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July 15th, 2014

7/15/2014

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

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

Check out this Facebook page:   the movement is growing!

US Uncut
June 30 ·


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

Share to break corporate media's censorship.


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

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

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






Wednesday, Feb 19, 2014, 3:10 pm

UIC Faculty Rekindle Fight for Public Education With Historic Strike

BY Rebecca Burns

University of Illinois----Chicago



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

Wednesday, Apr 30, 2014, 8:10 pm

College Adjuncts Union Scores Victory at Maryland Institute College of Art

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

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


_______________________________________________


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

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


UPS, FedEx owned by most of the same monopoly banks


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


Nurses walk out at Quincy Medical Center

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


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

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

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

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

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

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


________________________________________________


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

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


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

PROTECTING UNION MEMBER'S WEALTH IS AS IMPORTANT.   

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

Friday, Apr 11, 2014, 1:01 pm

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


BY Jonathan Leavitt

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



BHS Students on the picket line beside their CCTA drivers.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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May 04th, 2014

5/4/2014

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Cindy Walsh blogs on weekdays and on weekends may talk about protests, rallies, events----or for now, the primary election.  Monday I will speak to education reform.

WE THE PEOPLE MUST ENGAGE IN POLITICS TO TAKE BACK OUR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS.  WE NEED TO SHAKE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS OUT OF POLITICS AND WE NEED TO SHAKE UNION LEADERSHIP THAT KEEPS BACKING THESE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS.



As we work to rebuild the democratic party from control by corporate neo-liberals to 80% of the democratic party base of labor and justice we need to work as well on how neo-liberalism has distorted our labor and justice organizations as well.  Today I want to look at Maryland labor union leaders who think Anthony Brown is someone for whom to campaign while ignoring a candidate running as a labor and justice candidate.  Don't be fooled----I am more qualified/skilled than Brown for the administrative tasks of Governor-----I simply an not connected to the Wall Street/corporate crowd.   I have solicited the Maryland AFL-CIO for a few months before they declared for Brown so they know my campaign website and where these corporate neo-liberals are taking America.  They are choosing to support global corporations and markets over what is best for their union membership.

Below you see the politicians in Maryland the MD AFL-CIO is supporting-----ALL OF THEM CORPORATE AND WALL STREET.....ANTHONY BROWN BEING THE WORST OF GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS.  Let's take a look at where O'Malley/Brown has taken Maryland and where he intends to take it.



MARYLAND AFL-CIO ENDORSES THE MOST CORPORATE OF CANDIDATES AND EVEN ONES THEY KNOW ARE BEHIND MOVING TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT (TPP)

Folks, this is not sour apples for not having unions support my campaign. This is a serious problem in having unions supporting the most corporate neo-liberal of candidates who they know will kill labor and justice even more.

Anthony Brown will bust public sector unions out of the water, will continue to move towards ending teacher's unions and the privatization of education. He ignores the fact that labor laws are not enforced for goodness sake making wage theft in Maryland one of the highest.

Sarbanes (SR), Hoyer, Cummings all voted for NAFTA and breaking the Glass Steagall wall that killed unions and the middle-class and they are still in office in Maryland with union support. Ruppersberger is king of all that is NSA and spying/surveillance and drone warfare for goodness sake. Why would a union push for that kind of candidate? Dulaney is a Clinton investment banker!!!!! HELLO!!!!

Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland ran to give people another choice rather than allowing all of this to continue. I hope union membership look for who their leaders are supporting AND STOP ALLOWING THE SAME NEO-LIBERALS KILLING DEMOCRACY AND LABOR BE RE-ELECTED.

This makes unions look bad and it will cause membership to leave as unions do not protect their membership.


Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO

2014 Primary Election Endorsements
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GOVERNOR Anthony Brown

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Ken Ulman

COMPTROLLER Peter Franchot

ATTORNEY GENERAL Brian Frosh



MARYLAND STATEWIDE

MD District 1 No Recommendation

MD District 2 Dutch Ruppersberger

MD District 3 John Sarbanes

MD District 4 Donna Edwards

MD District 5 Steny Hoyer

MD District 6 John Delaney

MD District 7 Elijah Cummings

MD District 8 Christopher Van Hollen

District of
Columbia At Large: Eleanor Holmes-Norton




Education:

Brown is single-handedly behind privatization of K-community colleges and corporatizing our public universities.  He has worked to end public education in Maryland.  Public sector union busting....developing tiered education with working and middle-class trapped in vocational K-college with education based on online lessons and no access to student loans, financial aid, or grants because all money for education is now being used to subsidize corporate R and D and community colleges as Human Resources.  Taxpayer are now literally paying the operational costs of corporate research and job training in Maryland while being told there is no money for funding public schools and public aid to students wanting to attend college.   THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE ON EDUCATION-----IT IS REPUBLICAN.

Health Care reform:

Brown is the face of the most private and profit-driven state health system in the nation.  It literally ends public health and privatizes even the Medicaid-level care to private non-profits having no oversight and accountability.  THERE IS NO PUBLIC SECTOR PROTECTING THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND FROM FRAUD AND ABUSE.  Medicare and Medicaid lose almost 1/2 of spending to health industry fraud in Maryland and this reform simply dismantles more agencies of oversight leaving the public completely unprotected.  Maryland is the only state in the nation opting out of Medicare oversight and simply integrates Medicare into these tiered systems with the goal of ending Medicare as a Federal program.  Brown knows that these private systems are being built with the goal of corporate health plans, public sector health plans, and Medicare and Medicaid all falling into these tiered structures with 80% of Marylanders falling into Medicaid or Bronze----all preventative care that will be handled in clinics.  This is what third world medical care looks like and life expectancy in America will drop immediately if these reforms are left in place.   THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE ON HEALTH CARE----IT IS REPUBLICAN.

Public Private Partnerships:

Handing public assets and services to corporations with taxpayers paying the cost of operations and infrastructure development to maximize profits, handing the power to write all public policy to that corporation, and busting yet another middle-class sector to poverty to end public sector unions.  Brown is killing public education, public health, public transportation, handing our roads to corporate oversight, and they are now moving to hand Maryland water and waste to private corporations.  AS OBAMA STATED IN HIS MEETING WITH GERMANIES MERKEL-----AMERICA IS BECOMING A CORPORATE STATE.....MEANING THAT CORPORATIONS RUN ALL OF OUR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES.  That has indeed been Obama major achievement and O'Malley/Brown's as well.  Now, Gansler and Mizeur will advance this global corporate agenda as well-----but Brown is a Harvard guy-----Wall Street through and through just like Obama---- What other nation is a corporate state?  CHINA.


SEE WHY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS WANT BROWN TO WIN SO MUCH AND WHY BROWN IS MENTIONED OVER AND OVER IN THE CORPORATE MEDIA? YOU BETCHA!


Corporate taxation:

There is not a corporate tax break or corporate tax reduction Brown won't advance while pushing higher taxes in the form of taxes, fees, and fines on the middle and working class.  You see, neo-liberals and republicans don't care how much we pay in taxes-----as revenue falls from the end of taxing corporations and the rich----someone has to support not only running the state but subsidizing all the costs of business for global corporations.  BOTH REPUBLICANS AND NEO-LIBERALS WILL KEEP RAISING TAXES ON THE WORKING/MIDDLE CLASS TO SUBSIDIZE CORPORATE PROFIT.

Using Wall Street financial instruments to fund state projects:

Did the American people learn from the 2008 crash that fraud and corruption permeates Wall Street and government coffers and individuals lost tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud often tied to Wall Street's partnering with government.  Whether a privatized Fannie and Freddie ------whether financial instruments and credit bond leveraging-----all was found to be full of fraud costing Maryland hundreds of billions of dollars over a few decades....tens of billions last decade.  So, why would Brown double-down on development projects funded by Wall Street?  Do you know the economy is ready to collapse soon in a crash greater than 2008 and O'Malley/Brown has leveraged the state with debt so great as to create default on these public projects and send these public assets to corporate hands?  Think of the billion dollar school building scheme in Baltimore handing our school buildings to what will become education businesses.    THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE, IT IS A REPUBLICAN STANCE.

Private and Public Sector Pensions:

Pensions were taken in 2007 from the then safety of the bond market and thrown into the collapsing stock market just to buoy the big banks.  This was fraud and public malfeasance as pension funds lost almost 1/2 the value.  These pensions need not only that lost value back but the gains from the recent BULL market that would have had these pensions flush with money.  THERE IS NO PENSION SHORTFALL-----WE HAVE NOT RECOVERED MASSIVE PENSION FRAUD.  Now, some states are actively pursuing these lost funds-----public and private sector unions fighting in court.  In Maryland-----SILENCE.  In fact, union leaders are simply agreeing to pension cuts that are not needed.  This is not about increased cost for the taxpayer-----it is about recovery of pension fraud by Wall Street. 

NOT ONE WORD FROM ANY DEMOCRATIC POL OR UNION LEADER IN MARYLAND.  THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE, IT IS A REPUBLICAN STANCE.



Privatizing public transportation:

VEOLA is one of the most ruthless global corporations in the world with headquarters in Africa.  It is known for enslavement, worker abuse, profiteering and VEOLA has been brought to America to take most of public transportation in corporate neo-liberal states like Maryland.  The goal is to end public transportation and control the travel of most people to that of moving to and from work.  Public transportation was the greatest democratizing public policy in US history.  It gives freedoms and it is a cornerstone of first world quality of life.  We do not want to lose public transportation.  Secondly, privatizing the Port of Baltimore took state revenue of a few billion dollars a year and sent it to private corporations.  Now, the state revenue is a few hundred million in leases.  We have allowed a Port of Baltimore plan of global shipping to kill the Chesapeake Bay with invasive species-----crabs, oysters, and clams taken by Asian mussels for example.  Longshoremen are now being busted as yet again, middle-class wages move to poverty.  THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE----IT IS REPUBLICAN.



I could go on and on.  One thing I want to say is that even conservative republicans do not like global corporate control as it is not free market-----it is naked capitalism and subsidizing winners and losers.  When a system is rife with fraud and corruption----there are no free markets.  So, when I say the above is republican policy I dare say even republicans hate these policies.  The point is -----MARYLAND HAS NO DEMOCRATIC PARTY------IT HAS BEEN TAKEN BY GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS DISMANTLING OUR DEMOCRACY.

STOP ALLOWING A GLOBAL CORPORATE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PARTY CHOOSE OUR CANDIDATES!  THIS IS WHY ALL CANDIDATES CANNOT GET MEDIA COVERAGE DURING PRIMARIES!

My final point is this  ---------WHY WOULD A UNION LEADER SUPPORT ALL OF THIS?  TAKING THE US FROM FIRST WORLD TO THIRD WORLD IS NOT IN THE UNION MEMBER'S INTEREST.


_________________________________________
Below you see my concern about labor union leadership-----they know the article below shows where neo-liberals are taking Europe and the US and it is very, very, very bad for unions and workers.  The 1% laughs and says---unions can organize the poor.....well, unions will have no trust if they are leading the American people right into this third world structure.  We need to hear Maryland union leaders shouting as neo-liberals try to take Maryland to third world status.



THIS IS THE BIG PICTURE OF WHAT OBAMA AND NEO-LIBERALS HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THESE SEVERAL YEARS. THEY ARE SIMPLY CONTINUING ONE LONG GLOBAL CORPORATE CONSOLIDATION OF ALL BUSINESSES STARTED WITH REAGAN/CLINTON AND NOW BUSH/OBAMA.

Neo-liberals and neo-cons are global corporate pols working against labor and justice and the union leaders are pushing neo-liberals!



The French transportation global corporation is taking all of US public transportation private and that is why US global corporations are in France taking its public transportation. That is what these Trans Pacific and Atlantic Trade deals are about-----giving global corporations the right to work in a nation under their own nation's laws. French VEOLA is headquartered in Africa and comes to America working in some cases----and soon all cases---as they do in Africa... see the Super Shuttle/BWI protests in Maryland to see TPP in action. So, having US corporations taking French transportation will allow US corporations to bust unions and labor laws in France as they are doing in the US right now. Meanwhile, the same people are major shareholders in both global corporations. They are busting labor and justice in a global takeover of all public sector. Obama calls it state corporations.



As you see French unions are calling for nationalization of public sector services taken private in an attempt to counter global corporate takeover-----in the US the union leaders are pushing the pols that want to privatize all that is public-----THAT IS NOT WHAT UNIONS DO!  Remember, if we had nationalized the big banks at the collapse----we would have recovered massive fraud and the economy would be moving towards a health rather than ready to collapse yet again.



Revolting Europe On Europe, the left, labour and social movements Search

// you're reading... France   The battle for France’s national industry jewel
Posted by revoltingeurope ⋅ May 1, 2014 ⋅

France has been in a state of shock since it was revealed last week the company that built the high speed TGV train and steam turbines for EDF’s nuclear reactors was about to be taken over by the yankees. Things scarcely improved when a desperate Paris sought to bring in the Germans for an alternative bid over the weekend.

That the fate of Alstom – one of France’s largest private sector employers and seen as central to the country maintaining its position among the world’s major manufacturing powers – is in the hands of two foreign engineering giants, General Electric and Siemens, is seen as another blow to French pride. It comes amid a string of high profile company closures and record 10% unemployment, a picture that has allowed the Economist magazine to brand the country as the ‘sick man of Europe’.

For the unpopular French socialist administration, gloating from the right-wing opposition UMP party that on their watch President Nicolas Sarkozy warded off foreign predators with a multi-billion-euro bailout and temporary nationalisation, is particularly embarrassing.

Try as they might, President Francois Hollande and his Industry minister Arnaud Montebourg are struggling to show the administration’s patriotic colours. To be sure, Montebourg was behind Yahoo’s failed bid in April last year to buy French video site Dailymotion, arguing that he would not let the country sell off one of its top startups. But their overall record over the past two years is somewhat mixed. For example, that national cause-celebre of the Florange steelworks in north-eastern France. On the campaign trail in 2012 they pledged to keep the blast furnaces going after Indian multinational Tata pulled the plug, only to let them shut.

French giant run from Connecticut

Montebourg objected on Monday to the possibility that Alstom “in three days, can decide to sell 75 percent of a national jewel behind the backs of the employees, of the government, of most of the board and of the senior executives.” The bid from General Electric raised a simple problem that “the main part of Alstom, 75 percent of the businesses, 65,000 employees in the world, is going to be run from Connecticut.”

Their aim is reportedly to keep Alstom’s decision-making centre in France and protect jobs and strategic energy interests. But so far, their only solution was to bring in the Germans, and to try and flog the plan to the French as an Airbus-style “European” project, which might have worked in the past but is less likely to get a sympathetic hearing in the current Euroskeptic climate where Germany is rightly accused of imposing misery on fellow Europeans.

For General Electric, this is an opportunity to expand in Europe – and retreat from its none-too-successful transformation from a real economy engineering firm to a Fortune 100 “diversified financial” company, which invested in the sub-prime market and got its fingers burnt (a track record the French ought to be aware of). For Siemens, it is about wiping out the competition, and above all blocking the US giant’s ambitions.

But how bad is it for Alstom and does it really need rescuing? The newspapers variously report that the company is ‘coming is under pressure because its main markets for power generation and rail equipment are expected to be weak in the next few years’, that its debts are mounting, that Alstom, and that with a stock market capitalisation of a mere $11 billion, it is too small alongside giants such as GE and Siemens ($268 billion and $144 billion respectively).

Unions point out the say Alstom’s problems are much overplayed. Its order books amount to 56 billion euros, a record. In its transport division this amounts to 5 years worth of work. In any case the issue of depressed orders from power utilities affects Alstom’s rivals too.

Cost of capital

For his part, in a tweet this week, former Presidential candidate Jean Luc Melenchon identified some more fundamental problems: the ‘cost of capital, austerity and neo-liberalism’. So for the sake of balance in this debate, let’s explore the radical leader’s tweet.

1. Cost of capital: Over the past four years 1.5 billion euros has been handed out to shareholders in dividends, according to unions. Compare that to 2.3 billion euros of debts, which while below the average level in French companies, could be substantially lower if the fat cat owners had less cream. And the biggest shareholder of all – Martin Bouygues, the billionaire chairman of family conglomerate Bouygues, with a 29.4% stake – wants to sell its share to spend some money on what today are considered more lucrative ventures, perhaps telecoms. A capitalist captain of French industry who wants to bail out, heading for what he hopes are calmer waters, leaving behind him his ship and crew with a gaping hole in the hull.

2. Austerity: Alstom’s orders are heavily reliant on public procurement, and in particular the French state. But cuts in budgets due to the financial crisis and its austerity response, and the longer term EU budget straight jacket (the deficit must be no more than 3% of GDP) have had their impact. If you consider that Alstom’s clients globally are also subject to austerity plans of varying intensity and/or suffering the international repercussions, then the company’s problems are very much a result of public spending cuts. These same policies of course are the ones hurting the public finances and so are stopping the government pursuing the option unions support – nationalisation, albeit on a temporary basis.

3. Neo-liberalism: in some respects Alstom will have benefited from freer trade and greater global competition, for example orders for plant from key client EDF, now one of Europe’s largest energy companies. But greater competition has put the company under intense pressure by exactly the types of companies from the world’s more powerful capitalist nations that want to gobble it up. The Sarkozy rescue reportedly only got past EU competition chiefs on condition work was handed out to competitors, resulting in thousands of French job losses.

Pro-market policies since the early 1980s, as well as driving concentration of ownership into ever fewer hands, have moved decision-making away from centres of democratic oversight, if not control, meaning an a ‘dirigiste’ industrial policy becomes increasingly difficult.
Hollande needs not to forget the lessons of France’s relatively successful fight against globalisation which has left the country not only with a world beating rail system but with a volume car industry led by Peugeot and (whatever you think of nuclear) a formidable energy sector, and today, a rapidly growing green energy industry, led by companies like Alstom. These are sectors which provide the kind of high-skilled, high paid jobs that underpin any prosperous nation.

How about a ‘Franco-French’ solution?

So will it be a US takeover, a Franco-German solution or, as one trade union leader suggested would be best, a “Franco-French” future for Alstom? The latest in what one French newspaper has called a “national psychodrama” is that Alstom has accepted General Electric’s $17 billion offer to buy its energy division, despite government protestations. An apparent concession to ministerial pressure is that it is said to still be prepared to consider a counter-bid from Siemens. In the meantime, an independent committee will scrutinise the preferred bid from the US conglomerate and will report back at the end of next month.

Unions remain fearful that either proposed solution means big job losses and a breakup of the group. Instead they see a much more muscular role for the state in protecting French interests.


Says Christian Garnier, a CGT union rep at the company:

“For us, there is no preferred option. Whether the predator is American or German, we do not want either because in both cases it leads to the collapse and disappearance of the [Alstom] group. Siemens wants to eliminate a competitor. General Electric wants to get patents, know-how, the order book, and industrial facilities… Whatever the buyer, there will be job losses and closures. The true explanation of the proposed sale is that the largest shareholder Bouygues wants to make a capital gain by selling shares. We are being sacrificed for finance. We want the nationalization of the company. We want the state to stop its rhetoric and take action.”

Melenchon and his communist allies, who remain influential in parts of the trade union movement, say a state-led energy and transport “pole”, or cluster, is “the only guarantee of industrial independence for France”. This could be achieved, they suggest, by state-controlled train company SNCF, metro operator RATP, energy giant EDF and nuclear group AREVA  buying shares in Alstom as part of ‘new strategic cooperation agreements that are industrially, financially and employment-friendly, as well as being socially useful.”

This is a plan that will no doubt fall foul of EU state-aid rules, and other economic orthodoxies of the day, but if I were a Frenchman it would get my vote.


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January 20th, 2014

1/20/2014

0 Comments

 
I WANT TO EMPHASIZE TO THE CURRENT MIDDLE-CLASS WHO HAVE THE VOICE AND POWER TO CHANGE THIS MORE-SO THAN THE WORKING CLASS AND POOR-----THIS SOCIAL REFORM THAT TAKES US BACK TO MEDIEVAL SERFDOM DOES NOT END WELL FOR ANYONE BUT THOSE NOW THE RICHEST.  YOU NEED TO SHAKE THESE NEO-LIBERAL BUGS OUT OF THE RUG OR YOU WILL BE LIVING IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE.

MLK WOULD SAY NAKED CAPITALISM HAS TO GO!!!!



Regarding MLK day and The Lines Between Us:

I attended a justice gathering this week that had people telling stories of abuse in the City of Baltimore. It paints the ongoing War Against the Poor in the city. Now, if you are middle-class and think gentrification of the city needs to follow the path being taken by sociopaths at the top of the income scale....you need to reflect as to where your family will be if these sociopaths are allowed to carry through their plans to eliminate WE THE PEOPLE and THE BILL OF RIGHTS with TPP----living under suspended Rule of Law brings everyone down! That was MLK's message in the 1960s and it is 10 times more relevant now that Clinton and Obama have created global corporate rule and now move towards ending US sovereignty giving all rights to rule to the heads of a few global corporations. Don't worry, it is all illegal and a COUP against the American people and will be NULL AND VOID.....but most will see their personal wealth disappear before we turn this around!

I was speaking to a wonderful lady shouting loudly against injustice in the city who tells me of long lines around the NORTH AVE social services office waiting to process information for FOOD STAMPS. She told me how people were made to wait for hours in these lines in the freezing cold and if they made it inside the process failed to complete registration. Given phone numbers to follow up they found no answer to these phone calls.
PEOPLE NEEDING FOOD STAMPS ARE BEING GIVEN THE RUN AROUND SO THEY BECOME DESPERATE AND GIVE UP IN BALTIMORE.

I explained that this was deliberate and taken from the Texas plan used now for a decade of moving social services to phone and online where, just as a consumer trying to get through with a product complaint and cannot speak to a real person.....this is happening in social services. So, Baltimore closed 2 major social services hubs and left this one facility open to process all the people while being understaffed. THIS IS A SIGN OF ENDING PUBLIC ASSISTANCE IN THE STATE. She told me how Mikulski and Cummings told her they were fighting for Food Stamps and extended unemployment and I shouted to those gathered that these pols are lying because they know these services are being dismantled in Maryland as they pretend to fight for them! Remember, Maryland amazingly fell below the limit for extended unemployment just as it is being pushed in Congress.....6.4% all without any sustained job growth. No one believes that figure and it is skewed to play the requirements. Just an aside, the same is happening with health care. No one using dental insurance because they are being abused and exploited by dental chains. Another situation of passing progressive laws and not enforcing them. Texas is now equivalent to a third world nation with all of its social restructuring and suspension of Rule of Law and Maryland is using Texas as a model for their structural changes.....neo-liberals and neo-cons......WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE....THERE IS NONE. ALL OF YOUR INCUMBENT POLITICIANS KNOW THIS IS HAPPENING.

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

So, what happens when public policy deliberately makes sure you cannot be employed, then you cannot get social services, and all of the wealth you accumulated is lost to corporate fraud, and police brutality and abuse has you in jail working for prison contractors making profits paying you $2 an hour? Baltimore has over 160,000 people of which 60% are at or below poverty most victims of O'Malley's zero tolerance criminal record.

THIS IS BALTIMORE'S MLK LEGACY AND IT IS A REALLY SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS. ALL OF THE TIME AND MONEY THAT GOES WITH MAKING SURE PEOPLE CANNOT THRIVE COSTS SOCIETY MORE AND LABELS THAT SOCIETY IMMORAL AND CORRUPT.

This MLK march will be about a revolution that will not be stopped by social programs meant to quell social unrest. It is growing, it is broad, and it will be sustained. When Rule of Law returns, we know that Statutes of Limitation is suspended when a government suspends Rule of Law.


Below you see where the conservative approach to ending welfare and social services because it 'makes people lazy' went.....and this includes closing brick and mortar buildings for social services and directing people to call and then ignoring them as is happening in Baltimore today! 

Remember, this is only about the richest getting richer.....it is not about sound public policy.  Clinton took a thriving and strong society with middle-class wealth, strong integrity and oversight over business and government, strong social safety nets and ended all of that just so a few at the top could become extremely rich.  THAT IS ALL.  It wasn't enough to be millionaires.....  Obama and neo-liberals today are trying to seal the deal by suspending all Rule of Law and public justice as we all get fleeced.

Welfare Reform in Texas Has Not Worked, According to University of Texas at Austin Researchers

Jan. 29, 2008  University of Texas, Austin

AUSTIN, Texas — Most Texas families who leave welfare remain in or near poverty and many are likely to return to the welfare rolls in the future, say University of Texas at Austin researchers.

For a new book, "Life After Welfare: Reform and the Persistence of Poverty," Laura Lein and Deanna Schexnayder followed 179 families who left welfare after the welfare reform act of 1996 was signed into law.

"We examine the ways in which the effort to 'end welfare as we know it' has played out in the lives of impoverished families in Texas who draw on welfare support," said Lein, a professor in the School of Social Work and Department of Anthropology. President Bill Clinton signed a welfare law in 1996, and President George W. Bush reauthorized the bill with more stringent requirements for welfare recipients in 2006.

Lein and Schexnayder, a research scientist and associate director of the Ray Marshall Center in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, found the families experienced barriers to employment, confronted poverty even when employed and faced a failing safety net of basic human services as they attempted to sustain low-wage jobs.


"Have these reforms—ending entitlements and moving towards time limits and work requirement—lifted Texas families once living on welfare out of poverty or merely stricken their names from the administrative rolls?" they ask.

"If the goal of welfare reform was to reduce the welfare rolls, it was undeniably successful—at least in the short term," the authors said. "But if the goal was to reduce poverty and increase the well-being and stability of families previously on welfare, the results are far more complicated and disturbing."

Texas, with its early experiments with welfare reform and a relatively limited welfare program to begin with, is an important arena in which to study the aftermath of welfare reform, said Lein and Schexnayder, adding that federal lawmakers later increased the severity of welfare reform even more.

"Through the experiences of Texas welfare leavers, we can examine the potential outcomes of similar policy initiatives in other states as budgetary constraints continue to affect welfare policies," the researchers said.

University of Texas Press published the book. Daniel Schroeder, also of the LBJ School, and Karen Douglas of Sam Houston State University, contributed to the research.



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Next, I spoke with a group fighting for Expanded and Improved Medicare for All in Maryland.......A GREAT ISSUE!  What citizens in Maryland do not know is that Baltimore and Maryland have/are dismantling all of public health and with that the structures for entitlements like Medicare.  If you are fighting for universal care that is not Medicaid for All......the ACA idea of health care for all.....then you need to be shouting against the privatization of all of public health!  It is on steroids here in Baltimore and was the primary goal of City Health Commissioner Barbot and State Health Executive Sharfstein.......SEE WHY THEY DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO SEE THE HEALTH SYSTEM ROLLOUT WORKED!  Handing all of public health to private corporate non-profits is a big job!!!!

One of the people attending told a story of abuse in Baltimore's health system and foster care program that makes one think of Charles Dicken's London.  When a health system moves from public health to private and profit-driven you get a level of deregulation and unaccountability as makes Wall Street what it is today.....predatory and fleecing everything a person has under any means.  Now, imagine a global medical corporation like Hopkins who famously allowed impoverished people in Baltimore so little access to health care as to have them with life spans 30 years less than the upper class all while getting tons of Medicare and Medicare funding for these majority of poor.  We know the poor were given research projects to join for health care access and that is why the poor in Baltimore shout that they are being used as experiments.....because, in a way they are.  What is the level of abuse?  Well, dismantling public health in Baltimore has a private corporation like Hopkins shielded from most public scrutiny and the opting out of Federal Medicare oversight that has allowed Maryland to dismantle much of those public oversight systems tells us THERE IS A LOT OF VERY, VERY, VERY BAD STUFF HAPPENING IN MARYLAND HEALTH CARE.

Just recently we read where Hopkins was found to be providing faulty data for a black lung class-action lawsuit that worked against the victims and we know that victims of health abuse in Baltimore have absolutely no recourse for the most part as public justice does not exist and these MALPRACTICE LAWYERS only look for sure things that can easily win.  Now, we see Hopkins connected to organ laundering and new laws passing now surrounding tissue banking make EVERYONE LEARY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE DIE IN THE HOSPITAL.  It is third world stuff to be thinking an institution operating in the US would be out to get us-------LITERALLY.  Since there is no oversight and since all of these practices bring big money especially to the MEDICAL TOURISM GROUP........  Hopkins took billions of taxpayer money to build its global campus in Baltimore.....IT IS SAFER TO ASSUME THIS IS ALL HAPPENING THAN NOT!


THIS IS NEO-LIBERALISM AND NAKED CAPITALISM FOR YOU AND IT IS EXACTLY WHAT CLINTON HAD IN MIND WHEN HE TOOK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND HANDED IT TO CORPORATIONS.  REMEMBER, ALL OF MARYLAND'S POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS, THEY ARE NOT DEMOCRATS!

Below we see just one of many examples of how this organ stealing will grow and the public is deliberately left out of the loop in accountability...

THIS GENERATES DISTRUST!!!!


Israeli organ trafficker pleads guilty


Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:23AM3 0

 Levy Itzhak Rosenbaum (L) led by his attorneys Ronald Kleinberg (C) and Richard A. Finkel (R) An Israeli rabbi who was in involved in organ trafficking to the US pleaded guilty for breaking law.

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, 60, pleaded guilty to three counts of organ trafficking and one count of conspiracy in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey.

Rosenbaum brokered black-market sales of human kidneys in the US and arranged transplant surgeries at well known medical centers, including Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

“The transplant surgeries occurred in prestigious American hospitals and were performed by experienced and expert kidney transplant surgeons,” attorneys Richard Finkel and Ronald Kleinberg said in a statement.

He reportedly was paid $410,000 to arrange the sales of kidneys from healthy donors in Israel to three people in New Jersey.

Rosenbaum admitted in court papers that he “would assist the donor and the recipient to coordinate a cover story to mislead hospital personnel into believing that the donation of the kidney was a purely voluntary act and not a commercial transaction.”

Rosenbaum may face up to five years imprisonment on each count of the four-count information, and $250,000 in fines when he is sentenced in February

Following Rosenbaum's arrest, US authorities detained some 44 others, including rabbis and mayors in New Jersey, who were prosecuted for money laundering and human organs trade.

A month before his arrest, a report published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, accused Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip for their organs, indicating a possible link between the Israeli military and the mafia of human organs detected in the US.

SJM/MMA



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The Master Plan for Baltimore's development has the working class and poor out of the city center and off to the periphery of the Baltimore City line.  So, all low-income housing is being destroyed and not replaced and all Enterprise Zones using taxpayer money requiring low-income housing is ignored.  Even the parking ticket of subprime mortgage fraud has almost none of the money going to low-income housing or the victims.  We are seeing such a high level of corruption and fraud in these Enterprise Zones it takes your breathe away as tax credits given with almost free houses to connected people and bundled by the thousands to Wall Street investment banks.  Now residents of Remington and Old Goucher/Barclay are watching with alarm as all of the property around them are bought with cash and left to sit or are so badly rehabbed as to make them little better than before.  THIS IS WALL STREET AS LANDLORD AS RENTS GO SKY-HIGH FOR PROPERTY NOT MUCH BETTER THAN BEFORE THESE PROPERTY OWNERS WERE GIVEN THE PROPERTY FOR NOTHING WITH TAX BREAKS TO BOOT.  So, working class people who live in these neighborhoods know what is in store and they have no recourse and the COMMUNITY GROUPS that should be their voice are stocked with Hopkins development people who simply adopt whatever Baltimore Development says.  Now the development that poor and black citizens have felt are coming to the lower income white population and they are not liking it either.  We are organizing both groups of people along with the middle-class to fight what is THUGGERY GENTRIFICATION that guts a city's assets for the few and leaves control of city center's real estate to a few VISIGOTHS and that is not good social planning.

I let everyone know that Hopkins' plan of moving all low-income housing and poverty resources to the city line has to do with the plan to downsize the city's limits where the boundary will be moved closer to City Center leaving all the poor and working class outside Baltimore City limits.  Hopkins is diligently studying transporting the poor as the plan will be to stop public transportation out to these areas and limit it to shorter routes leaving those stuck at the border with few transportation opportunities.  What Hopkins has to do is think about how to move people to and from work without allowing them movement for personal reasons.  They are well on their way by making the MTA in Baltimore so bad in service, cutting routes and leaving people standing at bus stops for hours as to make it impossible to use.  Next, the subsidized bus fares will be built like school children's bus passes in that they will be valid in only moving during work hours.

Tying people moved out to the city boundaries to businesses right next to their living quarters sounds a lot like feudalism doesn't it! 

WELL, THAT'S MEDIEVALISM FOR YOU AND THAT IS THE NEW ECONOMY TO NEO-LIBERALS!


If people look at what housing looked like for the Chinese brought to an industrial city in China it has workers impoverished with wages tied to housing right there at the company for which they worked and they were literally trapped in these working situations.


SOUND LIKE PLANTATION COMPANY STORE STUFF??????  EXACTLY.

This is what Obama's HUD reform looks to do in cities being gentrified.  Now, do we as a society really want to go there because the few of the richest want to be super-rich and have fiefdom living?  REALLY?  Wouldn't we rather go back to first world standards and make the poverty programs work better?



Obama's housing reform panel angers affordable-housing advocates

John Taylor of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition says there should be more community representation on the panel. (Melissa Golden/bloomberg News) 

By Zachary A. Goldfarb Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 13, 2010

Affordable-housing advocates raised concerns Thursday that the Obama administration is excluding consumer and community groups from playing prominent roles in a government-sponsored conference next week that will kick off efforts to overhaul national housing policy.

After the administration announced the 12 panelists for Tuesday's conference, the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition said consumer and community groups had been "muscled out" by financial companies, economists and academics without a sense of how housing policy plays out in communities.

"Apparently being a community organizer qualifies you to be president, but it's not good enough to be part of HUD and Treasury's think tank on housing," said NCRC chief executive John Taylor, whose group works with hundreds of community organizations to promote access to financial services for low- and middle-income people.

The criticism by affordable-housing advocates was notable because the Obama administration has so far paid much more attention to their concerns than previous administrations have. Advocates, for instance, had credited the administration with listening to community groups that argued that the government must do more to embrace rental housing for those who cannot afford to buy a home.

Panels and players


Almost everyone agrees that the government's role in providing financing for home loans -- now standing behind nine in 10 new loans -- is too big and must be replaced by private capital. But an emerging flash point in the debate is how much the government may compel private companies to spend on ensuring that low- and middle-income people have access to housing -- either by renting or buying.

Tuesday's conference will feature two panels on housing reform -- one led by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and focused on financial markets, and another led by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and focused on broader housing policy goals. Six executives, five academics and a representative of a civil rights group will participate as panelists. After the panel discussions, breakout sessions will take up topics such as securitization and rental housing.

"Across the spectrum, stakeholders agree that our current system of housing finance requires fundamental reform," said Jeffrey A. Goldstein, undersecretary of the Treasury for domestic finance. "This conference is an opportunity for us to broaden our perspectives on a number of key issues in a transparent way to make certain that all of the best ideas are on the table."

The panelists include Bill Gross, Pimco's chief investment officer, who has been a large buyer of securities backed by home loans; Moody's economist Mark Zandi, who has advised politicians on economic policy; and Lewis Ranieri, who helped pioneer mortgage securitization.

The heads of Bank of America and Wells Fargo's mortgage units will be panelists, as well as former bank regulator Ellen Seidman.

Seidman, who now runs a community-oriented bank in Chicago, and Marc Morial, a former New Orleans mayor who is now president of the National Urban League, are likely to be among affordable-housing advocates' biggest allies at the conference.

Still, "it's really not much diversity or real community perspective from folks that represent the end user of mortgages," said Janis Bowdler, deputy director of the wealth-building program at the National Council of La Raza. "I am concerned that the process will be heavily influenced and informed by major industry players and economists."

But Andrew Williams, a Treasury spokesman, said consumer advocates will have a voice. "A number of consumer advocates will participate in the conference to ensure that a broad range of stakeholders have input into the reform discussion," he said.

White House's approach


Some say that, regardless of who is being invited to speak, the topics the administration is addressing are important ones.

"While I think it's important that the right people are at the table, the agenda really points to them trying to get the issues that the housing finance system has left behind -- like multifamily housing and affordability," said Linda Couch, deputy director of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The Obama administration has taken an incremental approach to reforming housing. It faces a January deadline, imposed by the new financial regulatory reform law, to come up with a plan for overhauling housing finance.

But officials say they fear that any specific proposal could rattle the fragile housing and mortgage markets, which are now supported to a great extent by government programs.

In April, the Treasury and HUD released seven broad questions to guide thinking on how to reshape housing finance. They received more than 300 comments.


0 Comments

December 02nd, 2013

12/2/2013

0 Comments

 
I want to emphasize that I am not trying to embarrass Maryland citizens or disgrace the state of Maryland in pointing out that there is too much corporate and government fraud and corruption-----I'M TRYING TO REBUILD A HEALTHY ECONOMY AND SOCIETY!  Maryland ranks at the top in what is pervasive fraud in all states in the US so we are not unique, we are just one of the best at lying, cheating, and stealing.

Below you see why O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake allow their administrations to be full of lying, cheating, and stealing-----rankings for this and that.  Maryland is the wealthiest in the nation------except that much of that wealth is massive corporate fraud that needs to come back.  Maryland is number one in education except that in every category measured we hear time and again that fraud in data is involved.  Below you see the skewing of data by making sure low achieving students aren't in school on test day-----this included underserved students as well as special needs.  Principals are pressured to make O'Malley look good on paper and they give him what he needs.  O'Malley did the same with policing in Baltimore as all crime stats were skewed while he was Mayor of Baltimore.  Police were told to meet a goal and they made it all up to reach that goal.  Maryland has no oversight and accountability so no one checks the data.

DO YOU KNOW THAT WHEN THE MARYLAND ASSEMBLY AUDITS FOR THE LITTLE OVERSIGHT WE SUPPOSEDLY HAVE THAT ALL THEY DO IS CHECK TO SEE IF FORMS ARE COMPLETED AND DO NOT CHECK THE DATA ON THE FORMS?  I want to emphasize that the people charged with this corrupt process are the Maryland Assembly people running now for Maryland Attorney General----Frisch and Frosh.

  That is how it makes the ranking below in this list of WELL-RUN STATES.......LOL!!!!!!

Remember, this headline was created so O'Malley can use it in running for higher office!  THE ENTIRE MEDIA PROCESS IS GEARED TOWARDS PROVIDING PROPAGANDA FOR GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS!

We know the crime and education stats are bogus so let's look at the other categories.  I love this one......perfect credit.
This is O'Malley's recipe for perfect credit......take a $1 billion mortgage fraud settlement for people defrauded by banks and put most of it in the state coffers.  Refuse to pay almost a billion in state court approved settlements for underfunded Baltimore City schools......cut Medicaid even more than the Federal government and pretend health care for the lower-class was never better.  Send teacher's pensions to the localities at a time when the state knows localities cannot handle this debt-----but it's off the state record now isn't it?  O'Malley is the one who underfunded all Baltimore City pensions for the few decades at City Hall and was in office when pensions were used as fodder by Wall Street in a move that sent state and city pensions from the safety of then bonds to the imploding stock market-----public malfeasance and fraud.

Next you use credit bond leveraging and selling of public assets to hide debt as with moving public offices to rental properties that expense by the year and hand the Port of Baltimore to a private corporation to expense costs to an annual renter's fee.  So, he is changing long-term cost to annual cost creating a false look at expenditure and lost public value.  Is it public interest to hand the Port over to business losing a few billion in revenue each year in exchange for a few hundred million in Port rent?  Public private partnerships that place the public in the position of paying all costs of operation of public services while private businesses reap tons in profit by just operating the public service.......REALLY?  Of course not, but O'Malley is using this to make it look like there is perfect credit and low debt. 

IT IS ALL MIRRORS AND O'MALLEY HAS ACTUALLY POSITIONED MARYLAND FOR A HARD FALL AS THE NEXT ECONOMIC CRASH FROM AN IMPLODING BOND MARKET HITS AND WE ARE WITHOUT ASSETS AND LEVERAGED TO THE EYEBALLS!  Remember, it is easy to have perfect credit by leveraging your debt with all kinds of financial instruments until you cannot anymore.  Think of an individual who gets one credit card after another to keep current on credit bills until he reaches the maximum-------IT'S THE SAME.  THIS IS WHAT O'MALLEY IS DOING.  When a pol uses skewed data to the max one can only expect this deception to sink the ship of state government!

THIS IS WALL STREET'S PLAN FOR TAKING OVER ALL THAT IS PUBLIC------LEVERAGING MUNICIPALITIES JUST LIKE THEY DID HOMEOWNERS DURING THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE FRAUD!  AN ECONOMIC CRASH WILL MEAN MUNICIPAL DEFAULT.

But we have to leverage because states and localities are poor you say!!!!  We are not poor, we simply have suspended Rule of Law and have tens of billions coming back to Maryland from massive corporate fraud!


WE LACK JUSTICE, NOT REVENUE!



Maryland: Low Poverty, Perfect Credit, Debt and High Crime

Find out where Maryland ranks in list of best- and worst-run states.
Posted by Deb Belt (Editor) , November 26, 2013 at 08:50 AM
patch


How well run is the state of Maryland, and how does it rank among the 50 states?


Maryland falls in the middle of the national rankings at No. 24.

Maryland


Debt per capita: $4,348 (13th highest)
Budget deficit: 9.5% (28th largest)
Unemployment: 6.8% (tied-17th lowest)
Median household income: $71,122 (the highest)
Pct. below poverty line: 10.3% (3rd lowest)

Here is how 24/7 Wall St. describes the state:

Maryland’s population is the wealthiest in the country. The state had a median household income of $71,122 last year, nearly $20,000 higher than the U.S. median. Also, just 10.3% of the population lived below the poverty line. The state had a relatively large amount of debt, at approximately 60% of annual revenue as of fiscal 2011, compared to 50% nationwide. Still, Maryland maintains a perfect credit rating from both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. Moody’s credited the wealthy tax base as a factor for its rating, as well as the state’s “history of strong financial management.” One negative factor is the state’s high violent crime rate, which was one of the highest in the country last year.

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I wanted to include this education piece just to show how data in Maryland is so skewed as to mean nothing in looking at rankings or stable government.

I will talk more on education reform another time.

George calls for hearing on school ranking


November 26, 2013|By Michael Dresser

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron George has called for a General Assembly hearing into whether Maryland's exclusion of a high percentage of special education students from standardized testing artificially inflated the score of the state's schools in national rankings.

George, a state delegate from Anne Arundel County, issued a statement Tuesday in which he called for answers on what he called the O'Malley administration's "reading test cheating scandal."


The Sun reported last week that Maryland may have achieved its No. 1 ranking on Education Week's ranking of state school systems in part by excluding a higher percentage of special education students from reading testings than any other state. By excluding special ed students at such a high rate, the state appears to have gained 5 points in eighth grade reading score and 7 in fourth grade.

George, ranking member of the House Ways & Means education subcommittee, accused the administration of cheating its way to No. 1 -- a ranking Gov. Martin O'Malley and legislative leaders frequently boast about.

"I am demanding answers about who in the administration was involved in this cheating scandal, what exactly they knew and when they knew it. I am calling on the leaders in the General Assembly to convene hearings to get to the bottom of this matter," George said. "We tell our students cheating is wrong and hold them accountable when they make a mistake. What message are we sending them now when corrupt politicians abuse the education system to advance their own political agendas?"

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Michael E. Busch said no hearings have been scheduled on the topic.

George is seeking the GOP nomination in a race against Harford County Executive David R. Craig, Charles County business executive Charles Lollar and former Ehrlich administration appointments secretary Larry Hogan.

On the Democratic side of the race, Attorney Douglas F. Gansler also weighed in on the controversy.

"The parents of Maryland deserve honest and transparent testing – and a more thorough explanation of how they were misled by a system that appears to have put a blind desire to pump up scores ahead of the needs of Maryland families," he said in a statement released by his campaign. "Let's not shy away from challenges, let's take them on with a commitment to early education programs, afterschool and summer learning bridge initiatives, getting our children the tools they need to succeed."

Gansler is running against Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown and Montgomery County Del. Heather R. Mizeur for the Democratic nomination.

In a statement, O'Malley press secretary defended the state's record and downplayed the significance of the test scores in the Education Week ranking system that bestowed the No. 1 ranking on Maryland. The publication also considers school funding levels and other factors.

"Some people are so desperate to score political points, that they're willing to question the achievements our students and educators have earned for five consecutive years," Press Secretary Nina Smith said.

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 Now, O'Malley will pretend to have leveraged to the gills to protect Maryland workers and unions and indeed, this is why labor supports O'Malley even as he kills them with other labor policy issues.  HE COULD HAVE CUT JOBS BUT HE USED BOND AND LEVERAGE TO SAVE JOBS.  THAT'S THE STORY AND LABOR WILL STICK TO IT.  It is why labor comes to O'Malley's defense over the Baltimore Hilton debacle that used taxpayers to advance the Baltimore Development Corporation's vision of city growth.  LABOR WAS RIGHT THERE TELLING MEDIA THE HILTON WAS GOOD FOR THEM.

Well, if labor understood O'Malley's end game they hopefully would not be allowing this neo-liberal to garner their support.  First, it is the billions of dollars in corporate fraud that goes without recovery that has Maryland's budget strained and just collecting that would end the need for all this leveraging and guess what? 

IT IS BETTER TO USE RULE OF LAW AGAINST CRIME THEN TO USE BOND LEVERAGE KILLING THE STATE'S FUTURE TO BALANCE A BUDGET.  Make no mistake.....O'Malley is deliberately loading the state and Baltimore with debt because he wants to hand all that is public to Wall Street when this next economic crash occurs!  HOW IS THAT GOOD FOR FAMILIES?




O’Malley, Md. lawmakers use debt to lube state’s path through recession

By Aaron C. Davis,March 22, 2011  Washington Post

Stacked into the budget that Maryland’s House of Delegates will debate Wednesday is a grim look at the state’s fiscal future:

To cover mounting debt, Maryland will have to raise property taxes after next year or begin eating into operating funds for schools, social services and public safety.

By 2014 — Gov. Martin O’Malley’s last full year in office — the state will have to curtail spending even further to begin repaying money used to close budget shortfalls during his first term. And by 2017, the state is projected to break through one of its debt ceilings.

Maryland’s debt costs are trending toward 30-year highs, even without factoring in billions in unfunded retiree health-care and pension costs. Maryland is far from alone. Almost every state has ramped up borrowing and gone deeper in debt to try to spur job growth while balancing expenses during the recession.

But in Maryland, O’Malley (D) has sought to use bonds and other borrowing to continue to fund initiatives that have been gutted by this point in the downturn by politicians in most states.

Once again in this year’s budget, and backed by lawmakers, O’Malley has spread out over several years the cost of tens of millions of dollars in open-space land purchases and has sought to issue bonds for efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

The governor and his budget team have cast the borrowing as a bridge to get the state to better economic times without throwing aside wholesale O’Malley’s environmental agenda and other state initiatives he sees as important.

But the state’s fiscal trajectory has also begun to splinter Maryland Democrats, with more conservative ones arguing that the state has gone too far in leveraging its future.

“We’re basically spending every cent we have and maxing out the state’s credit cards to the nth degree,” said state Comptroller Peter Franchot, a Montgomery County Democrat. “If something goes wrong in the economy again, we could be very vulnerable. We have no reserve capacity.”

But compared with the way worries about debt have paralyzed budget discussions in a split Congress in Washington and in many state capitals, O’Malley and the legislature’s Democratic leadership remain largely on the same page and comfortable with pushing Maryland’s debt load to the max long after their current terms end.


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This is just one example of leverage beyond what the state will be able to sustain when the next economic crash comes.  What projects do you think these transportation funds will address?  We know that the Port of Baltimore and the high-speed rail are tops on the agenda and neither is vital for Maryland's economy.  The Red Line is not a bad project but if the state defaults-----it belongs to private investors backing this deal as are the state's roads.  If we have a crash next year as big as financial analysts are calling---do you think the Red Line will move forward?  The high-speed rail and Port will.

What this makes clear is that these leveraged deals hand all of the states future tax revenue to these bond holders just as Baltimore City uses TIFs to hand decades of tax revenue to corporations both starving public coffers and soaking the middle/working class with taxes and fees to make up the difference.



I WANT TO EMPHASIZE THAT THIS IS ONLY ONE  OF MANY CREDIT BOND DEALS O'MALLEY AND RAWLINGS-BLAKE HAS TIED TO PUBLIC PROJECTS AND THEY WILL BRING US TO DEFAULT AS GOVERNMENT WILL NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES TO WEATHER ANOTHER ECONOMIC COLLAPSE!

Fitch Affirms Maryland Transportation Auth's GARVEE Bonds at 'AA'; Outlook Stable

October 15, 2013 03:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fitch Ratings affirms the 'AA' rating on the Maryland Transportation Authority's (MDTA) $479.035 million outstanding grant and revenue anticipation (GARVEE) bonds. The Rating Outlook remains Stable.

KEY RATING DRIVERS:

PRESENCE OF BACKUP PLEDGE MITIGATES FEDERAL CONCERN: MDTA bonds are secured by the first lien on Maryland's federal highway funds and the legislatively mandated subordinate lien on certain pledged Maryland Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) tax revenues, which helps offset reauthorization risk. The back-up pledge of tax receipts is subject to appropriation by the state's legislature.

UNCERTAINTY OF THE FEDERAL PROGRAM: The federal program, which was once a formula-driven program funded on a multiyear basis, has now morphed into a program where future policy is less certain. This means funding levels are less predictable and the program is more dependent on frequent action to extend authorization and on general fund transfers that will likely need to be continued indefinitely barring an increase in the federal gas-tax or a significant reduction in spending.

STRONG COVENANTS AND TIMING MECHANISMS: Additional leverage is limited by a strong additional bonds test of 3.0 times (x) maximum annual debt service (MADS). A debt service reserve fund equivalent to the maximum semi-annual interest payment provides debt service support. The eight-year maturity of the bonds is short relative to other federal reimbursement bonds and exposes bondholders to a lower level of uncertainty surrounding the highway trust fund (HTF) but this is more than offset by the back-up pledge.

ADDITIONAL LEVERAGE NOT ANTICIPATED: The authority has reached a statutory cap on GARVEE issuance and additional bonds are not expected in the medium term.

RATING SENSITIVITIES:

-- Increased leveraging of the TTF or a significant change in the basket of state highway revenues that weakens the secondary pledge;

-- Failure by the state to appropriate state highway revenues if needed to cover a shortfall in federal funds.

SECURITY:

The GARVEE bonds are secured by a pledge of the trust estate, consisting of annual allocations of federal aid and a subordinate pledge of certain TTF tax sources.

CREDIT UPDATE:

HTF's expenditures have been exceeding revenues over the past several years. The most recent authorization, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), provides funding certainty for the next two years but it does not address longer-term issues regarding the sustainability of the federal program or solvency of the HTF and relies on a total of $18.8 billion general fund transfers in 2013 and 2014. Funding levels have become less certain and difficult to predict beyond current authorization. In addition, the increase in corporate fuel economy standards approved in August 2012 would adversely impact gas tax revenues which support the HTF. In Fitch's view, the unsustainable trajectory of the HTF may lead to policy changes that could affect bondholders.

The pledge of subordinate TTF funds provides an important offset to this reauthorization risk and supports the current rating level. The TTF tax sources include a portion of motor fuel taxes, titling excise tax on vehicles, sales and use tax on vehicle rentals and corporate income tax. The GARVEE bonds have a pledge of these revenues that is subordinate to the department's consolidated transportation bonds (rated 'AA+' by Fitch). Total TTF revenues equaled $1.39 billion in fiscal 2012 (state fiscal year ending on June 30). Fiscal 2012 debt service coverage remained strong at 6.4x with federal revenues alone and 18.7x including state revenues.

The TTF's distribution of the state's corporation income tax after certain General Fund deductions is currently at 9.5%. For fiscal 2014 through 2016, the distribution will be 19.5%, and for fiscal 2017 and fiscal years thereafter the distribution will be 17.2%.

MDTA is responsible for coordinating, planning and implementation of the GARVEE program in consultation with SHA. SHA is the recipient of all Maryland Federal Highway Funds; GARVEE debt service paid directly to the trustee. SHA is also responsible for letting contracts and management and delivery of the ICC project.


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The rosy future given by Moody's ranking of Maryland as AAA tempered by Maryland's ties with the Federal government for jobs and revenue give you a glimpse as to what will happen as the next economic crash occurs.  Because the Federal government has not recovered tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud it is leaving the national debt so high that it will not be able to send help to states like it do in 2008 and will be forced to cut more government agencies and assets-----which is the goal of Wall Street and its dismantling of US government sector.  Keep the high debt by suspending Rule of Law and implode the economy with yet another bubble---this time the bond market.

Remember, it was Moody and S & P that gave us the AAA subprime mortgage loan fraud and they didn't feel any justice for that!  IS THEIR NEXT RATINGS FRAUD WITH STATE RANKINGS?  YOU BETCHA!!!


Maryland's cloudy credit horizonOur view: Moody's promise to drop the state's AAA-status if it downgrades the federal government is frustrating but may not mean much

February 18, 2013  Baltimore Sun


It would be ironic if Maryland, for the first time in the history of municipal bond ratings, lost its AAA status now. Thanks to a combination of spending restraint, tax increases and other reforms, Maryland's balance sheet is stronger that it has been in more than a decade. Gov. Martin O'Malley's budget proposal leaves nearly $1 billion in various reserve accounts, and the legislature stands poised to change the way it funds employee pensions to make the system more solvent.

But thanks to the dysfunction in Washington, that's just what may happen
. Moody's Investors Service, one of the big three bond rating agencies, issued a report this month about which AAA-rated state and local governments would face downgrades if the federal government is downgraded. On the list: Maryland and Virginia, along with Missouri and New Mexico. More that a dozen local governments in Maryland and Northern Virginia are also in line to be whacked, including Montgomery, Prince George's, Harford, Howard and Baltimore counties.

Other publications from Moody's suggest that a federal downgrade isn't necessarily imminent, and the agency hasn't said whether any particular event — like a failure to raise the debt ceiling or to address the sequestration cuts due on March 1 — would trigger action. Rather, Moody's is concerned about the medium and long-term trends in the ratio of federal debt to gross domestic product. "If the upward trend in projected debt ratios and interest costs continues, and further measures to stabilize and ultimately reverse them are not put into place, the rating could eventually move down," Moody's said in a Feb. 8 report.

Moody's has not changed its assessment of the strengths that have prompted it to give Maryland its highest possible rating — a history of responsible fiscal management, a strong economy and a highly skilled work force, among other things. But the agency has a rule that if a "sub-sovereign" entity — i.e., a state or local government — has particularly strong linkage to the sovereign government, its rating cannot exceed the national rating. The agency looks at five factors to determine such linkage, and both Maryland and Virginia are rated as outliers on two of them: federal employment as a percentage of total employment, and federal procurement contracts as a percentage of gross domestic product.


Moody's observation about the linkage between the state's economy and the federal government is bound to become subject to tsk tsking by the Maryland-is-bad-for-business crowd. They are right that the state needs to explore ways to diversify its economy and that, given the likelihood of federal cuts, Maryland can't count on the federal government for economic growth. But it's not like a radical change in the political climate in Annapolis could solve our current predicament. In order to grow its way out of being considered by Moody's to be strongly linked to the federal government, Maryland would need to increase its GDP by 73 percent and its workforce by 77 percent without getting another dime in federal contracts or a single additional federal job.


What would happen if Moody's did downgrade Maryland's bond ratings? That's entirely unclear. Theoretically, it would lead to higher borrowing costs. But neither of the other two major ratings agencies, Standard & Poor's and Fitch, has said it will automatically downgrade any state or local governments based solely on the federal rating. Indeed, S&P did downgrade the federal government after the debt limit standoff of 2011 without taking corresponding action against Maryland. Moreover, S&P's federal downgrade didn't significantly increase borrowing costs, and it's altogether unclear that bond buyers would look at Maryland much differently if it had merely two out of three possible AAA ratings.

In the end, what we're talking about here may be little more than a matter of Maryland pride. Governors like to brag about Maryland's AAA bond rating, and saying we are top-rated as a credit risk by two of the three major agencies doesn't quite have the same cachet as having always been triple-AAA.

Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp has argued Maryland's case to Moody's, to no avail. Rules, it seems, are rules, and it is the arbitrariness that she and other state officials find so frustrating. But there is at least one consolation: Virginia, our rival and political mirror image across the Potomac, is in exactly the same boat.
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November 12th, 2013

11/12/2013

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


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

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

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


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



UK government auditor questions reliance on big contractors

By Christine Murray

LONDON Tue Nov 12, 2013 12:08am GMT

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

Credit: Reuters/Andrew Winning

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

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

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

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

SOUND FAMILIAR?????

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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



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

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


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


TRUST IN GOVERNMENTS, CORPORATIONS AND
GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS CONTINUES TO DECLINE


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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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




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



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




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

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



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

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


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

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

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



Global shipping industry in danger of decline


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

1 12 Aug 2013 Joseph Wilkes  
Supply Chain Digital

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


Mistaking Omniscience for Omnipotence: A World Without Privacy

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

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

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

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

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

Omniscience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Omnipotence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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November 11th, 2013

11/11/2013

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  PLEASE BE AWARE THAT NEO-LIBERALS ALWAYS USE THE PRIMARIES TO SOUND PROGRESSIVE BUT WE KNOW THE POLICIES THAT ACTUALLY PLAY OUT ARE WEALTH AND PROFIT!!!!  Tell these pols we are not going to be fooled by running and voting for labor and justice!!!

NEO-LIBERALS ARE GOING TO TAKE ALL WEALTH BUILT FROM DECADES OF LABOR AND JUSTICE GAINS.......ALL MARYLAND DEMOCRATS ARE NEO-LIBERALS!!!!!

As we go into election season across the country please listen to what is said and how the media portrays it!  We need everyone to shout out what the truth to these campaign issues are and how these neo-liberals do not meet what they are out on the campaign trail saying-----think Obama.  If we knew about Obama what we know about O'Malley for example we would have never voted for him!!!!!  The theme of these last few years has been neo-liberals moving all of public assets and wealth to the top and protecting that wealth from public justice.  Now, they are soaking the public with losses in retirements, pensions, education, and health care to pay for the loses to massive corporate fraud. 

DO NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN.  WE CAN REVERSE THIS BY SIMPLY RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARY ELECTIONS!  WE HAVE HAD A FEW SUCCESSES, BUT TOO MANY NEO-LIBERALS ARE STILL WINNING!!!!


Below you will see campaign issues and how they are skewed.  These are vital issues for all Americans and we need to listen and research who these candidates are.  Please note that labor unions are being held hostage by neo-liberals as regards labor laws so they do not always do the right thing for labor and justice-----work with them to strengthen the unions but vote against all neo-liberals!

This is what a labor and justice victory looks like!  Remember, we do not need to have only socialists to reach justice, we need real progressive labor and justice candidates in all primaries challenging the neo-liberals holding the democratic party!!!


DAY FOUR: Sawant Wins 58.45% of Latest Ballots, Closes Gap With Conlin To 1,200 Votes

Posted by Clay Showalter 45pc on November 08, 2013 · Flag November 8, 2013 / 9:00 PM –

The latest ballot drop by King County elections has increased the likelihood that not only will Kshama Sawant defeat incumbent Richard Conlin in the race for Seattle City Council Position 2, but her margin of victory may be enough to avoid any recount!

The new numbers include Sawant gaining 58.45 percent of the newest ballot drop, bringing the overall total to 74,933 (49.49 percent) for Sawant and 76,170  (50.31 percent) for Conlin. After trailing by 6,136 votes on Election Night, Sawant has now cut Conlin's lead to only 1,237 votes - only a fifth of his original lead, with at least 30,000 votes left to count.

To win with 30,000 ballots to go, Sawant would need only 52.06 percent of those votes. In each of the last four ballot releases, Sawant has led by more than that margin. In each of the last three, her percentage has topped 55 percent.

King County Elections has now released six tallies of ballots in four days. The trend remains unmistakeable:

Ballot Drop Sawant Conlin

Election Night (Tues. 11-5) 38,116  46.13% 44,252  53.56% Day Two Afternoon (11-6) 7,862  49.69% 7,949  50.24%
Day Two Evening (11-6) 3,385  50.21% 3,342  49.57%
Day Three Afternoon (11-7) 6,950  52.79% 6,174  46.90% Day Three Evening (11-7) 5,747  55.92% 4,528  44.07%
Day Four Afternoon (11-8) 7,852  55.29% 6,338  44.63%
Day Four Evening (11-8) 5,021  58.45% 3,567  41.52%
Total 74,933 49.49% 76,170  50.31%

In close elections, a machine recount is triggered when candidates finish within half a percentage point and 2,000 votes of each other. King County Elections must do a manual recount if they're within 150 votes and a quarter of a percentage point.

To avoid a recount, with the assumption of 30,000 ballots left, the Sawant campaign must win 52.23 percent to win by more than a half percentage point, and 55.40 percent to win by more than 2,000 votes - both well within range given current trends. However, starting next week, counted ballots will include more challenged ballots cast earlier in the election period. This weekend, the Sawant campaign is holding volunteer and staff trainings to mobilize its large base of active supporters to help track down and verify challenged ballots, as a way to maximize the chances that the Sawant campaign can win the Position 2 race outright, without need for a recount. Read more about these trainings here, and please join us Saturday and/or Sunday at 11am at our Campaign Headquarters (1265 Main Street, Suite 205).

With the holiday weekend, King County Elections will release no further tallies until Tuesday afternoon, November 12, at 4:30 PM.

"The tremendous surge of enthusiasm for our campaign in its final weeks is being reflected in these results," Sawant said this afternoon. "This is what democracy looks like."

PS. All supporters should use the King County Ballot Tracker to ensure that your ballot has been counted without issue. It will save our Voter Protection Squad a trip to your house!


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YOU WILL NOT ONLY HEAR NOTHING ON THIS TOPIC BUT IF THESE NEO-LIBERALS HAPPEN TO GET QUESTIONED ON THIS TOPIC IN PUBLIC-------THEY SIMPLY DENY IT HAPPENS.  MEANWHILE MARYLAND JUSTICE ADVOCATES MARCH AND PROTEST WITH PUBLIC TESTIMONY THAT IMMIGRANTS AND LOW-WAGE WORKERS IN MARYLAND ARE BEING HIT HARD WITH THIS PRACTICE!

You cannot have a politician passing laws like Dream Act or welcoming immigrants to come to Maryland to work and then turn their heads to exploitation.  IF POLITICIANS ARE GOING TO ALLOW IMMIGRANTS TO WORK THEY NEED TO HOLD EMPLOYERS TO THE SAME LABOR STANDARDS NOW!!!


Wage Theft Outstrips Bank, Gas Station and Convenience Store Robberies
By Laura Clawson, Daily Kos

10 November 13

 

America's workers face a crime epidemic-one in which the criminals are rarely even made to pay back what they've stolen. The crime epidemic in question is wage theft:

Gordon Lafer assesses some of the damage:

Fully 64 percent of low-wage workers have some amount of pay stolen out of their paychecks by their employers every week, including 26 percent who are effectively paid less than minimum wage. Fully three-quarters of workers who are due overtime have part or all of their earned overtime wages stolen by their employer. In total, the average low-wage worker loses a stunning $2,634 per year in unpaid wages, representing 15 percent of their earned income. And enforcement? Forget about it. At the federal level, there's just one agent enforcing wage laws for every 141,000 workers. More than half of the states have cut wage enforcement staff in recent years, and some states have tried to eliminate those positions entirely. For instance,

In 2010, Missouri's labor department collected $200,000 in restitution for minimum-wage violations and $500,000 for prevailing-wage violations, and issued 1,714 citations for child-labor violations. Yet [Republican state House Speaker Steven] Tilley charged that investigators were being "overzealous," particularly in prosecuting complaints of employers cheating on prevailing wages. For many Republican politicians, crimes committed by employers against workers don't really register as crimes at all in our political environment. And while the Obama administration has cracked down, the back pay it's collected is just a drop in the bucket of what workers have earned that their employers have taken.


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Do you know that O'Malley/Brown (O/B)oversaw the period that the MD Veteran's hospital in Baltimore was ranked bottom in the nation for service to vets?  Do you know that homeless people are often vets and there is a War on the Poor in Balt under  O/B.  Do you know that O'Malley travelled overseas to market MD online 'colleges' almost everyone regards as inferior education to vets having strong education benefits that would have taken them to good 4 year universities instead.  Vets are being targeted with this cheap online education that takes all their GI bill education benefits and advocates shouting loudly that this exploits our vets--O'Malley/Brown are the face of this bad policy!  Not that it would be any different with the other neo-liberal challengers.

O/B made health care reform about building private health systems that gave health institutions the right to write health policy that made sure profit at the expense of patient access ruled the day and vets will fall into that lack of access as consolidation of the health industry-the ACA goal -will have global health systems preying on the poor, elderly, chronically ill, and vets. 

If we want health care that holds everyone equal access and care--just as US citizens paid for in taxes-we want Universal Care in MD-and we need a labor and justice candidate running in the primaries!


Brown proposes tax break for veterans Military pension exemption is part of five-part plan


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By Michael Dresser, The Baltimore Sun 12:09 p.m. EST, November 11, 2013

Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate Anthony G. Brown marked Veterans Day by releasing a five-part plan for former members of the armed forces, including a tax break and help with employment and housing.

Brown, the lieutenant governor, issued what he called his "Compact with Maryland Veterans" Monday with little fanfare on a day when he avoided scheduling campaign appearances and instead attended ceremonial functions in his official capacity.

As part of the plan Brown and his running mate, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, joined his fellow candidates in promising a tax cut – though on a relatively modest scale targeted at veterans.

Brown, an Army veteran of the Iraq war, proposed the elimination of taxes on military pensions up to $150,000 a year – a break he would phase in over eight years. His campaign estimated the cost as of July 2018 at $17.5 million annually.

The lieutenant governor's Democratic rivals -- Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Del. Heather R. Mizeur of Montgomery County -- have each called for broader tax cuts. Gansler has proposed a reduction in the corporate income tax, while Mizeur has recommended income tax cuts for about 90 percent of Maryland taxpayers – offset by increases for those earning more than $500,000.

The three announced Republican candidates – Harford County Executive David R. Craig, Del. Ron George of Anne Arundel County and Charles County business executive Charles Lollar -- have also called for reductions in a variety of taxes and fees.

In addition to the tax preference, Brown proposed that the state step up its efforts to help veterans find jobs and to provide bridge loans to veterans whose disability claims are caught up in the Veterans Administration processing backlog.

The plan also calls for establishment of a Veterans Treatment Court – modeled after the state's drug courts – to help veterans who get in trouble with the law to receive treatment for addiction and mental health problems and to avoid jail. Brown would also expand the state's Rental Housing Works program and devote at least 20 percent of its funding to veterans.

The Brown campaign estimated the total cost of the tax exemption and new programs at $24.2 million as of what would be the end of his first term.

In releasing his plan, Brown also pointed to the initiatives adopted over the last seven years he has served as No. 2 behind Gov. Martin O'Malley. Among other things, he noted that the administration won passage of a bill intended to make it easier for veterans to use skills acquired in the military in civilian jobs.

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People-----these investors in public private partnerships are all global corporations from VEOLA et al to Wall Street......how does that make for a win for the public?  Remember, these same corporations owe the American people trillions of dollar in corporate fraud and simply need to pay that back to have government fund these projects!!!!

Purple Line: Public-private transit partnership would be one of the broadest in U.S. Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post - This stretch along Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase could be slated for additional development under current Purple Line rail plans.

By Katherine Shaver, Published: October 12

  Maryland transit officials’ proposal to have a private company design, build, operate and help pay for the light-rail Purple Line in the Washington suburbs would be one of the first such arrangements in the United States, raising questions about potential risks and financial impacts.

Only one other U.S. transit project, a commuter rail line in Denver, entails such a far-reaching public-private partnership, but it is still under construction.

Graphic

Map of the proposed Purple Line

Purple Line: Impacted properties

The Maryland Transit Administration will buy some strips of private land. Here are the affected properties.


ARCHIVES | See previous Washington Post coverage of Maryland’s Purple Line plans.

Purple Line would take 116 homes, businesses Katherine Shaver SEP 5

New study details environmental, community impacts of building light-rail line through Maryland suburbs.

Details of the 35-year Purple Line plan have begun to emerge as the Maryland Department of Transportation prepares to seek state approval Wednesday to pursue it. A consortium of private companies would be expected to contribute $500 million to $900 million to the $2.2 billion project.

The private team would be reimbursed for design, construction and equipment costs as work progressed over five years. The state would then pay the company $100 million to $200 million annually to operate and maintain the line for 30 years. The payments could be reduced if the company did not meet certain standards, such as providing reliable service and clean trains.

The private financing costs would be paid back over time with Purple Line fare revenue, officials said. If ridership on the 16-mile line between Montgomery and Prince George’s counties did not materialize as anticipated, fare revenue from other Maryland transit systems would make up the difference, state officials said.

Maryland transportation officials say such a partnership would take advantage of the private sector’s light-rail expertise and require the companies to assume the financial risks of any construction delays or cost overruns. The efficiencies gained from one private entity overseeing all aspects — from the drawing board to bulldozers to trains on tracks — are projected to save up to 20 percent over 35 years, officials say.

“There’s a really strong incentive for [the private companies] to focus on quality and durability,” said Maryland Deputy Transportation Secretary Leif A. Dormsjo. “They have to really own not just the construction project but also make sure we don’t have surprises once riders start to use it.”

The approach, while considered innovative, is drawing scrutiny. Five U.S. transit projects have used public-private partnerships in some form, Maryland officials say. However, the Purple Line would be the only one besides the Denver project to rely heavily on private financing.

The plan will get its first test of political support Wednesday, when the state Board of Public Works — comprising the governor, comptroller and state treasurer — is scheduled to vote on whether to allow the Transportation Department to seek private proposals.

State Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), who reviewed the plan as a member of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee, said he considers it a “very risky proposition.”

“It’s attractive. It’s an innovative approach,” Madaleno said. “But we don’t have very many, if any, examples of how this works out.”

Moreover, he said, communities along the line need assurances that a private company would fulfill promises by the state, such as to run trains on a bridge over Connecticut Avenue in north Chevy Chase rather than stopping traffic.




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If you do not see the parallel to what is happening in the US to what the banks did in Europe you are not paying attention.  The pensioners are not the problem with the economy or government coffers-----it is the massive fraud of tens of trillions of dollars in fraud that targeted pensions as well that created this problem.  Yet, as you see neo-liberals are watching as this happens in a formerly democratic stronghold.

Look as well at the loading of all state and local governments with credit bond debt and you will see what happened to the southern European nations------deliberate debt designed to force a dismantling of public assets and wealth!!!!



'There are other steps that need to be taken, and soon, to prevent a cascade of municipal bankruptcies. The super-priority of derivatives in bankruptcy needs to be repealed, and the protections of Glass Steagall need to be restored. While we are waiting on a very dilatory Congress, however, state and local governments might consider protecting themselves and their revenues by setting up their own banks'.


The Detroit Bail-In Template: Fleecing Pensioners to Save the Banks

August 14th, 2013


by Ellen Brown, Web of Debt

The Detroit bankruptcy is looking suspiciously like the bail-in template originated by the G20’s Financial Stability Board in 2011, which exploded on the scene in Cyprus in 2013 and is now becoming the model globally. In Cyprus, the depositors were “bailed in” (stripped of a major portion of their deposits) to re-capitalize the banks. In Detroit, it is the municipal workers who are being bailed in, stripped of a major portion of their pensions to save the banks.





Follow up:

Bank of America Corp. and UBS AG have been given priority over other bankruptcy claimants, meaning chiefly the pensioners, for payments due on interest rate swaps they entered into with the city. Interest rate swaps – the exchange of interest rate payments between counterparties – are sold by Wall Street banks as a form of insurance, something municipal governments “should” do to protect their loans from an unanticipated increase in rates. Unlike ordinary insurance, however, swaps are actually just bets; and if the municipality loses the bet, it can owe the house, and owe big. The swap casino is almost entirely unregulated, and it is a rigged game that the house virtually always wins. Interest rate swaps are based on the LIBOR rate, which has now been proven to be manipulated by the rate-setting banks; and they were a major contributor to Detroit’s bankruptcy.

Derivative claims are considered “secured” because the players must post collateral to play. They get not just priority but “super-priority” in bankruptcy, meaning they go first before all others, a deal pushed through by Wall Street in the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005. Meanwhile, the municipal workers, whose pensions are theoretically protected under the Michigan Constitution, are classified as “unsecured” claimants who will get the scraps after the secured creditors put in their claims. The banking casino, it seems, trumps even the state constitution. The banks win and the workers lose once again.

Systemically Dangerous Institutions Are Moved to the Head of the Line The argument for the super-priority of derivative claims is that nonpayment on these bets represents a “systemic risk” to the financial scheme. Derivative bets are cross-collateralized and are so inextricably entwined in a $600-plus trillion house of cards that the whole financial scheme could go down if the betting scheme were to collapse. Instead of banning or regulating this very risky casino, Congress has been persuaded by the masterminds of Wall Street that it needs to be preserved at all costs.

The same tortured logic has been used to justify the fact that the federal government deigned to bail out Wall Street but not Detroit. Supposedly, the mega-banks pose a systemic risk and Detroit doesn’t. On July 29th, former Obama administration economist Jared Bernstein pursued this line of reasoning on his blog, writing:

[T]he correct motivation for federal bailouts — meaning some combination of managing a bankruptcy, paying off creditors (though often with a haircut), or providing liquidity in cases where that’s the issue as opposed to insolvency – is systemic risk. The failure of large, major banks, two out of the big three auto companies, the secondary market for housing – all of these pose unacceptably large risks to global financial markets, and thus the global economy, to a major industry, including its upstream and downstream suppliers, and to the national housing sector.

Because:

  1. There’s not much of a case that Detroit is systemically connected in those ways, and;
  2. Chapter 9 of the bankruptcy code appears to provide an adequate way for it to deal with its insolvency, I don’t think anything like a large scale bailout is forthcoming.
Holding Main Street Hostage Detroit’s bankruptcy poses no systemic risk to Wall Street and global financial markets. Fine. But it does pose a systemic risk to Main Street, local governments, and the contractual rights of pensioners. Credit rating agency Moody’s stated in a recent report that if Detroit manages to cut its pension obligations, other struggling cities could follow suit. The Detroit bankruptcy is establishing a template for wiping out government pensions everywhere. Chicago or New York could be next.

There is also the systemic risk posed to the municipal bond system. Bryce Hoffman, writing in The Detroit News on July 30th, warned:

Detroit’s bankruptcy threatens to change the rules of the municipal bond game and already is making it more expensive for the state’s other struggling towns and school districts to borrow money and fund big infrastructure projects.

In fact, one bond analyst told The Detroit News that he has spoken to major institutional investors who have already decided to stop, for now, buying any Michigan bonds.

The real concern of bond investors, says Hoffman, is not the default of Detroit but the precedent the city is setting. General obligation municipal bonds have always been viewed as a virtually risk-free investment. They are unsecured, but bondholders have considered themselves protected because the bonds are backed by the “unlimited taxing authority” of the government that issued them. Detroit, however, has shown that the city’s taxing authority is far from unlimited.  It already has the highest property taxes of any major city in the country, and it is bumping up against a ceiling imposed by the state constitution. If Detroit is able to cut its bond debt in half or more by defaulting, other distressed cities are liable to look very closely at following suit. Hoffman writes:

The bond market is warning that this will make Michigan a pariah state and raise borrowing costs — not just for Detroit and other troubled municipalities, but also for paragons of fiscal virtue such as Oakland and Livingston counties.

However, writes Hoffman:

Gov. Rick Snyder dismisses that threat and says the bond market is just trying to turn Detroit away from a radical solution that could become a model for other struggling cities across America.

A Safer, Saner, More Equitable Model Interestingly, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, Snyder’s Democratic opponent in the last gubernatorial race, proposed a solution that could have avoided either robbing the pensioners or scaring off the bondholders: a state-owned bank. If the state or the city had its own bank, it would not need to borrow from Wall Street, worry about interest rate swaps, or be beholden to the bond vigilantes. It could borrow from its own bank, which would leverage the local government’s capital into credit, back that credit with the deposits created by the government’s own revenues, and return the interest to the government as a dividend, following the ground-breaking model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.

There are other steps that need to be taken, and soon, to prevent a cascade of municipal bankruptcies. The super-priority of derivatives in bankruptcy needs to be repealed, and the protections of Glass Steagall need to be restored. While we are waiting on a very dilatory Congress, however, state and local governments might consider protecting themselves and their revenues by setting up their own banks.

___________________________________________

Let's remember, it is the neo-liberals on Capitol Hill pushing this as compromise in entitlement and Social Security 'reform' takes the lead since the Treasury is empty of the $4 trillion in payroll taxes paid since Reagan's time!!

Seniors would see smaller Social Security checks under Obama budget

By Tami Luhby  @Luhby April 10, 2013: 4:50 PM ET  CNN MONEY

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) Senior citizens would see their Social Security checks shrink under President Obama's latest budget proposal. The budget plan, released Wednesday, calls for changing the way the annual cost of living adjustments for Social Security and other federal programs are calculated. Shifting to "chained CPI" from the current inflation measure could reduce the federal debt by $230 billion, but it would also mean that seniors would get smaller increases in their Social Security payments each year.

The president's proposal would provide protections for the oldest seniors, low-income seniors and veterans, and those who are disabled. Seniors ages 76 to 85 would receive a supplemental payment annually to offset some of the slowdown in growth. Also, programs that are geared for those in or near poverty, such as the Supplemental Security Income, would be exempt from the switch to chained CPI.

But the change would still make a difference for many people. Chained CPI is expected to grow between 0.25 and 0.3 percentage points more slowly than the current CPI measure.

Initially, the reduction in the growth of Social Security checks would be quite small ... between $38 and $45 in the first year, for the average retired worker. But over time, that would grow into the hundreds of dollars.

Someone who started collecting the average Social Security benefit for a retired worker in 1999 would receive $12,972 in 2012. But let's say the Social Security Administration had already been using chained CPI -- that person would get only $12,336 this year, according to the National Academy of Social Insurance. That's nearly 5% less.

The difference gets bigger over time. According to the National Women's Law Center, a retiree who was collecting $17,520 last year would see 6.5% less, or $1,139, by age 85, if chained CPI were in effect. A decade after, their payments would be 9.2% smaller, or $1,612. These calculations do not include the supplemental payments, the details of which were not released until Wednesday.


For many seniors, these decreases aren't trivial. Nearly two in three recipients rely on Social Security for at least 50% of their income. And Social Security makes up at least 90% of the income received by 36% of seniors.

"For a lot of elderly people, Social Security is virtually their only source of income," said Paul Van de Water, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "A decrease of almost $600 a year ... for people in that situation is very significant."

That's especially true for older seniors, who have likely spent down their other assets and seen other income sources dry up. Also, these recipients are usually contending with growing medical bills, which chained CPI doesn't account for. The protections Obama is planning may mitigate the problems, but some experts don't think they'll fully shield this group.

  Krugman: Focus on deficit is 'destructive' "The older you get, the bigger the reduction you get,' said Gary Koenig, director of economic security for AARP's Public Policy Institute. "It's hitting at a time when folks can least afford it."

Women could get hit especially hard since they live longer than men and rely more on Social Security, said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security for the National Women's Law Center. For the typical single elderly woman, the switch would reduce her monthly benefit by $56 at age 80, not including the supplement. This is equivalent to a week's spending on food per month.

"The typical woman beneficiary is just barely above the poverty line," she said. "She has a really hard time meeting expenses."

Regardless of what one thinks of the magnitude of the cuts, switching to chained CPI is not the solution to reforming Social Security. Additional measures will be needed to extend the entitlement program's solvency since chained CPI addresses only about 20% of the gap.

And Peter Orszag, former budget director under Obama, says the difference between chained CPI and the current CPI is overstated -- that means Social Security benefits won't be cut by as much as is being forecast.


___________________________

Below is the Brookings Institute policy on entitlement and Social Security reform.  They think that now that these Trusts have been gutted with fraud, reforms are needed to cut American's retirements.  Note that the Brookings is the neo-liberal think tank that Clinton and Obama and all of democratic leadership subscribe to.  See why you hear all this manufactured crisis meant to hide what was always the planned policy?!

Social Security beneficiaries to get 1.5 percent raise


Eileen Ambrose 10:18 a.m. EDT, October 30, 2013

Social Security beneficiaries will receive a 1.5 percent raise next year, the Social Security Administration announced today. Also, the agency announced that the amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax is going up next year from $113,700 to $117,000.

According to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, the typical beneficiary will receive a $19 per month raise.

“Seniors know all too well, their living costs often outpace the COLA increase and a 1.5% increase is anything but too generous,” said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the group.

The increase comes at a time when lawmakers are likely to take up whether to change how the government measures inflation as part of budget negotiations.

Some economists say the current yardstick overstates inflation. The result is that the government collects less in taxes than it should because income levels for tax brackets and deductions are higher than they should be, economists say. And, they add, the overstatement of inflation means that Social Security pays more to beneficiaries than it should, too.

Republicans have backed moving to the so-called Chained Consumer Price Index that tends to report inflation at a lower rate. This index takes into account that consumers will make substitutions when prices rise, such as switching from high-priced strawberries in the fall to cheaper pears.

President Obama has signaled his willingness to go along, provided seniors get periodic bump-up in benefits and other guarantees.



_____________________________________________



The Simple Arithmetic of Diverting Payroll Taxes to Individual Accounts

Many people favor the creation of individual accounts as a partial or complete substitute for Social Security. Some propose to fund these accounts out of general revenues. When some part of the pensions based on these individual accounts is used to reduce Social Security benefits, this approach can indirectly reduce the projected long-term deficit in Social Security. This is the approach used, for example, in the Archer/Shaw bill.

Other so-called "carve-out" plans, such as those of Senator Kerry and Governor Bush, would divert part of the current payroll tax from the Social Security system. Their plans would carve out part of the payroll tax, which would then be directed to individual accounts. They would cut Social Security benefits enough to restore projected long-term balance.


The first point to recognize is that by subtracting revenues from the Social Security system, these plans force larger cuts than would otherwise be necessary to restore financial balance in that system. On the other hand, pensioners would have the balances in their individual accounts with which they could (or, in some plans, would have to) buy annuities.

This trade raises several practical questions:

Will the individual-account-based pensions fully compensate pensioners for the Social Security cuts?

Will the individual-account-based pensions be inflation protected?

Will individual account holders be required to convert their accounts into annuities? If not, what happens to those who are imprudent or unlucky, exhaust their accounts, and find themselves dependent on much-reduced Social Security benefits.









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October 22nd, 2013

10/22/2013

0 Comments

 
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


________________________________________________
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.



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

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

October 17th, 2013

10/17/2013

0 Comments

 
ALL OF MARYLAND'S CANDIDATES WILL CONTINUE PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS AND LEVERAGED CREDIT BONDS AND TAX INCREMENTS THAT ARE MORTGAGING OUR FUTURE.

BROWN, GANSLER, MIZEUR ARE ALL NEO-LIBERALS!

FROSH, FRICK, AND JON CARDIN ARE VISIGOTH ATTORNEY GENERALS IN WAITING!

Below we see how this public private partnership is in fact a very, very, very bad deal for Maryland citizens.  As we see, this is a 50 year deal that gives Maryland a few million in lease while the private company operating the Port is in line to earn billions if the expansion occurs. 
HELLO!!!!!!
VISIGOTH ALERT!!!!


Below you see news on the Port of Baltimore from almost two decades ago and then from the last few years since O'Malley and neo-liberals have privatized the Port allowing a Swedish corporation run it while preparing to make the Baltimore harbor an international destination for massive cargo ships just so the 1% in Maryland can be part of a global enterprise.  As you can see, it has no value to citizens of Baltimore and and job development....it is purely designed to take a public asset and create a hugely profitable business for the very few.

You can listen to the Longshoremen's Union to understand this isn't about job creation and tax revenue for the state....IT IS ONLY ABOUT SENDING PROFITS TO THE 1% IN MARYLAND.

As is true with all Maryland media coverage over and again the headlines JOBS/TAX REVENUE INCREASES/DEVELOPMENT GOOD FOR THE CITY all over the place.  NONE OF IT IS TRUE!

In 1996 we see the Port of Baltimore claiming $2 billion in economic activity with 62,500 jobs tied to the port and $141 million in tax revenue.  The business that made these figures are leaving as the price of doing business in a global harbor is getting too steep.  The jobs created by the merger with this private corporation appear to be 2,700.  The Longshoremen have been on strike twice in ten years because the private partner is trying to union-bust and break wages and benefits.  As with other port privatizing they are outsourcing port jobs overseas while downsizing unions employees.  SO MUCH FOR JOB CREATION AND GOOD PAYING JOBS!  No doubt the wages and benefits can come down for these well-paid workers, but we know how low they intend to go.....it will be poverty....just like the MTA employees privatized with VEOLA.
So this is a huge issue for labor and no one I know likes the Port of Baltimore being turned into a destination for gigantic rust-filled ocean cargo ships.  Think what dredging will bring up and it is all because the 1% want profit from being part of global shipping.  IT IS ABSURD!


Just as Visigoth is that all of these Port Authorities across the country that privatize like this are already full of fraud and corruption and refusing oversight.  They are quasi-government for a reason you know!


Dredge or die Port of Baltimore: Navigable channel is essential in cutthroat maritime world.

.September 12, 1996  Baltimore Sun

ENVIRONMENTALISTS won't like aspects of the Glendening administration's plan to dispose of dredged material from Chesapeake Bay harbor channels. Neither will penny-pinching conservatives. Or some watermen. Yet implementing the program is key to keeping the Port of Baltimore competitive in a cutthroat maritime industry.This is no small matter. The port accounts for over $2 billion a year in economic activity. It creates employment for 62,500 Marylanders. It generates $141 million in state and local taxes.


This is the current stats given on state websites: Keep in mind this is a 50 year agreement.

...... the partnership between the MPA and Ports America has the potential to generate up to $1.8 billion in total investment and revenue to the State of Maryland over the life of the agreement.It will also generate $15.7 million per year in new taxes for Maryland.  2,700 permanent direct, indirect and induced jobs will come from the increased and sustainable container business that the Port will see upon completion of the 50-foot berth and the completion of the Panama Canal project
____________________________________________
SURPRISE----NO OVERSIGHT IN MARYLAND!!!


I DIDN'T SEE THAT SAYS MARYLAND'S ATTORNEY GENERAL GANSLER!!!!

What they are saying is that this partnership at the Port will allow the private company to simply lease from the state for $3.2 million a year and keep all profits generated from dredging into an international port.  Remember how gambling passed in Maryland because O'Malley said almost 60 percent of the profits would come to the state and schools?  Now, we have 25% coming from table games....the biggest revenue maker in gambling.  Profits for the corporations are huge.  So none of these public private partnerships is about jobs and creating revenue for the state or city----it is completely designed to maximize corporate profit.

ALL OF THE CURRENT CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR PLEDGE TO CONTINUE THESE PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS AND LEVERAGED BOND AND TAX INCREMENTS THAT ARE MORTGAGING OUR FUTURE!  ANTHONY BROWN/ULMAN.....DEPUTY DOG GANLER.....AND MIZEUR who is being painted the good neo-liberal cop!


Controls faulted at Maryland Port Administration

  Posted: 6:36 pm Mon, October 24, 2011
By Nicholas Sohr
Daily Record Business Writer

The Maryland Port Administration showed “significant deficiencies” in its oversight of more than $60 million in revenue and $15.3 million in payments in fiscal 2010, state watchdogs said in an audit released Monday. The issues raised “could adversely affect MPA’s ability to maintain reliable financial records [and] operate effectively,” according to the Office of Legislative Audits, ...





'After making an annual payment to the Maryland Port Authority, the port operator will receive the net revenues from the business developed by the expanded terminal facility'.


Audit Report Department of Transportation Maryland Port Administration

October 2011

..................................
In exchange, MPA will receive annual lease payments of $3.2 million with periodic increases based on the rate of inflation. The agreement also required the company to make a one-time payment of $140 million to the Maryland Transportation Authority, which owned the property being leased; in exchange, the Authority transferred ownership of the terminal to MPA to provide for the lease.


'during fiscal year 2010, cargo shipped through MPA’s port facilities totaled approximately 7.6 million tons, and overall port revenues totaled $69.3 million'


'The new contract will bring in 5,700 new jobs to the port, including 2,700 that will be permanent to handle increased container business and 3,000 that will be in place for three years'.

_____________________________________________

THIS IS WHO O'MALLEY THINKS WORKS FOR THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND!!!  WHAT A NEO-LIBERAL WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT ARE ALL MARYLAND DEMOCRATS!

 Global reach. Local results.

Ports America is proud to be the largest terminal operator and stevedore in the United States, operating in more than 42 ports and 80 locations.

We provide clients with a distinct competitive advantage, combining the flexibility of global connection with the efficiency of local expertise. We are dedicated to customer satisfaction, consistently delivering measurable results. And our commitment to safety in the workplace is second to none.




Port Uses Public Private Partnership to Compete Against West Coast Ports

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Larry Ehl 2The Port of Baltimore used a PPP to increase odds of capturing West Coast ports business.

Instead of waiting for federal help, some ports are turning to public private partnerships for transportation improvements to improve competitiveness. Last week the House Transportation’s Freight Panel heard about a recent PPP at the Port of Baltimore.

Many states – unlike my home state of Washington – are turning to transportation PPPs as the federal and state governments find it hard to increase transportation taxes, and fuels taxes revenue declines. In Maryland’s case, the Governor’s office led the charge to establish the PPP legislation.

Earlier this year the Port celebrated the completion of a new 50-foot-deep berth and the addition of four supersized container cranes capable of handling post-Panamax ships. Link to news release.

If Washingtonians think the Port of Baltimore is not a competitor, consider this from Maryland DOT:

“Currently, a large percentage of ships use West Coast ports, requiring manufacturers to send products by rail to markets throughout the country.  With the completion of the Panama Canal expansion in two years, it is expected that a larger number of ships, including new mega-ships, will travel to East Coast ports that have the infrastructure to accommodate them in order to reach customers more quickly and less expensively.”

Here is what the Freight Panel’s briefing memo stated:

A recent PPP at the Port of Baltimore provides a prime example of a freight transportation facility that was brought online as a result of cooperative planning and development between private industry and governmental entities.

In January 2010, the Maryland Port Administration and a private port operator entered a 50-year lease and concession agreement for the Seagirt Marine Terminal at the Port of Baltimore. Under the agreement, the port operator is responsible for daily operations and the construction of a new 50-foot berth, including four ship-to-shore cranes. The port operator will also make hundreds of millions of dollars of capital improvements to the terminal. After making an annual payment to the Maryland Port Authority, the port operator will receive the net revenues from the business developed by the expanded terminal facility.

The Port recently received a $10 million TIGER grant, which will be matched with $19 million in state funding.

The Port is in the midst of a record-breaking year. According to the Maryland Port Authority, nearly 15,000 people are supporting themselves and their families with direct jobs at the port. Business here supports another 40,000 jobs and statewide overall, 108,000 jobs are linked to port activities.

It appears the State of Maryland, and the City of Baltimore, appreciate the jobs and tax revenue generated by the Port.



_______________________________________________

THIS IS WHERE THE PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP WILL TAKE MIDDLE-CLASS LONGSHOREMEN!!!



ONE OUT OF TWO FAST FOOD WORKERS HAVE TO USE GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE TO LIVE.

AFL-CIO Learn more from UC Berkeley Labor Center about how fast food corporate greed costs us all: http://bit.ly/1anxtq3

Via Wisconsin State AFL-CIO
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October 14th, 2013

10/14/2013

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At a time when moving people to public transportation and out of cars is the environmental thing to do neo-liberals are using this push to transit to upgrade and privatize as they do.  You will not have the level of service, the quality of service needed to get people onto public transportation if run privately because as we all know EVERY SERVICE THAT IS PRIVATIZED BECOMES ABOUT PROFIT-MAKING AT THE EXPENSE OF SERVICE AND QUALITY.  We know as well that labor becomes impoverished as well.  Privatizing does not make transit good.  It is defunding of public transit that makes public transit bad in Maryland and especially Baltimore.

Baltimore Development and City Hall are all on board to privatize the city transportation system and the Maryland Assembly is sending public funds to do it.  Montgomery County has a new transit system all run by VEOLA and MARC is run by CSX.  We know that tons of public transportation money will go into building the High-Speed rail that O'Malley signed on to.  Meanwhile we are paying tolls on new roads collected by private contractors all making profits while labor is impoverished.

BALTIMORE CITY HALL AND MARYLAND ASSEMBLY IS SUPPORTING THIS.

SHAKE THE BUGS FROM THE RUG AND GET RID OF NEO-LIBERALS BY RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE AT ALL LEVELS!


We are shouting for people to come to these meetings and write/complain as O'Malley and Maryland's neo-liberals privatize all of Maryland's public transportation.  PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION WAS THE CROWNING DEMOCRATIZING PUBLIC POLICY OF 1900s.....why are people silent as they work to dismantle and hand public transportation to Wall Street?


Central Maryland Transportation Alliance

Come to one of the six (6) public workshops to learn about the Maryland Transit Administration Bus Network Improvement Project and provide your feedback. http://mta.maryland.gov/bnip Bus Network Improvement Project | Maryland Transit Administration mta.maryland.govWhat Is the Bus Network Improvement Project (BNIP)?BNIP (Bus Network Improvement Project) is a focused, 8-month project to develop a plan for updating and improving MTA's bus service. BNIP is a key component of a larger effort called the Transit Modernization Program (TMP) which is working to modern...



BNIP Workshops Come to one of the six (6) public workshops to learn about the study and provide your unique feedback. Download PDF of workshop schedule. You can find more information on BNIP workshop agenda and format here!

Date Time Location

Tuesday, October 15 12:00 pm- 2:00 pm State Center
201 W. Preston Street,
Room L1
Baltimore, MD 21201


Wednesday, October 16 5:00 pm-7:00 pm Rosedale Branch
Baltimore County Public Library
6105 Kenwood Avenue
Rosedale, MD  21237


Saturday, October 19 12:00 pm- 2:00 pm North Point Branch
Baltimore County Public Library
1716 Merritt Blvd.
Baltimore, MD  21222


Monday, October 21 5:00 pm- 7:00 pm Towson Branch
Baltimore County Public Library 
320 York Road
Baltimore, MD 21204


Wednesday, October 23 5:00 pm- 7:00 pm Edmondson Avenue Branch
Enoch Pratt Free Library
 4330 Edmondson Avenue
Baltimore, MD  21229


Thursday, October 24 5:00 pm- 7:00 pm Brooklyn Park Branch
Anne Arundel County Public Library
1 East 11th Avenue
Brooklyn, MD  21225


________________________________________

In Maryland all of public transportation is being privatized, buses and all.  VEOLA is the choice for buses, taxis, and BWI transit and CSX gets the MARC commuter rail.  This is not good as we in Maryland know how quality of service goes down, labor becomes impoverished, and access declines when any service is privatized.  The public pays all the costs of capital investments and operations while the business partner rolls in profits!

More public transit — except buses — on road to privatization Local transit agencies make their own decisions.
October 11, 2013 | By Eric Freedman - Capital News Service LANSING — Most public transit agencies across the country contract with private firms to provide some services and operations, a new federal study shows.

A survey by the General Accountability Office found that local agencies across the country are most likely to contract out for paratransit services for disabled riders, dial-a-ride and commuter rail service.


“Transit agencies most consistently cite reducing costs as a factor influencing their decision to contract,” said GAO, a nonpartisan investigatory arm of Congress. “Contracting can reduce costs because contractors’ work forces are more flexible, with more employees working in part-time positions, and lower insurance costs, among other things.”

Other common reasons are more efficiency, more flexibility and starting new services, it said.

Michigan has a long history of helping to fund public transit in every county, according to Clark Harder, executive director of the Michigan Public Transit Association. In counties without a local transit agency, the Department of Human Services or an Office for the Aging may arrange for services.

Transit agency contracting practices vary across Michigan, from small systems such as those in St. Joseph and Monroe counties to large ones such as those in Grand Rapids and Metro Detroit.

For example, the Detroit Department of Transportation and The Rapid in Grand Rapids rely on a combination of employees and contractors.

DDOT has always contracted out paratransit service for passengers with disabilities, and its Detroit MetroLift program works with four private contractors, according to Deputy Director Angelica Jones. “We didn’t have the staffing and the wheelchair lift vans.”

Jones said the department has no plans to contract out its fixed routes — buses, which account for the major part of its services.

In Grand Rapids, The Rapid has contracted for paratransit and demand-response services for many years, said Jennifer Kalczuk, the agency’s external relations manager. Employees provide bus services.

Monroe County uses a different hybrid model: Lake Erie Transportation Commission employees provide bus services, a private company provides management and the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation, or SMART, owns the buses, said Lake Erie Transit general manager Mark Jagodzinski.

In contrast, SMART doesn’t contract out for any of its own fixed bus routes or small bus services, said Beth Gibbons, its marketing and communications manager. The agency serves Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties.


In the 1990s, SMART did contract out its fixed routes “but we brought it back in-house because we could do it cheaper,” Gibbons said. In addition, she cited concern about “quality of service because you don’t have the control.”

She also said SMART’s union contracts prohibit subcontracting existing work, so any future contracting out would be limited to new services.

The GAO findings are based on a survey of 637 transit agencies that file reports with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Of those, 463 agencies responded. GAO staff also interviewed transit officials, union leaders and representatives of citizen advisory groups.

“Transit agencies and contractors cited benefits and challenges to contracting, while labor unions primarily noted disadvantages — most notably, reduced wages and benefits and a potential decline in safety and service, among other issues,” the report said.

Challenges included the agencies’ loss of direct control of operations, it said, while contractors reported they could improve operational efficiency with the newest technologies, such as routing systems, and lower costs through more affordable insurance.

The GAO study comes at a time when Michigan’s state government, municipalities and school districts are increasingly looking to privatize services to save money.

For example, the Department of Corrections is hiring a Pennsylvania-based food contractor to provide meals to prisoners. The $145 million, three-year deal eliminates about 370 state government jobs. The Snyder administration estimates that the food service contract will save $12 million to $16 million annually, a claim that union leaders dispute.

In addition, a growing number of school districts have privatized nonacademic services such as cafeterias, bus transportation and janitorial services.

Sharon Edgar of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Office of Passenger Transportation said she hasn’t seen increased use of outside contractors by local transit agencies, adding that MDOT has no policy that encourages or discourages the practice.

Local transit agencies make their own decisions, Edgar said.

__________________________________________
We thank this writer of an opinion piece a few years ago as he saw the writing on the wall.  What is important is that since he wrote this more and more privatization has occurred.  The entire Montgomery County public transit is privatized with VEOLA and now more and more of Baltimore is as every upgrade comes with ties to a private partner.  Toll roads are now serviced by private contractors.

The downside of privatizing public transportationApril 16, 2011In his commentary in the Baltimore Sun


("End the MTA Monopoly," April 14), Professor James Dorn of Towson University, and the Cato Foundation whose journal he edits, would have us privatize our public transportation. Dorn characterizes the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) as a monopoly, without mentioning the scores of private transportation providers (vans, shuttles, taxis, etc.), including the massive French multinational corporation Veolia, which already co-exist with the MTA right here in the Baltimore region. But, granting the MTA's preeminent position in our regional transportation picture, what are the implications of what Dorn's suggestion? What could this mean for the present and future transit- riding public?

For starters, as a private enterprise, it would greatly reduce any accountability of the operation to the people it is supposed to serve. Government regulation of such private enterprises is fraught with obstacles, loopholes, lack of transparency, and persistent opposition by business lobbyists.

For another thing, it would add the need to "grow the business bottom line" as a factor in providing service to the public when, in urban areas around the country, reality requires that public transportation be subsidized beyond mere reliance on the fare box.

Finally, and most tenuously, it would have us place our public trust in this private enterprise to pursue the public interest, not exactly what people go into business to do.

The track record is clear for public utilities such as transportation which have been privatized. The results have usually been less and costlier service, and less accessibility for those who depend on such services. Eventually, there has been business bankruptcy and abandonment of the services back to management by government.

Just after a time when our economy has almost imploded due to the abuses of unimpeded, under-regulated greed by private enterprise, it is a bit much to ask us to look to the private sector to solve our very real problems of adequate public transportation.

Art Cohen, Baltimore



______________________________________________

PLEASE GET ENGAGED AND GO TO MEETINGS, PUBLIC FORUMS, AND PUBLIC COMMENT SITES.  THEY WILL TAKE PUBLIC TRANSIT THAT ALLOWS PEOPLE TO MOVE ANY TIME AND MAKE IT ONLY ABOUT GETTING TO WORK.

If you are sick and tired of an unfunded, broken transit system the problem is just that-----it is unfunded.  Privatizing is not better and in most cases it is worse!


Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Letting Elected Officials Know That Bus Riders Have a Voice!

Since the founding of the Bus Riders' Union in late 2011, many people were skeptical. They thought that bus riders like me don't vote, and that we weren't engaged in politics. Or they didn't think about us at all, ignoring transit issues during election time and ignoring bus terminals as voter engagement sites. We wanted to change that mindset. We started showing up to legislative hearings, to committee meetings, even to meetings with elected officials. And people started to hear our message, but some not loudly enough.

Today, we released a report that shows just how engaged bus riders are. Do bus riders vote? Well, yes. In our new report, called "Bus Riders Vote: A Report on Voter Engagement for Bus Riders", we showed that 55% voted in the past two years, and 58% plan to vote in the November 2013 elections. Not only do we vote, but 69% of us think that public transportation is a "very important" issue to us when we're deciding on a candidate.

Check out the full report online here and see our list of recommendations for elected officials, which includes recommending they: attend transit advisory committee meetings, speak to us at bus terminals, and ride the buses themselves! By doing these things, they will understand what we already know: many improvements need to be made to our bus system, from increasing County funding to repairing erroneous Metrocard machines.
Thank you for your support over the past few years, and read our report to learn more!


Aaron Watkins-Lopez
Bus Rider and Organizer with Long Island Jobs with Justice Posted by Long Island Jobs with Justice at 10:07 AM


___________________________________________


What's driving privatization of public transit?
In Fairfield, officials have outsourced the city's public bus service to MV Transportation.

Michael Short/California Watch

  As more cities turn to private companies to run public transit systems, our recent investigation shows that privatization may not be the silver bullet that cash-strapped municipalities were hoping for. We asked transit reporter Zusha Elinson to break it down for us. by Kelly Chen — March 7, 2013, 6:00 a.m.3

As more cities turn to private companies to run public transit systems, our recent investigation shows that privatization may not be the silver bullet that cash-strapped municipalities were hoping for.

In Fairfield, where the city’s suburban landscape makes it difficult to provide reliable and comprehensive bus service, local officials are finding it hard to hold its contractor, MV Transportation, accountable.
Transit reporter Zusha Elinson found that “over a two-year period beginning in 2008, the company was fined 295 times for a total of $164,000” for late arrival times and drivers speeding, being out of uniform and using cellphones while driving.

Behind the fines, however, is a much larger ideological debate: Is privatization of certain industries like transit, which some traditionally consider to be public domain, a good thing?

We asked Elinson to break it down for us.

Q: Why are more cities turning to private companies to run their public transit systems?


A: Privatization started under (President Ronald) Reagan, who championed public-private partnerships in favor of smaller government. But the trend really accelerated during the (recent) recession because a lot of municipalities and transit agencies don’t have enough money to maintain these services. The one thing that outsourcing your public transit does is save money.

Across the country, very large cities are going this route: Austin recently outsourced all their bus services; New Orleans handed over its entire public transportation to a private company, including its management; Nassau County in Long Island did the same.

A lot of times these deals will be sold as saving the taxpayers this many millions of dollars. But looking at a couple of different situations in San Diego and New Orleans,
the money being saved has been quite a bit less than advertised. That’s not to say they haven’t been saving money. Often they’ll tout savings that are quite far above than what is being saved.

Q: Who benefits? Who loses?

A: One of the biggest costs for public transit is labor. When they contract to private companies, they can winnow away labor costs by not offering pensions and cutting health benefits. So naturally, bus driver unions don’t like these arrangements because it means their wages and benefits will be cut.

For example, a few years ago in northern San Diego County when the North County Transit District brought in a private company, the starting wage for a bus driver went from $14 to $10.50 an hour. One general concern that comes with paying drivers less is safety – maybe you have more inexperienced drivers. This isn’t the case for every company, but it’s a concern.

Q: What does the case in Fairfield teach us?

A: Supposedly the benefit of doing this is that you have a contract with the company to make them do what you want. But the story in Fairfield shows that it’s not so. For example, in Fairfield, MV Transportation officials actually had quite a bit of political sway to squash efforts to keep them in line. So it was difficult, at least for (former) Transit Manager George Fink, to hold them accountable.

(Our investigation found that MV Transportation made a $10,000 campaign donation to then-City Councilman Chuck Timm in 2007. In 2009, Jon Monson, then the company’s board chairman, made $10,000 campaign donations to City Councilman John Mraz and City Councilwoman Catherine Moy.)

People can take lessons from this situation: You need to really take a look at which company you’re hiring and make sure they comply with the contract. Can people holding them accountable really do that? While many transit agencies are run very inefficiently and can be improved, you don’t have to worry about influencing politicians or people taking measures just for profit margins when the system is run by public agencies.

Q: Can this happen in big cities like San Francisco?

A: A leader of the Muni drivers union in San Francisco, a very strong union, laughed when I asked him that. He said no way. So, likely it wouldn’t come to a big city with a strong union presence, but it could be the fact that other large cities continue to do this. Maybe not SF, but some other big cities.

In the Bay Area, as we mention in our article, they’re considering contracting out some routes in southern Alameda County, where AC Transit has provided the bus service for many, many years. That’ll be a really big fight if that happens because the bus drivers union is quite strong in the East Bay. But I think it just shows the trend that even in the Bay Area, where the unions are really strong, this is even being considered.

Q: Does the public even know who runs its public transit system? Do riders feel the impact?

A: Transit officials tend to say that people don’t really know who’s running their bus lines, but I don’t think that’s actually true. In talking with people in Long Island, they were really wary of this situation in Nassau County. In fact, in Nassau County, where (nearly) everyone is a commuter to the city, their transit was outsourced to a big French company. For the first time ever, they formed the Long Island Bus Riders Union. It showed that bus riders were really concerned about what might happen. There’s always two sides to the story: The company says it saved a lot of money and provided services more efficiently. But at the same time, it cut service, which people are upset about.



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    Author

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

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