18.7 percent) and Denver (19.4 percent).
In a research and policy guide for transforming the U.S. economy toward an innovative entrepreneurial economy published earlier this year, Kauffman Foundation researchers said the nation could benefit from more enlightened immigration policies, designed to attract and retain highly skilled foreign workers and potential entrepreneurs.




About the research teamFor more information, visit the Global Engineering and Entrepreneurship at Duke research group, and the UC Berkeley School of Information.



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As we listen to Third Way corporate democrats led by Clinton and Obama tell us there is a need for foreign STEM workers and that is why they are creating this immigration policy that will harm all US workers......we know they are lying to us.  We know there are loads of US STEM grads among the unemployed wanting these jobs.  Why are they not getting them?  IS IT BECAUSE THEY AREN'T BEST OF THE BEST?  IS IT BECAUSE THEY ARE ESPECIALLY SKILLED?

IT IS BECAUSE THEY COME FROM WEALTHY OVERSEAS FAMILIES WHO SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO US ELITE SCHOOLS!!!  The goal is to have elite school grads leading all administrative offices in corporations and government and there aren't enough US grads to cover that.  If the culture of success is 'who you know' not what you know....think George Bush....it isn't about how smart you are intellectually, it is how willing you are to win at all costs and people coming from second and third world countries come already adapted!!!!



Diane Ravitch's blog
A site to discuss better education for all «  Why Are So Many STEM Graduates Unemployed?

By dianerav July 13, 2012 // 27 How many times have we heard the President, the Secretary of Education, and leaders of corporate America tell us that we must produce more scientists? That there are thousands of jobs unfilled because we don’t have qualified college graduates to fill them? That our future depends on pumping billions into STEM education?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My own predilection is to believe that all young people should get a full and rounded general education, which will teach them to think and evaluate new information. I prefer an education that includes the usual range of disciplines, not because of tradition but because each of them is valuable for our lives. We don’t know what the future will bring, but we all need to learn the skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. We don’t know what jobs will be available in ten or twenty years, but we all need to study history, so that we possess knowledge of our society and others; we need an understanding of science so we know how the world works; we need to be involved in the arts, because it is an expression of the human spirit and enables us to think deeply about ourselves and our world. I could make the same claims for other disciplines. The claim must be based on enduring needs, not the needs of the job market, because the only certainty is that the  job market will be different in the future.

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April 10th, 2013

4/10/2013

0 Comments

 
WE MUST GET CORPORATIONS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!  WE DO NOT WANT THE PEOPLE FUNDING ALL OF CORPORATE COSTS......SUPPLYING FREE LABOR......HAVING ONLY THE CONNECTED STUDENTS RUN WITH THESE NEW STARTUPS.  THAT IS NOT PUBLIC EDUCATION.......LIKE K-12 CHARTERS, IT IS PRIVATE SCHOOLS SUPPORTED BY THE PUBLIC!!

WE WANT CORPORATE TAX PAYERS NOT PATRONS!!

Baltimore is as one writer put it a 'company town'.  Johns Hopkins is the 'decider' in all things public policy and it declares itself a private institution even as it receives trillions in public money.  It has built a complete network of quasi-governmental and community organizations headed by people it supports to move policy in its desired direction.  This is happening in all areas having these elite private schools.  In Maryland we have Hopkins writing our health care reform in which we are told most people will be moved to Medicaid public health preventative checkups and private health institutions are making profits.  The same happens with an elite school like Harvard that fuels Wall Street or Stanford that fuels the tech and education industries.  WE HAVE SINCE THE ENLIGHTENMENT HAD UNIVERSITIES AS PLACES FOR SOCIETAL GROWTH STEEPED IN HUMANITIES AND LIBERAL ARTS.  DEGREES LEFT STUDENTS WELL-ROUNDED TO BECOME VALUABLE TO A BUSINESS FOR DIVERSIFIED SKILLS.  Now, we have students attending universities that are extensions of business who are trained with a specific skill and if that person leaves a job......they must go back to school for more training to get a different skill all paid for with public money.  STUDENTS ARE GRADUATING WITH NO LIFE SKILLS, NO CITIZENSHIP SKILLS, AND NO SOCIAL SKILLS.  THIS IS NOT HOW TO MAKE CITIZENS.....IT CRIPPLES DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES.....which is the point.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!

RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE NEXT ELECTIONS!!!



You will recognize that what is happening in Indiana is happening in Maryland.  If you look at the State Education Administration you will find employees brought from conservative states who are privatizing their public education systems.  Third Way corporate democrats have the same agenda as republicans.

Do you hear NPR constantly state that the republican party is dying?  IT IS BECAUSE THIRD WAY IS REPUBLICAN AND RUNS AS DEMOCRAT.....THEY ARE TAKING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REPUBLICAN!

This means goodbye labor and justice......the 80% of the party's democratic base!!


What You Need to Know About the Indiana University Strike

James Cersonsky
and StudentNation on April 8, 2013 - 9:27 AM ET

Though Indiana University's March Madness is over, a generation of gutting and restructuring has left Hoosier country on its feet. This Thursday and Friday, the university will be the site of a statewide strike. As the Board of Trustees holds its annual meeting, many students and staff are expected to walk out of class and off the job.



As one poster states:

The goal is to contest the administration's efforts to make IU a more exclusive, costly institution, at the expense of students and staff. We have already forced the administration to acknowledge these issues, but through collective action, we want to push further so that we can imagine together a different future for IU.

In addition to a 45 percent increase in tuition and fees over the past six years, the strikers cite issues of diversity and racism:

Recent cuts at IU have disproportionately targeted international students and students of color, college education has been eliminated from Indiana prisons, and immigration laws have been implemented that make an IU education cost-prohibitive for undocumented Indiana students.

Rather than organizing solely around affordability, students list a slate of demands:

1. Immediately reduce tuition and eliminate fees.
2. Stop privatization and outsourcing at IU.
3. End the wage freeze [i.e., stagnant wages for faculty and staff].
4. The university must honor its promise to double the enrollment of African-American students to 8%.
5. Support the abolition of both HB1402 [which prevents undocumented students from receiving in-state tuition] and SB590 [an immigration law enforcement bill styled after Arizona's SB 1070].

They add:

These demands are obviously not exhaustive—there’s no way to concisely communicate all the things that need to change at IU. These demands are a starting point, a spark to foster discussion and encourage action. These demands are made not just of the Board of Trustees, but of the entire state bureaucracy that the Board is a part of.

Campus activists have spent six months organizing the strike. "We're trying to encourage a culture of resistance, where different people who are involved in the struggle can organize on their own," a student organizer, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Nation. While there are regular general assemblies for strikers and supporters, many participants "go back to plan things on their own basis." 

Public sector workers in Indiana aren't legally allowed to strike, and according to the university, faculty are prohibited from using “faculty LISTSERVs and emails to promote organization around the proposed student strike.” (It also remains to be seen just how much support the strike has in the student body generally.) On Monday, strikers held a noise demo landing at the provost's office, where they called for the university not to retaliate against non-student strikers. Meanwhile, more than 100 faculty have signed a petition in solidarity with striking students—and calling for the university not to punish them for walking out.

The strike will be accompanied by a number of actions, as well as "Free University Days" organized by graduate students and instructors. 

Not in Indiana? The strikers are asking students and allies from across the country to write letters of support to the Indiana Daily Student at opinion@idsnews.com.



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Below is a list of universities that have moved from private to corporate universities and who get a lions share of all public research money. Remember Obama's $750 billion in stimulus in 2009.......most went to these corporate universities to keep the global corporate R and D going!!!!

O'Malley is trying hard to make the University of Maryland system one of these corporate university systems and is well on that way.  Soon, Maryland citizens will not be able to afford to attend university campus studies....they will be relegated to online classes.

WE DO NOT WANT TO LOSE PUBLIC EDUCATION AND WANT TO KEEP IT EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.  TO DO SO WE MUST HAVE CORPORATIONS PAYING TAXES AND RECOVERING AND PROSECUTING CRIME!


University of Maryland system is trying hard to be a corporate research system.

Historically, many of the prestigious universities in the United States have been private. Some public universities are also highly prestigious and increasingly selective though; Richard Moll designated such prestigious public universities Public Ivies. At schools like the University of Michigan, UCLA, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the College of William and Mary, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a vast majority of the departments are consistently highly ranked.

10 Innovative Universities Shaking Up Education Added by Guest Writer on 2013-01-27

Edudemic

Every college and university in America is concerned with innovation. After all, that’s the whole point of education — giving young minds an understanding of our past and a grasp of current developments, and releasing them into the wild to shape the future with their creations. But a few schools in particular can be counted on as continuous sources of headline-grabbing material, from new cures to new companies. These 10 colleges can safely lay claim to the honor of being innovation factories.

  1. MIT: Though once overshadowed by Harvard, Boston Magazine recently proclaimed Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s ascension to “most important university in the world.” Its reasoning: “The amount of technological innovation and entrepreneurial activity taking place at any moment all over the campus is remarkable.” The article cited the fabric-based computers and robot skin coming out of the school’s famous Media Lab, but it might just as easily have referenced MIT’s established reputation for shaking up education, or its collaborations and projects for fostering new methods for solving persistent global problems. In short, in a world where new ideas are vitally needed to propel us forward, an innovation factory like MIT becomes king.

  2. Stanford University: A recent report enunciated what those in both the academic and business worlds already knew: Stanford is innovation central. Over 5.4 million jobs created since the ’30s and $2.7 trillion in annual revenue have Cardinal innovation and entrepreneurship to thank. In fact, there are some who believe Silicon Valley might not exist at all if not for Stanford University. Part of the reason the school produces so much innovation is that it encourages so much innovation. From Innovation Masters lectures to hefty prizes for innovation from the research libraries to a faculty stocked with out-of-the-box thinkers, the school is a hub for creative activity and research for students and the surrounding community alike.

  3. Northwestern University: Of the $1.8 billion earned by universities commercializing their research in 2011, Northwestern singlehandedly accounted for over 10%. NU’s students and alums routinely churns out revolutionary products and processes, like those that were honored at the 2012 Chicago Innovation Awards: an infant HIV test for the third world, a more efficient gas storage technique, and a safety tool for surgeons. The inventions came from the NUvention Medical Innovation program but also from campus institutions not bearing the innovation label, like the Kellogg School of Management and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, proving the entire school is fertile ground for revolutionary thinking.

  4. Princeton University: The gothic, colonial, and Romanesque campus architecture reminiscent of bygone days belie this school’s firmly-established place as an innovator in the 21st century. To wit: the $115 million in revenue from licensing inventions in 2011. For seven years the annual Innovation Forum has been bringing good ideas to the surface and inspiring inventors, while the Innovation Garden is looking to do the same for entrepreneurs. Today Princeton folks are behind updated ways to cut the energy needs of big data providers and use nanotechnology to detect infrastructural damage before major collapses.

  5. Carnegie Mellon University: The word “innovation” pops up all over this Pittsburgh campus, from specialized degrees to conferences to institutions. But the heart of ingenuity at the school is the Robert Mehrabian Collaborative Innovation Center, where, for example, researchers work on government cybersecurity development and “capacitive touch sensing.” CMU has cemented itself as an innovation leader especially since the early ’90s, when cutting-edge projects like its Wireless Research Initiative and breakthrough work in computer science and search engines. Today the university is continuing this legacy by searching for ways to transform America’s energy sector and producing alums poised to give the world its next amazing invention.

  6. Olin College: As one student blogger put it, the enterprising Weasley twins should have gone to Olin, because they would have fit right in. Olin students have produced some fantastic devices, from ping-pong-playing robots to solar-powered trash compactors. The college is well-known for pedagogical innovation, the new Argosy Collaborative Faculty Exchange program being a perfect example. And thanks to a federal grant under the auspices of the selective new Higher Education Solutions Network, Olin will be able to put its considerable innovation prowess to work helping meet global development challenges.

  7. Columbia University: Whether compared with other Ivy League schools or the rest of America’s universities in general, Columbia is a top exporter of revolutionary ideas and products. Like Princeton, it was in the select club of earners of more than $100 million in licensing income in 2011. A noted top pick for journalism instruction, Columbia has joined fellow innovator Stanford to forge a path between journalism and technology. Creations like synthetic trees that capture 1,000 times more carbon dioxide than real trees are a natural byproduct of a school that’s ever ramping up its efforts to involve the entire university community in innovation.

  8. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: This is the place that’s given the world the integrated circuit, LED and plasma screens, MRIs, and Tesla Motors. In other words, it’s a discovery mecca. They literally celebrate innovation here, annually recognizing achievements in everything from tissue engineering to optical microscopy. Major accomplishments in recent years have been a cutting-edge HIV drug called Prezista and a less-harsh cancer treatment alternative to chemotherapy, while UIC’s Office of Technology Management 2012 winner of Inventor of the Year has created an exciting new insulation panel for heating and cooling houses with as much as 80% less energy wasted.

  9. University of Michigan: 2012 was a banner year for Wolverine innovation. The school was home to 368 new inventions and 101 awarded patents, which no doubt contributed in the state’s first promising innovation index results since 2008. UM has been steadily building a name for itself in entrepreneurship and innovation with offerings like TechArb, its student startup incubator, and MCubed, a new research program for funding “new initiatives with major societal impact.” The student body has also gotten on board with new ideas for campus sustainability through Planet Blue, with projects like a campus farm, a fruit and vegetable stand, and bike fix-it stations already implemented.

  10. Brigham Young University: Two years ago, Businessweek named BYU one of the most innovative colleges in the country, and that still holds true in 2013. Exciting ideas are kindled at the BYU Innovation Academy, and funded by the Crocker Innovation Fellowship, the latter of which recently helped a team of Cougars win the school’s Innovator of the Year challenge. The school also boasted a statewide innovation challenge winner in 2012. They were the tip of the iceberg, as the school’s Creative Works Office and Changemaker Week — for social innovation — continue to turn out fresh concoctions.
Here is one of these private research universities.  It is the same as Baltimore's Johns Hopkins et al in that it built itself on taxpayer money and it is now working as a corporate university just as Johns Hopkins is starting to do as a health care system.  Look at the price of the university tuition and then think of the trillion dollars in research public funding it gets.  The students work in these labs as part of their degree program for free......they aren't assured jobs after grad.....but the university and the corporations partnering with it run with the profits as successful research leads to startup and leads to merger with a global corporation.  ALL PAID FOR BY TAXPAYER AND STUDENT TUITION AND FREE LABOR.


Northwestern University
Cost of Attendance


The basic formula used to calculate the cost of attendance for the 2013-14 academic year is as follows:

Expense Amount Tuition $45,120 Fees (Health $200, ASG $162, Athletic $45) $407 Room and Board $13,862*

Books and Supplies $1,878 Personal Expenses $1,926 Loan Fee $35 Transportation Varies Cost of Attendance $63,228 *The cost of attendance for commuter students is $52,664, which includes $984 for transportation and $2,325 for room and board.



Article updated: 4/11/2011 6:12 PM

Public has right to question what’s happening at “private” Northwestern

By Chuck Goudie

Northwestern really isn't a "private" university.

This may come as a shock to parents who wrote checks for $53,000 this year to cover private tuition, room and board. It's not just Northwestern.

Advertisement DePaul, Loyola, Notre Dame and most other so-called "private" universities aren't private at all. They solicit and receive public funding from the government for research and also benefit from student

federal grants.

So, if you pay taxes, these "private" schools get lots of your money. (The most notable example of a truly private school is Hillsdale College in southern Michigan. It accepts and allows no federal funding for anything. That is another story.)

Despite the use of federal funds at Northwestern, the administration of the university is private. There is no oversight or regulation by a publicly-elected or appointed board, and no public accountability for most decisions.

So, this is about the only place to publicly ask these questions:

What in the world is going on at Northwestern?

Is there a management problem up there in Evanston?

Who's in charge?

The university's purple and white has been turned black and blue the past few months following three eye-opening missteps involving professors and administrators... the very people who are supposed to be

the experts.

The grouping of gaffes features:

• an explicit, live, in-class sex demonstration from exhibitionists hired by a controversial psychology professor.

• the public defrocking and professional dismemberment of successful, well-known Medill project head David Protess, who helped exonerate wrongly convicted death row inmates.

• volleys of nasty allegations and legal wrangling between Protess and university officials who charge each other with lying and covering up.

• the most recent embarrassment occurred at Northwestern's famous Kellogg School of Business when a son of Libyan dictator/terrorist Moammar Gadhafi was allowed to attend three days of graduate classes under an alias.

All of these events have one thing in common: they were terribly managed by Northwestern public relations officials and top administrators once they leaked out of the "private" campus and became public.

The case of Gadhafi's son visiting campus in February is the most egregious example of ineptness. When Northwestern/Kellogg officials were notified that Khamis Gadhafi wanted to sit in on an executive MBA class taught by Dr. Deepak Chopra, they went along with Gadhafi's request that he not be truthfully identified to the other students in the class.

The Mohammar protégé was on a cross-country trip, part of a corporate-sponsored "internship." It was at the same time that a revolution was stirring in Libya... a revolt that would lure him home just a few days later to lead an elite military unit accused of slaughtering countless innocent civilians.

Nevertheless, last week when the Northwestern/Kellogg public relations office was provided with questions about young Mr. Gadhafi's stealth campus visit, this was the reply: "Yes, he attended a three-day executive education course as a student. That's really all I can share" stated Meg Washburn, director of media relations.

I wrote back: "Why is that? We are talking about a "student" who supervised the beatings of unarmed civilians, military attacks on residential villages (using internationally banned weapons) and the executions of soldiers who refused to fire on demonstrators…just a few weeks after he was welcomed into a Northwestern classroom.

"Who arranged for him to be there and why did the university allow him to be falsely identified to unsuspecting students?

"Considering the atrocities that U.S. defense officials believe were committed by Khamis Gadhafi, why isn't Northwestern/Kellogg issuing a more definitive statement and someone at the university sitting down to do an interview with us? With all respect, the recent case of a sex demonstration in a Northwestern class received far more substantive responses from university officials."

In Northwestern's final statement on the matter, Kellogg Business School Dean Sally Blount did not respond to the substantive questions.

Blount said Gadhafi's "visit occurred prior to the uprising in Libya, and before the recent, very troubling allegations against him surfaced" and that Kellogg is committed to respecting human dignity and the integrity of the learning environment, and they promise to review all enrollment procedures and criteria and determine changes that need to be made.

If things continue, one thing that will need to be changed is Northwestern's motto, in Latin on the purple and white crest.

"Quaecumque sunt vera." It means "Whatsoever things are true."

What in the world is going on at Northwestern?

You deserve an answer too.

After all, they have some of your money.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie




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Government-Supported Research Enables Their Profits, But Many Corporations Have Nearly Stopped Paying Taxes

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Multinational corporations have built their businesses on the backs of American taxpayers. They've depended on government research, national defense, the legal and educational systems, and our infrastructure.

Yet they've turned around and mocked us with declining tax payments. They've cut workers. They've refused to invest their massive profits in job-producing research and development. And they've insulted existing employees with low wages and dwindling retirement support.

As a final disdainful act, many of them have tried to convince us that they LOSE money in the U.S. while only making profits overseas.

Here are the facts.

Business Built on Our Backs

(a) Research

The most essential aspect of business growth is the long-term basic research that is largely conducted with government money. Starting in the 1950s, taxpayer-funded research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the Internet), the National Institute of Health (pharmaceuticals), and the National Science Foundation (the Digital Library Initiative) has laid a half-century foundation for corporate product development. Even today 60% of university research is government-supported.

The tech industry is a special case, with many computer and communications companies coming of age in the 1990s, when industry funding for computer research declined dramatically and government research funding continued to climb. As of 2009 universities were still receiving ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from industry.

(b) Infrastructure

Thanks to the taxpayer-funded National Highway System, corporations have acquired access to markets across the country for over 60 years. Along with road construction came the water, electric, and telephone facilities needed to sustain their businesses.

Today, the publicly supported communications infrastructure allows the richest 10% of Americans to readily manipulate their 80% share of the stock market. CEOs rely on roads and seaports and airports to ship their products, the FAA and TSA and Coast Guard and Department of Transportation to safeguard them, a nationwide energy grid to power their factories, and communications towers and satellites to conduct online business. Private jets use 16 percent of air traffic control resources while paying only 3% of the bill.

(c) Law

A litany of advantages accrues to the business world through the legal system. The wealthiest Americans are the main beneficiaries of tax laws, property rights, zoning rules, patent and copyright provisions, trade pacts, antitrust legislation, and contract regulations. Their companies benefit, despite their publicly voiced objections to regulatory agencies, from SBA and SEC guidelines that generally favor business, and from FDA and USDA quality control measures that minimize consumer complaints and product recalls.

The growing numbers of financial industry executives have profited from 30 years of deregulation, most notably the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Lobbying by the financial industry has stifled reasonable proposals like a sales tax on financial transactions.

More big advantages are enjoyed by multinational corporations through trade agreements like NAFTA, with international disputes resolved by the business-friendly World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. Federal judicial law protects our biggest companies from foreign infringement. The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership would put governments around the world at the mercy of corporate decision-makers.

(d) Education

Public colleges have helped to train the chemists, physicists, chip designers, programmers, engineers, production line workers, market analysts, and testers who create modern technological devices. At the primary and secondary levels, the "equal opportunity" principle mandated by the Supreme Court in Brown vs. the Board of Education has contributed to business growth, building the math and language skills that until recently led the world.

(e) Defense

The U.S. government will be spending $55 billion on Homeland Security this year, in addition to $673 billion for the military. Most of their resources, along with local police and emergency services and the National Guard, are focused on crimes against wealth.


Belittling Us Instead Of Paying Us Back

Instead of paying for their decades of government-supported growth, corporations have nearly stopped paying taxes, leaving payroll deductions and individual income taxes as the main sources of federal revenue.

From 2003 to 2011 total corporate profits more than doubled from $900 billion to almost $2 trillion, but the corporate income tax rate dropped by more than half, from 22.5% to 10%.

On top of this, the most profitable corporations get the biggest subsidies. The Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in welfare assistance to financial institutions and corporations. According to U.S. PIRG and Citizens for Tax Justice, 280 top-earning Fortune 500 companies, which together paid only half of the maximum 35 percent corporate tax rate, received $223 billion in tax subsidies.

What have they been doing with their windfall profits? Anywhere from $2.2 trillion to $3.4 trillion in cash is being held by non-financial corporations, who have chosen to fatten stockholders rather than invest in new production facilities and the employees needed to make them functional. Worse yet, as reported by The Nation, Market Watch, and Business Insider, they've been steadily cutting jobs in order to 'streamline' their operations.

For the employees who remain, average real wages were $17.42 in 2007, down from $19.34 in 1972 (based on 2007 dollars). Wages as a percentage of the economy are at an all-time low.


An Added Insult -- Profits Declared Overseas, But Not in the U.S.


Multinational corporations use the vacuous argument of an excessive U.S. tax rate to defend their tax avoidance, although in reality the U.S. has the third-lowest rate of tax revenue per GDP among all OECD countries.

The biggest tax avoiders are not content to just shirk their tax responsibilities. To sustain the image of profitmaking for their investors, many of them claim hefty worldwide incomes while reporting little or no income in the United States. Pfizer, for example, just declared their fifth straight annual loss in the U.S., despite a five-year income total of over $50 billion.

A review of SEC data reveals more chicanery. In the last two years Citigroup reported $27.8 billion in foreign income, but a $5 billion loss in the United States. Exxon credits the U.S. for 1/3 of its revenue and 40% of its assets, but only 15% of its income. Apple has 2/3 of its employees in the U.S. but claims only 1/3 of its profits as U.S. income.


Summing Up the Absurdity: You Made Us the Best, But We Don't Have To Pay

Forbes responded to suggestions of American decline with this stirring defense: "We lead the world in Internet innovation, music, movies, biotech and many other technological fields that require out-of-the-box thinking. From Apple to DreamWorks Studios, from Amazon to Zynga, we are the world's innovators."

They might have added, "And we don't have to give anything back to the people who made it all possible."

Photo: An American flag hangs in the lobby of Citigroup Center in Chicago. (Source: jcsullivan24/Flickr)


Paul Buchheit is the founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

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The Corporations Colonizing our Public Schools April 10, 2013 - Chicago Daily Herald

In an era of corporate aggression into the public sphere, not even the classroom is safe. As the corporate reach extends into public schools, our kids are increasingly reshaped as products, as data to be collected, as pawns in the corporate fight to rid the country of unionized jobs. In our classrooms, the humanity and education of students is gradually being replaced with corporate systems and profit-values.

As if the only human activity with any meaning or moral relevance is the pursuit of money, corporate education transforms the entire scope of the education process into pre-employment training. Instead of investing in the future, corporate education looks to squeeze a profit from it before it arrives.

Rather than trying to educate evolved, modern adults, the corporate model seeks to profit off our tax-money while reshaping students as nothing more than future employees. The long process of raising our kids into responsible, active grown-ups is replaced by a process that openly places profit over progress, corporate values over human ones.

Joel Klein, the former Bloomberg favorite and Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, was hired by right-wing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch to help Amplify move desperately needed funding out of the classroom and into corporate hands. (Photo: via Amplify.com)

While there are many corporations, foundations, and individuals who have contributed to the infiltration of private corporate interests into publicly funded education, there are 3 that stand out.

The Walton Foundation, The Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, known as the Big Three, have consistently threatened democratic processes in public education reform.They’re able to spend nearly $4 billion annually on anything from political campaigns to Astroturf organizations to funding research and studies that are in line with their goals.All three of these groups have heavily invested in School Choice reforms and voucher programs.

School choice, charter schools, and voucher programs are really ways to subsidize private education using public money. These failed, profit-driven policies are an extension of the corporate search for profit, an attempt to transfer public wealth to private hands under the pretense of “reforming” schools (whose failure, conveniently enough, was triggered and exacerbated in the first place by selective austerity policies driven by some of the same corporate groups now trying to profit from their failure).

Which groups, companies and individuals
are behind the corporate drive
to privatize public education? The Gates Foundation: while the Gates Foundation does great work in other areas, their work in US educational systems seems to be misguided at best. They fund Astroturf groups like Teach for America and Educators for Excellence, who recruit young professionals and basically pay them to undermine teachers unions. The Gates Foundation advocates data based compensation for teachers, as well as closing schools that perform poorly on data driven high stakes tests. They also support increasing class size.

However, reducing class size is one of  the only reforms that has repeatedly been proven to improve student performance(pdf). While the Gates Foundation claims to be open to all reform ideas, they tend to primarily fund and publicly support those based on test scores alone, ignoring teacher and parent input.

The Broad Foundation: Broad contributed millions of dollars to the campaign to extend mayoral control of the public schools in New York City under Michael Bloomberg. He also has an unusually close relationship to Joel Klein, Randi Weingarten and Arne Duncan.

The Broads got their money by building federally subsidized housing in suburbs of California and Texas. Apparently, there have been a number of chronic problems with those homes. The Broad Foundation Superintendents Academy trains management candidates in six intensive, four-day sessions spread over 10 months to become school superintendents in primarily urban areas.

These superintendents have a clear preference to charter schools over public. They also have a not-so-great record of corruption.

The Walton Family Foundation: this is the charitable arm of the Walton Family, owners of the middle class job killing, union busting company, Walmart.

They claim to want to improve public education through school choice. What they really support is the voucher system. As most aware New Yorkers know by now, this is nothing more than a ruse to siphon public money into private hands.

Teach For America: this is possibly the largest group trying to undermine public teachers unions in the country. Recruits for TFA are not encouraged to continue teaching, they are recruited to teach for 2 years, gain experience, then move on to something bigger and better.

For those trying to undermine unions, Teach for America is perfect. They can hire teachers for way less than a dedicated career educator, give them a whopping 5 weeks of training, put them in any classroom and after 2 years, get them out.

No long-term health benefits, no pension plans, nothing.

The “teacher” gets to bulk up their resume. Major corporations get to donate to an organization that looks like it cares about children. Everybody wins!…except the students.

A look at TFA’s donors list is another cause for concern. The Walton Foundation is one of its biggest contributors. Other contributors include Bain & Company, Monsanto, Bank of America, Exxon Mobile, and Goldman Sachs just to name a few. It’s like a “who’s who” of groups that caused the Great Recession.

They aren’t only receiving private money though. They also get your tax dollars. They receive money from the US Department of Education and NASA.

Amplify: Amplify Insight just won a 12.5 million dollar contract to develop assessments and teaching tools for Common Core tests. Amplify Insight is a division of Amplify, an education technology company whose CEO is Joel Klein.

Amplify is the education branch of News Corp, owned by notorious phone hacking, privacy invading, Rupert Murdoch. Besides the very real concern of keeping children’s personal information as private as possible, Murdoch’s involvement in education is especially disconcerting given that he has openly said he was mostly interested in the money. When he bought Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn based education tech company, he said

“When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching,” said News Corporation Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch. “Wireless Generation is at the forefront of individualized, technology-based learning that is poised to revolutionize public education for a new generation of students.”

The Center for Educational Innovation – Public Education Association(CEI-PEA): a New York City-based “nonprofit” organization. Under the Re-Start program initiated in NYC in 2011, CEI-PEA was one of the organizations chosen to take over management of a few under-performing schools. One of those schools is J.H.S 166 George Gershwin, which is being closed due to poor performance. As previously reported by The BQ Brew, their Board of Trustees is full of supporters of TFA, hedge fund executives and New York City’s gentrifying elite.

inBloom: formerly known as Shared Learning Collaborative. New York is one of 9 states that will pilot inBloom’s technology. This is supposed to be a way of storing students personal learning needs and streamline information sharing for teachers, parents and administrators.

The concern is that students’ sensitive personal information will not only be stored on a database where security has not been established, but that that same info will be made available to third party companies. This will allow private corporations to access a school district’s student data so that the corporations will know what educational technology they can sell to specific schools. Parents have largely not been made aware of the change to the security of their children’s information.

Resistance, Never Futile:
Parents, Teachers and Communities Push Back Despite the seemingly endless number of corporate-sponsored deformers attempting to co-opt the educational system, there are a number of true grassroots organizations out there that are fighting for students. They are made up of teachers, parents, and members of the community who are tired of being excluded from the main stream pseudo debate on students’ futures. Movement Of Rank and file Educators(MORE): http://morecaucusnyc.org/
MORE is the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers(UFT). They are working on fighting the single party representation that has had control of the UFT for decades, as well as fighting for social and community justice for both teachers and students. From their mission statement:

“8. We reject the corporate takeover of the public schools, and the wave of school closures in the city, which have particularly affected poor communities with high proportions of people of color.  We insist on a moratorium on the opening of new charter schools.  We seek to end the cuts to education which have led to increasing class sizes as well as inadequate social, health, guidance personnel and services.

9. The schools should be the people’s schools.  We stand for democratic governance and popular control of our school system that fully reflects the needs, aspirations and diversity of those who make up its parent and student body. Mayoral control, which is inherently undemocratic, must be abolished , and be replaced by an elected People’s Board of Education which represents the interests of teachers, students, parents, and community.”

New York Collective of Radical Educators(NYCoRE): http://www.nycore.org/
is a group of public school educators who believe that the struggle for fair education does not end at the end of the school day and that the struggle is an integral part of education. They believe in organizing with parents and communities for social change. New Yorkers for Great Public Schools(NY-GPS): http://www.nygps.org/
a true grassroots organization, NY-GPS has been very vocal about their opposition to Mayor Bloomberg’s educational agenda. With vast community support, they are fighting for a moratorium on school closures and to get the word out to all New Yorkers about the corporate interests trying to buy their public schools. Parent Voices NY: http://www.parentvoicesny.org/
is a group for parents who have been increasingly concerned with high-stakes testing in public schools. Their main purpose is to help parents organize against these tests and advocate for a more wholesome approach to educating our youth. Their site is a great tool to hook up with direct action groups city wide. Class Size Matters: http://www.classsizematters.org/
is a group that advocates for smaller class sizes in NYC and nation wide. They provide information and links to studies on why smaller class size has been prove time and again to have a positive affect on student improvements. United Opt Out: http://unitedoptout.com/
is a national movement to end corporate education reform. This is a group of parents, educators, students and activists who want to see the elimination of high stakes testing in public schools. Their site is a full of information on how to opt out of testing either on the individual level or school level. There is tons of information on direct actions in most areas of the US, and info on how to create your own opt out group if needed. Diane Ravitch’s Blog: http://dianeravitch.net/
while this is not a group you can join, Ms. Ravitch has been a great voice in the movement to protect public education in the US. Her blog is regularly updated with information from all over the country warning the public to be aware of what’s going on in our schools. She is a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University.



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IN BALTIMORE IT IS NYC MAYOR BLOOMBERG THAT IS THE BILLIONAIRE FUNDING THE PRIVATIZATION OF BALTIMORE CITY SCHOOLS.  AS I HAVE SAID ALL SCHOOLS ARE BEING TAKEN TO CHARTER......TIED TO VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND DIRECTLY TO BUSINESSES.  THAT IS WHAT YOU SEE BELOW AS FACEBOOK'S ZUCKERBERG BUYS THE OPPORTUNITY TO BUILD HIS OWN SCHOOL SYSTEM ....FOLLOWING THE GATES MODEL.  IN BOTH CASES THE PROBLEM IS LOST CORPORATE REVENUE AND TAX BASE THAT HAS THE SCHOOLS IN RAGGED CONDITION.  SO, THE SOLUTION IS NOT TO HAVE BILLIONAIRES BUILD THEIR OWN SCHOOL SYSTEM.....IT IS TO PAY TAXES AND BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR CORPORATE FRAUD TO FUND PUBLIC EDUCATION AS IT IS.

WE DO NOT CALL THIS PHILANTHROPY ..... HE IS SIMPLY BUYING THE SCHOOLS SYSTEM.  IT IS THE SAME IN MARYLAND WHERE PRIVATE DONATIONS DETERMINE WHAT SCHOOL SUCCEEDS AND THRIVES.  NOTICE THAT GATES AND ZUCKERBERG ARE TWO TECH PEOPLE CONTROLLING INFORMATION AND EDUCATION BY MAKING IT ONLINE.....

GOOD FOR BUSINESS BAD FOR US!




Whatever Happened to the $100 Million Mark Zuckerberg Gave to Newark Schools? —By Maggie Severns

| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 2:23 PM PDT  Mother Jones
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Cory Booker, Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Christie discuss Zukerberg's $100 million donation to Newark, September 2010. Mike Derer/New Jersey Governor's Office Reports are surfacing that Mark Zuckerberg and other technology leaders are planning to launch a new, yet-to-be-named advocacy group that will push for immigration and education reform. The move is a big deal for Zuckerberg, who has mostly avoided politics in the past, but has a reported $13.3 billion to put into the game if he chooses to.

What would this influence look like? There could be clues from Zuckerberg's last foray into advocacy work, the high-profile $100 million he donated to Newark public schools in the fall of 2010. That September, Zuckerberg appeared with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker to announce the donation on the Oprah Winfrey Show. This was right before the premier of The Social Network, which portrayed Zuckerberg as a narcissist who stole the idea for Facebook.

News of the donation captured national attention for a moment, then faded. In Newark, a local foundation established by Zuckerberg and the state have spent more than two years deciding how to best create a schoolyard revolution with $100 million dollars. At first, the "Facebook money," as it's called in Newark, helped the state hire consultants and establish several new charter schools. But the reform effort has floundered at moments: The first million dollars went towards a poorly conducted community survey that had to be re-worked by Rutgers and New York University, and criticism was fierce when a foundation board established to decide how the Facebook money was spent included only one Newark resident: Cory Booker. ("Yes, it's their money. But it's Newark's kids," an op-ed that ran in the Star-Ledger read.)

Then last November, nearly $50 million of Zuckerberg's money went to pay for a new teacher's contract, the first in New Jersey to offer performance pay for teachers who are deemed as "highly effective." The contract offers up to $12,500 in bonuses for the teachers rated as the best in the district. It's the first contract in New Jersey to offer performance-based pay, a policy that's been instituted in a few cities such as Washington, DC. In DC, the plan was so controversial that it might have cost Mayor Adrian Fenty his job. "I think it helped—I know it helped—to be on our side of the table and have deeper pockets," one school district official said about the Newark negotiations.


The teacher's contract was negotiated relatively quietly. But the pushback continues from those in Newark who think it's wrong for the Christie administration to have access to so much extra money with no need to listen to the community or the public. "In my conversations with [school commissioner] Chris Cerf, it became abundantly clear to me that he saw the money to be a spigot for funding his school agenda," said Paul Tractenberg, a law professor at Rutgers University, who describes the donation as a catalyst for "a broader top-down strategy" towards public education.

Frustrated Newark parents and graduates, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, believe that Booker and others have been far too secretive about their agenda and how they're spending Zuckerberg's millions, so they fought and won a lawsuit to force the city to release emails from Booker that relate to the funds. The emails weren't groundbreaking, though they did reveal Sheryl Sandberg's deep involvement in orchestrating the donation and rolling it out. Meanwhile, Booker has raised at least $54 of the $100 million of the matching funds he needs, money that came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and New York hedge fund donors.

With the merit pay contract, Newark used Zuckerberg's money as a lever in negotiations to create what one reform leader in Newark called a "higher level" of change. Zuckerberg's new group doesn't even have a name yet, much less a public agenda. But if reports that the group plans to get involved in education prove true, Zuckerberg, like Bill Gates before him, could become another tech giant stirring up the education world.


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December 04th, 2012

12/4/2012

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REAL DEMOCRATS DO NOT PRIVATIZE PUBLIC EDUCATION, CREATE TIERED EDUCATION FUNDING, AND IMPOVERISH OUR TEACHERS---THESE POLS ARE NOT DEMOCRATS


I thank all of you from around the country for joining my website and blog.  Please note that Maryand's Governor O'Malley will probably be a Presidential candidate in 2016 and if you like these corporatization and globalization issues.......vote for him.  If not, please spread the word in your neck of the woods NOT TO VOTE FOR O"MALLEY!

I want to end discussion on education for now by looking at the spectrum these corporate Third Way democrats are creating in public education.  It truly has nothing to do with being public and everything to do with wealth and corporations.  Below you'll see an article about the latest thing being pushed in Third Way/Republican corporate states regarding what is best for poor schools and students....like they need something other than what every other school has.  We are seeing the boot camp approach that has students in school for extended hours and elimination of recess and often PE in order to focus exclusively on STEM.  I laughed at the interviewee that said the current standard of 7am to 2pm.....basically 6-7 hours in classroom is from an agrarian age.  These people are a hoot.  We all know that our ability to focus on tasks at hand deteriorate beyond a certain amount of time and that is what drives the suggested hours in the classroom.  All the data says that extending hours does nothing and in fact may harm achievement.  Also, if this is the 'no-brainer' the interviewee says......why are they not doing it for all schools rather than only underserved schools.

The important piece that was brushed over as dismissive was the fact that teachers are getting lower wages to work these extra hours.  These Third Way pols are working to reduce benefits and wages to the point that teachers will be barely technicians.....which is the point as they want classrooms to be online.  These extra hours each day in the classroom will come with no extra help and it will necessarily effect quality.  Again, you have private donors paying for this and setting the terms rather than having these people paying taxes into the general fund to support public education.
WE WANT CORPORATIONS AND THE RICH PAYING TAXES INTO THE GENERAL FUNDS....NOT 'GIFTING' THEIR OWN PERSONAL POLICY!!!!!!!
Having after-school programs for students is a fine format that brings in community groups and frees the teachers of direct responsibility.  Why would you change that.  I already hear underserved parents decry the schedules their children are exposed.

Meanwhile, the next article shows a private school system forming under the guise of 'public' education.  Here you have all kinds of private donations funding enrichment programs over and above the normal school hours.  In other words, these private schools are getting the kinds of education programming that these underserved schools need and all of the money is circumventing the general fund that would allow equal distribution of money.  PLUS THEY ARE PUBLICLY FINANCED.   ALL WHILE A MANTRA OF NEEDING TO DO BETTER FOR UNDERSERVED CHILDREN'S EDUCATION.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!!!!!

I speak all the time about the disjointed approach to public works in Maryland and Baltimore that creates a patchwork of systems with no oversight and lots of failed quality and waste.  That is what these corporate incumbents are doing with our public education and it will not end well for the lower/middle class as public education funds go overwhelmingly for affluent schools that used to be private.

Day To Get Longer At Some Low-Performing Schools by Tovia Smith  NPR

Listen to the Story All Things Considered

December 3, 2012

Around 20,000 kids will be spending more time in school next year. A public-private partnership was announced on Monday to fund longer school days at some low-performing schools in five states.



MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

Kids in five states can look forward to a longer school day next year. A public-private partnership is offering up some extra money to cover the cost. It will cover additional instruction for about 20,000 students in Colorado, Connecticut, New York, Tennessee and Massachusetts. Here is NPR's Tovia Smith.

TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: More and better is how the idea was described by advocates today. Funding from the Ford Foundation, along with state and federal monies will pay for 300 extra hours a year of instruction in poor and low-performing school districts.

SECRETARY ARNE DUNCAN: And I think this is the kernels of a national movement.

SMITH: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been a big booster of more time in school, not just because it allows for more learning and individual intervention, but also, he says, it offer students more social support and supervision in the very risky after-school hours.

DUNCAN: When I led the Chicago Public Schools, we had one child killed due to gun violence every two weeks. And none of those kids were killed during the school day, and almost none of them were killed at 12 at night or 3 in the morning. It was at 3 o'clock to 7 o'clock. And those hours are times of huge anxiety, huge stress.  That's for what after-school programs exist.

SMITH: About 1,000 schools around the nation have already extended school hours either later in the day or into the summer. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy says it's a no-brainer to finally change a school calendar that was devised centuries ago to accommodate an agrarian economy.  Connecticut is home of the 1% and is wealth and corporate

GOVERNOR DANNEL MALLOY: I joked earlier, if we do all of this, who's going to bring the crops in? The reality is that we would not have designed the school day or school year if we had started our national history at a different time. So this is our time to change.

SMITH: Many schools who've already extended their school hours report improvements in both attendance and test scores. Meg Mayo Brown is superintendent in Fall River, Massachusetts, where she says even the most troubled school benefited.

MEG MAYO BROWN, SUPERINTENDENT, FALL RIVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS: When it was first designated as chronically underperforming, parents could not get out of that school fast enough. There was a mass exodus. Today, in 2012, it is my most over-selected, highest-performing middle school in Fall River with a waiting list of students to get in.

SMITH: But critics say more hours can't take all the credit. The research, they say, is mixed.

FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, PRESIDENT, LAWRENCE TEACHERS UNION: From the teacher's perspective, it's really - it's not the silver bullet.

SMITH: Frank McLaughlin is president of the teachers union in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where troubled schools are now in state receiverships. He says complex problems and deep poverty in communities like his can't be solved by something as simple as a longer school day. It can help, McLaughlin says, but teachers need to be better paid for the extra hours.

UNION: Sometimes it's quite a bit less than the contractual hourly rate. In fact, in one of the schools it's less the minimum wage. It's almost that they take advantage of young teachers.

SMITH: Longer hours have been a sticking point in teacher contracts elsewhere. But Duncan says the bickering shouldn't derail what he calls a common sense plan.

DUNCAN: As a country, we have not taken this step for a long time due to sort of adult intransience, and you get into real basic fights about cleaning up and toilet paper and other things like that. And those are the real issues that unfortunately historically has stopped this from happening.

SMITH: Funding, however, will likely remain an obstacle. While today's new partnership allows some schools to expand hours, elsewhere, other schools who've tried it are now returning to their old shorter schedules because of the expense. Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

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THESE ISSUESBELOW ARE COMMON AMONG MOST EDUCATORS AND YET, THESE CORPORATE EDUCATION REFORMERS ARE USING NONE OF THE ACCEPTED RESEARCH AND DATA ON LEARNING AND GOING WITH THE 'POUND IT INTO THEIR HEADS' APPROACH.  IT IS THE SAME AS SHOCK AND AWE THAT DRIVES THESE NITWITS!!!


American Thinker
March 13, 2007  By Bob Myer

A Longer School Day?
In some places in the US, as well as in the UK, schools are either considering or experimenting with extending school hours.  In Massachusetts, the extended school day is suggested as a possible remedy for schools who fail to meet No Child Left Behind benchmarks.  In the UK, extended school hours may remedy a lack of quality childcare, thus allowing parents to work longer hours without worrying where their children are.

But one has to look to the other side of the scale to see what is potentially being replaced by longer school hours.  What purpose is being served by extending school hours to eight or ten hours a day?  What roles are shifted between teachers and parents, between homes and schools?
There is a potential to use extended school days as a holding pen for kids in which teachers become baby sitters instead of educators.  Creating meaningful, expanded and extended learning opportunities takes a lot of time, effort and care.  Without the time and energy to prepare these lessons for students, teachers will likely take the route of least effort.  The result might well be an extended recess period at the end of the day with little learning, lots of free time...and lots of opportunity for mischief.  Free time in a place of learning is a recipe for disaster.
However, legislatively mandating how extended days are utilized would create just as many problems.  By attempting to use extended days to improve test scores, governments may very well practice test students out of learning all together.  Students already spend an inordinate amount of time practicing, taking and reviewing federally, state, and locally mandated standardized tests.  Any person who asks his or her local high school just how many class periods this takes will probably be shocked.  Imagine tossing an extra two or three hours of test preparation a day on top of that.  Learning how to test is mind-numbingly boring for students and teachers.  It tends to stifle creativity and focuses on number-based outcomes - usually measured in school and district passing percentage.
Perhaps to create a structure of useful learning activities for an extended school day it would be better to look at what is being replaced and what roles are shifted from the home to the school during an extended day.  One could argue that open time to talk about the day's events around the dinner table (or the television or the computer, as the case may be) is missing.  For that matter, a school day which ends at, say, 6pm may need a dinner around a table!  Would teachers be required to play the role of mediator and thought-provoker around the extended school "dinner table"?  Would it be reasonable to expect teachers to help students get a grasp of the world around them beyond what already takes place in the current school day?
Would parents, consequently, want to vet their teacher's views and methods more in an extended school environment, given that teachers may very well spend more time with their kids than they do?  How would this be accomplished in the current public school system?
And, finally, who's to say that teachers would be willing to spend up to ten hours a day at school, caring for a surrogate family of students?  Despite some mythical belief that teachers actually live underneath the stairwells of their schools, teachers actually do have families, friends and activities outside of the school hallways.  How would they maintain their own life-work balance?
What the extended school day suggests is that there is not a "one size fits all" answer to publicly funded primary and secondary education.  This, in turn, creates an issue which is, to say the least, very problematic.  Parents who opt into, or depending on state legislation are forced into, this system would demand school choice, and rightly so.  If a parent is going to put an ever increasing amount of trust and responsibility into an educational facility, it is only right that they would be able to choose that facility.  This might be accomplished through open enrollment within a school district, school vouchers or through an interconnected system of charter schools.  In an open market where educational dollars traveled with students, the ability to choose schools would allow parents to find options which fit their family's lives, beliefs and schedules.  The challenge would then be for schools to evolve into what their communities needed them to be.
And that's the trick here.  The system must become more open, more responsive to the local community.  While schools can be mandated to extend their days and teachers can be paid more money, until there is either a general consensus on curricular particulars throughout public education or open choice of and competition between schools, more hours will not equate to better educated children. on "A Longer School Day?"


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ALL OF BALTIMORE'S WEALTH IS GOING TO BUILD THESE EXCLUSIVE ASSETS THAT THEY THINK WILL BE FUNDED BY YOU AND I AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS EVEN AS THEY ESCAPE PAYING TAXES.  THE FOUNDATIONS LISTED AS PRIVATE DONORS HAVE ALL RENOUNCED POVERTY FUNDING FOR THE MOST PART AND ARE COMMITTED TO AFFLUENT DEVELOPMENT.  SO, IN BALTIMORE, WE NOT ONLY HAVE A DISTORTED MOVEMENT OF GENERAL FUNDS AND TAX REVENUE, BUT THE FOUNDATIONS THAT USED TO WORK FOR THE POOR ARE NOW FUNDING PRIVATE, AFFLUENT PROJECTS LIKE THE ONE BELOW.  AS A RESULT, THE MAJORITY OF BALTIMORE'S SCHOOLS ARE STARVED FOR FUNDING.  WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THAT?  JUST CLOSE A BUNCH OF SCHOOLS.

JUST MAKE YOUR TEACHERS BE ALL OF THE AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS THAT NOW CANNOT BE AFFORDED BY EXTENDING SCHOOL HOURS.

  WE SIMPLY NEED TO

VOTE OUR INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE TO GET RID OF THIS PATRONAGE SCHEME.

Contract schools are public schools open to all BPS students. These schools are operated by private entities under contract with BPS to provide an additional education option for students.

Overview Curriculum

Each contract school has a curriculum, schedule, calendar, and admissions procedure that may differ from other public schools. Contract schools may be operated by community organizations, universities, foundations, and teachers. All contract schools are held accountable for high student achievement by the Board of Education.


Private SupportThe EBCS, only one of two public city schools built without any school capital funds, will engage in private fund raising. There are a number of partners involved in this extraordinary project, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Weinberg Foundation, among others. TIF funds will also support the construction of the school’s gymnasium, auditorium and library, which will be shared with the community.

Johns Hopkins is making a contribution of $3 million for capital expenses and plans to provide an annual $750,000 operating subsidy for eight years. In addition, Johns Hopkins will continue to seek additional private funding support for the ECBS. For example, the SOE recently received a $1.5 million start up gift from the Windsong Trust to support the EBCS with funds going towards needed equipment, curriculum design and implementation, initial teacher recruitment, and professional development.



THIS SCHOOL WAS SUPPOSED TO ALLOW ALL OF THE 600 DISPLACED UNDERSERVED FAMILIES TO BRING THEIR CHILDREN BACK TO THE COMMUNITY FROM WHICH THEY WERE UPROOTED.  RATHER, WE HEAR THAT FEW ARE ACTUALLY INVOLVED IN THE SCHOOL AND ALL OF THE MULTI-INCOME HOUSING THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO LEAD TO A EGALITARIAN APPROACH NEVER CAME.  IT WAS ALL FARCE AS WITH THE ENTIRE EBDI PROJECT HAS BEEN REGARDING INCLUSIVENESS.  THEY MERELY SAID WHAT THEY NEEDED TO IN ORDER TO QUALIFY FOR FUNDS.  THIS IS ILLEGAL AND WE WANT THE MONEY BACK!!!

WE NEED TO GET BACK THE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS THAT WENT INTO THIS PROJECT BECAUSE  WE CAN APPLY THOSE FUNDS TO UPGRADE MANY OF THE CITY'S NEEDIEST PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Ben Carson to lead board of East Baltimore schoolWorld-class surgeon appointed chair of Hopkins' contract school

December 03, 2012|Erica L. Green  Baltimore Sun

World-renowned surgeon Benjamin Carson has been named president of the board overseeing the East Baltimore Community School Inc.--the educational institution spurred by the revitalization of the city's Middle East community, including a new elementary/middle school that will anchor the community.

The appointment of Carson, director of the pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, was announced by Hopkins on Monday.  He started his new post effective Dec. 1, and took over for David Nichols, former vice dean for education at Hopkins' School of Medicine.

The East Baltimore Community School is a contract school operated by Hopkins and Morgan State University (we wrote a story about the partnership, which can be found here), and was renamed the Elmer A Henderson School: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School this year.

“We are honored to have Dr. Carson lead our efforts to provide a quality education to the students of East Baltimore,” said David Andrews, dean of the School of Education, in a statement. 

Andrews, who took his post as dean of Hopkins' School of Education in 2010, has been overseeing the school's restructuring and day-to-day operations. He told The Sun last year that he plans to make the Henderson-Hopkins school one of the best in the city and the nation. 

“An inspiration to all who know him, Dr. Carson will help us reach our goal of making this one of the top schools of learning in Baltimore and serve as a model nationwide," he said in a statement.

The school--an anchor of a 20-year, $1.8 billion mixed-use revitalization project on 88 acres in East Baltimore--is scheduled to expand in population and occupy a sprawling $42 million, 90,000-square-foot, 7-acre campus next fall.

“I am excited to be a part of an endeavor like Henderson-Hopkins that can provide not only an example, but also a how-to manual for inner city schools, universities and corporate entities that want to work together to strengthen the fabric of our society,” Carson said in a release sent by Hopkins.

“The education of our children is not only the responsibility of teachers, but rather, of everyone who is impacted by stellar education or the lack thereof. That, of course, is all of us.”

erica.green@baltsun.com

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October 20th, 2012

10/20/2012

0 Comments

 
THIS ENTIRE EDUCATION REFORM IS BEING WRITTEN BY CORPORATIONS....IT IS NOT PEOPLE DRIVEN!


A high school student who took a vocational tract would take shop and math classes that would provide a foundation for entering a trade after graduating.  Then, he/she would decide a trade, say electrician, and apply to the union apprenticeship program and start an extended on-the-job training.  This successfully moved generations of blue collar workers into work with no college degree, but certification.  We have the same thing now.  Students can take computer tech classes and heaven knows they are tech savvy through their own social/personal web actions.  Now, there may be a shortfall in math, but it is ridiculous to say that this necessitates an entire career training via public education.  What we need are strong technical apprenticeships for STEM employment ON-THE-JOB. 

Looking at yesterday's blog that questions corporate funding of K-12 schools tied to yet another corporation, you see an effort to completely distort a system that worked for generations and gave strong, well-trained and committed workers that were well-paid.  What these STEM businesses are trying to do is remove the costs of training and the window of lower skill level from corporate costs.  THIS IS AN EDUCATION GOAL THAT IS PROFIT ORIENTED AND NOT PEOPLE ORIENTED AND IT IS TOWARDS WHAT YOUR THIRD WAY POLITICIANS ARE WORKING.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT QUALITY EDUCATION!!!!!!

If you watch free TV you will see one after the other ads for computer, online instruction geared to these trade jobs.  All are paid with taxpayer loans that the student will pay or will default and you and I pay.  This is the only direction being offered to a vast number of people.  THIS CHANGE IN APPROACH IS WHAT IS CALLED 'EDUCATION REFORM'.  IT IS MOVING FORWARD AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT AND IT IS WHERE ALL THE FEDERAL SPENDING ON EDUCATION IS MOVING.  YET, NO ONE WANTS IT AND WE DO NOT NEED IT.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!

As the article below explains, academics are fighting this concept with the argument the SCHOOLS ARE MEANT TO CREATE WELL-ROUNDED CITIZENS NOT WORKERS. THIS IS THE DYNAMIC THESE EDUCTION REFORMERS ARE WORKING TO CHANGE.  Do not let them use the excuse that government coffers are empty as they give copious money to corporations and turn their head to fraud.  Shout loudly for school funding
mechanisms to be strengthened and remain centralized.  Decentralization is simply meant to move away from equal funding and towards this 'gifting' to individual schools!

Do we need to cut administrative costs in education?  YES, especially at 'innovation center' universities.  Do we need each school as a separate business as Baltimore's Superintendent Alonzo is doing?  NO.


October 18, 2012
Pressed to bridge the skills gap, colleges and corporations try to get along

By Jon Marcus   Hechinger Report

WARWICK, R.I. — Angel Gavidia worked as a construction worker, an auto detailer and a taxi dispatcher before he found his calling as a computer-networking engineer, a high-paying job for which employers are desperately short of workers even at a time of stubborn unemployment.

Community College of Rhode Island

He found his way in spite of community-college advisors who at first steered him into other fields of so little interest to him that he quit school. Then Gavidia was accepted to a program in which an IT-services company called Atrion collaborates with the Community College of Rhode Island to help students get both a classroom education and on-the-job training.

The model, under which Gavidia worked as an apprentice at the company while taking on-campus courses, gave him a huge head start to a job by teaching him the real-world skills employers want but say they often can’t find in college graduates.

“I came into this position feeling like, we didn’t learn this in school, and we should have,” said Gavidia, who, at 26, now works full time at Atrion as an associate engineer.

It’s a rare example of a successful partnership between business and higher education, which otherwise often bicker about how to help the nation’s economy recover by better matching graduates’ skills with workplace needs.

Business officials complain that too many college students aren’t learning what they need to get jobs. Academics retort that their job is to provide knowledge, not vocational training—and that what future workers really need isn’t job-specific preparation, but the ability to think critically that comes from a well-rounded education.

Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn

“There’s been something of a rupture,” said Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. “On the higher-education side, we have sometimes not thought enough about how best to prepare our students for the jobs that will be available when they graduate. And employers haven’t always communicated clearly enough to universities what skills employees need.”

It’s not for lack of prodding.

“I hear from business leaders all the time who want to hire in the United States, but at the moment, they cannot always find workers with the right skills,” President Barack Obama told an audience at a community college in February. “Companies looking to hire should be able to count on these schools to provide them with a steady stream of workers qualified to fill those specific jobs.”

Despite high unemployment, however, the nation is surprisingly short of workers with the right educations. As of July, the most recent period for which the figure is available, an estimated 3.66 million jobs were vacant, and employers say they can’t find the people they need to do them.

Some economists question whether the figure is actually that high, saying companies are simply taking their time hiring. But most agree that there’s a significant mismatch.

In the IT industry alone, 93 percent of employers surveyed by the Computing Technology Industry Association said they couldn’t find workers with the right educations, and 80 percent said this affects productivity and customer service.

“There’s just a shortage of supply,” said Ryan Hoyle, whose job is to hire engineers and other skilled employees for the Detroit branch of an IT company called GalaxE Solutions, which, together with two neighboring tech companies, has 500 openings he said they can’t fill.

Before it teamed up with the Community College of Rhode Island, Atrion “found it very difficult to find the right combination of skills and talent, and frankly it was often at a cost,” driving up entry-level salaries and forcing the company to spend more and more money hunting for qualified prospects, said Patrick Halpin, its talent recruiter.

Yet even as demand for college degree-holders goes up, their numbers are leveling off. Enrollment appears to be flat or falling, even at community colleges that had been growing at double-digit rates. Once they are enrolled, only about half of students in four-year universities graduate within even six years, and fewer than 20 percent at two-year community colleges do so within three, according to the organization Complete College America.

“If you take a longer economic view, it’s clear that, unless something changes, higher education is not going to provide the kind of workforce we need 20 and 30 years down the road,” said Rosenberg, who is part of a business-higher education initiative in Minnesota looking for solutions to this problem there.

There are some models emerging of college and corporate collaborations like the one in Rhode Island. They’re broadly known as “learn and earn”—or, among educators, as “programs of study” that line up courses to lead to a specific job.

But most business leaders surveyed by Public Agenda and the Committee for Economic Development said they think American higher education is unable or unwilling to adapt to economic demands and lacks accountability, contributing to a shortage of qualified workers.

“There are growing and grave concerns about the system’s ability to remain a leader and produce the workforce our future economy demands,” said Steve Farkas, lead author of the Public Agenda report.

Business and higher education have traditionally spoken different languages, and they work at vastly different speeds, people in both camps acknowledge.

“There is this mismatch,” said Lee Todd Jr., former president of the University of Kentucky, who founded two high-tech companies before that. “In academics, you’ve got seven years to make tenure. In business, if you don’t have the next product ready by the next quarter, you’re in trouble.”

Even when they do try to satisfy marketplace needs, colleges and universities have trouble keeping up with them, said John Dorrer, a program director at the nonprofit organization Jobs for the Future.

“Sometimes you have this phenomenon of higher education being divorced from the reality, with faculty not spending enough time looking at developments in industry,” Dorrer said. “Technology is moving faster, the world is moving faster, markets are more unstable, and that instability and the pace of technological change [are] not well-aligned with what happens in institutions.”

Eduardo Padrón sees that, too, in his capacity as president of the second-largest single higher-education institution in the United States, Miami Dade College.

“What I hear from business leaders who come to us is that the universities place before them all kinds of excuses,” said Padrón, who works extensively with business. “They want to take three years to put a program together, and then they have all these excuses for not doing it the right way. It’s part of a tradition that’s not changing with time.”

Frustrations have reached such a level that major corporations have started their own college-level training and education programs. There really is, for instance, a University of Farmers, run by the Farmers Insurance Group. Corporations from Dunkin’ Donuts to Walt Disney World also offer college-level educations to workers, prospective workers, and even employees of other companies.

“If they can do it,” asked Brent Weil, senior vice president of the Manufacturing Institute, “why can’t colleges do it?”

But colleges and universities fire back that there’s plenty of blame to go around. They complain that what industry means by “job skills” is often vague. Surveys of company executives find that what they really seek in their employees isn’t a knack for widget-making, but such characteristics as critical thinking, innovation, and an ability to write and speak well.

“Those CEOs have to be more clear about the kinds of workers that they want,” said Rosenberg. “I’m not sure it always filters down even to their own HR departments.”

Nearly 90 percent of employers think colleges should place more emphasis on producing graduates who can communicate effectively, according to a 2009 survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Seventy-five percent say colleges should emphasize ethical decision-making more, while 70 percent want colleges to stress among students the ability to innovate and be creative.

Higher-education officials point out that the same companies talking about the value of employee education have been cutting back on their own professional-development and tuition-reimbursement benefits, shifting the burden of workforce training onto the very higher-education system that it’s criticizing.

In 1979, workers new to a job got an average of two and a half weeks per year of professional development, according to the consulting firm Accenture; now, Accenture says, at a time when people change jobs much more often, only about a fifth of employees surveyed reported receiving any training at all over the previous five years.

Meanwhile, the proportion of employers who provide tuition reimbursement has fallen from nearly 70 percent to under 60 percent in the last five years, reports the Society for Human Resource Management.

“Too many businesses pay lip service to education, especially higher education, but often are not willing to go the extra mile to make significant partnerships happen,” said Padrón.

While the two sides argue over who’s at fault, a new force is pushing them to pool their efforts: students and their parents, who want to know what career payoff to expect from spiraling tuition.

In an annual survey of first-year college students by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, 86 percent said they enrolled “to be able to get a better job”—the top reason, above “to learn about things that interest me.”

It’s community colleges that have been most in the workforce-development spotlight. That’s because so many job vacancies turn out to be in “middle-skills” occupations for which an associate degree is often adequate, such as lab technicians, early-childhood educators, radiation therapists, paralegals and machinists. Almost half of all jobs now require an associate degree—a greater proportion than call for a bachelor’s degree.

Which raises yet another, more surprising, problem: Few corporate CEOs—or, for that matter, policymakers—went to community colleges, or send their kids there.

“They’re four-year grads. All the people they know are four-year grads. They don’t have experience with community colleges,” said Karen Elzey, director of Skills for America’s Future.

“We have to get business leaders to pay more attention to the institutions that are going to serve the populations that right now are not reaching the levels of attainment that we need,” said Joseph Minarik, senior vice president of the Committee for Economic Development.

“Educators understand that the world needs poets,” said Minarik, who was chief economist of the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration. “Business leaders need to know that, too. And business leaders and educators also need to know that the world needs people who can work with sophisticated control systems on a factory floor.”

____________________________________________________
RIGHT NOW IT IS THE UNDERSERVED FAMILIES WHO ARE ATTENDING SCHOOL BOARD MEETINGS SHOUTING DOWN THESE POLICES THAT DO NO GOOD FOR THE PEOPLE THEY TOUT TO HELP.  THAT IS ONLY BECAUSE THE UNDERSERVED SCHOOLS ARE UNDER SCRUTINY.  THESE POLICES ARE WIDE-REACHING AND WILL SOON SEE MIDDLE-CLASS SCHOOLS COMPETING FOR FUNDING SOURCES AND OPERATING AS A PRIVATE BUSINESS RATHER THAN SIMPLY SPREADING THE FUNDING EQUALLY FROM A STRONG TAX BASE.  YOU THINK COMPETING WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE IS BAD, WAIT TO SEE WHAT YOU WILL HAVE TO CONCEDE TO IN ORDER TO RECEIVE ADEQUATE FUNDING!

THIS POLICY WILL REACH YOUR MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILY IN A NEGATIVE WAY!

Baltimore school funding model gets national praise
By James Campbell, on September 10, 2012, at 8:00 am From Randi Feinberg, ERS [Education Resource Strategies] Updates, September 06 

In 2007, Baltimore City Public Schools implemented a bold plan. With the school system struggling, Superintendent Andrés Alonso proposed Fair Student Funding (FSF) and other reforms. His goal was to empower school leaders and create accountability for student learning. In just one year, the district implemented FSF for all schools. This meant allocating dollars (instead of staff) to schools based on their student population and school needs. The district also closed lower performing schools and reorganized and downsized the central office.

Five years after the reform was proposed, ERS, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, set out to understand whether the district met its goals and what other districts might learn from this experience. Among the many successes, we learned that the district succeeded in creating a more equitable distribution of dollars across schools and was able to move a significant amount of dollars from the central office to school level control. For all the details, read our paper “Fair Student Funding and Other Reforms: Baltimore’s Plan for Equity, Empowerment, Accountability and Improvement.” The paper explores the successes, the lessons and notes that implementing FSF is an ongoing process that requires time to develop the necessary support structure for schools and to renegotiate employee contracts. FSF cannot be a standalone initiative. Instead, as Baltimore models, it should be a key component of a larger coherent district strategy.

Any district considering the move to FSF will want to review the insights from Baltimore’s experience, and this new ERS publication is a good place to start.


WHAT WE ARE SEEING IN BALTIMORE IS JUST WHAT IS THE INTENT OF THIS POLICY; WE SEE STUDENTS BEING CATEGORIZED IN FUNDING.  THE DEFINITION OF STUDENT NEEDS IS RELATIVE.  POOR FAMILIES THINK THERE LIES THE NEED......THE EMPHASIS NOW IS ON ADVANCED PLACEMENT (AP) STUDENTS ALREADY HAVING THE BEST CHANCES OF SUCCESS.  WHEN THE POLICY SAYS THAT FUNDING FOLLOWS THAT CHILD, THEN NO MATTER THE SCHOOL, THAT CHILD WILL GARNER THAT LEVEL OF FUNDING.  SO THE DISABLED CHILD IS BEING ASSESSED AS NEEDING THE LEAST FUNDING AS THEIR PROSPECTS ARE LIMITED AND EVEN IF THEY ENTER THE BEST SCHOOL, THAT FUNDING WILL MEAN LOWER SUPPORT.  IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THIS CHILD WILL NEED EXTRA RESOURCES TO BE GIVEN AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.  WHEN YOU TRANSLATE ALL THIS TO THE PRIVATE, PROFIT-BASED CHARTER SCHOOL FORMAT TOWARDS WHICH THE PEOPLE PROMOTING THIS INTEND TO MOVE, YOU SEE THAT A CHARTER/BEST SCHOOLS WILL ONLY TAKE THE STUDENTS WHO BRING THE MOST FUNDING. 

THIS IS TOWARDS WHAT THIS PLAN WORKS!

ALL PARENTS WILL BE PRESSED TO CONTINUOUS COMPETITION FOR SCHOOL SLOTS RATHER THAN SIMPLY HAVING A GOOD LOCAL PUBLIC SCHOOL!

THESE PEOPLE ARE UNSCRUPULOUS CURS!

Student-based budgeting proposes a
system of school funding based on five key
principles:

1. Funding should follow the child, on a
per-student basis, to the public school
that he or she attends.

2. Per-student funding should vary
according to the child’s need and other
relevant circumstances.

3. Funding should arrive at the school as
real dollars—not as teaching positions,
ratios or staffing norms—that can
be spent flexibly, with accountability
systems focused more on results and less
on inputs, programs or activities.

4. Principles for allocating money to
schools should apply to all levels of
funding, including federal, state and
local dollars.

5. Funding systems should be as simple
as possible and made transparent to
administrators, teachers, parents and citizens.
In addition to the weighted student
formula, a full school empowerment
program includes public school choice
and principal autonomy. Every school
in a district becomes a school of choice
and the funding system gives individuals,
particularly school administrators, the
autonomy to make local decisions.
This autonomy is granted based on the
contractual obligation that principals will
meet state and district standards for student
performance. Student-based funding is a
system-wide reform that allows parents
the right of exit to the best performing
schools and gives every school an incentive
to change practices to attract and retain
families from their communities.
Under the weighted student formula
model, schools are allocated funding
based on the number of students that
enroll at each individual school, with
extra per-student dollars for students who
need services such as special education,
English language learners instruction or
help catching up to grade level. School
principals have control over how their
school’s resources are allocated for salaries,
materials, staff development and many other
matters that have traditionally been decided
at the district level. Accountability measures
are implemented to ensure that performance
levels at each school site are met. With its
emphasis on local control of school funding,
most teachers’ unions have been reasonably
supportive because the weighted student
formula devolves autonomy to the school
site and places responsibility squarely in the
hands of each principal.
In each district the local context has
flavored weighted student formula in its own
ways. Like most education policy, school
districts vary on the extent to which they
have implemented school empowerment
programs. Each district profiled in this
yearbook is rated based on ten benchmarks
of a robust school empowerment program.
The rationale for each benchmark is
described below. The benchmarks were
determined based on the author’s analyses of
the commonalities and best practices within
existing weighted student formula programs
and the recommendations of other studies of
student-based budgeting.2
School Empowerment Benchmarks
1. School budgets based on students not
staffing
Schools should receive revenue in the same
way that the district receives revenue, on a
per-pupil basis reflecting the enrollment at a
school and the individual characteristics of
students at each school. The current staffing
model used in most school districts is a very
inefficient way to fund schools and creates
dramatic inequities between schools.


0 Comments

October 05th, 2012

10/5/2012

0 Comments

 
I'M GOING TO LET CHRISTIANS HAVE IT!!!  MUSLIMS DON'T WANT THIS CASINO ECONOMY THAT IS NAKED CAPITALISM BECAUSE IT IS AGAINST THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.  HOW CAN AMERICA SURRENDER ITSELF TO PURE FINANCIAL HEDONISM THAT SCARS FAMILIES AND PREYS ON THE POOR AND CALL ITSELF CHRISTIAN?

WHERE ARE THE CHURCHES THAT CAN FIGHT HARD AGAINST MARRIAGE EQUALITY AND BE SILENT AS GAMBLING TAKES OVER OUR COMMUNITIES?

SHOUT OUT AGAINST THIS AND VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!

THERE IS TOO MUCH TOP DOWN FOLKS.......WE NEED TO BRING IT BACK TO THE COMMUNITIES!

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT WHAT POLITICIANS SAY AND WHAT IS TRUE IS ALWAYS AT ODDS.  THE LAST ARTICLE IS A COMMENT FROM A READER WHO TELLS US HOW A HEALTH CARE WORKER LAW THAT WILL COME INTO EFFECT WILL HAVE EXTREMELY BAD CONSEQUENCES BECAUSE IT APPEARS TO BE ONE OF THOSE THAT IF LEFT UNFUNDED WILL HURT NOT HELP.  DON'T LET THESE POLITICIANS GET AWAY WITH FALSE STATEMENTS!


Not Everyone In Spain Eager To Wager On EuroVegas
by Lauren Frayer  NPR Gustavo Cuevas/EPA/Landov October 5, 2012

Listen to the Story Morning Edition

Spaniards protest the construction of the EuroVegas gambling complex at Puerta del Sol in Madrid last month.

American billionaire, casino mogul and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson has a new project: a $35 billion gambling megacity in Europe. He has chosen debt-ridden Spain as the location for "EuroVegas," which is expected to bring up to 250,000 much-needed jobs.

But many Spaniards are divided over whether they want casinos in their backyard.

Adelson recently touched down in his private helicopter in the Madrid suburb of Alcorcon, where wind whips across empty lots and half-built apartment blocks. The area has been down on its luck since the housing collapse, and one-third of its residents are unemployed.

On this land, Adelson envisions a glittering gambling city, to rival Las Vegas — complete with 36,000 hotel rooms, 18,000 slot machines and three golf courses.

Unemployed residents like 28-year-old Ruben Alvarez say it's like a mirage in the desert — almost too good to be true.

"If it's true and they really bring 250,000 jobs here? Imagine that. Things would definitely improve here if people had work. It would let people breathe a sigh of relief," he says. "But we'll have to see if it's true."

Initial Euphoria Waning

Spanish politicians have been salivating over the jobs EuroVegas would bring. Madrid beat out Barcelona for the contract by offering concessions. Now some of the initial euphoria is waning, as Spaniards learn the terms of the deal.

Las Vegas Sands, Adelson's company, says it'll pay only 35 percent. Cash-strapped municipal authorities would somehow have to come up with the rest. Adelson's company is also asking for tax breaks and exemptions from local labor laws — to bring in foreign workers and allow smoking inside casinos, despite a nationwide ban.

In this economy, Spain doesn't exactly have much bargaining power. And some feel Adelson is taking advantage of that.

Carlos Ruiz is a retired engineer who volunteers with a group called "EuroVegas No."

"Taking into account the very bad situation of Spain, he's doing all kinds of blackmails," he says.

Ruiz worries that with Europe's highest jobless rate — 25 percent and double that for youth — Spain is willing to sell its soul for a few jobs. He says Spanish leaders have fallen for a get-rich-quick scheme.

"[A plan] that we think doesn't create good jobs, stable jobs, that harms the environment, that harms the social relations, that ignores civil rights, that brings wealth only to the investors, not to the rest of society," he says.

Tax Breaks For A Billionaire?


Madrid is thinking about taking out massive bank loans to finance its part of the deal. But Spanish banks just got a bailout from Europe.

"Citizens from the whole of Europe are lending money to Spanish banks because they are in a bad situation — hoping that someday these banks will start to give credit to small enterprises, to families, to people," Ruiz says. "But this money is going to go to Mr. Adelson, who is one of the richest men in the world. This is quite unfair."

Adelson would also get tax breaks for his investment. Economist Gonzalo Garland, at IE Business School in Madrid, says if the government is going to offer tax breaks to casinos — which could bring prostitution, drugs and the like — it needs to better explain that decision to the public.

"A lot of people might think gambling is something where you do want to charge lots of taxes rather than not," Garland says. "But I think it's very important to be careful to show that this would be an exception because of some other gains; the gains would be the tourists and all the money they'll be leaving."

Both Las Vegas Sands and Madrid's town hall failed to respond to repeated calls for interviews, perhaps because negotiations over EuroVegas are still under way.

Need For Other Sources Of Growth

Beyond any moral objections, Garland says construction is what got Spain into this economic mess in the first place. Madrid's suburbs are littered with empty buildings left over from the housing boom.

"I think it would be a big mistake for Spain to again try to rely on construction as a big engine of growth," Garland says. "What probably Spain needs is to look for other sources, and look for several — not just concentrate on one."

Subsidies for wind and solar energy — possible future engines of growth in Spain — were cut in the last round of austerity, right around the time Adelson came calling.

Back in Alcorcon, where the casinos are slated to be built, 28-year-old Ruben Alvarez kills time on a bench near town hall. He's been out of work nearly a year. He says he's not crazy about casinos, but that he'd jump at the chance to work at one, nonetheless.

"People are out on the street. Those lucky to have jobs are getting paid less and less. Every day things are getting worse," Alvarez says. "So with casinos coming, it's a good thing for the jobs, but it could also be dangerous for us — for the young people, if there's prostitution and gambling.

"It could be a bit of a temptation," he says. "Considering the situation we're in."

__________________________________________________
EVERYONE KNOWS, JUST AS THE SPANISH CITIZEN INTERVIEWED ABOVE THAT THESE JOBS ARE NOT GOOD JOBS, THEY DO HIRE FROM OTHER THAN LOCAL WORKER POOLS. AND THEY TEND TO BE PART-TIME, ESPECIALLY THOSE PAYING THE MOST. O'MALLEY KNOWS AS WELL THAT HE BARELY MADE THE THORNTON EDUCATION GOAL FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THAT WAS WITH INTENSE PUBLIC PROTEST.  WHERE IS THE $800,000 THE ALGEBRA PROJECT IS IN COURT TRYING TO GET FOR BALTIMORE SCHOOL?  O'MALLEY SENDS THIS MONEY TO THE INNOVATION CENTERS/ONLINE COURSES AT UNIVERSITIES

AND IT DOES BRING MORAL HAZARD.  CASINOS REPRESENT A SOCIETY IN DECAY!

National Harbor Facilities The site has a convention center, six hotels, restaurants, shops, and condominiums.



O’Malley Denounces Anti-Gambling Ads As ‘Hogwash’
October 3, 2012 6:07 PM

Source: ABC News/ Wash Post 9/26-29 ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) --

Gov. Martin O’Malley on Wednesday fired back against television advertisements opposing the state’s proposed gambling expansion, contending the casino company behind them is simply trying to protect its large operation in West Virginia from losing Maryland gamblers.

“It’s a bunch of West Virginia casino hooey,” the governor said.

O’Malley, speaking to reporters outside the Maryland State House, took particular umbrage at the suggestion in the ads that additional gambling proceeds won’t go to education as set out in the proposal. The ads, paid for by Penn National Gaming Inc., suggest Maryland has reneged on funding promises in the past, and that voters shouldn’t be fooled.

But O’Malley, who has made education funding a top priority of his tenure, said it was “ludicrous” to suggest Maryland hasn’t been committed to funding education during his administration, which has made record investments in schools.

“It’s silly to engage in what ifs when you look at our history and you look at every budget I’ve ever submitted,” the governor said in a follow-up interview.

However, the governor conceded it’s not possible to say how the money will be used in perpetuity under future administrations.

“You know, what’s the guarantee that a house won’t fall on Mr. Carlino tomorrow,” O’Malley said, referring to Penn National’s chairman and chief executive officer, Peter Carlino.

Maryland is in the middle of an astonishing ad blitz from both sides of the gambling issue, which will be on the ballot in November.

So far, with more than a month before Election Day, Penn National has spent more than $18 million on its campaign against a casino in Prince George’s County. Supporters, including Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International, have spent more than $14 million. Supporters tout the proposed gambling expansion as a big revenue raiser for the state that will generate thousands of jobs.

O’Malley called a special session in August, when lawmakers approved allowing table games like blackjack at Maryland casinos as well as a new casino site in Prince George’s County, where MGM wants to build a casino at National Harbor near the nation’s capital.

Penn National, which is based in Wyomissing, Pa., owns the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia, not far from the Maryland border. It also owns the Hollywood Casino in Perryville, which was Maryland’s first casino to open. It also owns Rosecroft Raceway in Maryland, which is in Prince George’s County.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

____________________________________________________
WE ARE SEEING TWO LEADING GROWTH INDUSTRIES IN MARYLAND AS IS TRUE ACROSS THE COUNTRY.  ONE IS THE GAMING/TOURIST INDUSTRY AND THE OTHER IS THE PRIVATE NON-PROFIT.   THIS ARTICLE IS 2008, THE YEAR OF THE CRASH.  TODAY THE NUMBERS FOR THESE HAVE SKYROCKETED IN MARYLAND.  LOOK AT THE LAST ARTICLE TO SEE BALTIMORE'S BOARD OF ESTIMATES MEETING AGENDA TO SEE THEIR BUSINESS IS A LONG STRING OF PRIVATE NON-PROFITS FUNDED BY GIFTING ORGANIZATIONS AND CITY TAXES.

MANY OF THESE ARE NATIONAL CHAIN ORGANIZATIONS.  SOME ARE SPECIAL INTEREST.  NO ONE WILL SAY THEY ARE NOT HELPFUL.  THE PROBLEM IS THIS:

WE ARE SEEING LOCAL REC CENTERS AND SMALL COMMUNITY NON-PROFITS CLOSING BECAUSE THEY ARE BEING DEFUNDED.  THESE EMPLOY PEOPLE IN THE COMMUNITY WHO KNOW THE PEOPLE THEY ARE HELPING.  THE PEOPLE ARE HEADING THE PROGRAM THEMSELVES.

THESE NATIONAL PROGRAMS SUPPLANT THOSE BONDS THAT ARE CRITICAL IN AT-RISK COMMUNITIES ESPECIALLY AND COMMUNITIES IN GENERAL!!!!!  THIS IS HOW COMMUNITY LEADERS ARE MADE.

THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS OF THOSE NON-PROFITS WILL BE PAID WELL WHILE THOSE UNDER WILL SEE VERY LOW OR NO PAY.

Friday, July 4, 2008 Maryland job growth booms in nonprofits Sector accounts for almost 10 percent of all employment in state by Kevin James Shay | Staff Writer  Gazette.Net

Jobs in Maryland’s nonprofit sector increased almost three times faster than in the for-profit sector from 2005 to 2006, according to a Johns Hopkins University study released this week.

Nonprofit employment in Maryland rose by 2.9 percent in 2006 — the most recent year for which data are available — to about 244,000, compared with an increase of 1.1 percent to 2.6 million in for-profit jobs, the study says. The growth in nonprofit employment in Maryland is fueled by industries that consistently add jobs, such as health care, education and social services, said Stephanie Lessans Geller, research project manager with the Center for Civil Society Studies within the Baltimore university’s Institute for Policy Studies and a co-author of the report.

‘‘It’s a long-term trend that has been occurring for the past six or seven years,” Geller said.

Nonprofit employment in Maryland grew by 20.5 percent from 1999 to 2006, far more than for-profit job growth of 7.1 percent. Nonprofit hospitals that include Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System added 14,449 net jobs over the seven-year period.

Three of the four largest private employers in Maryland are nonprofits, according to figures compiled last year by the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development. Those are Johns Hopkins University, MedStar Health and Johns Hopkins Health System.

Nonprofit organizations, which do not pay property taxes but whose employees pay income taxes, provided 9.6 percent of all jobs in Maryland in 2006, well above the national average of 7.2 percent and up from 7.2 percent in the state in 1998. State nonprofit payroll has increased from $6.1 billion in 1998 to $10.6 billion in 2006.

‘‘Nonprofit job growth is especially critical given the recent employment declines in other parts of the U.S. economy,” Lester M. Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies, said in a statement.

Doesn’t look atcurrent slowdown

The new study does not cover the current economic slowdown. In May, Maryland’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate ballooned to 4.0 percent from 3.5 percent in May 2007 — so far the largest year-over-year increase in 2008, according to U.S. Department of Labor figures.

But the state is still seeing overall job growth, as Maryland has added about 6,500 jobs since January, including 1,100 in May. Meanwhile, businesses across the nation have shed more than 300,000 jobs in 2008, and the national unemployment rate shot up to 5.5 percent in May from 4.5 percent a year ago.

Geller said she could not speculate on what has occurred in the nonprofit sector in Maryland the past year or so. But the latest federal figures showed job gains in Maryland in May in education and health services, which have many nonprofit employers. Losses mounted in the construction, manufacturing and finance sectors, typically dominated by for-profit companies.  IT IS NO MYSTERY.....HEALTH AND EDUCATION IS THE NEXT GLOBAL WORKFORCE AND THEY ARE USING THE TAXPAYER TO GROW THEIR INDUSTRY.....JUST LIKE DEFENSE AND SPACE INDUSTRIES. 

The average weekly wage for an employee of a 501(c)(3) organization was $627 in 2004, compared with $669 in the for-profit sector, according to Independent Sector, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit advocacy organization.

While nonprofit wages are generally lower than in the for-profit sector, in industries in which the two sectors converge such as health care and social services, studies have shown that nonprofit wages are actually higher than at the for-profit companies, Geller said.  THAT'S BECAUSE THEY PAY ONE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR WELL AND HAVE VISTAS AND VOLUNTEERS AS WORKERS. THE VISTAS ARE PAID BY TAXPAYERS.

In addition to hospitals and private universities, the nonprofit sector includes museums such as the National Aquarium in Baltimore, schools, clinics, day care centers, social service providers, symphonies, art galleries, theaters and environmental organizations.

Among state jurisdictions, Baltimore city had the most nonprofit employees in 2006 with some 84,400, followed by Montgomery County with about 39,900 and Baltimore County with about 34,400. Prince George’s County saw the largest percentage gain since 2005 among the state’s five biggest entities at 5.8 percent to about 14,400.
_____________________________________________________


MOUNT VERNON PLACE CONSERVANCY, INC. $50,000.00

DOWNTOWN BALTIMORE FAMILY ALLIANCE, INC. $20,000.00 (DBFA)

CHESAPEAKE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY, INC. $50,000.00

FRIENDS OF PATTERSON PARK, INC. $50,000.00

NUEVA VIDA, INC. $15,000.00

YOUNG AUDIENCES OF MARYLAND, INC. $40,000.00

DOWNTOWN SAILING CENTER, INC. $50,000.00

ARTS EVERY DAY, INC. $25,000.00

BOYS HOPE GIRLS HOPE OF BALTIMORE, $50,000.00

BLUE WATER BALTIMORE, INC. $25,000.00

MEALS ON WHEELS OF CENTRAL MARYLAND, $20,000.00

Choice Jobs Program, a non-profit entity

HEALTHY TEEN NETWORK, INC. $ 45,000.00
___________________________________________________

HERE IS A COMMENT FROM A READER ON HOW THESE BILLS BEING PASSED ARE MADE TO SOUND GOOD BUT HAVE THE INTENTION TO HARM.  ALL OF  GOVERNMENT MONEY IS GOING TO PAY FOR THE PLANNING OF PRIVATE HEALTH SYSTEMS WHILE THE PEOPLE ARE BEING UNDERMINED AT EVERY STEP!  ALL MARYLAND POLITICIANS PRAISED THIS HOME HEALTH WORKER BILL AS GOOD.....

Philip Bennett said:

I am writing this as a homecare worker of 36 years, not for any homecare agency.
The Federal Department of Labor (DOL) is proposing changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)to Domestic Service which, if put into effect, may seriously reduce the take-home pay of countless numbers of homecare workers such as I and make the lives of the people with disabilities we assist less manageable.
The changes would require the payment of minimum wage to homecare workers and mandate that homecare workers must receive time and a half pay for every hour over 40 hours per week of work done. Medicaid would bear most of the burden.
This sounds like it would be a major victory for me and my fellow homecare workers, right? But there's one big problem: where is the money to pay for this? If the law says we can't work without minimum wage or time and a half pay but the money's not there, then we won't be allowed to work those hours!
That means, instead of increasing our take-home pay, the proposal will slash all hours beyond 40 per week of our pay. For me, that's 416 hours and $4,742.40 per year I will lose.
My fellow workers who currently put in 84 hours per week will suffer a 44 hour loss -- over half their pay!
Healthcare insurance will also be harder to qualify for since it's based on the number of hours worked.
As a result, many workers will be forced to seek out second or third or forth jobs to make up the loss.
And, for the people we assist, their lives will be harder. They will either endure a reduction in homecare hours or will have to seek more workers. That means more poorly paid people in their homes with even less incentive to do a good job. Many people with disabilities have a hard enough time right now managing their assistants. The added strain will cause many to just give up and move into nursing homes.
Who benefits from this proposal? Certainly the nursing home industry. Also the homecare unions which will receive more dues-paying members even as all the members' average standard-of-living declines. Even the most poorly-paid worker in a closed shop is required to turn over at least $25.10 per month in union dues. That's a windfall for union coffers even as the average standard of living of the workers plummets.
What can we do? We can demand that, before this proposal is put into effect, funding for it be allocated and in place to begin payment immediately. Finding this money won't be easy. The federal government is 15 trillion dollars in debt (that's $15,000,000,000,000: a lot of zeros!) The states and municipalities aren't doing much better. But, until we are shown the money, this proposal is nothing but a shell game which promises a reward but leaves us worse off than before.
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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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