Category: Public Housing Privatization

September 03rd, 2014

9/3/2014

MARYLAND LEADS IN COMMISSIONS, BOARDS, AND COMMITTEES THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PUBLIC INTEREST OR OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY----THEY ARE THERE TO MAKE SURE THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN!

I want to spend a few days looking at individual government commissions at each level of government to show how dysfunctional they are. Policy goes there to die or it is called one thing while doing another. You see just that in the article below about Massachusetts and its commissions.....I give an example of the same in Maryland.

The surge in states creating commissions and quasi-status for NGOs was a step towards moving the business of legislating away from state and local legislators and handing major public policy decisions to whatever appointee a Governor or Mayor made. Fast forward to neo-liberals and neo-cons controlling our major parties and you have global corporate pols appointing corporate people working in corporate/shareholder interest and against public interest. WE DO NOT WANT COMMISSIONS ETC CIRCUMVENTING OUR LEGISLATURES. This same process has Congress with appointed committees that write entire policy ------ten pols writing critical public policy and then taking it to the floor of Congress to 'tweak'. NONE OF THIS IS REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY.

A DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN WOULD NOT SUPPORT THESE CENTRALIZED POLICY-MAKING ENTITIES. GET RID OF THE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.

Meanwhile the committees that were once filled with the general public in local communities/boards are languishing. In their place----private corporate non-profits headed by directors appointed by corporations funding an issue. As the article below states, and this is true in Maryland-----no oversight or accountability or even attention to staffing is happening with public committees and community groups.

In Maryland, the commissions that are active and filled with appointees by Governor or Mayor have most of their meetings behind closed doors calling issues proprietary and minutes reflect that lack of transparency. This is why Maryland citizens never know what is happening in policy until it comes to vote......too late to organize and protest.

Imagine if all of those boards and committees met in our local schools in the evenings to discuss the issue assigned to these committees.......that is what we used to do. This is the democratic discussion of issues that has been allowed to wither as boards meet during a workday in places not convenient to the general public.

WE NEED EVERYONE DEMANDING PUBLIC COMMITTEES AND BOARDS AND GETTING OUT TO PARTICIPATE. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO LEGISLATES.

State study confirms unfilled job boards

By Todd Wallack | Globe Staff July 30, 2014

Massachusetts is failing to properly staff and track hundreds of state boards, committees, and commissions, a Senate panel concluded in a report released Wednesday, resulting in what some call “zombie boards” that never meet.

The Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight discovered dozens of state panels that have not met or produced reports in years, alongside new committees that have not been able to start because of empty seats, while still other panels appear to be redundant. The review found that 48 boards are probably no longer needed either because they have completed their work or outlived their missions, such as one that issued its final report on the future of Boston Harbor beaches in the 1990s.

“I was surprised that we hadn’t taken action earlier,” said Senator Cynthia S. Creem, the Newton Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight, who added that many people count on state boards to champion issues they care about. “I think it’s been neglected.”

The Senate researchers’ work was complicated, however, by the fact that the governor’s website for boards and commissions omitted some panels where the governor does not make appointments. And information for the roughly 700 boards that were listed was “often absent, incomplete, out-of-date and/or incorrect.”

“The Commonwealth’s current system for appointing commission members and monitoring commissions’ activities is inadequate,” the report found.

The Senate launched the review last spring after the Globe reported that more than one-third of the seats on state boards and commissions were either vacant or filled with holdovers whose terms had officially expired months or years ago — a figure that took many state officials by surprise. The Globe also found that some boards had not met in decades (including at least one with a member who was dead), while others struggled to gather a quorum because of the vacancies.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that Massachusetts appears to have far more boards than other states its size, according to a Globe survey of a dozen other states,making it difficult to keep track of them and fill all the vacant positions.

Senator Robert L. Hedlund, a Weymouth Republican on the post audit committee, said he believes lawmakers and the executive branch have become too eager to set up commissions and too reluctant to eliminate them when they are no longer useful.

“It seems as though government in general expands and it never really contracts,” said Hedlund, the assistant minority leader. “I would like us to be a little more serious when we form a commission and be judicious, so that when we do form a commission it is taken seriously.”

Officials in the governor’s office, which controls the majority of board appointments, said they are already working on ways to eliminate unneeded boards.

“We have made tremendous progress in deactivating boards and commissions that are no longer current, where it is within our power to do so,” said Heather Nichols, a spokeswoman in the governor’s office. “Where it is not, we are happy to work with the Legislature to sunset those boards and commissions that have already served out their purpose.”

Patrick administration staffers said they do the best they can to fill vacant positions, but noted that it can be challenging because the vast majority of positions are unpaid and require significant hours to attend meetings, often during the day. Many vacant seats are also controlled by state lawmakers and other officials outside the adminstration’s control.

The Senate review made a number of recommendations to address the problems, some of which would require legislation:

■ Requiring the governor’s office and departments to review whether commissions are riddled with vacancies, struggled to gather a quorum, have not met in a year, or are no longer needed;

■ Creating a sunset review commission to determine whether boards or commissions should be dissolved because they are redundant or defunct;

■ Streamlining the background check for new board members;

■ Giving the governor more flexibility to fill seats when he cannot find someone meeting all the requirements specified in state law;

■ Reappointing holdover members to new terms if new members cannot be found;

■ Making greater efforts to update the state’s boards and commissions website, as well as to add details on panels that are currently missing;

■ Posting meeting agendas, minutes, and reports for all commissions online;

■ Changing the law to automatically eliminate special commissions after they have issued their final reports.

But Hedlund, the Republican committee member, worried that the government has become so lax about following up on commissions that it probably will not follow through on the Senate panel’s recommendations either.

“It will be treated in the same way,” Hedlund predicted. “Tomororrow, it will be yesterday’s news.”

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This is one example of a commission on fracking created by O'Malley and neo-liberals under the guise of protecting Maryland from fracking abuses. Neo-liberals support fracking and O'Malley led the Governor's Commission on exporting natural gas----an action that places fracking on steroids. So, we have pols painted as being 'green' because they formed a commission that did absolutely nothing and never had any intent to protect Maryland Marcellus Shale from fracking.

The millions of dollars sent to this 'study' more than likely went to subsidize natural gas exploration in Maryland to find the best land to frack and then allowing the same connected people to buy that land.

For Immediate Release Thursday, April 3, 2014 - 4:05pmFood & Water WatchContact: Jorge Aguilar – 202-683-2529; JAguilar@fwwatch.org
Rich Bindell – 202-683-2457; RBindell@fwwatch.org

Fracking Health Study Narrow, Hasty, and Underfunded Say Health Experts

Call On Gov. O’Malley and Maryland Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission To Extend Deadline On Health Study

WASHINGTON - Today, a commissioner from Governor Martin O’Malley’s Marcellus Shale Commission joined three leading medical advocacy groups at a press conference in Baltimore in critiquing the timeline and scope of a study on the possible health impacts of shale gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” that is scheduled for release in June.

Representatives from the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (ANHE), Maryland Environment Health Network (MdEHN), Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY), Food and Water Watch and Ann Bristow warned that the study is poised to fall woefully short of meeting international standards and health study guidelines for protecting public health.

They called on Governor O’Malley to commit more resources and to extend the health study deadline in order to fully assess the potential health effects to all Marylanders. They also noted that the study is limited to investigating possible impacts on public health only among residents of Western Maryland, even though exploitable shale gas reserves are located across the state.

“We are watching the emerging science from other states show increasing harms from fracking. We’re hearing about poisoned drinking water and radioactive waste, as well as smog in places that used to have pristine air. So it is clear that an eight month study period, funded at $150,000 does not suffice to assess even the top tier of costly health impacts that fracking will likely have in Western Maryland, let alone the rest of the state,” said Rebecca Ruggles, Director of the Maryland Environmental Health Network said.

“As it currently stands, the State of Maryland is conducting a flawed, rushed, and superficial study that will not help inform Maryland residents—nor their elected officials—about the full burden of possible health risks from the entire process of shale gas extraction,” said Katie Huffling, a registered nurse and the director of programs for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. “As nurses, we are also gravely concerned that they will not be including a health cost assessment in their study. If the public is being asked to assume health risks from fracking, it deserves a comprehensive investigation of those risks and their economic costs, not a fig leaf."

Health professionals across the country have argued that a Health Impact Assessment (HIA)—a specific National Research Council-sanctioned process developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization (among others)—must be conducted to inform any decision as critical as whether or not fracking should be permitted in states.

“Drilling and fracking operations are inherently dangerous and pose demonstrable risks to health, especially for children, pregnant women and other vulnerable people living nearby,” said Sandra Steingraber, PhD and cofounder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York. “The proper tool for investigating these impacts is a comprehensive Health Impact Assessment with its vetted protocols and seal of approval by national and international public health institutions. A comprehensive HIA with full public participation, not a rushed study with a political deadline, is what the people of Maryland need and deserve. “

The Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission is currently scheduled to make a final recommendation on fracking in August to Governor Martin O’Malley that will include the health assessment report.

Ann Bristow, a current commissioner on the Advisory Commission, also joined the medical advocates in calling for more time.

“As a member of Governor O’Malley’s Safe Drilling Initiative Commission, I am very worried that we are moving too fast and not getting all the health data we need to make protective recommendations to the residents of Maryland," said Bristow. “Several commissioners have repeatedly asked for more time and a more thorough scope of work on these critical health issues. If the health study team were on schedule, we would have received the baseline health assessment, with public commentary, last month. We need more time and a guarantee of transparency and public participation."

Food & Water Watch Southern Region Director Jorge Aguilar added that the O’Malley administration should pay attention to the demands of the health community.

“After two years of a largely unfunded process, Governor O’Malley’s administration now seems to be rushing through the final year, when specific studies just got started,” said Food & Water Watch Regional Organizing Director Jorge Aguilar. “The health study team has already missed its first deadline and it’s not clear that the health community will have time to comment on the final report. The writing is on the wall: this will be an inadequate study unless the time line is drastically modified to address the concerns of the health community.”

###Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.

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You will note that it was an out-of-state organization that outed this commission for failing to do its duties on the mission tasked----not any Maryland organization. Note as well Heather Mizeur is on this commission and ran as protecting Marylanders from fracking.

YOU WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ON THIS COMMISSION IF YOU WANTED TO DO THAT.

Now, as this out-of-state organization says----this commission ----NARROW, HASTY, AND UNDERFUNDED----never meaning to find anything. What this commission should be is a long-term, citizen-filled exploratory group committed to research and planning for the public interest. This is why public committees and boards tasked with doing just that are languishing without support.

WE MUST ENGAGE IN POLITICS----BE THE CITIZENS FILLING THESE BOARDS, COMMITTEES, AND COMMISSIONS IF WE ARE GOING TO REMAIN CITIZENS.

MARCELLUS SHALE SAFE-DRILLING INITIATIVE ADVISORY COMMISSION

David A. Vanko, Ph.D., Chair (appointed by Secretary of the Environment & Secretary of Natural Resources)

Appointed by Secretary of the Environment & Secretary of Natural Resources: Shawn Bender; Ann R. Bristow, Ph.D.; Stephen M. Bunker; George C. Edwards; Margaret J. (Peggy) Jamison; Jeffrey F. Kupfer, Esq.; Clifford S. Mitchell, M.D.; Heather R. Mizeur; Dominick E. Murray; James M. Raley; Paul Roberts; William R. Valentine; Nicholas Weber, Ph.D.; Harry Weiss, Esq. Montgomery Park Business Center, 1800 Washington Blvd., Baltimore, Maryland, February 2004. Photo by Diane F. Evartt.

Staff: Brigid E. Kenney c/o Department of the Environment
Montgomery Park Business Center, 1800 Washington Blvd., Baltimore, MD 21230
(410) 537-3085
e-mail: bkenney@mde.state.md.us
web: www.mde.state.md.us/programs/land/mining/marcellus/pages/index.aspx

Maryland Marcellus Shale Public Health Study, July 2014
Interim Report, July 2014
Initial Report, December 2011

Final Report (with Dept. of the Environment & Dept. of Natural Resources) due Aug. 1, 2014.

In June 2011, the Governor created the Marcellus Shale Safe-Drilling Initiative Advisory Commission (Executive Order 01.01.2011.11). With the Department of the Environment and the Department of Natural Resources, the Commission is studying the short-term, long-term and cumulative effects of producing natural gas from the Marcellus shale formation. This formation underlies portions of Western Maryland: Allegany and Garrett counties being the only parts of the State with natural gas reserves in Marcellus Shale. Drilling for natural gas from the Marcellus shale involves a process called hydraulic fracturing. This requires very deep wells with long horizontal sections through which pressurized water, sand, and chemicals are blasted to crack rock and release the natural gas.

Authorization for the Commission extends through May 1, 2015.

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Keep in mind who supports O'Malley and neo-liberals every election in Maryland-----labor and justice leaders. Anthony Brown will be worse than O'Malley if that is possible. Of course all of these corporate policies are Republican so you do not vote Republican to get environmental policy.

Let's look at who these people are that O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly placed in charge of Departments that protect our land and water.

Keep in mind, this happens all the time and all Maryland pols know this is what Maryland Assembly and neo-liberals and neo-cons do with all these commissions.

Department of the Environment

21 August 2014

doe    DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT

Governor Martin J. O'Malley

Water Management      Jay G. Sakai
Robert M. Summers            Secretary

Guess what! Sakai is from Baltimore with Baltimore's Public Works and a Hopkins graduate. Hopkins is VEOLA Environment----privatizing public water works and Hopkins is a great big shareholder in natural gas and exporting raw energy. That is someone you would put in an agency to make sure commissions like this Marcellus Shale protects the fracking interests.

DO YOU HEAR MARYLAND ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS SHOUTING THIS COLLUSION WITH CORPORATIONS THAT KILL THE ENVIRONMENT? I DON'T.

Previously, Mr. Sakai also directed the technical support functions for the City of Baltimore’s Department of Public Works, an agency with more than 3,400 employees, where he administered application development contracts and large-scale information technology implementations.

He serves on the board of the Maryland Association of Municipal Wastewater Agencies. Mr. Sakai is also a member of the American Water Works Association and the American Public Works Association.

Mr. Sakai succeeds Robert M. Summers, Ph.D., who is now MDE’s Deputy Secretary. A licensed professional engineer, Mr. Sakai holds a Master of Science in Business and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

WOW------another Johns Hopkins grad in Natural Resources---water agency. Don't forget, Hopkins is behind the collapse of our Baltimore water system as all of state and city revenue that should have gone to upgrading infrastructure went to building Hopkins global corporation...... and it's bid to take Baltimore Harbor global will kill the Chesapeake Bay with invasive species and pollution. The Baltimore Harbor recently received an 'F' in pollution, and it was this Department of Natural Resources with the Department of Environment that approved the construction at Harbor Point on toxic waste dump. So, it takes lots of failed policy to remain at 'F' in environment for decades.

SEE WHY THIS MARCELLUS SHALE COMMISSION IS KNOWN FOR BEING NARROW, HASTY, AND UNDERFUNDED.

Dr. Summers received his B.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1982) in Environmental Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining Maryland’s environmental programs, he worked as a post-doctoral research associate at the State University of New York, Marine Sciences Research Center in Stony Brook, NY and as a research assistant at the Johns Hopkins University’s Chesapeake Bay Institute.

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES

Governor Martin J. O'Malley

Joseph P. Gill    Secretary

Land Resources    Kristin Saunders Evans

Mr Gill is a Georgetown grad in law with a history of leading a quasi-public land trust. Now, if you live in Maryland you know that public land is disappearing faster than ever usually under the guise of public private partnerships. You place M and T Bank Stadium on public land and it is no longer public land. You give the Port of Baltimore to a private investment firm and you no longer have public land/water. You hand public land to expand natural gas export terminal and you lose public land. You place a private residential high-rise on public housing land and you no longer have public land. You privatize public schools to private charters and you no longer have public land. You hand all waterfront property in Baltimore and National Harbor et al to private developers and you no longer have public land. You give public parks/mansions -----public universities over to private non-profits and you no longer have public land. You privatize public water and waste----you give private rights to natural gas, BGE, and CSX lines and the public loses large swaths of land. All this is happening today in Maryland. Baltimore is seeing all of its public land handed to private developers.

What is Maryland Environmental Land Trust? Well, the development in Maryland is anything but environmental.

Maryland Environmental Trust

Company Description:

The Maryland Environmental Trust (MET) is quasi-public statewide land trust established in 1967. Staffed with funds from the Department of Natural Resources, it is directed by an independent Board of Trustees. This unusual structure has resulted in the protection of over 100,000 acres of privately-owned forest, farm, and open space land across the State of Maryland with permanent, donated easements.

Below you see Ed Rendell of PA.....a state totally destroyed by fracking and a pol handing complete control of public land to fracking corporations.....teamed with Anthony Brown---do you hear Maryland Environmental Trust going crazy over all this? Not a word. They are represented on this Marcellus Shale commission by Mr Gill's appointee.

Maryland’s New Public-Private Partnerships

Date: Thursday, May 9, 2013 « Back to Events Start:May 9, 2013 8:30 amEnd:May 9, 2013 11:30 amCategory:News

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

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Below you see a Department of Natural Resources staff charged with such things as appointing members of commissions like the Marcellus Shale with a long history of bad environmental results. All of Maryland's environment is at risk because the Department of Natural Resources has such a skeleton staffing that no oversight happens. As you see below stewardship of the land is not key in this public agency.

When we elect pols like O'Malley who are simply working for corporations they will staff agencies with people looking to move money to the right people and not to doing the work of the public. Then, you compound that by having these same appointees choosing who participates on these commissions and you get the results outlined at the top.

Public commissions, public committees, and public boards should have people passionate about the issues from the public perspective, not corporate profit.

YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS KEEP SUPPORTING THE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS CREATING THESE POLICIES-----PLEASE GET RID OF THESE INCUMBENTS!

Below you see who will be involved in these fracking and land use issues and who is appointed to commissions developing plans.

Remember, Maryland is one of the richest states in the nation----plenty of money for this stuff being lost to fraud and corruption.

   Kristin Saunders Evans
Secretary for Land Resources.

Study finds Md.'s parks, after deep cuts in staff and services in recent years, need an infusion

State parks in peril

November 09, 2007|

By Candus Thomson | Candus Thomson,Sun reporter

"I don't think anyone was surprised by the findings," said Kristin Saunders Evans, assistant secretary of the Department of Natural Resources who oversees parks. "We're trying to the best of our ability and resources, but in some instances we've let our stakeholders down."

Below you see yet another 'nationally recognized program' in Maryland that does not really exist. It is all propaganda to make Maryland look progressive. Our Health Care reform and our Education reform is all called 'a national model' and is a mess because we have no oversight and accountability or pols in office working in the public interest. JUKING THE STATS makes everything done a national model.

Indoor projects raise questions

Md. auditors criticize use of funds designated for open-space projects

August 08, 2008

|By Laura Smitherman | Laura Smitherman,Sun reporter

Program Open Space, Maryland's nationally recognized effort to create outdoor recreational opportunities and preserve untouched lands, has been spending money on the indoors - including golf-course building renovations, community centers and an indoor aquatic center.

Call it Program Enclosed Space.

State auditors criticized the longstanding practice in a report yesterday on the Department of Natural Resources and said that the General Assembly's counsel advised them that the use of open-space funding for indoor recreational facilities doesn't appear to be within the law.

Agency officials told auditors that they believed the indoor projects qualified for funding because the facilities accommodate recreational activities, such as swimming, that are typically done outdoors. And, agency officials noted, the public would be able to enjoy year-round use of the indoor facilities, making them a better investment.

John R. Griffin, natural resources secretary, promised to seek clarifying legislative language in the next General Assembly session to ensure that such expenditures follow the letter of the law. Nonetheless, agency officials said they were surprised by the dispute.

The open-space program has been used to build or acquire indoor facilities since the 1970s, they said, and state lawmakers are typically enthusiastically supportive, attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the projects throughout the summer. They said the indoor facilities must be related to the mission of the program and are often nature centers or recreational facilities.

"Bottom line is, this has been going on for a long time, and this is the first time we've seen it raised by legislative auditors," said Eric Schwaab, the agency's deputy secretary. "These local projects have long been supported. It's not like this has been conducted in secret."

In recent months, $2 million in open-space funding has been approved for Calvert County's first indoor aquatic center, $1.4 million for the purchase of the Sonic Sports Arena in Cecil County and about $240,000 for indoor tennis lights in Montgomery County.

Program Open Space, established in 1969, is funded through transfer taxes on real estate transactions. The money is split between the state government and local communities based on a complicated formula, and much of it goes toward buying large tracts of land for preservation or parks. About $276 million has been allocated to the program over the last two years.

Local governments develop long-range plans on land preservation and recreation, and individual projects for which they seek reimbursement must be approved by the state's Board of Public Works. Public comment can be made at several times in the process.

"It's a wide-open, very public process," said Kristin Saunders Evans, assistant secretary for land resources at the natural resources department.

Logging GRSF 3

In the coming months, the Forest Service will publish the FY2011plan for the Green Ridge State Forest. As with previous plans, the Forest Service will propose cutting down more than 200 acres of trees in several sites.Most of the logging will leave about six trees per acre.DNR cuts trees that are 90-100 years old, far short of their biological maturity,1with the stated goal of optimizing production of timber.2Other goals, such as encouraging wildlife growth and breeding, providing healthy forests for Maryland citizens, stabilization of soil, or sequestering carbon are subsidiary or have not been considered.

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May 27th, 2014

5/27/2014

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STEALING THE WORKING-CLASS HOMES THROUGH FRAUD AND THEN FORCING THEM OUT OF THE CITY IN POVERTY----WOW.

PUBLIC LAND IN BALTIMORE IS DISAPPEARING AS OUR PUBLIC SPACES ARE NOW SIMPLY EXTENSIONS OF CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS AND THEIR LANDSCAPING.

WE DON'T NEED PUBLIC HOUSING------WE NEED PEOPLE OWNING THEIR OWN HOMES AS REHABS IN BLIGHTED COMMUNITIES. NO ONE IN THE CITY BENEFITS FROM THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION IN BALTIMORE'S HOUSING DEVELOPMENT.

WHEN I WATCH AS BALTIMORE JUSTICE LEADERS SUPPORT ANTHONY BROWN OR DOUG GANSLER----KNOWING BOTH ARE THE FACE OF THE INJUSTICE IN BALTIMORE HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT----

We all know that the subprime mortgage fraud was designed to move massive amounts of public money to the top and to place much of the nation's real estate into the hands of the few. We all know trillions of dollars in subprime mortgage fraud occurred and we have received no justice. For those continually saying people bought houses that were too expensive---most people caught in this fraudulent scheme did nothing wrong. The house flippers and working class buying McMansions was rare. The people caught in this fraud were working/middle class people simply taking that second mortgage knowing they would pay it off years down the line. They were couples who bought a house a little more than they could handle with the idea of climbing the income ladder to afford what would be their life's investment. THEY DID THIS BECAUSE THEY DID NOT KNOW MASSIVE FRAUD WAS OCCURRING AND WAS SCHEDULED TO TAKE DOWN THE ECONOMY. So, the average person is not the cause of this housing crisis. Let's look at Baltimore to see how all of this was a long-range plan that said

'TO HECK WITH GENTRIFICATION----WE ARE SIMPLY GOING TO LIE, CHEAT, AND STEAL THIS REAL ESTATE FROM THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND'.

It is Baltimore Development Corporation run through Johns Hopkins who contrived and enriched themselves on targeted housing fraud. I showed the connection to the AIG spin-off HighStar that allowed all the fraud to occur and then had the US taxpayers pay 100% on the dollar for bets AIG made on loans they knew were fraudulent. Maryland is still seeing huge foreclosures from these frauds as more and more real estate falls back into he hands of the people perpetrating the frauds.

SECOND PHASE OF THE MASSIVE CAPTURE OF WEALTH IN EUROPE AND THE US-----RECONSTRUCTING SOCIETY TO THE NORM OF 99% OF PEOPLE LIVING IN POVERTY.

This is called THE NEW ECONOMY------neo-liberals like to call it THE 21ST CENTURY ECONOMY. It is a continuation of moving all that is public to the top through public private partnerships but it extends to the remaining public property and assets. So, public parks, public gardens, public housing property, government buildings, government facilities are now all being taken private. Know that $1 billion in public school construction connected to the same Wall Street that committed massive fraud and owes billions to the State of Maryland? It is designed to send all those school buildings to private hands----national charter chains-----when the economy crashes and that will happen very soon.

THE SECOND PHASE OF SOCIAL TRANSITION IS PRIVATIZATION OF ALL PUBLIC PROPERTY AS WELL AS SERVICES.

Here in Baltimore that means housing and property is being handed over to connected people for nothing----well, not for nothing. They are being paid for loyalty as this whole takeover happens. This mirrors what US development and military do overseas when they hand a war lord a billion dollars to distribute buying people to work against the interests of the people they serve. SAME THING HAPPENING IN AMERICAN CITIES -----THIRD WORLD FRAUD AND CORRUPTION. Buying loyalty to protect against the majority of people getting mad as heck.

We have an organization that calls for land banks---they are saying this private non-profit is working to help the public keep land that the Baltimore City Hall is handing away as fast as it can. What it is doing is taking what is not privatized and placing it into a Land Trust supposedly for the people in these communities. It is simply going to be held from public use until the powers that be are ready to use it. It's being sold as helping to protect public land while it takes it private in these private Land Trusts. WE ARE UNDER ATTACK BY NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs) that have worked overseas doing the same thing and now they are in the US in the real estate grab of the century. For those that think urban areas and blight need this kind of action consider this----simply using the subprime mortgage fraud settlement of $1 billion would have rehabbed entire communities with more settlement from banks to come. Instead---all this land is being given to the banks. The working class and poor pushed out----are the ones who paid the taxes for decades supporting this city before Johns Hopkins made employment impossible for most in the city through public policy like outsourcing and importing labor from out of state.

THIS IS WHAT JUSTICE FROM MASSIVE FRAUD LOOKS LIKE AND IT KEEPS HOME-OWNERSHIP IN THE HANDS OF WORKING/MIDDLE CLASS.

Instead, these people are being forced out of lifelong communities by landlords that fleeced them and now are charging too much rent and are being allowed to be slum landlords.

Land banking

From Wikipedia,

Land banking is the practice of aggregating parcels of land for future sale or development.

While in many countries land banking may refer to various private real-estate investment schemes, in the United States it refers to the establishment of quasi-governmental county or municipal authorities purposed with managing an inventory of surplus land.

Definition

Blighted Land in Philadelphia Land Banks are quasi-governmental entities created by counties or municipalities to effectively manage and repurpose an inventory of underused, abandoned, or foreclosed property. They are often chartered to have powers that allow them to accomplish these goals in ways that existing government agencies can not. While the land bank "model" has gained broad support and has been implemented in a number of cities, they are implemented differently so as to best address both municipal needs and the state and local legal context in which they were created.[1]

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People in Baltimore are being told that consolidating this land into parcels will allow them to maintain control from those predatory government officials sucking huge tracts of land and handing them out in pay-to-play schemes. What you see company store scenarios where people who used to work for a public space now work for these quasi-governmental spaces. IT IS VERY CREEPY PEOPLE. Instead of having a public community garden that stays in public hands and is managed by public employees the people work on land that is not theirs, policy controlled by the private non-profit that is simply making use of the land until future development and in all cases-----the same people making away with all the land now, will be the same people coming back for these Land Trusts later with the people never having title. Imagine if citizens of Baltimore were made the landowners of these gardens and could actually build a business of their own?

WE NEED TO STOP THIS RIDICULOUS INSISTENCE THAT LAND NOT BE OWNED BY EVERYONE. CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT HANDING PARCELS OF PROPERTY IN BLIGHTED NEIGHBORHOODS TO THE PEOPLE LIVING IN THOSE NEIGHBORHOODS-----PERHAPS FARMING IN THE CITY ON THEIR OWN LAND ARE BUILDING A BUSINESS THEY ACTUALLY OWNED?

Land Trusts work to keep people from owning their own land and developing it the way they want to. Look out 4 decades from now when Baltimore development has expanded and that land will be extremely valuable and it will to handed to the same people lying, cheating, and stealing everything in sight.....Baltimore Development, Johns Hopkins, and their crony corporate pols.

Look below how this neo-liberal approach to maximizing profits while keeping your hands on the real estate. They have been doing this in China for these few decades. This is from a Chinese real estate developer.

Neo-Liberalism land market in China, a case study of development of Mo'ganshan District, Shanghai

Neo Liberalismeverything's priced, everything's commodity, no government intervention
sooo…optimize the value of everything? at least two parties r both happy
(they also assume, land market will put the best function in its best-fit location, such as the offices in the middle of the city, then the residential further aways, bcoz location is so important that u need to occupy the most accessible center of the city with the functions generates the most money)

This policy is not democratic----it is not equal protection-----no Bill of Rights----it is not a healthy social structure as we are hearing all across the country. It places most people in the position of never gaining wealth---of always being marginalized and we are talking of 70% of Americans now at poverty and those numbers growing. So, WAKE UP MIDDLE-CLASS-----THIS IS THE FUTURE BEING BUILT FOR YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN. You may think its fine for the poor but we are all being made poor as neo-liberalism creates third world !

Richard Roman: Use mortgage settlement money for victims

By / Guest columnist | January 26, 2014

Attorney fees in indigent defense cases prompted the question: "What's the price of justice?"

Unilaterally increasing the fees is not the answer. The Texas Constitution does not empower judges to burden taxpayers with increases in indigent defense expenditures.

Taking money from innocent homeowners victimized by the subprime mortgage crisis to pay for indigent defense is not justice.

El Paso families have been impacted by unexpected medical bills, layoffs and the government shutdown. Many fell behind on their mortgages. Dealing with less-than-compassionate banks was no help. Some banks were guilty of questionable practices.

Recently, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office settled mortgage lawsuits filed in E1Paso courts. Millions of dollars of relief were obtained for homeowners. Yet in December 2013, Abbott explained how settlement funds were used to fund Texas Indigent Defense Programs. Documents obtained through open records requests verified that foreclosure settlement funds were deposited into the Texas Judiciary Fund.

The U.S. Department of Justice and a group of state attorneys general recently settled with mortgage servicers to assist struggling homeowners.

Last November a $13 billion settlement that JP Morgan Chase reached with government regulators was touted as the "largest settlement with a single entity in American history."

The Los Angeles Times said that of the $13 billion, $7 billion was tax deductible and $4 billion was from a "separate" settlement (the Federal Housing Finance Agency). The remaining $2 billion was for promoting "lending in low-income communities." Eligible borrowers should begin receiving calls in March.

As for Texas, state Sen. Jose Rodriguez recently stated, "In the best of all possible worlds, the state ought to raise taxes to adequately fund civil legal services and indigent defense, but we all know that the state is not willing to do that at this time."

This funding debate is not limited to Texas.

New York Gov. Cuomo is in a dispute with the Working Families Party and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over who gets $600 million from a foreclosure settlement Schneiderman negotiated with JP Morgan Chase. He argues his office has sole discretion over the money and it should go to homeowners. Cuomo said he and the Legislature should decide.

"This money should go where it's needed most - to underwater homeowners victimized by Wall Street's subprime crisis," said Working Families Party National Director Dan Cantor.

Critics argued that putting it in the state's general fund short-changes those who lost their homes in the mortgage crisis because the funds could be used for any purpose. They said that "similar settlements in the past, including those entered into by Cuomo when he was attorney general, stayed within the AG's office. None were this size, however".

An El Paso task force was created to look at indigent defense issues. Perhaps a task force should be formed to study "innocent" homeowner relief.

There was an unjustified $2 million increase in private reimbursements for indigent defense this year. An additional $500,000 is being sought for the remainder of the fiscal year. County Judge Veronica Escobar said the county will "pull the money from our contingencies if we are forced to do it."

The Council of Judges has been asked to reconsider their vote to raise attorney fees. Attorneys should be fairly compensated for their indigent defense work. However, money secured from mortgage litigation should go where it's needed most - to innocent homeowners victimized by the subprime mortgage crisis, not towards funding indigent defense.

Gov. Cuomo and Attorney General Schneiderman appear to have settled their dispute over how New York will use mortgage settlement funds.

Perhaps Texas and El Paso County can do the same.

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What we are seeing outside Baltimore and Maryland is an increase of public space and public gardens. Expanding these designations into blighted areas allows for a feeling by citizens that they are invested in these properties. Add to this dimension the use of subprime mortgage fraud to rehab tons of blighted homes for the people living in the community and VOILA-----YOU HAVE URBAN RENEWAL THAT BRINGS EVERYONE INTO THE PICTURE.

What Baltimore is doing is opposite of this. It is clawing back public space----re-designating public space for these activities as Land Trusts under non-profits or handing them to private individuals who simply sit on the property until they are ready to develop all the while having a community garden with sweat equity having to leave at a moments notice.

THIS IS THE THIRD WORLD-----THIS IS A COMPANY TOWN APPROACH THAT JOHNS HOPKINS PUSHES BECAUSE IT WANTS TO CONTROL ALL LAND AND POLICY IN THE CITY.

Public Harvest: Expanding the use of public land for urban agriculture in San Francisco
Linked by Michael Levenston

SPUR offers 11 recommendations to expand and coordinate the city’s institutional support, increase funding and provide more access to public land.

By SPUR – San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association
April 2012, 36 pages

Excerpt – Executive Summary:

Urban agriculture has captured the imagination of many San Franciscans in recent years. Two dozen gardens and farms have sprouted across the city since 2008, and in 2011 the city changed its zoning code to permit urban agriculture in all neighborhoods. Interest in urban agriculture stems from its numerous benefits. City farming and gardening provides San Franciscans with vibrant greenspaces and recreation, education about fresh food and the effort it takes to produce it, cost savings and ecological benefits for the city, sites that help build community, and a potential source of modest economic development. But the city will not fully capture these benefits unless it responds to the growing interest and energy behind the issue.

The demand for more space to grow food is strong. Surveys since 2005 have consistently demonstrated long waiting lists at many of the city’s community gardens. In most cases, residents must wait more than two years to get access to a plot. The launch of more than 20 new urban agriculture projects in the past four years, some of which are communally managed and involve greater numbers of people than traditional plot-based gardens, is another indication that the current amount of land dedicated to urban agriculture is insufficient.

The challenge ahead is matching residents’ interest with public resources. Private land and private funding alone are not sufficient to meet the demands for urban agriculture space in our dense city. Instead, the city must improve its existing programs and expand the availability of public land, funding and institutional support.

Currently, at least seven city agencies provide monetary support and 11 agencies provide land to city gardeners and farmers. Though well-intentioned, their support is largely uncoordinated, understaffed and, as a result, inefficient. While city funding for urban agriculture has increased during the past five years, it has decreased from a peak a decade earlier and is in the middle range when compared to other large American cities.

For San Francisco to reap the many benefits of urban agriculture, SPUR recommends that the city expand and coordinate its institutional support, increase funding and improve funding efficiency, and provide more access to public land.

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This is what we know is happening. The very people committing the frauds are now getting the Federal money to buy and build the land vacated be residents victimized by these mortgage frauds and the economic collapse caused from the massive fraud. We all want development in Baltimore but we want Rule of Law and Equal Protection driving that development.

THIS IS NOT A THIRD WORLD PROPERTY GRAB.

Baltimore has hundreds of millions owed from the postage stamp mortgage settlement and billions more when the rest of justice in these frauds are gained. It has $700 million owed just from the court award for the state underfunding Baltimore City schools which needs to go into this rehabbing process. The Federal and State money sent to Enterprise Zone development that never met the requirement of low-income housing has hundreds of millions of dollars coming to these communities.

THERE IS PLENTY OF MONEY TO HAND HOME-OWNERSHIP TO LARGE NUMBERS OF WORKING CLASS AND POOR IN BALTIMORE. THERE IS PLENTY OF PROPERTY TO BE HANDED TO THESE SAME COMMUNITIES IN PUBLIC PARKS AND GARDENS.

It is to no one's benefit other than the few connected to this massive fraud and corruption in Baltimore City land grab to allow a few to amass control of large parcels of land. Having huge development corporations owning entire communities-----REALLY?????

WAKE UP PEOPLE----THIS IS THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT BY PEOPLE ENRICHED FROM THIRD WORLD MASSIVE FRAUD!

The Chicago Reporter / By Angela Caputo 13 COMMENTS

Federal Dollars Help Gentrifying Neighborhoods, Not Most Distressed Communities The federal program designed to help blighted communities recover from the foreclosure crisis, helps gentrifying communities more than those that need financial support.

May 24, 2014 | The following was originally published in The Chicago Reporter.

The house at 4419 N. Kimball doesn’t have much curb appeal. It’s an aluminum-sided, American foursquare on a narrow lot with a patch of grass for a front yard that’s barely big enough for a folding chair.

Two years ago, it sat empty — a casualty of the foreclosure crisis, one of thousands of single-family houses and apartment buildings left vacant across Chicago. But the building’s prospects started looking up in 2011 when it was acquired through the federally-backed Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

Money poured into the Albany Park house. New hardwood floors were hammered into place and granite countertops were installed in the kitchen. The private developer was contracted to rehab the house by a nonprofit organization. That nonprofit was hired by the city to oversee the program. When it hit the market, the three-bed, two-bath home — with stainless-steel appliances, two-car garage, small backyard and a bonus room in the basement — sold for $187,000. And the public was handed a $594,359 bill.

Chicago began receiving program money in 2009, roughly a year after the housing market crashed. In the six years since, the city has collected $169 million — of which $140 million went to rehabbing and demolishing homes. Phil Ashton, an urban planning professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says the federal aid “was never enough money to put a dent in the foreclosure problem.” It was, however, the first big chunk of federal money sent to Chicago to address the vacant properties left in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. And in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, where vacant homes can be bought for the price of a car, the hope was that it would go a long way.

But records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show the city spent money on buildings with luxury finishes in gentrifying areas while distressed properties in some of the city’s hardest hit neighborhoods were left to languish. In their grant proposal to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, city officials pledged to rehab 2,800 units, a combination of apartments, condos and single-family homes. Less than one-third were completed.

Darlene Dugo, a regional vice president for Mercy Housing Portfolio Services, the nonprofit hired by the city to manage the program, chalks up the shortcoming to unforeseen circumstances. “We thought that you’d only need to put in $60,000 per unit but when we got into the properties, we found that they were gut rehabs,” she said.

Gut rehabs that, in many cases, were finished off with “condominium-grade finishes” like stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops, luxuries that Dugo says are standard in some of the neighborhoods her organization was tasked with targeting.

“We want to make sure we’re putting out a product that has sustainability,”Dugo added. “We want to give them the finishes they deserve.”

A tale of two neighborhoods

If ever there was a place in need of foreclosure relief, it’s Roseland, a beat up corner of Chicago’s Far South Side where the owners of tidy, single family homes are losing the battle over blight.

Roseland ranks third in the city for likely vacant residential properties, according to our analysis of foreclosure-related vacancies dating back to 2008. There are nearly 700 empty houses and apartment buildings sprinkled along blocks filled with tiny homes on wide lots. Central Roseland is the hardest hit corner of the community, and no matter how hard neighbors try to maintain a semblance of order — potting plants and manicuring their lawns — their attempts are overshadowed by boarded up houses and weed-strewn lawns.

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May 13th, 2014

5/13/2014

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PLEASE DO NOT LOOK THE OTHER WAY AT ATTACKS ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE HAPPENING TO THE WORKING CLASS AND POOR-----THE MIDDLE-CLASS KNOWS IT TOO IS VICTIM AND THESE ASSAULTS BELOW WILL COME TO YOU AND I.

As a middle-class professional I try in my blogs to encourage the upper-middle and middle class to not be complacent with the loss of civil rights and liberties of the working class and poor in our country. Remember, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism is about making all but a very few impoverished so you and/or your children and grandchildren will be facing this dismantling of public justice and Bill of Rights. Residents in cities may think its good to push out the poor but let's think how an injustice to one becomes an injustice for all.

There is a social media meme circulating that says----

the richest are telling the richer to tell the middle-class the problem is the poor.

Well, the problem is that the richest have stolen tens of trillions of dollars from the US economy and off-shored it to overseas accounts and our entire democracy and public justice and public sector works and services are being dismantled. This is causing poverty to soar and crime and violence with it. So, the problem is the richest have yet to have Rule of Law brings back the loot THEY STOLE FROM GOVERNMENT COFFERS AND INDIVIDUAL'S POCKETS.

The US is now in a state of propaganda as is found in second and third world countries. When corporations control data creation-----they will skew it to their benefit and not the public interest. Whether at the Federal level with Obama or the State level with O'Malley, or the city level with Rawlings-Blake-----ALL DATA BEING PRODUCED IS SKEWED. Below you see how corporate media now simply reports the propaganda as news. For people liking public radio, NPR in 2009 was doing a fine job holding power accountable. In 2010 NPR was reorganized to corporate control and the reporters made clear that they were being forced to report 'spin'------propaganda----and not journalism. This is what you see below. Maryland is king of spin.....Baltimore is supreme. The middle-class in Baltimore now have to watch as citizens are completely stripped of all rights as citizens-----they are stripped of any way to earn money and are reduced to crime to survive------and of course it is the small businesses and middle-class who become the targets of desperate attempts to get money. The violence of poverty is skyrocketing with the huge increase in poverty in Baltimore and will come to all communities as people lose hope and embrace retaliation. THAT IS WHAT THIRD WORLD SOCIETIES LOOK LIKE. This is Baltimore City today.

Gentrification is a natural process. It has happened throughout civilization. It can be done equitably and within Rule of Law. The State of Maryland and Baltimore lose billions of dollars each year to fraud and corruption that should be going to these communities to rebuild opportunity.

STOP THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION AND SEND MONEY TO DEVELOP THESE UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES FOR THE UNDERSERVED.

That does not mean the poor cannot be moved or ratios of populations cannot change. It means that development will be fair in making sure people stay in the communities or areas they have lived all their lives. It means that development funded with Federal, State, and local tax money be held to the laws of equal opportunity and access in housing and education. You do not use Federal money from HUD to dismantle public housing buildings and then not provide public housing nearby. It may not need to be public housing if grants allowed low-income and homeless to occupy these thousands of blighted houses all through these neighborhoods.

Instead, public policy written by Johns Hopkins and the Baltimore Development Corporation are set on forcefully removing all working class and poor from city center and downtown and go so far as using city services to bankrupt low-income homeowners with deliberately inflated water bills and tax bill and fines----driving these homeowners into bankruptcy and foreclosure. As I have said----Johns Hopkins is the most neo-conservative institution in the world having Baltimore democrats pushing these undemocratic policies.

WE NEED TO REBUILD THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AWAY FROM CORPORATE CONTROL AND BACK TO THAT OF PUBLIC INTEREST AND CIVIL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES.

When a society allows the deliberate targeting of communities with fraud and corruption in order to advance development----you have an autocratic society. Using police brutality and misconduct to scare people away and jailing people known not to have committed a crime is all intimidation tactics used in covert warfare folks. IT IS AUTOCRATIC AND IGNORES ALL RULE OF LAW----IT DOES NOT BELONG IN AMERICA.

If you do not care if the poor lose their rights as citizens think of what is happening to the middle-class with the attack on retirements, home equity, pensions, health care coverage and Medicare, and even our children's students loans----all losing wealth from corporate fraud and government corruption. So, this is not simply something hitting the lower class-----it pushes all of us into impoverishment and loss of rights as well.

WAKE UP======AN INJUSTICE FOR ONE WILL BECOME INJUSTICE FOR ALL!
Below you see martial law being implemented in Baltimore City because City Hall has defunded communities and community services, have put minority and women contractors and the people they hire out of business......they have eliminated the public sector and cleansed the school system of the city's middle-class killing all of the ability of families to provide support for extended family. City Hall allows people's homes to be stolen, police brutality to run wild, fraud and corruption to take a billion and more from city coffers each year -----money of which would help these youth. They are doing it because the goal is to make it impossible for the working class and poor to survive in the city. Two decades of these kinds of attacks on the poor with O'Malley and now Rawlings-Blake and the neo-conservative Baltimore City Hall has succeeded in pushing some of the poor out to the counties-----but you know what-----these people simply come back because there is no support mechanism for these families.

THE ENTIRE SOCIAL SERVICES AND SOCIAL WELFARE SYSTEM IN BALTIMORE IS BROKEN.

Mind you-----these children are living in homes torn with drug abuse and parents incarcerated on and off through life. This children have parents having to work 3 jobs because Baltimore has a system of enslavement in lieu of wages that allow citizens to actually support themselves-----all driven by Johns Hopkins. Closing community recreation centers where youth could go for support? REALLY??????? The use of national corporate/ church non-profits etc. to replace these public community centers takes the one avenue for social gathering and organizing, developing of leadership, for political discussion out of the communities.

YOU MUST NOT BRING POLITICS INTO THESE NON-PROFITS AND IF WE DO-----WE WILL DECIDE WHO TALKS AND ABOUT WHAT.

That is what Baltimore City Hall is creating in Baltimore. It is totalitarian in its exclusion of the public and in enforcement of law. Mind you-----Baltimore has some fine private non-profits and community groups doing good work-----they are fighting for funds and support and these connected groups receive the bulk of funding. The #1 institution receiving and then deciding how public policy as regards the working class and poor unfold-----JOHNS HOPKINS IS BALTIMORE'S PUBLIC SECTOR.

There's no doubt these children need to stay off the streets and especially at night. If they have no computers, cannot afford phones, have no real parks and amusement facilities.....and now, no rec centers-----WHAT DO YOU EXPECT THESE YOUTH TO DO?

An autocratic society crushes these families with more fines, penalties, and exposure to police action.

Council approves tough new curfew for city youths Some kids would be required to be inside by 9 p.m.

By Luke Broadwater, The Baltimore Sun 8:24 p.m. EDT, May 12, 2014

A tough new curfew forcing kids off the streets as early as 9 p.m. was approved Monday by the Baltimore City Council over objections it will place too much stress on the Police Department and lead to conflicts between youths and officers.

The legislation requires one more vote for final passage, which is expected next month. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has said she'll sign it into law.

The bill's sponsor, Councilman Brandon Scott, said it is intended to keep small children from wandering the street, becoming victims of crime or suffering from neglect.

"We have to do something," Scott said. "Young children are out there. ... This bill is not about arresting kids. This bill is not about dropping crime. It's about connecting young people and their families with the services they need."

The legislation, approved 11-2, calls for youngsters under 14 to be indoors year-round by 9 p.m. Youths ages 14 through 16 could stay out until 10 on school nights and 11 on other nights.

Currently, all children and teens younger than 17 can stay out until 11 on weeknights and until midnight on weekends. Parents can be fined up to $300 if their children are caught outside after curfew.

TALK ABOUT IT: Should Baltimore enact an earlier curfew for city youths?

The legislation increases penalties to $500, though they could be waived if parents and children attend counseling sessions provided by the city.

"We all know that when children are on the streets late at night without proper supervision, they are more likely to either become the perpetrators or the victims of violent crime," Rawlings-Blake said in a statement. "I believe this legislation will be another much needed tool to help reduce the number of juveniles on the streets at night, while furthering a commitment my administration has made to provide more services for young people we know are vulnerable."

The bill was opposed the American Civil Liberties Union and criticized by the head of the city's police union. City Councilmen Carl Stokes and Warren Branch voted against it.

Branch, the chair of the council's public safety committee, said he worried the legislation would force yet another responsibility on police.

"There should be more agencies involved instead of putting the stress and pressure on our Police Department," he said.

Sonia Kumar, an attorney at the ACLU of Maryland, sent a letter to council members expressing concern about the "constitutionality and policy implications" of the curfew.

"The bill is a very significant expansion of Baltimore's curfew laws," she said. "Whatever the intention of the bill, there's no evidence that the bill will accomplish those goals. There are really significant reasons for not entangling young people and their families in the criminal justice system."

Kumar said she saw difficulties in enforcing the legislation fairly without police stopping kids and demanding they produce an ID card.

"The breadth of what is proposed is deeply troubling and a poor use of city resources," she said.

Rawlings-Blake has announced plans to expand the city's curfew center to become two year-round Youth Connection Centers for kids and teens who violate the curfew.

"We continue to invest in programs such as basketball leagues, jobs programs and rec center improvements that provide constructive alternatives for our young people," she said. "We need an all-hands-on-deck approach."

The legislation continues current exemptions from the curfew, including a provision for youths to be out late if they're with a parent, or going to or from a job, religious event, or school or recreational activity. The legislation eliminates an exception that has permitted young people to run errands for their parents.

Scott said those opposed to the bill have an outdated view of the curfew center.

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The City of Baltimore loses a billion dollars and more to fraud and corruption, gives a billion more to subsidize global corporate wealth in development, and loses hundreds of millions more in waste and mismanagement of Federal and State funds----this is why it just cannot seem to find a million to fund strong public recreation centers for the citizens of all communities.

REMEMBER, THE GOAL IS TO PRIVATIZE ALL THAT IS PUBLIC INTO THE HANDS OF GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.

Keep in mind that these rec centers being closed are run by the communities themselves. The goal of tying the new recreation centers to charter schools-----which will be the new school buildings identified as where these new rec centers will be built----is that charter schools will be taken private and run by corporations----yet another end of public gatherings and freedom to discuss, organize, and implement policy as the community sees fit.

Lack of funding could close Baltimore City rec centers
11:26 PM, Oct 24, 2011 5:31 AM, Oct 25, 2011 BALTIMORE -

Advocates say the 55 recreation centers around Baltimore City give kids a safe place to play and learn after school. But now there's a controversial plan that could result in the closing of many of those rec centers.

The Cecil Kirk Recreation Center doesn't look like much from the outside. In fact, the sign on the wall is missing some letters. But "The neighborhood kids come here. We're packed all the time in there," said parent Russell Smith, who also coaches basketball at Cecil Kirk.

It's packed, he says, day after day -- with kids from this neighborhood near North Avenue. "If I wasn't here I would probably be at home, but being at home wouldn't be as much fun as being at the rec," said Alanna Jones, who visits the center every day after school.

They come after school to find a safe place to play, meet friends, and get help with homework.

"There are some of us who are still barely making it and we need places like Cecil Kirk," said Angelique Jones, Alanna's mother.

A plan proposed by City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake would shift the funding and operation of many of the city's 55 rec centers to private companies, or charities.

But a call for bids on running them brought only six viable entries. A spokesman for the mayor tells ABC-2 news that could mean many of the centers will be forced to close in just a couple months.

"If they're closing the recs where are we going to send our children to? What are we going to do?" Angelique Jones said.

Several members of city council say they have concerns with the mayor's plan.
Monday night, Councilman Bill Henry (D-4th) called for a public hearing on the issue. "This is not something that the city can step away from. We say all the time, the kids are our future. But if we mean that, we would spend money on them," he said.

Ian Brennan, a spokesman for Mayor Rawlings-Blake, said "The (privatization) plan is part of a larger effort to revitalize the rec center system. We need to stop doing things because that's the way we've always done things."

But parents outside Cecil Kirk say the old way, still works for them. "They're still serving their purpose because kids still come here," Smith said. "I could see if the kids weren't coming. That's a different story if the kids are not showing up. But the kids are here, and what are you going to do with them?"
The mayor's spokesman says they are looking for more companies and organizations to bid on running those rec centers.

The councilman's hearing, in which the head of the Rec and Parks Department is expected to come before council and explain how the plan would work, is expected to be on November 2nd. _____________________

This is just one example of the largesse sent to national corporations for no reason at all----this case was actually racketeering. Downtown has mortgaged tax collection for the richest of corporations and developments while the city residents send their tax revenue to maintain and build this infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Baltimore simply want small and small and regional businesses in their communities.....not corporations that are ground zero for massive fraud and corruption.

City Council votes on controversial Harbor Point tax plan $100M tax break is on the line for developer

UPDATED 7:07 AM EDT Aug 13, 2013
A $100 million tax break from Baltimore City is on the line for a developer who wants to rebuild a piece of land between Harbor East and Fells Point.

The most controversial part of the measure is the tax break. The city wants to use tax dollars to help finance the Harbor Point project.

The City Council took a preliminary vote on that strategy Monday night and passed it.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake called this a once in a generation project that she and supporters said will eventually mean thousands of jobs and a much bigger tax base for the city.

Plans call for Harbor Point to house the new regional corporate headquarters for Exelon and other businesses. There's also supposed to be high-end living space and retail, along with a hotel.

The tax break from the city is supposed to help pay for infrastructure and other improvements to the site of the project.

But opponents of the tax break deal are skeptical about it and who it will actually benefit. Some said the developer, William Beatty, should give a portion of his tax break to the surrounding impoverished neighborhoods and city schools.

"It really doesn't contribute to uplifting the people who live in that community. This seems to be an intentional, direct benefit to a developer and all of the hangers-on of this developer, and I don't see that the residents or the surrounding community are going to benefit," concerned citizen Kim Trueheart said.

A final vote on the whole project is expected to happen Sept. 9.

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The idea that we want Baltimore's youth coming into contact with a police force known nationally as being one of the most brutal in the country----the idea we want these working class and poor families ticketed and fined right into jail===where by the way they will find a job as private prison and jail contractors now work the incarcerated for $2 an hour doing formerly public sector work-----a middle-class job.

From stop and frisk to high speed police chases ending with citizens shown to have nothing but maybe a previous arrest record----to police deliberately planting drugs and guns to create the reason for apprehension.....we all know this is happening and using yet another assault on public justice and rights on youth----is a disgrace. It is a policy written by Johns Hopkins----the City Hall are neo-conservatives running as democrats!

Baltimore City Officer Suspended On Allegations Of Excessive Force

July 30, 2013 5:52 PM

Christie Ileto Christie Ileto joined WJZ's News Team in the fall of 2012.

BALTIMORE (WJZ)– A city police officer is suspended for allegedly using excessive force on a suspect in their custody.

Christie Ileto has more on the incident being investigated by top brass.

Sky Eye Chopper 13 caught the aftermath of a car crash Baltimore City police say started as a pursuit on Belair Road on Monday evening.

“During the course, the vehicle went off the road and collided,” said Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez.

Members of the regional auto theft task force were trying to stop a car they believed to be stolen.

“By the time I got the corner, a little young dude, a teenager, was laying on the ground,” said a witness.

Baltimore City police say it wasn’t the pursuit of the young driver, but what happened after he crashed into an auto car lot that had top brass concerned.

“They threw him on the ground, and it looked like the other police smacked him,” a witness said.

“The message is clear. We will not tolerate officers breaking the law in order to enforce the law,” Rodriguez said.

Police brass say the alleged assault occurred after the juvenile was on the ground.

And rather than a citizen filing a complaint, Rodriguez says police initiated the investigation themselves.

“While the age of the individual certainly gives us concern, we want everyone to be treated fairly and professionally,” Rodriguez said.

City police have policies that allow them to use force and instruct them when it’s appropriate to initiate a pursuit. But Rodriguez couldn’t tell us at this point if any rules had been broken.

This case is under investigation.

Police have not been able to confirm the age of the driver or his name.

The department says not only will they investigate the officer allegedly involved, but his supervisor’s actions as well.

__________________
Congress included in the Affordable Care Act that authorities can now sedate a citizen without their consent -----setting the stage for the kinds of imprisonment of political dissidents in third world countries. More importantly, our children are being subjected to high levels of drugging all in an effort to control behavior. Behavior problems in city youth often come from chemical exposures like lead----from parents with drug addiction and abuse at home. All of this is tied with poverty. So, to reverse these problems you end poverty......NOT SUPERSIZE IT. Are these youth reacting to dosing with anti-psychotics and hyperactivity drugs in a negative way-----? Wealth inequity is a myth. The rich at the top simply stole tens of trillions of dollars and left massive amounts of impoverishment at the lower levels.

SIMPLY REINSTATING RULE OF LAW AND RECOVERING THOSE FRAUDS WILL BRING RELIEF FROM POVERTY AND MANY OF THE SYMPTOMS.

If the middle-class cannot see how these policies will come to your neck of the woods----WAKE UP!!!!
Dosing children with drugs known to have serious side-effects and physical reactions is unethical and immoral. It is policy you would find in China and Soviet Russia to control citizens. We do not do this in America.

THINK WHO YOU ELECTED TO OFFICE IN BALTIMORE CITY HALL AND MARYLAND ASSEMBLY TO SEE WHO IS ALLOWING THESE POLICIES TO ADVANCE. THEY ARE NOT DEMOCRATS.

Antipsychotic Use Skyrockets in America's Poorest Children

Fran Lowry

March 12, 2013

Investigators from the University of Maryland in Baltimore found that from 1997 to 2006, use of antipsychotic medications in this population increased 7- to 12-fold, with most of the increased use associated with treatment for behavioral problems.

"Awareness of the expanding use of antipsychotic medications in the emotional and behavioral treatment of children has been noted in several studies of community-based pediatric populations," lead author Julie Magno Zito, PhD, from the University of Maryland, told Medscape Medical News.

"But," she added, "additional information is needed on trends in our neediest youth, namely according to how antipsychotic users differ in terms of their eligibility for Medicaid insurance coverage and the reasons for use. Such information would help to characterize the 'who' and 'why' of expanded antipsychotic use."

The study is published in the March issue of Psychiatric Services.

Call to Action

In the current observational, cross-sectional study, Dr. Zito and colleagues analyzed claims data for 456,315 youths aged 2 to 17 years who were continuously enrolled in Medicaid in a mid-Atlantic state from 1997 to 2006.

They focused on the use of antipsychotic drugs in the following Medicaid-eligibility categories: foster care; State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), currently known as the Children's Health Insurance Program; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), for children whose family income was at or below the federal poverty level; and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

The researchers found that the prevalence of use of antipsychotic medications almost tripled, from 1.2% in 1997 to 3.2% in 2006.

This growth was greatest in youth enrolled in SCHIP (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 5.9), followed by those in foster care (AOR, 4.1) and TANF (AOR, 3.6), and least among children with SSI (AOR, 2.8).

"The children on SSI are the ones we would presume to be the sickest," Dr. Zito noted. "This 6-fold increase for near-poor or SCHIP children and the 3.6-fold increase among poor or TANF children in a decade means that there was increasing use among the vast majority of enrollees and not, as one would expect, among the small minority, approximately 10%, on SSI, who qualify as the most vulnerable."

During this decade, 9320 children received a prescription for an antipsychotic. The growth in prescribing was most pronounced for pediatric bipolar disorder (AOR, 3.77) and behavioral conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (AOR, 3.48).

The researchers also found that the proportion of children using antipsychotics from 1997 to 2006 increased significantly more among African Americans and Hispanics than among whites.

"These data support a call to action for outcomes research to better establish clinical appropriateness and to encourage system-wide oversight for quality assurance," Dr. Zito said.

Postmarketing surveillance studies are also needed to assess the outcomes of community-based psychiatric treatment, she added.

"This is particularly true when medications are used for off-label conditions that have minimal or no evidence of benefit relative to medications with FDA labeling for a particular diagnosis," she said.

Psychotherapy Undervalued

"This is a continuation of the important work by Dr. Zito and her group," R. Scott Benson, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in private practice in Pensacola, Florida, told Medscape Medical News.

In this article, the researchers acknowledge that there are many factors involved in the increased rate of prescriptions for antipsychotics in children, Dr. Benson pointed out.

"There is always the suggestion that these children are given a diagnosis without the benefit of the comprehensive assessment that these psychiatric conditions demand. And there is the suggestion that the reimbursement system undervalues effective psychotherapy interventions and overvalues prescribing medication," he said.

He added that the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry have developed guidelines for the evaluation of children and the use of evidence-based treatment.

"Florida and other states have developed consultation services for physicians who are providing care to these children, and we have seen a reduction in the prescription of these medications. Also, when they are prescribed, there is closer monitoring for safety and effectiveness," Dr. Benson said.

_____________________

SPEAKING OUT:

Baltimore’s Poverty Cleansing Program

by Brendan Walsh

REMEMBER the game of musical chairs? Players circle around assembled chairs until the music stops. Then everyone rushes for a chair. There are never enough chairs for each player. The object of the game is to gradually eliminate the players until one player grabs the last chair. During the game, stronger players often knock weaker ones off the chairs. It can be a fierce game if you want to win. And you can always assure victory if you control the music and own the chairs.
      We are playing this game in Baltimore. It’s a “poverty-cleansing” game, and the poorest of the poor are gradually being eliminated. No one is assessing the ramifications of the policies that are causing people to lose life’s necessities--a home, a just living wage, a real chance at an education, and even basic food stamps.
      According to “Plan Baltimore,” more than 156,000 Baltimoreans live in poverty. That’s 24% of the city’s population struggling to hold on to the “chairs” that sustain life.
      To live a human life, to raise a family, to build a community, you need housing. You need meaningful work that pays a living wage. You need food, a sense of dignity, human recognition and respect, and hope in large doses. Poor people are being denied each of these necessities.
      Keep a close eye on our housing programs, our jobs and wages, our incarceration rates, and our educational disasters. We are developing a “zero tolerance” for poor people. We are, intentionally or through neglect, cleansing Baltimore of poor people.
      On July 3rd, when the Murphy Homes were demolished, there was rejoicing. Buildings designed to “teach the poor a lesson” were leveled in a controlled implosion. Bleak, sterile, cheap places of confinement were removed from the landscape. It also means the loss of 658 units, housing for 1,500 to 1,700 people.
      One decade ago there were 18,162 public housing units, 18,526 “other subsidized” units, and 53,002 families “still in need” in Baltimore City. These numbers represent at least 90,000 families--more than 200,000 Baltimoreans, some of the poorest of the poor--all of them desperate for housing.
      But, as we enter the new millennium, we learn that the federal government is getting out of the housing business. When they level places like the Murphy Homes, they do not build new units for the majority of those displaced. The major fact in Baltimore is demolition. Houses are bulldozed without rhyme or reason. There is no comprehensive plan. Of the 66,000 rowhouses in center city, the plan is to demolish 20% by the year 2004. Virtually all of these houses are in the poorest neighborhoods.
      Think about it. We have a poverty rate of 24%. We are in the process of tearing down all public housing and 20% of the existing affordable rowhouses. So where will the poor go?
      We are told that the private sector, through programs like Section 8, will take up the slack. It is suggested that the poor should just get themselves to the five surrounding counties and “things” will work out. The unbinding of Baltimore will save us all. Does anyone believe there is a welcome mat in Baltimore, Howard, Carroll, Anne Arundel and Harford counties?
      The reality is that the poorest of the poor will just go wandering--a forced march to nowhere. Or they will “double up” with a relative or friend, or simply hide out in whatever abandoned building is still standing.
      If you are one of our 50,000 addicts, you will not be considered “housing-ready.” Thus, you will not be eligible for any subsidized housing. If you have been arrested for some drug-related offense, you too will not be eligible for subsidized housing. The number of people not “housing-ready” grows daily.
      Look at jobs and wages in the Baltimore metropolitan area. According to the recent report of the Job Opportunity Task Force, 62% of all jobs in the region are “low skill” jobs, and two out of three of these jobs are located outside the city. A “low-skill” job means a “low-wage” job--a poverty wage. The economic boom of the ’90’s has clearly created a sharp division between “high-skilled,” well-paid workers and “low-skilled” underpaid workers, and more and more unemployed. For every “low-skill” job, there are three “low-skill” job seekers.
      Our response to this crisis is abominable. We continue to remove the necessary chairs. There are more cries for “quality of life” arrests and we build more and more prisons. We lock people up and add fuel to the fire. People get out of jail fully enraged and then return to poor neighborhoods with no skills, no hope.
      One big result of our “welfare to work” program is that young children often have no adult parent or guardian at home when they return from school, or during the summer months. At our soup kitchen, more and more children are coming without an accompanying adult.
      When we began Viva House 30 years ago, we only saw single men over the age of 50. Now women and children are 70% of our guests. By the year 2004, will it be only children coming to soup kitchens?
      We are going in exactly the wrong direction.
      It is time to end the game of musical chairs. We can’t eliminate poverty by eliminating the poor. The federal government can’t drop out of the housing business at precisely the moment people are in dire need of housing. We can’t permit 62% of our labor force to work “low-skill,” “low-wage” jobs, while a few people pile wealth on top of wealth. We need to invest in the poor. In their lives. In their schools. In their neighborhoods.
      We can either change priorities, or that big bulldozer will level all of us.
      Everyone is entitled to a chair at the table. ____________________

The same people creating the subprime fraud are now receiving all the foreclosures and state funding for affluent development using the subprime mortgage fraud while victims remain homeless. This article shows the plan to corner people forced into renting in a captured real estate market that will be predatory and criminal.

This is what Baltimore City Hall thinks is great! This is what has Baltimore youth disconnected and disenfranchised. These residents are what is replacing public housing and section 8-----

Last Updated: March 31, 2014

Delancey Closes on 3rd Baltimore Multifamily
By Erika Morphy | Baltimore

BALTIMORE—"We feel that Class B multifamily is the right place to invest due to the opportunity to buy properties below replacement cost that generate significant yield, and have a captive renter base," says CEO Daniel M. Kline.

___________________
WPC is a market-based policy group pushing privatization of public education. Baltimore is ground zero for ending public education and handing all education to corporations, creating schools as businesses and vocational tracking from K-college. Underserved children and schools are taken first because they have no advocates protecting public education. Once established in Baltimore---this privatized system will expand across Maryland.

Underserved schools are subjected to tiered funding---principles literally cannot afford toilet paper. Students are placed in front of computer terminals and online lessons that do not engage and have the students feeling negatively about education. This is what youth in Baltimore have to face as the one community source that should be positive. Making these youth travel by buses to reach schools that offer enriched programs means students will drop out or be truant more times than necessary. These are the public policies that create negative youth behavior. If you do not respect a person----that person will not respect the system.

As you see below, Baltimore is one of a few that subject its schools to tiered funding -----deliberately defunding schools for underserved and special needs creating a warehousing that ends democratic public education. These schools will simply become Wall Street charter chains---and this will expand to middle-class public schools as well.

Alonzo is a Bloomberg---Wall Street ax-man willing to dismantle American public education for corporate control and profit. Students drop out rates and truancy are soaring in Baltimore with Alonzo's and Wall Street's reforms. Remember, this is Johns Hopkins policy pushed by Baltimore City Hall and Maryland Governor O'Malley---formerly of Baltimore's neo-conservative pols running as democrats in Baltimore. Anyone in Baltimore can tell you this article below is pure propaganda.....schools are not doing well, the curricula is hated, the students are falling in performance and leaving school----ergo, the problems that extend to the streets.

What We Can Learn from Baltimore City Public Schools

By Liv Finne, Director, WPC’s Center for Education

, October, 2010 Forward-thinking school superintendents, like C.E.O. Andres A. Alonso of Baltimore City Public Schools, are reorganizing the way they run their schools, and achieving dramatic gains for students. They are implementing Fair Student Funding. This reform shifts control over school spending from central districts to individual school principals. Under Fair Student Funding, school principals are able to control the actual dollars in their school budgets, instead of having to manage a building already staffed by the district. Principals with budget power are then able to customize their programs to meet the individualized educational needs of their students. In return for this new flexibility and control, school principals are held accountable for student performance.

Thirteen other school districts across the nation have adopted Fair Student Funding, also known as Student-Centered Funding, student “backpacking,” or Weighted Student Formula. The idea is the same. Instead of providing funding based on staffing ratios or categorical program, the money follows and funds the child, weighted according to his educational needs. The districts employing this strategy for funding schools include the following: Belmont Pilot Schools in Los Angeles, Boston’s Pilot Schools, Renaissance 2010 Schools in Chicago, Cincinnati, Clark County (which includes Las Vegas), Denver, Hartford, State of Hawaii, Houston Independent School District, New York City, Oakland, Poudre School District in Colorado, St. Paul, and San Francisco.

The story of how Baltimore City Public Schools achieved this reform is well worth telling. It started with a visionary leader: Andrés A. Alonso. He was selected as Chief Executive Officer of Baltimore City Public Schools in the summer of 2007.

Elements of Fair Student Funding

Create a system of great schools led by great principals who have the authority, resources and responsibility to teach all students well.
Engage those closest to the students in making key decisions that impact them.
Empower schools, then hold them accountable for results.
Ensure fair and transparent funding that schools can count on annually.
Size the district appropriately -- schools and central office -- to address the realities of revenues and expenditures.
Allow dollars to follow each student.
Put the resources in the schools.

Read the full Policy Note here

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March 08th, 2014

3/8/2014

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IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY CRIME AND VIOLENCE IS SO HIGH IN BALTIMORE-----LOOK BELOW AT HOW BAD PUBLIC POLICY IMPOVERISHES JUST TO ENRICH A FEW!

ALL OF OUR PUBLIC ASSETS ARE BEING HANDED TO RICH DEVELOPERS FOR NEXT TO NOTHING IN AREAS SLATED TO HAVE HIGH PROPERTY VALUE. IF KEPT PUBLIC PROPERTY------THAT WOULD BE PUBLIC WEALTH. EVERYONE SHOULD BE CONCERNED BECAUSE THIS IS NOT ONLY ABOUT GETTING THE WORKING CLASS OUT OF CITY CENTERS....

WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE THE VICTIMS.

IT IS ABOUT TAKING PUBLIC LAND AND ASSETS THAT MIDDLE-CLASS TAXPAYERS BUILT.

The Obama Administration is privatizing all that is public faster than Bush and that includes the Housing Urban Development agency HUD. Federal policy sends all kinds of taxpayer money to dismantle public housing and projects with the idea that these are bad for the poor and communities. This is likely true------concentrated poverty in these projects is not a good idea. The problem is that there is no intention of providing any other opportunity and in fact, the policies are leaving even more people homeless and impoverished AND THE MONEY IS BEING FUNNELED INTO THESE CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS.

Below is a good article giving a long view of public housing policy. I include just the Obama years because we need to look at again, a neo-liberal saying they are going to do something progressive and not doing it. So, with public housing like with fraud,......supposedly we cannot easily seek justice because the definitions are left vague. OBAMA HAS LEFT PUBLIC HOUSING DISCRIMINATION VAGUE AS HE HAS IGNORED FRAUD.

What I want to emphasize is that tons of Federal money is coming for public housing and being funneled into projects that are making the rich richer and doing nothing for the people paying the taxes. Here in Baltimore, consolidation of real estate into the hands of a few is indeed aided by these funds and it is all illegal. So, the low-income lose and the taxpayers lose.

ALL GOES TO THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP. WE NEED THAT MONEY BACK. IT IS THE PUBLIC'S MONEY.

Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a
Landmark Civil Rights Law

by Nikole Hannah-Jones
ProPublica, Oct. 28,
2012, 11 p.m.

A 2009 internal HUD study found that many communities were not even bothering to complete the required fair housing paperwork when they applied for block grants.
In a sample of 70 applicants, 35 had not provided an "analysis of impediments" to fair housing, prompting HUD to conclude that they were "apparently not performed at all." Nearly all of the reports received were considered substandard, the review found. A year later, investigators from the Government Accountability Office confirmed what civil rights advocates had long known: HUD's system for ensuring compliance with the fair housing law was a sham.
GAO officials reviewed documents filed by 441 recipients of
block grants, a step HUD officials do not routinely take.

They found that about one-third of the fair housing materials were out of date. More than one in 10 hadn't been updated since the '90s. Communities in the Midwest and Northeast — the most-segregated regions of the country — performed
the worst.

The GAO dismissed the analyses of impediments to fair housing that some communities provided as worthless because of their "brevity and lack of content." Most did not offer time frames for when the communities would
eliminate barriers to integration or include the required signatures of the relevant elected officials.

Investigators noted that 25 recipients of block grants had filed no analysis, "raising questions about whether some jurisdictions may be receiving federal funds without preparing the documents required to demonstrate that they have taken steps to affirmatively further fair housing."

According to the GAO, HUD staffers in seven regions had read the key documents for just 17 of 275 block grant recipients. Efforts to ensure "the integrity of the AI process...were not common," the report said.

The GAO made a number of recommendations. But HUD didn't even adopt the simplest one: to require that grantees submit their analysis of impediments for HUD to review.
In interviews, many HUD officials acknowledged they have no idea how to enforce the provision for affirmatively furthering fair housing. Already overstretched, they focus on what is clear: the disability accommodations provision of the Fair Housing Act. It's simple, they say, to check off whether
an apartment door is wide enough for a wheelchair or if a parking lot has enough handicapped spots.

But compliance officers stumble when it comes to race and segregation. One said she received little training on how to apply the 1968 act to block grant recipients. "The one week of training I was sent to, you focus on the civil rights law as a whole," she said. "You're not focused per se on
segregation." The official said she did not review broader issues such as the impact of discriminatory zoning "because I don't even know what they are."

Rolando Alvarado supervised fair housing enforcement for HUD in New Jersey for more than a decade. When asked to define "affirmatively furthering fair housing," he exhaled and then paused. Ten seconds passed. "That is tricky. There is no exact regulation, it's a gray area," said Alvarado, who retired in 2009. "I've never seen anything that clearly defines
that in my time at HUD."

Alvarado said he relied on his staff to ensure enforcement of the mandate. But how could his subordinates enforce something he himself could not explain?
"You are right. I don't know," he said. "It was reliance on if staff had conducted enough investigations and compliance reviews they would have an inkling of what to look for."

Alvarado said he could not recall a single instance in which he challenged a community's assertions about its efforts to further fair housing. When it comes to these issues, he said, "You are basically taking them at their word." After the Westchester settlement, in which the judge criticized the
department for failing to enforce the law, the word came down from HUD leaders that there should not be a recurrence. Officials say that directive was not accompanied by any training, additional staff or instructions on what practices
should be examined.

"The message is that we need to be more aggressive but absent the new rule, there is very little guidance as to what would constitute a failure to affirmatively further fair housing," said a senior fair housing official. "There's a car here and nobody knows how to drive it."

Trasvina promised Congress in January 2010 that by the end of the year the agency would release a rule requiring communities that receive money from the
agency to "promote integration." More than two years later, those regulations have not been issued. HUD has declined to say when they might appear or give a reason for the delay.

The focus of HUD's civil rights work appears to have veered away from race. In March, the department issued a rule banning discrimination against gay and transgender people in HUD-assisted housing and by lenders receiving guarantees
from the Federal Housing Authority.

Asked what they are doing to fulfill the Fair Housing Act's mandates, HUD officials pointed to Joliet, Ill., where HUD has withheld block grant funds over the city's attempt to demolish a mostly black federally subsidized apartment complex. HUD also has withheld block grant money from Westchester County, which the Justice Department says has failed to live up to the terms of its settlement agreement.

Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for the housing agency, said in an email that HUD "very nearly" cut off block grant money for Galveston, Texas, and threatened to do so in Delaware's Sussex County. But other communities with serious questions about fair housing continue to receive federal housing dollars, and fair housing officials say the agency still
brushes civil rights concerns aside. One senior housing official pointed to New Orleans, which hasn't lost its block grant despite the Department of Justice lawsuit. "If that's not enough to reject a grantees' funding," he said. "Any finding from the fair housing office will not ever be sufficient."

Another example is Waukesha County, Wisc. HUD launched an investigation of the 90 percent-white county last year following a complaint from a fair housing group. The group accused the county of allowing its nearly all-white communities to block rental housing to keep out African Americans and Latinos from neighboring Milwaukee. African Americans and Latinos account for 57 percent of
the city's population. Yet the agency treats Waukesha County no differently from racially integrated Montgomery County, which has a 30-year track record of placing affordable
housing in its most prosperous neighborhoods. Waukesha still receives its automatic influx of HUD dollars.

"It is fair to say, it is accurate to say, that the only situation in which HUD is doing anything effectively to affirmatively further fair housing are situations where there has been litigation," said Florence Wagman Roisman, a law professor at Indiana University. "Then it does as little as possible, as
grudgingly as possible."

Prospects for substantial change appear dim.

Obama administration officials say that if the president is re-elected, they will complete work on the long-delayed rules defining what it means to "affirmatively further fair housing."

At a private fundraising event in Florida in April, Mitt Romney said he would consider closing down HUD if he wins the election."I'm going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them," he said. "Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad
was head of, that might not be around later."

Have you experienced discrimination under the Fair Housing Act?
Share your story with us.

ProPublica's Kirsten Berg contributed to this story.

_________________________________________-

NEO-LIBERALS HATE ALL WAR ON POVERTY AND NEW DEAL POLICY AS MUCH AS REPUBLICANS. SO LABOR AND JUSTICE ARE BEING ATTACKED BY NEO-LIBERALS. DO NOT BELIEVE THE TOKEN PROGRESSIVE BONES BEING THROWN.

What to do with public housing and the people they support. Well, logic has it that you can demolish the high-rises with the Federal money and invest in low-income housing within all Enterprise Zones. That is what should be happening. All of those public housing are on property in the city centers that will become valuable as development continues so keeping them public.......a park, public community/recreation centers, etc are what public interest requires. Yet, in Baltimore, all of this public land is going to developers.....again in large parcels to control all of how the community will be developed. MARKET-RATE IS THE THEME!!!

Below you see exactly what they intend to do in Baltimore and Maryland-----what this does is eliminate any future use of that property for the public AND IT KEEPS THE PRIVATE CORPORATION FROM PAYING PROPERTY TAXES ON THIS DEVELOPMENT. In Baltimore, they will even get deferment on all other taxes and they will get tax breaks for remodeling the building. It's like placing public garages under private buildings to have public subsidized private parking. Remember, all of this public housing property will become high-end as development continues saving tons of money in property taxes.

EVEN IF YOU WANT TO BE RID OF LOW-INCOME PUBLIC HOUSING....THINK OF THE PUBLIC LAND INVESTMENT AND WHERE THESE PEOPLE GO----IT ALL CREATES THE ENVIRONMENT OF CRIME AND VIOLENCE AS PEOPLE LOSE JOBS AND HOMES.

New York Public Housing Land To Be Leased For Pricey Apartments

By MEGHAN BARR and JENNIFER PELTZ
03/08/13 03:17 AM ET EST

NEW YORK -- New Yorkers pay dearly for the privilege of living in one of the world's great cities. But would they shell out top dollar for an apartment on the grounds of a public housing project?

That scenario could play out across Manhattan under an unprecedented proposal by the city housing authority to lease out public housing land and allow developers to build market-rate apartment buildings – intended for much wealthier residents – on areas currently occupied by basketball courts, parking lots and outdoor plazas.

City Council Moves to Stall Land Leases at Public Housing
By MIREYA
NAVARRO
Published: October 10, 2013


The New York City Council and a group of tenants sued
the Bloomberg administration on Thursday over plans
to lease land in public housing developments for the creation of market-rate apartments.

The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in
Manhattan, stems from a long-running controversy over the New York City Housing Authority’s proposal to
raise revenue for repairs and capital projects by allowing private developers to build on the grounds of eight public housing projects in Manhattan.

Housing officials have given developers a Nov. 18
deadline for proposing ideas — so-called expressions of interest — but it was unclear whether they would be able to select construction projects before the change in administration that will follow the November mayoral election.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the lawsuit is intended
to forestall any deals with developers before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s term is over. “The city has the ability to designate a developer and tie the hands of the incoming administration,” said Steven Banks, attorney-in-chief of the Legal Aid Society, which is representing the tenants. “The new administration would be without remedy.”

Democrat Bill de Blasio, the leading candidate for
mayor, has not ruled out developing land owned by the housing authority, but he has said he favors building affordable housing, not market-rate units. The public housing system has more than 400,000 residents and $6 billion in unmet capital needs.

The Council objected to being left out of the
decision-making regarding the plan to build on public housing grounds. In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs seek to have the city rescind the request for expressions of interest. They argue that under state law, housing officials have no authority to lease public housing land for high-income residents and that
they must submit their plan to the Council for approval.

“There’s still a need for more low- and middle-income
housing, and that should be the city’s priority,” said Rosie Mendez, who heads the Council’s committee on public housing.

In response to the lawsuit, the housing authority
issued a statement saying that it “has heard significant interest from developers and looks forward to receiving their proposals next month.”

“It’s unfortunate that the City Council is attempting
to block a proposal that would generate significant revenue for the New York City Housing Authority — money that would go directly into developments and repairs for residents,” the statement said.

FEDERAL MONEY YET AGAIN FUNNELED TO THE SAME INVESTMENT FIRMS/DEVELOPERS GETTING TAX BREAKS FOR DEVELOPING IN UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES AND ALL THE PEOPLE LIVING IN THESE COMMUNITIES WILL BE DISPLACED.

What Rawlings-Blake and O'Malley with City Hall
are doing is privatizing all that is public. Public employee unions are busted and pay is lowered to poverty. This is what happened as MTA is privatized with VEOLA and it is what is being tried with longshoreman unions at the Port of Baltimore. It is all union-busting and impoverishing of labor. So, why are unions backing all of Maryland's neo-liberals every election rather than running labor and justice?

The US Constitution protects equal opportunity and access in housing and education. What Baltimore is doing is illegal because they not only ignore equal access, they try to pass laws that say 'we will accept Federal funding for development but not honor equal access and opportunity laws'. They pretend they can do this and they cannot. It is public malfeasance.

Below is a good analysis of Baltimore's situation. It is too long to copy but check it out. I would just like to emphasize throughout is the disregard of real data and deliberate disregard to Rule of Law and adherence to Federal requirements. This is important in getting the public's wealth back and hopefully helping those displaced with justice. Breaking these laws is not only public malfeasance but fraud on the part of the developers knowingly failing to meet terms of Federal and State contracts.

September
2007
Volume 20, Number 4

What we think about, and what we’d like you to think
about

THE ABELL REPORT
Published as a community service by The Abell Foundation

Erroneous reporting leads to a
lack of public concern

“Baltimore Housing currently serves
over 40,000 residents in more than
14,000 housing units.” This statement
appears (as this study is being written) on
the city’s public housing website. HUD
also reports a similar number — 14,446.
But the true numbers of public housing
units being used in Baltimore are far
lower and can be found in the Housing
Authority’s most recent annual plan, as well
as City Hall’s Citistat Reports.
Nevertheless, the Housing Authority and
HUD continued to use these outdated
numbers in 2007. The HUD official
who oversees Baltimore’s housing
authority appeared unaware that as of
spring 2007, Baltimore only had 10,748
available units in its inventory (with
1,123 of them vacant).
The absence of accurate and consistent
reporting and the lack of analysis of
the loss of public housing has served as
a convenience in a political climate
where even a suggestion of building a
small number of public housing units
can cause a neighborhood uproar.

A lack of public
participation

Housing advocates have complained
of a lack of public input in the demolition
plans, despite federal law requiring
a housing authority to “conduct reasonable
outreach activities to encourage
broad public participation” in its annual
public housing plan. At a sparsely
attended April 17, 2007 hearing on the
future of Baltimore’s public housing,
several advocates protested that they
found no public notice of the event, and
questioned why it wasn’t posted on the
agency’s website.

Housing officials said sufficient
notice was given when they advertised
in The Baltimore Sun and the Afro-
American in March and at the Enoch
Pratt Free Library. The Baltimore Sun
notice, however, was a tiny, one inch by
three- and three-quarter-inch ad buried
in the classified ads that ran for three
days, a month before the hearing. During
the hearing, no copies of the 100-
page plan were available (though an
electronic copy was on HABC’s website),
and housing officials gave no
overview or public explanation for their
decision to demolish projects. One
advocate accused housing officials of
trying to “circle its wagons” against
public participation and called the plan
“a roadmap for the continued decline of
public housing.” Each of the eight
people testifying was given two minutes to speak. The hearing was over in a half hour.

__________________________________________

Equally important for citizens of Baltimore is the
fact that Baltimore HUD is probably the most corrupt of all corrupt agencies in Baltimore and as such all kinds of red flags will go up with these public properties. Keeping this property in city central that will become valuable as
development occurs is the only thing to do in public interest. We could build multi-income housing, parks, public community centers with this public
land. Since Baltimore HUD is corrupt, they will hand it off undeveloped for cheap to a connected investor who will make tons of money on this property when development of this area is finished. See why it is public malfeasance.

The second part to this is the workers who represent a
dying middle-class in Baltimore with the attack of middle-class jobs and leaving Baltimore families desperate and poor. Extended families depend on these strong
jobs and it is this policy of killing Living Wage jobs that give us Baltimore's high crime and violence culture as people turn to drug dealing et al to survive. All for no good reason.

The City of Baltimore loses billions of dollars
to fraud and corruption and rebuilding public justice in the city would fill the city's coffers and allow for a healthy public sector. Handing all that is public to private ownership or public private partnerships is what fuels all the fraud and corruption. We will need to investigate these sales to assure this is not yet another example of public malfeasance. You see, these residents know the history of these promises to the underserved....the Federal money is used but none of the requirements to help the low-income are carried through.

Workers nervous about layoffs as Baltimore Housing Authority sells off buildings Residents say they want protections from private developers in writing

Below you see the other side of what this privatization brings-----more public sector jobs
lost with the prospect of private jobs paying nothing.

The Lakeview Towers
on Druid Park Lake Drive are among the first of 22 housing complexes to be
offered for sale under a plan by the housing authority.


(Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun / August 10, 2005)


Union officials warned Thursday that as many as 200 maintenance workers and building monitors at Baltimore's public housing properties could lose their jobs under a plan intended to infuse the buildings with private money.

Employees such as maintenance mechanic Lucky Crosby Sr., who has worked for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City for a decade, say they took the jobs with the understanding that the pay was relatively low, but the work was secure.

"By working for the Housing Authority, we joined the credit union so we could buy homes that we have to finance," said Crosby, 46, of Sandtown-Winchester. "We bought cars that we have to finance."

Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano acknowledged that some jobs might be lost as 22 of the agency's 28 properties are sold to developers over the next
two years. He said the Housing Authority is keeping some positions vacant and filling others with temporary workers to reduce the potential number of
layoffs. Graziano said the agency is encouraging the developers to hire some of the workers, and to keep them apprised of the latest information as soon as it's
available.

"This is a very large change, a massive change in the way we're doing business, and I understand change does create anxiety," Graziano said. "We're trying to provide whatever assurances we can." The Housing Authority has identified 11 developers to buy the buildings. Several of them declined to comment Thursday.

The federal government is offering tax credits to developers who buy and renovate public housing.
Officials say the effort is intended to improve the lives of low-income Americans. But in the case of the maintenance workers, Anthony Coates said, it's
doing just the opposite.

Coates, president of AFSCME Local 647, said members who lose their jobs could lose their homes.

"We're the working poor," he said. The maintenance workers, who earn between about $15 and $20 an hour under their most recent contract, want the Housing Authority to tell them how many workers face layoffs, Coates said.

He said knowing the scope of the layoffs is especially important for the older maintenance workers on staff, who may find it harder to get new jobs.

Coates accused the agency of stalling contract negotiations. Senior housing
officials rejected the accusation, and said a meeting is scheduled for next week. They said inclement weather forced them to postpone some meetings.

Anthony Scott, executive director of the Housing Authority, said the federal
program has unfolded rapidly. The Housing Authority began preparing its
application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over the summer, submitted it in October and found out it had been approved in
December.

"We informed our employees as quickly as we could," Scott said. Graziano said the agency already has a "significant number of vacancies," but declined to say how many.

It's "a moving target," he said.

On top of that, he said, at least 10 percent turnover is expected each year. He said Housing Authority workers would be attractive employees for the
developers
______________________________________________
Neo-liberals are working for control of all real estate by a few. The good news is that most of the wealth lost to the middle-class is through fraud and needs to come back. Think of the tens of millions of homes caught in the subprime loan fraud and foreclosed....many families need these homes replaced. So, the middle-class is still the middle-class.....just waiting for justice!

If you notice the list below include the same financial and investment firms that created and profited from the massive subprime mortgage frauds and indeed, they all still owe trillions in total fraud. We can rebuild all public housing by simply recovering the fraud. Yet, the plan was to steal the homes through fraud and then hand all the city center property to those same people and that is what these Enterprise Zone and Public Housing deals do......with taxpayer subsidy as the cherry on top!

THE LOW-INCOME LOSE, THE TAXPAYERS LOSE, AND THE MIDDLE/WORKING CLASS LOSE ALL TO NEO-LIBERALS WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT.

10 Largest Private Equity Real Estate Firms
         by Andy
Macalaster • February
21, 2010

The PERE 30 (from Private Equity Real Estate Magazine) revealed that the top 30 real estate private equity firms raised $211.9 billion over the past five years, up from $190 billion as calculated by last year’s ranking. Listed are the
top 10 largest real estate private equity firms.

As a note: the top two largest firms raised $25.6 billion and $20.15 billion respectively in dedicated real estate funds between January 2004 and April,
2009. Together the pair raised a fifth of all the direct-investment capital secured by the world’s 30 largest real estate private equity firms.

10. Westbrook Capital Partners
Westbrook has raised and invested $10 billion of equity in over $35 billion of real estate transactions in major markets throughout the world. Westbrook’s investment equity is
committed by a broad base of institutional investors, which includes public and private pension funds, endowments, foundations, and financial institutions.

9. The Carlyle Group
The Carlyle Group is one of the world’s largest private equity firms, with more than $87.9 billion under management with funds across four investment disciplines (buyouts, growth
capital, real estate and leveraged finance). Carlyle has committed more than $3.6 billion of its own capital to its funds.

8. Tishman Speyer
Tishman Speyer has acquired, developed and operated over 325 projects totaling over approximately 116 million square feet and more than 92,000 residential units,
and a property portfolio of US$50.2 billion internationally.

7. LaSalle Investment Management
LaSalle Investment manages approximately $39.9 billion (as at Q3 2009) of private and public property equity investments. Their client base includes public and private
pension funds, insurance companies, governments, endowments and private individuals from across the globe.

6. Lehman Brothers Real Estate Partners
Lehman Brothers Real Estate Partners has raised over $10 billion in capital over the last five years with a total of $44 billion in transactions among 1,150 properties.

5. Beacon Capital Partners
Since its inception in 1998, Beacon Capital Partners has sponsored six investment vehicles representing over
$8.5 billion aggregate equity capital from various endowments, foundations and pension funds. Beacon Capital Partners was established after the predecessor public company, Beacon Properties Corporation (a New York Stock Exchange listed
company), merged with Equity Office Properties Trust in a transaction valued at $4 billion.

4. Colony Capital
Colony Capital is a private, international investment firm based in Los Angeles, California. The company focuses on real estate opportunities around the world either on its own, through funds run by the company, or in joint ventures. The company is run by billionaire Tom Barrack.

3. Goldman Sachs Real Estate Principal Investment Area

The Real Estate Principal Investment Area (REPIA) manages a series of global opportunistic real estate funds, known as the Whitehall Funds, and other niche products. REPIA, through the Whitehall Funds, offers Goldman clients the opportunity to co-invest in real estate and real estate related assets
worldwide.

2. Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing
Morgan Stanley Real Estate has the longest uninterrupted real estate industry presence of any Wall Street firm. MSREI has raised over $20 billion in capital in the last five years and has completed over $58 billion in transactions.

1. The Blackstone Group
Blackstone’s real estate fee earning assets under management totaled $23.7 billion as of September 30, 2009.
Assets include office, hotel, healthcare, retail and multi-family properties around the world. Blackstone has the world’s leading hotel portfolio, as well as one of the largest portfolios of office buildings in the United States.
Blackstone’s real estate group currently has over $12 billion of equity capital available for investment, the largest pool of capital for real estate investments available today.

For a full list of the top 30 real estate private equity firms with an executive summary click here.

_________________________________________

Below you see reverse mortgages as a tool to make sure homeownership does not go beyond this generation for most of the middle/working class. Land ownership is for the gentry you know! Reverse mortgages are not always bad. We had our mother's retirement supplemented by reverse mortgage. The problem these least several years is that people are not having the money for retirement because it was stolen and not because they did not save. These are the people being forced into reverse mortgage now.

THESE HOMES SHOULD NOT BE LOST TO FAMILIES AS FRAUD AND DAMAGES HAVE NOT BEEN RECOVERED TO THE PUBLIC.

Remember as well, Obama's Administration is deliberately allowing a manipulated inflation rate of near zero lower all of the public's COLAs by hundreds of dollars. So seniors and vets owning homes are losing hundreds of dollars in monthly payments because of what is a 'manipulated' inflation rate. Never in the history of public programs has the COLAs not been 3-5% as inflation never has been lower. Please look at my blogs on faulty inflation data if you cannot see that what you are buying at the store is costing much more.

Low-income people are being hit from every direction in fraud and corruption making sure they do not have what they need for retirement and neo-liberals are in office to see this happens. It is not only republicans.....it is neo-liberals running as democrats!

Sun Aug 18, 2013 at 06:45 PM PDT

Reverse mortgages: The final blow killing middle class
wealth
byEgberto Willies Follow forDaily Kos

Many fellow Americans that have worked their entire lives, weathered several
recessions and depressions, put their children through school, helped many in
need, and faithfully paid their mortgages for decades are now being taken advantage of once again. Most have followed all the rules necessary to be considered fiscally responsible, yet because of "legal fraud" by the financial sector and policies effected by purchased politicians, their years in retirement
will be compromised.

The Plutocracy, the one percent has walked away with a large percentage of their 401Ks, their SEPs, and to some extent their financial security. Because of stagnant or falling real wages, much of the working middle class have maxed out on their credit in the attempt to maintain their standard of living. For a Plutocracy that feeds on perpetual growth, from where will it feed now? An old and well-crafted financial instrument known as the reverse mortgage is being marketed on steroids to a baby boomer population.

Before any reader of this article that may have already taken out a reverse mortgage gets upset, please note that it is understood that for many this is the
only option left. That said, every American should be fighting for a system that allows all the ability to build a nest egg that can be transferred to the next generation.

Back in 2010, Sen. Fred Thompson was a spokesman for AAG and was pushing their government back reverse mortgages. I was writing my book when the
commercial came on and I wrote the following in a chapter right then.
While taking a short coffee break from writing this book I saw former Republican Senator Fred Thompson, an AAG spokesman hawking reverse mortgages. He
says:
“Hi folks, I am Fred Thompson. Now like me you probably heard a lot about
reverse mortgages but weren’t quite sure how they worked or whether they would
be the right financial solution for you. Well take my word for it and hundreds
of thousands of other Americans who have used the Government Insured reverse
mortgage as a safe effective financial tool. If you are 62 year or older and own
your own home, give AAG a call and find out how a reverse mortgage can help you.
I am extremely proud to be associated with AAG, a national reverse mortgage
lender that is helping seniors overcome their financial worries and live the
lives they’ve dreamed. Why don’t you find out more by calling AAG today? Find
out how much call you may qualify for today.”

My first thought was how could a former Senator, a senior, a person who likes to tout morality be so callous to entice the elderly to splurge their wealth away. Most Americans have a large portion of their wealth in their homes. Having
some wealth to transfer to one’s offspring helps the next generation to the next financial level.

Unfortunately, yet another financial instrument designed to use the ignorance of the average American citizen’s knowledge of our economic system to donate
their money up the wealth tree to the rich. At the end of the reverse mortgage’s term, the elderly is left without an asset to transfer to their offspring at the time of their death.

Ironically as this piece is being written Fred Thompson is back on with the 2013 version of his "working middle class pilfering" commercial. The most deceptive part of the ad is stating that the owner of the house retains ownership of the home. You cannot own something that you cannot give to
someone free and clear. Even more ironic is that Thompson, a professed small government conservative, is pushing a product that depends on the good faith and
capital of the United States government.

Most Americans amass most of their wealth within their homes. Each generation in a responsible family is better off when the previous generation wills their assets forward. Reverse mortgages are yet another financial instrument that
stunts the growth of the middle class by encouraging home owners to extract the capital out of their homes and use it as a supplement to their retirement or to simply splurge. Inasmuch as most reverse mortgages are federally regulated, their upfront costs are very high. These costs amount to free cash for the bank and mortgage insurance companies, your money transferred to them for a marginal service.

The big dirty secret is that reverse mortgages, like student loans pre-Obama, are nothing but a no-risk gift to the bankers, a wealth transfer engine from the masses to a select few. When the "owner" of the home dies, the government pays
the bank any difference between the amount owed (interest plus principal) less the sale price of the home. If the heirs want to keep the home, they must pay the loan off in full. If the amount owed is more than the value of the home, the
heirs must pay 95 percent of what is owed to the bank with the government paying
the rest. What is the reason for the bank being in the transaction? It is there simply to extract from the government and the homeowner. They have absolutely nothing at risk for the profits they make.

Reverse mortgages mask a systemic problem that affects the American worker, a backward and inhumane retirement system. Every American worker makes a vibrant
economy possible by providing 40, 50 or more years of work, taxes, and spending. It is appalling that a worker is incapable of having Social Security capable of providing a decent living. No one should have to deplete all of their assets to
survive.

The trajectory in this country has been that the wealth and income of the very few at the top grows faster than the growth of the economy as a whole. This means that some of that growth is directly coming out of the pockets of the
working middle class in the form of lower wages, extractions from the government (tax dollars, interest payments, etc.), reverse mortgages, higher tuitions as states lower taxes, commercial student loans, etc. This is an unsustainable path
and it is leading to a country where the vast majority of citizens will have no assets. They will be functionally indentured servants. They will be nothing but a commodity, a unit of work and service.

Wake up America. Taking this country back from the Plutocracy will require education, resolve and action. Taking this country back will entail taking back what was stolen through well designed redistribution mechanism that foments a vibrant working middle class.

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