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CINDY WALSH FOR MAYOR OF BALTIMORE----SOCIAL DEMOCRAT
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June 21st, 2014

6/21/2014

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Weekends I do not blog but  share actions and in this election season speak to the primary races and soon to be general elections in Maryland.

As I stated earlier, it is the duty of the Maryland Attorney General and the Maryland Election Board to enforce both Federal and state election law.  The Maryland Attorney General would let the US Attorney General's Office know election violations are happening in the state.  If these agencies fail to uphold Rule of Law, it is the Maryland Circuit Court responsible to provide justice for someone experiencing election fraud.  It is the Federal Election Commission charged with investigating and providing justice for someone experiencing election fraud.  If the FEC fails to do its duty.....then the Federal courts come into play.

MAKE NO MISTAKE-----ALL OF WHAT I SPEAK IN THIS ELECTION IS INDEED CLEAR ELECTION VIOLATION AND SYSTEMIC FRAUD.  YOU ARE WITNESSING STATE AND FEDERAL AGENCIES REFUSING TO ACT IN THEIR CAPACITY TO PROTECT AND SERVE----TO ENFORCE RULE OF LAW.

This is no small matter and it reflects why more and more American people are not voting or feeling their votes do not matter.  It is a systematic dismantling of our election system.  We heard just recently that in Maryland over 630,000 voters are unaffiliated with a party and it is because of these illegal election practices. 

THAT'S 1/3 OF MARYLAND VOTERS AND THOSE STILL IN PARTIES HAVE AN EXTREMELY LOW TURNOUT.  IT IS THE SYSTEMIC ELECTION FRAUD THAT CREATES THE APATHY.

A political campaign is a non-profit entity and as such are susceptible to the same election laws as everyone else.  So, when a candidate in a race participates in an election event or organizes an event that willfully and deliberately excludes candidates in that race------they are guilty of election violations.  The practice of having one candidate invite two others to a forum or debate, deliberately leaving out others in a race constitutes a 501c3 violation of election law that says----do not damage a candidate's campaign.  The same is true when these same candidates participate in an election event hosted by other organizations knowing that event violates election laws of excluding other candidates in a race.

When Anthony Brown invites Gansler and Mizeur to debate-----when Gansler, Mizeur, and Brown participate in forums while Cindy Walsh is protesting exclusion from these events as they walk by to the stage venue----they are actively breaking election law.  Violating election law is a felony offense and as the guideline show below-----any candidate elected having committed a felony shall be ineligible to hold public office.


Keep in mind, this systematic censure of one candidate's campaign is VERY serious election violations.  We will ask that the democratic primary results be disqualified and no democratic candidate move forward in the general election.

At the same time, Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland seeks her opportunity to participate in these elections and requests a reprieve from the election statute requiring registration for the general election by February 2014 allowing her to register as a Green Party candidate in Maryland's General Election of 2014 for Governor of Maryland.


MARYLAND STATUTES AND CODES Section 16-1001 - General penalty provisions. Listen § 16-1001. General penalty provisions.


  Disqualification of candidate found in violation.- A candidate who is convicted of any practice prohibited by this article shall be ineligible to be elected or appointed to any public office or employment for a period of 5 years following the date of the conviction. 
 

[An. Code 1957, art. 33, § 16-1001; 2002, ch. 291, §§ 2, 4.] 

MARYLAND STATUTES AND CODES Section 5-101 - In general. Listen § 5-101. In general.
 


(a)  Applicability.- This subtitle governs the process by which an individual becomes a candidate for a public or party office in an election governed by this article. 

(b)  Compliance required.- An individual's name may not be placed on the ballot and submitted to the voters at an election unless the individual complies with the requirements of this title. 
 

[An. Code 1957, art. 33, § 5-101; 2002, ch. 291, §§ 2, 4.]   



_____________________________________________

Cindy Walsh for Governor was told time and again that 3 of the democratic candidates would not appear at an event if I was invited, the candidates arranged their own debates/forums exclusive of me, and on many occasions physically saw me protesting my exclusion from events.  Media constantly referred to the democratic race in ways that defined the contest with only 3 candidates in the race.

When someone knows an operation is acting illegally and chooses to participate with no acknowledgement of said crime they are now guilty of the crime itself.  If you walk into a gambling activity and find it to be illegal but sit down anyway to participate-----you are just as guilty as those organizing the event.  If any or all of those democrats for governor had refused to participate and/or made an official protest of illegal actions those charged with enforcement would have been pressured to act.  It is the failure at all levels to report and refuse to participate in illegal activities that has allowed Maryland's election system to become systemically criminal.

Cindy Walsh even went to Jon Cardin----candidate for Maryland Attorney General and head of the Maryland Assembly Elections Committee -----to complain about the fraud and he said----'that's the way we do it in Maryland'.


Since the entire democratic primary was rife with fraud there is no way any one candidate can win this election.  It is therefor necessary to void the primary election results and require the Maryland Democratic Party be monitored for a period of several gubernatorial election cycles by both state and federal officials for adherence to the letter of the law.


Pursuant to 18 USCS § 594, whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for, or not to vote for, any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, at any election held solely or in part for the purpose of electing such candidate, shall be fined or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

The statute prosecutes individuals who conspire to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States or any agency thereof in order to violate election laws. 


Pursuant to 18 USCS § 241, two or more persons are prohibited from conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any state, territory, commonwealth, possession, or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him or her by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his or her having so exercised the same.


42 USCS § 1985 provides that an action for damages where two or more persons have conspired to:

  • deprive any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws;
  • prevent or hinder the constituted authorities of any state or territory from giving or securing to all persons within such state or territory the equal protection of the laws; or
  • prevent by force, intimidation, or threat any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote from giving his or her support or advocacy in a legal manner toward or in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person as an elector for President or Vice President, or as a member of Congress, or to injure any citizen in person or property on account of such support or advocacy.
In any case of conspiracy as set forth above, if one or more persons engaged therein do, or cause to be done, any act in furtherance of the object of such conspiracy, whereby another is injured in his or her person or property, or deprived of having and exercising any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States, the party so injured or deprived may have an action for the recovery of damages occasioned by such injury or deprivation, against any one or more of the conspirators.
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June 06th, 2014

6/6/2014

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When public justice is dismantled------when the public sector is dismantled with no oversight and accountability----when corporations take over all those functions and can act with impunity-----

SPYING AND SURVEILLANCE IS AN ATTACK ON OUR RIGHTS TO PRIVACY AND FREEDOM AND OUR CIVIL RIGHTS.  IF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW----THE EXECUTIVE POSITION OF GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND CAN STAND FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE-

Do you hear any candidates in this Maryland governor's race shout out about this huge NSA/SPYING INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX DRIVING MARYLAND'S ECONOMY?????
  CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR IS THE ONLY ONE!

NEO-CONS AND NEO-LIBERALS WORK FOR GLOBAL CORPORATE RULE!



SAIC is a Johns Hopkins corporation Enterprise as Hopkins now refers to itself.  It is almost fully funded by Federal money and it includes a massive super-computer on the Hopkins campus that receives all data collected from every avenue of society-----building profiles on every individual.  The goal is to integrate to such an extent that corporations will know every aspect of a person's life before hiring or in keeping that person employed.  This is totalitarianism.  From grocery receipts that let corporations know how many packs of cigarettes or alcohol you buy----there goes the health insurance rates; to SMART METERS that tell when you are home and know how much disposable income you have as regards rates for utilities and waste pickup; to every movement by car and public transportation knowing where you go and with whom you speak.  THIS IS A SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM THAT WOULD MAKE STALIN GREEN WITH ENVY.  It is indeed what autocratic societies do.

Below you see how these systems are being tested-----they are being installed in cities like Oakland and Baltimore as a social unrest indicator as the poor are driven to third world conditions and lose all their rights as citizens.  Remember, many of these poor are the former middle-class and many of today's middle class will be these poor-----DO NOT THINK IT IS OK BECAUSE THIS IS TARGETING THE WORKING CLASS AND POOR.  AN INJUSTICE FOR ONE BECOMES INJUSTICE FOR ALL.

Baltimore's Chief of Police Batts was in Oakland for the short time he oversaw Johns Hopkins SAIC installation in that city and he is now here in Baltimore doing the same.  You see, Batts is mostly a contractor----working with SAIC installing a business structure-----just as Baltimore School Superintendent Alonzo was in Baltimore to install the corporate structure for privatized K-12.  This is why what are public appointees are paid as if they are business executives.......THEY ARE BUSINESS EXECUTIVES.  Privatizing the police means creating a surveillance society and simply have the same kinds of computerized stations as with the drones overseas-----the drones having the capacity of striking/disabling/or reporting on any one person.  Below you see it is Occupy Oakland who is being used as the development phase.  KEEP IN MIND----IT IS SAIC AND NOT OCCUPY OAKLAND THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FIND TO BE THE THREAT!


Below you see an article with references that show you to what extent Johns Hopkins SAIC partnered with Wall Street plan on developing all across the country.  Right now it seem NYC, Oakland, and Baltimore are ground zero for development.  All of the republicans shouting Constitutional Rights are right.  All of the labor and justice shouting Constitutional Rights---are right.  None of this is legal and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money are being funneled to this Johns Hopkins Enterprise.  Hopkin of course still calls itself a private non-profit for tax and taxpayer funding purposes.


California, Corporate, Intelligence Fusion Centers Oakland Domain Awareness Center SAIC Proposal and Emails

October 18, 2013

The following documents include the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) proposal to the City of Oakland for the construction of the Joint Domain Awareness Center as well as emails and weekly updates on construction progress.  The documents were obtained via public records requests made by members of Occupy Oakland’s Privacy Working Group and originally posted online at Oakland Privacy.  For updates on the center’s construction follow @OaklandPrivacy on Twitter.

SAIC Proposal for Oakland Domain Awareness Center 167 pages December 10, 2012 Download
(PDF 13.2 MB) City of Oakland, Port of Oakland, SAIC Emails and Progress Reports 261 pages July 2012-September 2013 Download
(PDF 42.9 MB)  


Share this: Related Material From the Archive:
  1. Oakland Domain Awareness Center SAIC Contract Documents
  2. Oakland Domain Awareness Center Project Status Presentation May 2013
  3. NYPD Domain Awareness System Public Security Privacy Guidelines
  4. Oakland Police Officers’ Association Open Letter to the Citizens of Oakland
  5. Occupy Oakland Move-In Day Photos January 2012
  6. DHS Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative Privacy Compliance Review
  7. ICANN Law Enforcement Recommendations for Domain Registration and WHOIS Data Collection Revisions
  8. White House ATF Fast and Furious Emails and Documents

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______________________________________________




NDAA Critic Stranded In Hawaii After Turning Up On No-fly List

Source: RT

17 October, 2012, 20:15



Wade Hicks was en route to a US Navy base in Japan to see his wife when armed military guards informed him that they had other plans. Hicks, an American citizen with no criminal record, had just been put added to a federal no-fly list.

After being escorted off his plane during a routine re-fueling stop on the Pacific Island of Oahu, Hicks, 34, was left stranded in Hawaii this week. In an interview, he suggests that his opposition to a newly-created law that allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens at military prisons without charge or trial could be to blame for his mistreatment.

"I was very, very vocal about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and I did contact my representative” about it, Hicks tells talk show host Doug Hagmann. "I do believe that this is tied in some way to my free speech and my political view."

According to Hicks, he has little reason to believe otherwise. He tells Hagmann that he formerly worked as a contractor for the US Department of Defense and has undergone extensive background checks in order to obtain an enhanced license that allows him to carry a concealed firearm. Hicks says he also holds on to a special identification card issued by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the US Homeland Security Department sub-agency that administers pat-downs and screenings at airports across the country. An investigation carried out by Hagmann has led him to locating no criminal history for the man whatsoever.


My campaign for governor has been censured by public and private media and it is no coincidence that it is always NBC channel 4 in Washington that handles the Maryland debates.  The NBC reporter covering a Montgomery College debate I was part said to me when she heard of my platform of civil rights, civil liberties, and Rule of Law said to me----NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT THAT----and indeed no one did because I was completely removed from any media coverage.

David Seaman, Critic of NDAA & SOPA, Dismissed by Business Insider After NBC News Complaints

By Connor Adams Sheets@ConnorASheets
on January 16 2012 5:01 PM


'Seaman, infuriated by Quintano's move, wrote an article for Business Insider Sunday alleging that his being blocked amounted to censorship due to his opinions about the controversial legislation. NBC Universal has gone on the record as being in support of SOPA, as Seaman reported in a previous article'.

___________________________________________

You know you are dealing with neo-cons and neo-liberals when a your state is being made into ground zero of totalitarian surveillance and warfare.  From drones, to cyber (security), to security personnel-----that is Maryland's economy and all of higher education in Maryland focuses on these degree paths at the expense of humanities and liberal arts----

TAKING OVER A NATION'S ECONOMY WITH ENGINES OF REPRESSION IS MORE THAN A CANARY IN A CAGE.


NSA Building Quantum Supercomputer
An undated aerial handout photo shows the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters building in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Voice of America News
VOA News January 03, 2014 12:55 PM


Quantum computers that can perform vast numbers of calculations simultaneously may be closer to science fiction than reality, but previously unpublished documents indicate the secretive U.S. National Security Agency is working hard to build a real quantum supercomputer, powerful enough to decode virtually every form of encryption now known.

Such a computer, many times faster than today’s fastest machines, could easily solve codes now considered "unbreakable" - the type of ciphers currently used worldwide by scientific and financial institutions and governments to protect their data.

The basic principle of quantum computing is a physical phenomenon that is not yet fully understood: certain subatomic particles can simultaneously exist in two different states. A conventional computer works with binary "bits" of information that are represented as either zero or one; quantum bits could be both zero and one simultaneously.

In theory, that quirk of physics will allow quantum computers to skip through much of the elaborate mathematical computations necessary to solve complex encryption keys.

Documents made public by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the code-breaking agency is spending nearly $80 million on a secret research program called "Penetrating Hard Targets."
   
NSA would not comment on this week's disclosures by Snowden, who has been living in asylum in Russia since last year, after exposing secret U.S. diplomatic cables and worldwide surveillance activities.
 
The U.S. government is said to be competing against quantum-computer research efforts by the European Union and Switzerlands, but experts in the field say practical exploitation of such systems is years if not decades in the future.



______________________________________

Below you see two articles----one from a right-leaning group and the next by a left-leaning group.  Neo-liberal media will try to make the right's concerns fear-mongering.  The neo-con media will say we need to get crazy people off the street:

BOTH GROUPS ARE RIGHTLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE PROVISIONS IN THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT THAT ATTACHED HOME HEALTH WITH REQUIRED SOME VISITS FROM CARE PROVIDERS.

The Affordable Care Act uses outpatient involuntary treatment with home visits by care providers in a broadly defined way that can be expanded to include anything.  Addiction is a very subjective diagnosis----and it includes a huge number of mental health categories.  Add to that social services and domestic and child welfare cases------ALL BEING MONITORED BY PRIVATE HOME HEALTH CORPORATIONS---and you have a serious attack on privacy and civil liberties.

Anyone can have a diagnosis of mental illness and addiction attached to them.  Involuntary treatment whether it is home treatment, forced taking of drugs----IS TOTALITARIAN AND IT IS BURIED IN YOUR AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.

Have you heard your pols shouting against the extreme level of personal privacy and civil rights violated in the ACA in the guise of mental health and social services?  Indefinite detention to home with visits from a corporate employee?  OH REALLY?????


Remember, if this was still a first world Rule of Law Equal Protection nation----we may not be fearful of abuses.  This is a second going to third world suspended Rule of Law with no equal protection making and preparing to enforce these laws.  These ACA programs all aim at working class and poor families and in a third world nation---that is 90% of the population.

NEEDLESS TO SAY----IT IS JOHNS HOPKINS HOME HEALTH CARE CORPORATION THAT LEADS IN THE BALTIMORE AREA!

'Joshua Cook said that while the administration would claim the program only applies to those on Medicaid, the new law, by its own definition, has no such limitation'.




Report: Obamacare provision will allow 'forced' home inspections by gov't agents


  • Examiner.com
  • August 15, 2013

Citing the Heath and Human Services website, a report posted Wednesday at the Freedom Outpost says that under Obamacare, government agents can engage in "home health visits" for those in certain “high-risk” categories.

Those categories include:

• Families where mom is not yet 21;
• Families where someone is a tobacco user;
• Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities, and
• Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.

According to HHS, the visits fall under what is called the "Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program" allegedly designed to “help parents and children,” and could impact millions of Americans.

Constitutional attorney and author Kent Masterson Brown said that despite what HHS says, the program is not “voluntary."

"The eligible entity receiving the grant for performing the home visits is to identify the individuals to be visited and intervene so as to meet the improvement benchmarks," he said. "A homeschooling family, for instance, may be subject to 'intervention' in 'school readiness' and 'social-emotional developmental indicators.' A farm family may be subject to 'intervention' in order to 'prevent child injuries.' The sky is the limit."

Joshua Cook said that while the administration would claim the program only applies to those on Medicaid, the new law, by its own definition, has no such limitation.

"Intervention," he added, quoting Brown, "may be with any family for any reason. It may also result in the child or children being required to go to certain schools or taking certain medications and vaccines and even having more limited – or no – interaction with parents. The federal government will now set the standards for raising children and will enforce them by home visits.”

According to Cook, the program will require collection of a massive amount of private information including all sources of income and the amount gathered from each source.

One of the areas of emphasis mentioned by HHS is the "development of comprehensive early childhood systems that span the prenatal-through-age-eight continuum."

Last session, Cook added, South Carolina State Rep. Bill Chumley introduced a measure that would make the forced home visitations illegal in his state. The measure passed in the House but died in the Senate.

In 2011, he noted, HHS said $224 million would be allocated to support these home visiting programs.







___________________________________



' "I simply don't think that involuntary commitments are going to be an effective tool toward stemming mass shootings," says Jeff Deeney, a social worker in Philadelphia who writes about mental health for The Atlantic.

Deeney says just a tiny fraction of mentally unstable people are a threat to public safety'.


The Divide Over Involuntary Mental Health Treatment
  By Kirk Siegler Originally published on Thu May 29, 2014 12:19 pm

  • Listen 3:56
  • Involuntary commitment to a hospital for mental illness can be a lengthy and complex process. A California law makes mandatory outpatient treatment an option. iStockphoto
The attacks near the University of California, Santa Barbara, are renewing focus on programs aimed at requiring treatment for people who are mentally ill as a way to prevent mass shootings and other violence.

In California, a 2002 law allows authorities to require outpatient mental health care for people who have been refusing it. Proponents argue that this kind of intervention could prevent violent acts.

But counties within the state have been slow to adopt the legislation, and mental health professionals are divided over its effects.

Do Family And Friends Know Best?

The story behind Laura's Law begins in 2001. In rural Nevada County, near Lake Tahoe, 19-year-old Laura Wilcox was shot and killed by a 41-year-old man with a history of mental illness. He had walked into the county's behavioral health center and opened fire.

Tom Anderson was the county's chief public defender at the time and represented the gunman in court. He recalls that the man's family had tried to alert mental health officials numerous times before the shooting.

"[Officials] were declaiming privacy issues and stuff and wouldn't communicate with the family," Anderson says. "He ... started amassing guns and setting up booby traps around his house, and he had this psychosis of he was going to be attacked any minute."

Now Nevada County's presiding judge, Anderson is also a vocal advocate for Laura's Law, which was passed by the state Legislature in 2002. The law allows counties to compel outpatient treatment for people whose family or friends are concerned about their mental state. It's seen as an intermediate step before someone is forced into inpatient psychiatric care.

Anderson says this tool could be one way to prevent future violent incidents, including mass shootings. And, he says, the patients often respond positively.

"The beauty of the program — the wonderment of it to me — is that roughly about 60 percent of the people that they do outreach to, where they go out to intervene after a person has been referred, voluntarily accept services at that time," he says.

A Question Of Rights

So far, only two California counties — Nevada County and Orange County — have gone forward with implementing Laura's Law. And the state hasn't allocated any funding to it.

The legislation is controversial. There are concerns that involuntary treatment could make mentally ill people vulnerable to civil rights abuses.

"You do have to be conscious that even though these people are mentally ill, they do have rights," says Steve Pitman, board president of the Orange County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Pitman, whose brother dealt with mental illness for 50 years, says family members need more power to intervene and force treatment. He says they're the ones who often know what's really going on, while police or a county mental health official may have just a few minutes to drop by for a welfare check.

"The problem in so many of these cases is that when they're interviewed to see if they meet those kind of threshold requirements, they don't give off any signals of being a danger to themselves or others," Pitman says. "Somebody who's experienced in these kinds of things knows all the right answers to give. They don't want to go to the hospital, so they say all the right things."

That scenario echoes Elliot Rodger's alleged behavior prior to the Santa Barbara incident, in which he allegedly killed six people, then himself.

But Pitman and others are cautious about linking policy changes like Laura's Law too closely to recent mass shootings. For one thing, they say, intervention cases that fall under Laura's Law may take weeks, if not months, to fully implement. And that may be too late.

"I simply don't think that involuntary commitments are going to be an effective tool toward stemming mass shootings," says Jeff Deeney, a social worker in Philadelphia who writes about mental health for The Atlantic.

Deeney says just a tiny fraction of mentally unstable people are a threat to public safety.


"I think what we don't have that people want so desperately is the program that stops nonviolent non-offenders from committing their first violent crime because of a mental illness," he says.

Deeney wants to see the conversation shift away from involuntary treatment programs like Laura's Law and toward preventive measures at high schools and college campuses.
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May 07th, 2014

5/7/2014

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ALL CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND INTEND TO CONTINUE THIS MOST PRIVATE AND PROFIT-DRIVEN OF STATE HEALTH SYSTEMS IN THE NATION  EXCEPT CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR.  WHERE DO NEO-LIBERALS IN MARYLAND GO WHEN YET ANOTHER PRIVATE CONTRACTOR IS GIVEN HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS TO FAIL?  GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS GO TO THE CONNECTICUT MODEL-----CONNECTICUT BEING WEALTH AND PROFIT AND HOME OF THE US INSURANCE INDUSTRY.

YOU WILL NOT HEAR A CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL TALK ABOUT EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL OR GIVE YOU A HEADS UP THAT THESE PRIVATE SYSTEMS ARE GEARED TO ENDING MEDICARE AND MEDICAID.

Today I would like to look at what happens when oversight and accountability is taken from health care and when patients become a vehicle to profit rather than a consumer of public health.  We know that PHARMA now manufactures drugs with an eye on how to increase profit----so, we have drug shortages for drugs vital to people but not profitable for drug corporations to make.  Patent extensions are being built and we know Trans Pacific Trade Pact specifically makes it harder for generic drugs to hit the market at a time when the Affordable Care Act specifically states the American people will use generic over name brand.  We know that fraud and corruption is systemic in the health industry taking 1/2 of health spending. 

ALL THIS HAPPENS BECAUSE OF DEREGULATING AND PRIVATIZING PUBLIC HEALTH.


I watched FOX NEWS a few weeks ago and it had as a report that OLESTRA was actually good for you.  Remember, olestra is the food additive that made everyone sick and it was found to be harmful to health and foods having it were pulled from the market a decade ago.  Well, its back and now they are marketing that olestra is good for you, neutralizing all kinds of bad environmental stuff in foods.  The report was given by a man with no public health background----he appeared to simply be a corporate researcher.  THIS IS FOX NEWS MARKETING A FOOD KNOWN TO BE HARMFUL TO AN AUDIENCE LARGELY WORKING CLASS AND POOR.....


We are seeing more and more where the Federal agencies charged with public health are silent on all matters regarding the efficacy ------whether things are helpful or harmful-----and allow corporations to market as they want regardless of clinical trial.  The American people are now exposed to deliberate health harm.  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PUBLIC HEALTH IS DISMANTLED.  Maryland has no oversight or accountability and Maryland Assembly has passed laws making it as hard as possible for Maryland citizens to seek justice in cases of medical misconduct.

That's what corporate neo-liberals do-----stop voting for them in primaries----run and vote for labor and justice.


Center for Science in the Public Interest

The Problems With Olestra
Olestra rapidly depletes blood levels of many valuable fat-soluble substances, including carotenoids. Olestra has an extraordinary avidity for certain fat-soluble substances, far exceeding what one would expect based on the fat substitute's proportion of the diet. Olestra's removal from the body of fat-soluble nutrients is linked directly to the additive's being a non-absorbable lipid-like substance.

In Procter & Gamble's two eight-week clinical studies, the lowest level tested -- 8 gm/day (equivalent to 16 olestra-containing potato chips) — caused dramatic depletion of fat-soluble vitamins within two weeks. Procter & Gamble also measured total serum carotenoids, alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, lutein, and lycopene. Olestra caused significant declines in all carotenoids monitored. Total serum carotenoids declined sharply by the fourteenth day of olestra consumption and was down by 50% to 60% by the end of the studies. A dosage of 32 gm/day of olestra reduced total serum carotenoids by 70% over the eight weeks.

In a recent four-week study conducted in Holland, 3 gm/day (equivalent to just 6 potato chips) of sucrose polyester (the general name for olestra-like chemicals) caused a 20% decline in beta-carotene levels and a 38% decrease in lycopene, another key carotenoid (Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 62:591 (1995)).

Feeding olestra with one or more meals, as was done in the several clinical studies, results in the greatest depletion of carotenoids. While that might seem to be a worst-case scenario, many people would, indeed, consume olestra-containing foods with meals. In fact, Procter & Gamble's petition states that mealtimes constitute the great majority (79%) of the occasions during which consumers eat "savory snacks." Also, since the frequency of consumption of snacks would likely increase if olestra snacks were available, interaction between nourishing foods and olestra at meals would be likely to increase, resulting in lower serum levels of fat-soluble carotenoids and other phytochemicals. There would also be more opportunities for olestra to reduce the absorption of beta-carotene and fat-soluble vitamins that people ingest in dietary supplements and fortified foods.

Olestra's depletion of carotenoids is of great concern, because a growing body of evidence indicates that they may confer important health benefits. The physiological activities of fat-soluble plant nutrients are just now being elucidated. For instance, in a recent case-control study, lutein (along with zeaxanthin) was strongly associated with a lower risk of macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in the elderly (J.A.M.A. 272: 1413 (1994)). That observation is buttressed by the fact that lutein and zeaxanthin form the yellow pigment in the macula (the central part of the retina). In three clinical studies, 3 gm/day of sucrose polyester or 8 gm/day of olestra reduced lutein levels by 20% to 40%.

Cancer experts are urging Americans to eat much greater quantities of vegetables and fruits, in part because of their carotenoids and other phytochemicals. Beta-carotene and other carotenoids have reduced cancer incidence in animals exposed to carcinogens. (J. Nutr. 119:123-6 (1989); Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 53(1 Suppl):238#-246S (1991))

In humans, numerous epidemiological studies have linked diets rich in carotenoid-rich fruits and vegetables to lower risks of cancers of the lung, esophagus, pharynx, mouth, stomach, colon, rectum, and bladder. Several studies have found an association between low levels of serum beta-carotene [which could be a marker for other carotenoids) and high rates of stomach and lung cancer. (Am. J. Epidemiol. 135: 115 (1992)]

The Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, released in 1988 by the Department of Health and Human Services, states:

[E]pidemiological studies provide suggestive evidence that consumption of foods containing carotenoids, including the beta-carotene precursor of vitamin A, protects against development of epithelial cell cancers such as those of the oral cavity, bladder, or lung. These studies have generally shown lower rates of cancer among individuals consuming the highest overall levels of vitamin A, carotenoids, or fruits and vegetables. The National Research Council stated in its landmark 1989 report, Diet and Health, "[T]here is strong evidence that a low intake of carotenoids, which are present in green and yellow vegetables, contributes to an increased risk of lung cancer." The director of the National Cancer Institute's "5 A Day" program pointed out the plausible biochemical mechanisms for the association between fruits and vegetables and lower cancer risks:

Fruits and vegetables are sources of vitamins and minerals (including vitamins A, C, E, and folate), carotenoids and other antioxidants, fiber, and various phytochemicals. . . . Each of these substances may play a role in reducing risk. More likely, it is a combination of these factors, and others not yet explored, which may confer protections. (J. Heimendinger, program director, The National 5 A Day for Better Health Program, Scientific and Program Design Rationale (Aug. 10, 1994) In January, 1996, just three weeks before the FDA approved olestra, the federal government (HHS, USDA) published the newest edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the nation's basic nutrition policies. That document urged people to consume carotenoid-rich fruits and vegetables because of their likely role in preventing cancer and other chronic diseases.

While there is not yet conclusive proof that carotenoids reduce cancer risk, to approve a major new additive that would significantly reduce levels of carotenoids (and possibly other fat-soluble phytochemicals) defies logic. It is a remarkable case of governmental ineptitude to have one agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Cancer Institute, encouraging consumers to eat more carotenoid-rich fruits and vegetables, while another agency, the FDA, approves a food additive that depletes the body of potentially beneficial substances in those foods.

Supplementing olestra with selected vitamins will not solve all of olestra's nutrient-depletion problems. Olestra is highly effective at reducing serum levels of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Simply supplementing olestra with those vitamins, as Procter & Gamble has proposed, would not completely solve that problem. Consider the 1.5 million patients taking the anticoagulant drug Coumadin (warfarin). Coumadin therapy often employs low doses of the anticoagulant, making the drug's efficacy particularly sensitive to fluctuations in vitamin K levels. Eating snack foods containing olestra and added vitamin K might cause substantial fluctuations in serum vitamin K levels, possibly impairing the efficacy of Coumadin. Furthermore, researchers are now identifying important functions for vitamin K other than those associated with blood clotting, such as bone formation in fetal development and childhood and retention of bone in older women.

No animal or clinical studies have demonstrated that vitamin K-supplemented olestra would be safe for Coumadin users and effective in maintaining physiological functions in addition to blood coagulation.

Doctors will have to warn their patients to avoid olestra (or, more safely, all snack foods of unknown composition).

Olestra causes gastrointestinal disturbances, which are sometimes severe, including diarrhea, fecal urgency, and more frequent and looser bowel movements. A variety of gastrointestinal symptoms occurred in subjects who consumed on a daily basis the amount of olestra that would be found in less than one ounce of potato chips (about 16 chips), as well as higher doses. For instance:

  • In Procter & Gamble's eight-week vitamin-restoration study, 8 gm/day of olestra caused a five-fold increase (1/17 versus 5/17) in diarrhea compared to the incidence in controls who ate natural fat.
  • In the eight-week vitamin-restoration and dose-response studies, 32 gm/day (the amount in about 3 ounces of chips) caused diarrhea in half the subjects (9/17 in one study, 13/24 in the other); control groups had much lower incidences (4/21 and 1/17, respectively).
  • In the dose-response study, 8 gm/day of olestra increased the total number of incidents of gastrointestinal symptoms — including diarrhea, loose stools, nausea, gas, and others — from 40 to 66 (65% increase). In the two clinical studies, 20 gm/day of olestra caused roughly a doubling of the number of incidents compared to controls.
  • At all doses of olestra in both eight-week studies, one or more people experienced symptoms that persisted on an intermittent basis for at least 40 days.
Gastrointestinal disturbances are not normally life-threatening, but they can be very inconvenient, unpleasant, uncomfortable, and worrisome. Imagine the plight of a school child who must repeatedly request permission to go to the toilet (and consider the teacher's plight, too). Think of the driver of a giant 18-wheeler barreling down the highway at 70 miles per hour when he gets hit with a bout of fecal urgency. Consider a teenager on a first date when he or she is constantly worrying about diarrhea and gas. Or a young woman who has to see a doctor because she worries that her nausea might be caused by a pregnancy, or an elderly person who fears that his diarrhea reflects a serious intestinal problem. Many people will eventually link the olestra snack foods to their gastrointestinal problems, but they may experience much discomfort before they make that link. And as long as olestra snack foods are marketed, new consumers will constantly be experiencing those problems.

Olestra sometimes causes underwear staining associated with "anal leakage." Olestra sometimes causes underwear staining. That phenomenon may be caused most commonly by greasy, hard-to-wipe-off fecal matter, but occasionally also from anal leakage (leakage of liquid olestra through the anal sphincter).

Procter & Gamble conducted a study that examined the effects of different formulations of olestra. The study used a dose of 34 gm/day, but, unfortunately, it lasted only five days, so it must be considered very preliminary. However, even that study showed that anal leakage occurred at a slightly higher rate in the test groups consuming the types of olestras than in the control group (which, inexplicably, included 2 cases of anal leakage). In addition, anal leakage was reported by one subject in the high-dose group (32 gm/day) of the eight-week dose-response study. Given the small size of the study groups (an average of 20 subjects/group) in the two eight-week studies, this single occurrence adds further evidence that Procter & Gamble has not yet resolved the anal leakage problem in heavy consumers of olestra.

Although underwear staining and anal leakage do not endanger consumers' physical health, those phenomena could cause psychological problems, including feelings of embarrassment and insecurity. Children and teenagers, especially, are likely to be disturbed about having dirty underwear, fearing embarrassment in front of friends and family. Snacking should be a pleasure undiluted with problems like dirty underwear.

Another condition associated with olestra consumption, "oil in toilet," occurred frequently in Procter & Gamble's two eight-week clinical studies. It could be disconcerting and might spur some people to see their doctor.

Data are lacking on the health effects of olestra on potentially vulnerable segments of the population. Key tests were unacceptably brief. Only poor studies have examined the effect of olestra on gastrointestinal disturbances in children, while no studies at all have focused on gastrointestinal problems and nutrient losses in healthy people over 44 years of age and people with poor nutritional status. For instance, the longest test on children, who would likely be major consumers of olestra-containing snacks, lasted only 7 days and exposed children to an average of only 7 gm/day of olestra, equivalent to two thirds of an ounce of potato chips. People who had poor diets and relatively low levels of carotenoids and who ate olestra regularly might be at special risk.

Furthermore, Procter & Gamble has not conducted human studies to assess the potential long-term health effects of olestra consumption. The results from brief (eight-week) clinical trials suggest possible serious long-term nutrient depletion and gastrointestinal effects for regular consumers of olestra. Eight-week-long studies are inadequate for a product that may be consumed by millions of people at high levels over a lifetime. Long-term tests on various population groups are essential to ascertaining the health effects of olestra. In addition, Procter & Gamble must conduct human studies to demonstrate the effect on serum carotenoid levels of occasional consumption of various amounts of olestra.

Olestra's possible carcinogenicity needs to be better resolved. Olestra was fed to rats (two studies) and mice (two studies) for two years at levels up to 10% of the animals' diets. Liver foci, which may be precursors of cancer, occurred in both rat studies. In one mouse study there was a statistically significant increase in lung tumors in the two highest-dosage groups; those tumors were not seen in a second study.

The levels of olestra fed to the rats and mice are of the same order of magnitude likely to be consumed by people. Especially since there is little margin of safety between human and animal consumption in these studies, findings of liver lesions in both rat studies and lung tumors in one mouse study are of particular concern. The FDA should appoint a committee of independent cancer experts (who do not consult for industry) to review the animal data and determine whether the liver foci and lung tumors (a) are definitely not a problem, (b) provide clear evidence of risk, or (c) raise questions that must be resolved through further research.

Procter & Gamble's claim that olestra's gastrointestinal effects are similar to those caused by high-fiber diets is not true. Procter & Gamble has claimed that olestra has gastrointestinal effects that are comparable to those caused by eating larger amounts of dietary fiber. In fact, the gut microflora usually adjust quickly to increased fiber, but do not adjust to olestra. Increasing fiber consumption often results in flatulence and similar effects, but, as the National Research Council has pointed out in Diet and Health, those effects seem to be temporary. Olestra's adverse effects persisted throughout the two eight-week studies and can be eliminated only by ceasing consumption of olestra.

It is not possible to set an Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) for olestra use in snack foods. An ADI for food additives is normally set by dividing the highest "no-observed-effect level" (NOEL) by a safety factor. However, Procter & Gamble has not been able to demonstrate a NOEL for olestra. In eight-week clinical studies, important adverse effects, including depletion of fat-soluble carotenoids and vitamins and gastrointestinal disturbances, occurred at 8 gm/day, the lowest olestra consumption level tested. Arguendo, if 8 gm/day were considered the NOEL for olestra, dividing by a minimal safety factor of 10 would yield an ADI of 0.8 gm/day, far below the likely consumption levels for olestra if the pending petition were to be approved. If the 3 gm/day level of sucrose polyester at which other investigators found significant depletion of carotenoids were used as the NOEL, application of the 10-fold safety factor would result in a 0.3 gm/day ADI, even further below the likely daily intake of olestra from savory snacks.

The only NOEL justified to date for olestra is zero and that fact alone should have been sufficient to deny the petition. Of course, one could argue that diarrhea, fecal urgency, and flatulence are merely "unpleasant phenomena" and not "adverse effects," the average consumer would likely concur that those sometimes severe gastrointestinal effects are indeed "adverse effects." Some consumers would undoubtedly associate their adverse effects with consumption of olestra, but many others might not. Furthermore, it is highly inappropriate for the FDA to permit a laxative food additive to be used in foods that would be widely consumed by a large fraction of the population. Likewise, even though the benefits of carotenoids and other non-vitamin phytochemicals are just beginning to be understood, many independent researchers concerned about carotenoids have told the FDA that reduced levels of those dietary substances should be considered an adverse effect.

Any benefits of olestra do not outweigh the risks. Industry and the public have been excited about olestra because of the possibility that it would help people eat diets lower in fat and saturated fat — and prevent obesity and heart disease. The current petition asks for use of olestra only in potato chips and similar foods. A person who ate an ounce of potato chips only occasionally would receive little calorie-saving from olestra-containing chips. A frequent chip-eater would save more fat, but would also experience a substantial decline in carotenoids and other phytochemicals (along with an increased risk of macular degeneration and possibly cancer and heart disease) and might experience gastrointestinal problems. Poorly nourished people, Coumadin-users, and other subgroups might experience additional problems. On balance, olestra's meager benefits are outweighed by its risks. Of course, people who wanted safe fat-free or lowfat chips can simply choose from the growing variety of such products already on the market.

_________________________________________

Listening to corporate NPR/APM I heard a report that addressed the growing appearance of salmonella outbreaks because after all------OUR MEAT PROCESSING PLANTS ARE THIRD WORLD WITH NO OVERSIGHT AND REGULATION.  Since Obama came onboard-------oversight agencies are being dismantled faster than with Bush.  The corporate reporter simply said -----JUST COOK THE MEAT LONGER AND DON'T WASH IT!  That was our public health announcement.  This dismantling of oversight and deregulation of food industry is just another step towards Trans Pacific Trade Pact that allows foods from developing countries into America having the worst of health issues.  Neo-liberals are saying

------THE GOAL IS MAXIMIZING PROFITS FOR US GLOBAL AGRICULTURE AND MEAT IN OVERSEAS MARKETS----WHO CARES ABOUT THE HEALTH OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

These are pols you are electing as democrats folks~

As I showed earlier, Trans Pacific Trade Pact TPP has Obama and neo-liberals overseas demanding nations that partner in this allow antiobiotics and hormones in their nation's food supply even as we know it is a health crisis in America.  This is what dismantling public health looks like.  Normally, the Department of Health and Human Services at Federal and State level would be shouting against all of these policies as harmful to public health----but they are silent.  That is what dismantling public health does -----no public advocate.



New salmonella outbreak in chicken resists antibiotics
Elizabeth Weise , USA TODAY 7:35 p.m. EDT October 8, 2013

A salmonella outbreak linked to raw chicken from California involves several antibiotic-resistant strains of the disease and has put at least 42% of the victims in the hospital, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

"That's a high percentage," said CDC spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds. "You would expect about 20% hospitalizations with salmonella Heidelberg."

There have been no deaths linked to the outbreak.

Thirteen percent of those sickened have salmonella septicemia, a serious, life-threatening whole-body inflammation, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington.

DeWaal was briefed by Christopher Braden, director of the division of food-borne illness at the CDC.

"This outbreak shows that it is a terrible time for government public health officials to be locked out of their offices and labs, and for government websites to go dark," she said.

As of Tuesday, 278 people in 18 states have been sickened in the salmonella Heidelberg outbreak. Interviews with some of the patients have linked it to chicken produced by Foster Farms at three California plants, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said Monday.

The CDC has been hampered in tracing the outbreak because the government shutdown meant the agency had to shut down PulseNet, a national network of public health laboratories that looks for trends and matches reports to spot food-borne illness outbreaks. It's one of the agency's most important tools in detecting such problems.

"We were trying to do this without the automatic system, and it was nearly impossible," Reynolds said. Seven of the eight staffers who run the system were furloughed. "We were doing it by hand, and it just become untenable."

CDC director Thomas Frieden determined that not having PulseNet was resulting in "an imminent threat to health and safety," a finding that allowed the agency to bring back the seven staffers, Reynolds said Tuesday. "It's back up and running as of today."

There are seven strains of salmonella Heidelberg involved in the outbreak, and some are resistant to some commonly used antibodies. That makes it a very "complex" outbreak, Reynolds said.

"The salmonella strains are showing resistance to multiple antibiotics, and that means more people are going to the hospital and their infections will be harder for physicians to treat," DeWaal said.


The USDA's public health alert named three facilities operated by Foster Farms as the likely source of raw chicken contaminated with salmonella. Most of it was sold in California, Oregon and Washington, and most of the illnesses have been in California, the USDA said.

In an emailed statement, a Foster Farms spokeswoman said, "consumers should know that the frontline antibiotics used to treat salmonella are fully effective in treating the illness."

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter took strong exception to that. "They have no ground to stand on to make that statement," she said. Slaughter has been an outspoken advocate for ending the routine feeding of antibiotics to animals to promote growth, a practice which FDA and CDC agree can breed antibiotic resistant strains of disease.

Frontline antibiotics aren't all working in this outbreak, she said. "These Heidelberg strains are resistant to multiple antibiotics, including ampicillin, chloramphenicol, tetracycline and streptomycin."

The chicken has not been recalled because the agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service "is unable to link the illnesses to a specific product and a specific production period," the news release says. Consumers can identify products that came from the three plants by looking for these packaging codes: P6137, P6137A and P7632.

In its own news release, Foster Farms said it is working with USDA inspectors and the CDC. The company's food safety chief, Robert O'Connor, said USDA inspections have not been affected by the federal government shutdown.

Common symptoms of salmonella food poisoning include diarrhea, cramps and fever that typically start eight to 72 hours after eating food with high levels of the bacteria. Some people get chills, nausea and vomiting, lasting up to seven days, the USDA says. For people with weak immune systems, including infants and the elderly, the infection can be deadly.

Foster Farms encouraged consumers to cook poultry to an internal temperature of 165 degrees to kill disease-carrying pathogens. The USDA recommends that consumers use a food thermometer as the only way to be sure the proper temperature is reached.

An outbreak of one of the same strains of salmonella was linked to Foster Farms chicken in 2012 in Oregon and Washington. That outbreak sickened 134 people in 13 states, the CDC reported this year.

In a statement on its website, Foster Farms said it has "instituted a number of additional food safety practices, processes and technology throughout company facilities that have already proven effective in controlling salmonella in its Pacific Northwest operations earlier this year."

Salmonella is known to contaminate poultry flocks in the USA.

"Salmonella is naturally occurring in poultry and can be fully eradicated if raw product is properly handled and fully cooked," O'Connor of Foster Farms said.

Several European countries have succeeded in eradicating it by stringent testing and eliminating any flock with an infected bird, but that is considered too costly to implement in the USA.

Contributing: Kim Painter


________________________________________


Remember, if neo-liberals are pushing hormones and antibiotics overseas----they have no intent in ridding the US of this public health disaster.  The joke in circles of the rich---an epidemic could take millions of people from an overpopulated planet.  The stage for epidemic has been set by Clinton and now Obama.  Democrats work for the people and republicans work for wealth and profit.  Neo-liberals are republicans.

Dismantling food safety in the US is necessary when the goal is to flood US markets with food from countries having no health standards.  That is what neo-liberalism has done from Reagan/Clinton and now Obama.  LET THE PEOPLE DIE----THIS IS ABOUT PROFITS!


Published on Thursday, August 22, 2013 by OtherWords

The Un-American Way: On the Anti-Democratic 'Trans-Pacific Partnership' Why the TPP deal threatens food safety and public health
by Wenonah Hauter

The United States is negotiating a NAFTA-style trade deal that should be alarming to American consumers. The main reason it’s not getting much attention is that the mainstream media is largely ignoring it.(GlobalTradeWatch/Flickr)

This pact deserves more news coverage. It threatens to undermine our own laws and increase the opportunity for corporate takeovers of public resources in the United States and abroad. The worst part? These negotiations are taking place behind closed doors.

This controversial agreement is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It’s comprised of the United States plus 11 other nations that border the Pacific Ocean. The TPP would boost liquefied natural gas exports and food imports. This increases the real dangers posed by reckless fracking for natural gas and the growth of imported food from several countries whose safety standards fall far short of our own.

The TPP could become the biggest corporate power grab in U.S. history. This deal would establish a regime under which corporations would acquire an equal status to countries, allowing them to take legal action against governments both at the national and local levels.

With this power, multinational corporations — especially energy companies — could overturn laws enacted to protect the public and the environment if they were to deem that those protections violated the profit-based terms of this trade agreement.

The United States currently has enough challenges plaguing our food system, with many of our would-be TPP partners shipping unsafe food even without these so-called free-trade agreements. Seafood imports alone have been particularly troubling. Much of the seafood we import is farm-raised using antibiotics and hormones that are illegal in our own country, and a mere 2 percent of those imports are actually inspected by the FDA.

The TPP would encourage increasing the amount of seafood we take in without requiring the trading partners to ban the use of illegal chemicals.

This could also hurt the American consumers through the expansion of the oil and gas industry, as it tries to increase its land use at home to frack more gas for export to our new TPP partners.

This pact could quickly undermine local, state, and even federal laws that protect public health and the environment. Many localities have recently passed laws to ban fracking. Unfortunately, a lot of the companies that are pursuing hydraulic fracturing in the U.S. are either foreign-owned or have foreign investors.

The TPP would potentially give companies the power to sue local governments, granting them their own permission to exploit natural resources and undermine local laws.

Treaties like the TPP undermine important efforts by grassroots movements and governments to protect people and the environment against the dangers of infecting our food system with increased use of antibiotics and hormones or the risks associated with fracking for natural gas.

Protests against this trade accord have already gotten started in other countries, including Japan and Malaysia, as concerns grow over its expected negative effects. The bottom line is that TPP will bring little, if any, benefit to small-scale growers and producers.


As negotiations near completion, it’s critical that we let our members of Congress know that we don’t support this kind of corporate power grab. President Barack Obama is asking Congress to grant “fast-track” authority, allowing him to negotiate the TPP and other trade deals without otherwise requisite congressional oversight. We must stop that from happening.

Undermining laws that U.S. citizens voted to put in place isn’t the American way.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License Wenonah Hauter is the executive director of the consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch. She has worked extensively on energy, food, water and environmental issues at the national, state and local level. Experienced in developing policy positions and legislative strategies, she is also a skilled and accomplished organizer, having lobbied and developed grassroots field strategy and action plans.

__________________________________________

The most disturbing issue with health care being profit-driven is there are no limits to what can be done.  Whether it is Wall Street creating bets on people's life insurance and when they die-----or whether it is the large US global health systems as we have in Baltimore with Johns Hopkins acting in HEALTH TOURISM where the goal is to attract the rich of the world to your institution------all of this making ethics and morality fly out the door as it does in finance.  Johns Hopkins Medical System has been sited once for involvement in illegal organ procurement and citizens of Baltimore for years have said that the poor suspect organ harvesting at Johns Hopkins.

RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE PROFIT-DRIVEN HEALTH TOURISM WILL BRING THESE MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE ACTIONS TO THE US------EVERYONE BELIEVES THIS!

We know this is already happening in the US and it is because public health systems are being dismantled at the Federal and state level.  Baltimore has NO PUBLIC HEALTH after O'Malley and now Rawlings-Blake allowed Sharfstein and Barbot privatize all of public health to private corporate non-profits.


CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR WILL REVERSE THIS PRIVATE HEALTH SYSTEM WITH EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL AND REBUILD PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCIES AND PROTECTIONS FOR THE PEOPLE!



Child Organ Harvesting And Trafficking-Linked Arrest Made In Mexico 

| by  OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ Posted: 03/17/2014 10:22 pm EDT Updated: 03/18/2014 8:59 am EDT
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Huffington Post

Police in Mexico's western state of Michoacan detained an alleged member of the Knights Templar cartel who is suspected of kidnapping children to harvest their organs, an official said Monday.

Michoacan state Public Safety Secretary Carlos Castellanos Becerra alleged that Manuel Plancarte Gaspar was part of the cartel's organ-trafficking ring. The ring would kidnap children and take them to rented homes with medical equipment where their organs were removed, Castellanos Becerra charged.

"We have several statements in open investigations that point to a network of several suspects who would identify people with certain characteristics, especially children, and kidnap them," he said.

Castellanos Becerra said the cases go back several years, but he said he couldn't give any specific details or discuss evidence because the investigation is still open.

Plancarte Gaspar, 34, was detained last week along with another suspect in a stolen car. The men also had some crystal meth, Castellanos Becerra said. He said Plancarte Gaspar is the nephew of Enrique Plancarte Solis, a top Knights Templar leader.

Hours before the announcement, a leader of one of the local vigilante groups that sprang up last year in Michoacan to challenge the cartel's control told a radio station that people in the area knew the Knights Templar gang was involved in organ trafficking because several children had been rescued in his town while being transported in a refrigerated container inside a van.

"They were inside a refrigerated box, tightly wrapped in blankets," Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles, leader of the civilian "self-defense" group in Tepalcatepec, said in a morning interview with MVS radio.

Mireles said the van carrying the children was headed to the port city of Lazaro Cardenas and ended up in Tepalcatepec after making a wrong turn.

"They were all children from the same Mexico City school," he said.

He said the children's parents had allowed them to go on an outing to the beach when they were likely kidnapped. He said the children were turned over to their parents who traveled to Tepalcatepec.

Mireles didn't say when the children were rescued and didn't answer his cellphone Monday.

Mexican authorities have said drug trafficking is no longer the top source of income for the Knights Templar, which was once a top producer of crystal meth. The officials say the cartel's main sources of income are illegal mining, illegal logging and extortion.



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April 25th, 2014

4/25/2014

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I OCCASIONALLY MISS A DAY OF BLOGGING WHEN ATTENDING SYMPOSIUMS OR RALLIES....PLEASE COME BACK.  I BLOG ON WEEKDAYS.....

CORPORATE POLS ARE DISMANTLING EVERY AVENUE FOR COMMUNICATIONS FOR WHAT WILL BE 90% OF AMERICANS.  IF YOU DO NOT SHOUT OUT TO SAVE NET NEUTRALITY AND THE POST OFFICE-----ALL COMMUNICATIONS WILL BE CONTROLLED BY CORPORATIONS AND LIMITED TO A FEW PEOPLE.



I attended a rally yesterday of Postal workers fighting to keep the US Post Office public.  The USPS is the only method of communication left that is public and that will always work in the public interest in providing quality service and make communications accessible to all.  Allowing neo-liberals and neo-cons to privatize USPS will open the door to millions of people having no means of communication.

CORPORATE POLITICIANS IN BOTH PARTIES ARE DISMANTLING THE POST OFFICE PIECE BY PIECE IN HANDING ALL REVENUE-GENERATING OPERATIONS TO PRIVATE CORPORATIONS.  THEY HAVE CREATED POLICY THAT DELIBERATELY TAKES REVENUE THAT WOULD MAKE THE USPS A PROFITABLE AGENCY
-----PRE-FUNDING OF PENSIONS DECADES IN ADVANCE----JUST TO STARVE THE POST OFFICE BUDGET.  REMEMBER, THE USPS TAKES NO TAXPAYER MONEY.  IT IS SELF-FUNDING.

Let's look at the goal of neo-liberal/neo-con policy as regards communications.  Think what is needed to take a nation of 300 million people from a first world society to a third world society ------kill education, control communication, and create a surveillance society.  This has been the recipe of totalitarianism for centuries.

How are your cell phone plans going?  Lot's of free phones and each member of the family using them.  Not missing the $15 phone bill with unlimited local calls when we had our public utility.  Wall Street intends to end the compartmentalization of services and go with an everything or nothing plan.   Just as we are forced to pay for 100 cable channels in order to watch a half dozen......they are going to require people to buy unlimited/shared plans that will price many people out of the market. A few hundred a month for phone and internet will keep many families away. There goes the phone for everyone in the family.  What is happening at the same time is a culture of robo-calls hitting our phones.  Collection agencies and marketing firms
are now filling the time we have bought with daily calls sometimes two and three firms each day.  So, the public is now paying to receive more calls it does not want and having smaller amounts of time to use in communicating.  CALL TO STOP THESE HARASSING MESSAGES YOU SAY!  The phone services have allowed these businesses the ability to over-ride MUTING......to over-ride CALL ENDING.....AND phones are being built so people cannot block calls from numbers they do not want.  Imagine if you pay $30 for hundred minutes of time and half of this is taken in robo-calls.      THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW TO LOW-INCOME PEOPLE AND IT IS GETTING WORSE.  WHY BUY TIME FOR A PHONE THAT WILL BE LOST TO CORPORATE ROBO-CALLS.  There goes that means of communication.  This is 'de-phoning' the working class but you can bet the middle-class is not far behind in seeing phone bills eating too much of disposable income.  People are being left to count the minutes they can get to talk so forget making calls that require long wait times----you know, customer service.

DE-PHONING.....DE-BANKING.....what is next?

It was announced that the Obama Administration is moving forward with ending net neutrality after making this issue central in his election in 2008.  PROTECTING PEOPLE ACCESS TO WHAT HAS BECOME AS ESSENTIAL AS ELECTRICITY AND FUEL IN LIVING LIFE IN AMERICA.  There's profit to be made say neo-liberals!  So, rather than appoint an FCC head that moved forward with declaring the internet a UTILITY so rates would be controlled as electricity and water is now....everyone paying the same for the same products...Neo-liberals are going to create a tiered system of accessing the internet with corporations taking all of the high speed capability and you and I being able to afford what will be ever slower and limited access to much information on the internet.  Remember, email is considered data and as the charges for data climb as it will with the end of net neutrality......you will be counting the words you send.   Video streaming will become too expensive to afford and as you know, most of the websites we open are now full of video/graphics that will make costs soar.  MOST PEOPLE WILL NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO MUCH ON THE INTERNET AND EMAIL WILL BECOME RATIONED. 

THIS IS THE TOTALITY OF OUR COMMUNICATIONS FOLKS.  PHONES AND EMAIL BECOME TOO EXPENSIVE WHAT DO YOU HAVE?  You write a letter.  But wait.......there is no mail service because the USPS was privatized and mail delivery is not a profitable business.  Prices for stamps are high now because of the privatization and loss of revenue ----think what the price will become when  global corporations control the stamp!

What the Post Office privatizers are now doing is eliminating the Post Office as a place and door-to-door delivery and centralizing where you will go every day to pick up mail.  STAPLES has just been awarded the ability to receive letters you want to send, ending the protections of mail traveling in public hands.  FED-X and UPS do a great job you say!

FED-X AND UPS DO NOT WANT THE MAIL BUSINESS BECAUSE IT IS NOT PROFITABLE......LETTER HANDLING WILL END.



WE THE PEOPLE WILL BE LEFT TO SEND SMOKE SIGNALS IF YOU ALLOW CORPORATIONS TO END OUR LAST PUBLIC METHOD OF COMMUNICATIONS.



AT&T Puts an End to Unlimited Data Plans


By Liane CassavoyJune 2, 2010


AT&T has rolled out new mobile data plans for users of its smartphones and tablets. Starting next Monday -- the same day that Apple is widely expected to unveil a new iPhone -- AT&T will no longer offer its $30-per-month unlimited data plan to new users. Instead, customers will have to pick between plans that allow them a certain amount of data access each month.

In a statement announcing the new plans, AT&T says the new options will "make it more affordable for more people to enjoy the benefits of the mobile Internet." The new data plans include three options:

- DataPlus: This $15-per-month plan allows users to access 200MB of data per month. If customers go over the 200MB limit, they will receive another 200MB for an additional $15 per month. AT&T says that 65 percent of its smartphone customers currently use less than 200MB of data per month on average, so this plan should save them money.

- DataPro: This $25-per-month plan allows users to access 2GB of data per month. If you go over that limit, each additional GB of data will cost $10. AT&T says that 98 percent of its smartphone customers user less than 2GB of data a month.

- Tethering: If you choose to use your smartphone as tethered modem, you'll have to spring for the tethering plan in addition to the DataPro plan. Tethering costs an extra $20 per month. AT&T says that tethering for iPhones will be available this summer, when Apple releases the iPhone OS 4 update.

Current AT&T smartphone customers will be able to keep their unlimited data plans, for now, at least. But users of the iPad 3G may see a change in their plan: iPad users who currently subscribe to the $29.99-per-month unlimited plan will be switched to the DataPro plan.

__________________________________________

For those not wanting or needing all the bells and whistles you are being forced out of buying what you need because of predatory marketing and credit collection.  If a family cannot afford internet connection they will not be able to switch to unlimited/shared option plans....they will be de-phoned. 

BETTER THE MASSES NOT COMMUNICATE IN AN AUTOCRATIC SOCIETY!

If 70% of Americans are at the poverty line and the percentage will rise if Trans Pacific Trade Pact TPP is ended....most Americans will not be able to afford ordinary communications.


Even the middle-class needs to be concerned as ending net neutrality will mean prices for what are now ordinary downloads....like movie streaming.....will skyrocket.  These shared plans will rise from $99 to well over a few hundred dollars a month if you are to retain the quality you have now.
  With health care costs rising, just when does that disposable income disappear?  Communications will go before food, health, and shelter!

APSeptember 17, 2012, 3:12 PM

Robocall complaints up despite do-not-call list

(Skip Peterson/AP, file)

(AP) WASHINGTON - So much for silence from telemarketers at the cherished dinner hour, or any other hour of the day.

Complaints to the government are up sharply about unwanted phone solicitations, raising questions about how well the federal "do-not-call" registry is working. The biggest category of complaint: those annoying prerecorded pitches called robocalls that hawk everything from lower credit card interest rates to new windows for your home.

Robert Madison, 43, of Shawnee, Kan., says he gets automated calls almost daily from "Ann, with credit services," offering to lower his interest rates.


"I am completely fed up," Madison said in an interview. "I've repeatedly asked them to take me off their call list." When he challenges their right to call, the solicitors become combative, he said. "There's just nothing that they won't do."

Madison, who works for a software company, says his phone number has been on the do-not-call list for years. Since he hasn't made any progress getting "Ann" to stop calling, Madison has started to file complaints about her to the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the list.

Amid fanfare from consumer advocates, the federal do-not-call list was put in place nearly a decade ago as a tool to limit telemarketing sales calls to people who didn't want to be bothered. The registry has more than 209 million phone numbers on it. That's a significant chunk of the country, considering that there are about 84 million residential customers with traditional landline phones and plenty more people with cellphone numbers, which can also be placed on the list.

Telemarketers are supposed to check the list at least every 31 days for numbers they can't call. But some are calling anyway, and complaints about phone pitches are climbing even as the number of telemarketers checking the registry has dropped dramatically.

Government figures show monthly robocall complaints have climbed from about 65,000 in October 2010 to more than 212,000 this April. More general complaints from people asking a telemarketer to stop calling them also rose during that period, from about 71,000 to 182,000.

At the same time, fewer telemarketers are checking the FTC list to see which numbers are off limits. In 2007, more than 65,000 telemarketers checked the list. Last year, only about 34,000 did so.


Despite those numbers, the FTC says the registry is doing an effective job fighting unwanted sales calls.

"It's absolutely working," Lois Greisman, associate director of the agency's marketing practices division, said in an interview with The Associated Press. But, she said, "the proliferation of robocalls creates a challenge for us."

Greisman said prerecorded messages weren't used as a major marketing tool in 2003, when the registry began. "In part because of technology and in part because of greater competitiveness in the marketplace, they have become the marketing vehicle of choice for fraudsters," she said.

For people trying to scam people out of their money, it's an attractive option. Robocalls are hard to trace and cheap to make.

With an autodialer, millions of calls can be blasted out in a matter of hours, bombarding people in a struggling economy with promises of debt assistance and cheap loans. Even if a consumer does not have a phone number on the do-not-call list, robocalls are illegal. A 2009 rule specifically banned this type of phone sales pitch unless a consumer has given written permission to a company to call.

Political robocalls and automated calls from charities, or informational robocalls, such as an airline calling about a flight delay, are exempt from the ban. But those exemptions are being abused, too, with consumers complaining of getting calls that begin as a legitimate call, say from a charity or survey, but then eventually switch to an illegal telemarketing sales pitch.

Robocalls can be highly annoying to consumers because they're hard to stop. Fraudsters use caller-ID spoofing so that when a person tries to call back the robocaller, they get a disconnected number or something other than the source of the original call.

The best thing people can do when they get an illegal robocall is to hang up.
Do not press "1'' to speak to a live operator to get off the call list. If you do, the FTC says, it will probably just lead to more robocalls. The caller will know you're there and willing to answer, and may continue to call.

The FTC says people can also contact their phone providers to ask them to block the number. But be sure to ask whether they charge for that. Telemarketers change caller-ID information often, so it might not be worth paying a fee to block a number that will soon change.

The industry says most legitimate telemarketers don't utilize robocalls to generate sales.

"They give a bad name to telemarketers and hurt everybody," says Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of government affairs at Direct Marketing Association, a trade group.

Cerasale says the do-not-call list has resulted in telemarketers making far fewer cold calls to random people. Instead, he says, marketers have shifted to other methods of reaching people, such as mail, email or targeted advertisements on websites. That, he said, could be one of the reasons that the number of telemarketers checking the registry has dropped so sharply.

In light of the increased complaints, the FTC is stepping up efforts to combat robocalls. It recently released two consumer videos to explain what robocalls are and what to do about them. It also announced an October summit to examine the problem and explore the possibility of emerging technology that might help trace robocalls and prevent scammers from spoofing their caller ID.

Enforcement is another tool. The FTC has brought cases against about a dozen companies since 2009, including Talbots, DirecTV and Dish Network. The cases have yielded $5.6 million in penalties.

The agency said this month that it was mailing refund checks to more than 4,000 consumers nationwide who were caught up in a scam where the telemarketer used robocalls from names like "Heather from card services" to pitch worthless credit card rate reduction programs for an up-front fee. Checks to consumers range from $31 to $1,300 depending on how much was lost.

_______________________________________

When ATT ends unlimited data-----the most widely used option----you know the market is on the way to creating conditions you don't want or need to one that is most profitable.  That is what this shared packaging will be......paying for the 100 cable stations for a few wanted channels.

As the prices for SMART PHONE and technology rise, the tech industries are filling our schools with processes that require more and more operational exposure.  Society is being built around the need to access more of this and the ability to afford it is growing for most people.  THIS IS WHAT BEING WINNERS AND LOSERS IS ABOUT.

REMEMBER, HAVING PUBLIC UTILITIES IS WHAT MADE ALL CITIZENS EQUALLY ABLE TO BUILD THEIR FUTURES AND RISE IN ANY DIRECTION.  THIS MASS-PRIVATIZATION OF ALL THAT IS PUBLIC WILL IMPOVERISH AND DISENFRANCHISE MOST IN AMERICAN SOCIETY.

Ending net neutrality will give large corporations the ability to access ever faster and larger data packages while the employee has no access and computers at work protected against private use. 

ERGO------MOST AMERICANS WILL NOT KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON AS IS TRUE IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES!


Opinion: It’s a trap! Beware carriers’ new unlimited talk and text plans


By Brad Chacos  —   July 20, 2012 6 44 23 12 2 The most effective chains are the ones you don’t realize bind you.

After AT&T unveiled its own version of a shared data plan on Wednesday, dozens upon dozens of posts hit the Web heralding the news and weighing Mobile Share against both traditional data plans and Verizon’s Share Everything. (Even yours truly got in on the frenzy.)

Most posts considered the deal’s advantages for the consumer. But how do shared data plans benefit the carriers? Ah, that’s where things get a bit more devious.

Pooled data is the bait on the trap AT&T and Verizon have structured shared data to give themselves several advantages. The plans meet customer demands for a family data pool. Low subscription prices for tablets should drive more consumers to connect their slates to cellular networks. And both Mobile Share and Share Everything include unlimited talk and text minutes.

Wait! That last one’s a consumer benefit, not a carrier benefit. Isn’t it?

Not quite.

Analysts who have studied the plans agree: If you aren’t already on an unlimited talk and texting plan, shared data plans will actually cost you more money — often, a lot more money. Being for-profit businesses, carriers of course love pulling down more dough, but even more than that, they like the idea of getting you used to paying for unlimited talk and text.

That’s because talk and text deliver insane profit margins. It is a cash cow for carriers, and the cow’s milk is running dry.

Data killed the voice plan star Don’t take my word for it, though. Back in June, the Wall Street Journal reported that cellular subscribers have spent less time talking on the phone ever since the iPhone launched in 2007. That follows several years of an upward usage trend prior to the arrival of smartphones.

You never hear anybody complaining about their rollover minutes any more, do you? Now you know why.

Carriers have been keen to the mass migration for a while now, which helps explain why Skype had to fight a terrible struggle to even land on the original iPhone. (AT&T only caved in after both consumers and the FCC complained heavily.) That griping isn’t a thing of the past, either; this past May, Nokia tried to blame its Lumia struggles on Skype’s Windows Phone app.

In a 2011 New York Times report, Verizon vice president Brian Higgins conceded that as Internet speeds and availability increase, “Eventually, everything migrates to a data channel. We’re moving away from silos of communication to one where everything is combined together.”

That worries carriers, who see much more profit from voice subscriptions than data subscriptions.

After Apple announced that FaceTime would begin working over cellular networks in iOS 6, GigaOm and 9to5Mac examined the situation and found that chatting over FaceTime uses 3MB of data per minute. On a 2GB plan, that’s good for 666 minutes; a 3GB bumps that to an even 1,000. Comparable minutes on a voice plan cost significantly more than those on data plans — sometimes more than twice as much, the publications found.

Surprise! It’s rumored that AT&T might charge iPhone users an additional fee if they want to use FaceTime over Cellular. (Sprint definitely won’t, though.)

Data also killed the SMS star Carrier profits are even more gargantuan when it comes to text messages. In the wake of Apple’s iMessage service, CNET’s Steve Shankland did the math and found that on per-text SMS plans, which normally charge 20 cents per text, carriers receive the equivalent of $1,250 for every MB — not GB — of data — a 8,333 percent markup over the $30/2GB data plan Verizon had available at the time.

Shankland said the $20/month unlimited texting plan was “a better deal if you send and receive more than 100 messages a month.” No matter which way you cut it, though, carriers make a ton of money on texting.

That’s why iMessage and services like Kik (which send texts via data networks) have the carriers worked up. Data-based texting services were estimated to cost carriers $13.9 billion (with a “B”) in lost revenue in 2011.

“You lie awake at night worrying about what is that will disrupt your business model,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in May. “Apple iMessage is a classic example. If you’re using iMessage, you’re not using one of our messaging services, right? That’s disruptive to our messaging revenue stream.”

People who talk and text less often drop down to lower-priced limited service plans. But carriers won’t have to lose revenue or leave their messaging services lying dormant if they can convince you to pay for unlimited talk and text as part of a shared data plan.

Coincidentally, shared data plans began appearing shortly after Stephenson made his comments.

Can you escape the trap? If you don’t chat on the phone very often and don’t want to pay a premium for a service you don’t use — things are looking grim.

After introducing its Share Everything plans, Verizon did away with all the rest of its individual offerings. Unlimited talk and text is now the only way to fly on the nation’s largest 4G LTE network. Existing subscribers can keep their current plans, but be prepared to say sayonara to your low-cost limited voice minutes when you upgrade to a new handset.

AT&T’s a better option for tentative talkers and texters. It is still offering its traditional individual and family plans alongside Mobile Share — at least for now. Don’t expect that to last forever, though. As AT&T Mobility honcho Ralph de la Vega said in the aforementioned June WSJ article:

“The industry’s definitely moving towards unlimited… . Especially as more people adopt smartphones that have voice capabilities over the Internet, segmented voice plans will become less relevant.”

In other words, the talk and text cash cow isn’t dead. If shared data plans give us a glimpse of the future, we’ll be paying for its life support for a long, long time.
__________________________________________

We want to be clear-----Obama is not forced to do this.  He understands that the only way to have net neutrality was to declare it an utility.  His FCC refused to do that and sent the the Supreme Court policy they knew would be refused and now use this as an excuse to move forward with ending net neutrality.

When we have politicians who campaign on issue stances and then ignore them----we have not had free and fair elections.  One cannot vote for a politician if you have to guess if they will or won't do what they say.  That is politics in Iran or Nigeria.....


THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST INCREDIBLE POLICIES AS REGARDS MOVING TO A THIRD WORLD SOCIETY AND YOU DO NOT HEAR IT DISCUSSED AT ALL ON MEDIA.....DO YOU HEAR YOUR PUBLIC MEDIA DISCUSSING THESE POLICIES?  THEN, SHAKE THEM OUT!  THEY SHOULD NOT BE RECEIVING TAXPAYER MONEY IF THEIR GOAL IS TO KEEP YOU UNINFORMED!



April 24, 2014
Goodbye, Net Neutrality; Hello, Net Discrimination
Posted by Tim Wu  The New Yorker

In 2007, at a public forum at Coe College, in Iowa, Presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked about net neutrality. Specifically, “Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate net neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint F.C.C. commissioners that support open Internet principles like net neutrality?”

“The answer is yes,” Obama replied. “I am a strong supporter of net neutrality.”
Explaining, he said, “What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites…. And that I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there.”

If reports in the Wall Street Journal are correct, Obama’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Thomas Wheeler, has proposed a new rule that is an explicit and blatant violation of this promise. In fact, it permits and encourages exactly what Obama warned against: broadband carriers acting as gatekeepers and charging Web sites a payola payment to reach customers through a “fast lane.”

Late last night Wheeler released a statement accusing the Wall Street Journal of being “flat-out wrong.” Yet the Washington Post has confirmed, based on inside sources, that the new rule gives broadband providers “the ability to enter into individual negotiations with content providers … in a commercially reasonable matter.” That’s telecom-speak for payola payments, and a clear violation of Obama’s promise.

This is what one might call a net-discrimination rule, and, if enacted, it will profoundly change the Internet as a platform for free speech and small-scale innovation. It threatens to make the Internet just like everything else in American society: unequal in a way that deeply threatens our long-term prosperity.

Some history may help explain the situation. The new rule gives broadband providers what they’ve wanted for about a decade now: the right to speed up some traffic and degrade others. (With broadband, there is no such thing as accelerating some traffic without degrading other traffic.) We take it for granted that bloggers, start-ups, or nonprofits on an open Internet reach their audiences roughly the same way as everyone else. Now they won’t. They’ll be behind in the queue, watching as companies that can pay tolls to the cable companies speed ahead. The motivation is not complicated. The broadband carriers want to make more money for doing what they already do. Never mind that American carriers already charge some of the world’s highest prices, around sixty dollars or more per month for broadband, a service that costs less than five dollars to provide. To put it mildly, the cable and telephone companies don’t need more money.

In 2007, Obama understood all of this. Without net neutrality, the result would be “much better quality from the Fox News site and you’d be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites.” That year, he swore to me personally that he was committed to defending net neutrality. Unfortunately, his F.C.C. chairman is in the process of violating a core promise to innovators, to the technology sector, and, really, to all of us who use the Internet.

_______________________________________

Since the goal of privatization is busting public sector unions and send more taxpayer money to corporate profit....what is this mantra from neo-liberals shouting they are working to build the middle-class?

IT IS A COMPLETE LIE!  NEO-LIBERALS ARE THE ONES WHO KILLED THE MIDDLE-CLASS WITH CLINTON AND HIS EMPIRE-BUILDING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS SCHEMES.

Right now sending a letter is getting more and more problematic because the Post Office is being defunded and losing control of avenues of delivery.  Closing sorting facilities because hundreds of billions of dollars in pre-paid pensions is taken from annual revenues is a deliberate move to make the USPS unable to provide competitive service.  Where is all those billions in pension pre-payments going?  Well, as you know, the US Treasury is broke......these pensions are being spent as with our payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare to build and maintain the NSA spying and Homeland Security.

WE NEED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO BE OUTRAGED!!!!!!  STOP ALLOWING THESE POSTAL EMPLOYEES TO FIGHT FOR WHAT IS ESSENTIAL IN A DEMOCRACY-----COMMUNICATIONS!



AlterNet / By Jodie Gummow

  Post Office Privatization Deal in the Works: Activists Take to the Streets The Postal Service plans to replace well-paid postal workers with low-wage Staples employees.

American Postal Workers Union protest in New York.
Photo Credit: Jodie Gummow

April 24, 2014  |     “U.S. mail is not for sale!” This was the hard-hitting message of hundreds of local activists who joined forces across the country in a national day of action protesting a privatization deal between the U.S. Postal Services and Staples.  

The USPS pilot program establishing unsecured postal counters in more than 80 Staples stores in four geographic areas began late last year.  


In response, American Postal Workers Union (APWU) members and associates rallied outside Staples stores around the country demanding an end to the deal which they say is aimed at replacing good, living-wage postal jobs with low-wage, high-turnover jobs filled with untrained Staples employees.  They say it may eventually lead to layoffs and the closing of post offices.

In New York, members of the New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union (APWU) joined forces outside the 5 th Avenue Staples store to deliver a clear message to the American people:

“What we’re trying to do is send a message to the U.S. Postal Service and Staples that the U.S. mail is not for sale,” Jonathan Smith, president of the New York APWU who led the New York charge explained to AlterNet. “We will not allow them to hire employees with no minimum wage, with no benefits and who are not trained to do the job properly.  With all the concern about privacy and identity theft, that’s just not the right way to handle the U.S. mail.  The mail needs to be handled by experienced postal employees who swear an oath and who are accountable to the American people. This is a disservice to the American people and the constitution,” he said.

While Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has denied the USPS-Staples scheme is privatization, the APWU recently obtained a copy of the heavily redacted  USPS agreement, which reveals the true goal of the program is to replace jobs held by USPS employees with low-wage jobs in the private sector, as well as expand the program to 1,500 Staples stores nationwide.

Smith explained to AlterNet how this directly comprises the quality, security and reliability that consumers expect and deserve in the handling of their mail as the struggling U.S postal service looks for ways to cut costs and boost revenue.

“Donahoe is trying to turn the postal service into a for-profit organization. We are here to tell the American people that we will not allow the Postal Service to take our work away and give it to people that are not trained. We are the 99 percent and if we don't fight for our rights, they will take it away.”

Likewise, Bobby Blum, Vice President of the  National Postal Mail Handlers Union spoke of the importance of unions to join together in postal alliance to fight against global corporations and privatization. 

 “We’re here today to stop the transfer of middle-class jobs to low-wage jobs and to stop the transfer of union jobs to non-union jobs,” he said. “We stand shoulder to shoulder to stop the privatization of the people’s postal service.   The CEO of Staples averages a $15 million a year salary, while the average Staples employee makes less than $9 an hour…We must stand together to fight. We can’t let postal employment go to the corporate elite and the cronies in congress dismantle the people’s service.  An injury to one is an injury to all – we stand with you today and say, ‘Stop staples! Stop staples now!” he said.

Fuelling further outage is the recent Staples announcement that it will close 225 stores by 2015, which has many furious employees wondering how such an important public asset could be turned over to a struggling private company, as Times Square postal worker Diane Erlanger explained to AlterNet at the protest.





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April 10th, 2014

4/10/2014

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NEO-CONS AND NEO-LIBERALS ARE PUSHING THESE EDUCATION REFORMS AS FAST AS THEY CAN BECAUSE NO ONE WANTING A DEMOCRACY WITH A BILL OF RIGHTS WANTS THESE REFORMS....DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN.

IF YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS ARE NOT SHOUTING AGAINST THIS.....IF COMMUNITIES DO NOT RISE AGAINST THIS ......YOU WILL LOSE DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION AND BE LEFT WITH AUTOCRATIC JOB TRAINING FROM KINDERGARTEN THROUGH CAREER COLLEGE.


HERE IS A LETTER FROM A PARENT AND HER EXPERIENCE WITH BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND EDUCATION REFORM:


This is my daughter, my sacrifices, the wind beneath my wings, the whole of my heart,my one and only and the catalyst for my advocacy. 3 months ago I posted that my daughter was being bullied in school. The school did not act responsibly & I removed her from school for her safety & to keep me from going to jail.
I stepped down from many of my community efforts to focus on my daughter and my family. For 3 months I studied the history of Balto City's special education & the legislation that is in place to protect our children. I can confidently say that the school system does not take our children's future seriously. My daughter has been out of school for 3 months and no one has contacted me to see if she is alive or dead. I soon realized why it's possible to have such a high percentage of special ed students go from the school system to the prison system and homelessness. It's not just the school system's fault, parents have to start showing up & representing their children. We have a small window of time to set the stage for our children's future.
 My daughter will began attending her new school on Monday for an appropriate safe education. If this could happen to us, an informed parent & special education advocate; imagine what could happen to a parent that is not showing up. The disparity and heartache I endured as a parent, brought me to my knees so many times. I was preparing to leave Maryland in order to give my child the best there was to offer. I never ask people to pray for me because I believe my relationship with God & Universe is solid, but I asked a new to pray for me because my spirit had broke. I don't want another parent's spirit to break while wanting better for their child. Though some in the community may be disappointed, my focus will remain with my daughter and special education. 32,000 special ed students were arrested in Maryland last year and no one cares. I believe that I can make a difference in the prison and homeless rate with our children and I'm going to try.
Thank you MH for your prayers. When much is given, much is required.

Whether Race to the Top or Common Core----the intent is to create an education environment structured completely on workplace training done as cheaply as possible.

The biggest issue to remember in judging the effects a policy like Common Core will have on the US is this: the idea the standardization will increase quality or achievement has no basis....all research shows otherwise. Take STEM courses....Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.....all of these subjects are based on facts so they are already standardized. To change the context of democratic education and plurality in society because the conservative states want to teach creationism over evolution is ridiculous. If national standard tests require knowledge of evolution and if evolution is taught in university......that will be the standard. What danger lies in Common Core is the standardization of the humanities and liberal arts. Keep in mind that it is the humanities that gave us THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. You know, when all people are citizens having the right to education created by and including lives and accomplishments of all citizens. This is the major reason any democracy would reject Common Core. Every region of America has its own vision of history, religion, civics, psychology, literature, etc. This is what makes a plurality. In nations like China where plurality is not allowed-----they have standardization like Common Core. Remember when Bush/Cheney famously stated history would be kind to their administration even after they pushed the US into systemic fraud and corruption.....started war with lies.....removed the US from International Criminal Courts because they pushed crime and torture around the world? Well, Common Core started its development in the Bush Administration and you can bet the standard history lesson for Bush/Cheney will be that their administration was a beacon for American progress.


Regarding what Race to the Top really looks like in Maryland:

Below you see an article in the Baltimore Sun that addresses a media report on the state of education reform in Maryland.  I only posted the first part so look for the article in its entirety.  The point I make here is that while this report looks at factors that assess this reform it completely ignores what most people see as the major factors.  This is deliberate.  If public education is to be dismantled then the public cannot know the goals of these reforms.

Let's look at what we are told and what is actually happening.  I shared this with a friend having a special needs student in Baltimore City schools and she was shocked.
  Remember, special needs is not only physical disability-----it includes emotional and slow-learners as well.  TRUTH BE TOLD----IT WILL INCLUDE MOST OF US.
________________________________________

There are three issues with AP in Maryland.  One can be seen with a CATO Institute chart that shows the school spending curb in Maryland grow while SAT scores stayed flat and low.  Conservative CATO uses that to say more money does not improve education.  In Maryland, fraud and corruption takes 1/2 of most kinds of public funding from the system so we can best assume that this chart shows that it is the fact that the money never made it to the classrooms that caused SAT scores to remain flat.  Indeed, Maryland schools are so underfunded as to lack basic resources for decades. 

The same is happening with AP......the funds are allocated but are not used effectively or are redirected completely.




There is a second side to AP in Maryland.  IN Baltimore, AP is used as a development tool.  In Baltimore you have Dunbar High School designated as an AP school with almost none of the original students capable of achieving in AP.  The reason Dunbar was made AP was to change the student population from low-achieving and underserved to affluent.  This means you will have students never meant to be in AP failing to pass these tests.

The third side to this AP issue is a deliberate intent to skew education data by making it appear that Maryland had a high number of achieving students and therefore strong education programs when it doesn't.  This is a systemic problem in Maryland.  Skewed data all meant to make a politician or program look successful when it isn't.  Parents across the state are crying foul over this one.  So, limiting underserved schools to teaching math and reading just so those grades would rise while neglecting all other subjects causing these students to fail science and social studies for example.  Having AP classes just to have them while not funding these schools enough to make the classroom changes needed is purely political.

As an academic who writes about this nationally I will continue to encourage reporters who take the time to do good research to hold power accountable.



Destiny Miller sits in AP Biology class at Woodlawn High School. Among Baltimore County schools, AP class grades at Woodlawn have some of the weakest correlations with AP test scores, Sun analysis has found. Maryland schools have been leader in Advanced Placement, but results are mixed


Top students at low-performing schools can earn As and Bs, but still fail the exams


Story by Liz Bowie | Photos by Amy Davis  BAltimore Sun



Destiny Miller went online this summer to check one last set of grades from her senior year at Woodlawn High School — scores on three Advanced Placement exams.
The 18-year-old sat alone on her bed waiting for the scores to appear on her smartphone. For many top students like Destiny, the scores might seem an academic footnote; she already had her diploma and had been admitted to college. Yet the idea that she might not have succeeded on the AP tests made her so anxious that, just as the scores began to download, she turned her phone face down, unable to look.

Destiny was experiencing the pressures of being a pioneer on the frontier of Advanced Placement, one of thousands of minority, low-income students being targeted for a nationwide expansion of the rigorous college-level courses. She took a deep breath, turned her phone back over and looked at the three numbers on the screen.

For such students, the scores show how well their education prepared them for college and whether they might earn college course credits, potentially saving thousands of dollars in tuition. For federal and state education officials who have invested $400 million in taxpayer dollars over the past decade to subsidize AP exams for bright, low-income students, the stakes are even higher.

So far, the expansion has not lived up to its promise. It has not delivered vast numbers of students from low-performing high schools to selective colleges with credits in their pockets, helping to bridge the academic gulf between the nation’s rich and poor. Too often, students who haven’t been prepared in earlier grades flounder in AP classes, or are awarded A’s and B’s in the courses and then fail the AP exams.
.............


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When education becomes about profit there is no room for any student that just will not bring the most profit to the corporation owning these schools.  Goodbye special needs structures and good bye equal opportunity and education based on what is good for the student's learning experience.....

Baltimore City schools are now individual businesses with principals given so little money they look at a student with special needs as costing money and work to get rid of them.  That is what school choice and charters do....sets the stage for bypassing equal opportunity all the while handing a large chuck of public education financing to what are private businesses as charters.

Competition and fighting for funding leads to fraud and corruption in our education system just as our entire corporate and governing structure has today.  Quality and access is gone.......democratic education is gone.....and an autocratic standardization is established.  This is what Race to the Top with Obama and Bill Gates pushing nationally and Johns Hopkins and Rawlings-Blake/Baltimore City Hall and O'Malley/Maryland Assembly see as education reform.


ALL OF THE CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND WILL ADVANCE THIS EXCEPT CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND.



Youth group accuses district of pushing out students


DAVID MAIALETTI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER


 BY SOLOMON LEACH, Daily News Staff Writer leachs@phillynews.com, 215-854-5903Posted: April 09, 2014


A GROUP OF current and former students launched a campaign yesterday to identify peers they claim have been pushed out of Philadelphia public schools through closings or cutbacks to key programs.

Youth United for Change said the closure of 24 schools last year, combined with cuts to the school district's Re-Engagement Center and slots in accelerated schools, has left students who drop out with few options.

"Being pushed out is unfair," said YUC member Maury Elliott, a former Simon Gratz High student who briefly re-enrolled in an alternative school. "The school district and the [School Reform Commission] fail to stop this injustice. Instead, they influence it."

Outside school district headquarters, members of the group wore T-shirts that read, "Have You Seen Me?" and stood in front of large makeshift milk cartons with blacked-out pictures.

About 10,000 students were displaced by last year's closures, the district said. Most have been accounted for, but 600, whom YUC described as "missing," have not.

District spokesman Fernando Gallard said an analysis indicated the 600 students either left the district, enrolled in private or parochial schools, or dropped out. Dropout numbers, he said, are typically a year behind.

YUC said another major blow has been cuts to the Re-Engagement Center, which provides former students with re-engagement options and links them to services. The center's workforce is down from five full-time staffers in 2011 to one this year, plus a few interns, the district said.

YUC wants the district to implement better tracking systems for student transitions; acknowledge that school closures increase the likelihood of dropouts; locate and re-engage missing students; conduct and release an analysis of school closings; and fully fund the Re-Engagement Center.

Gallard said that the center is an important part of the district and that the hope is to restore resources to that and other programs.

"This goes to the heart of the conversation we've been having since we had to lay off over 4,000 employees," he said. "It's all directly connected to funding."

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Make no mistake......this privatization will marginalize most families into substandard education.  Remember, only 10% of people would fall into the Advanced Placement category that these privatizers have decided are the only students needing a humanities and democratic rich education.

Baltimore has the most cruel system of culling and throw-away tiering of schools in the nation.  It is all done while Maryland media present education data that is false and propaganda that makes all of this privatization look like creation of quality education and achievement. 

Remember, as most parents and academics know, Common Core
lowers our current level of achievement, it does not enhance it.  While rigor was deliberately removed from classrooms over the last few decades to force achievement to fall......when public schools are allowed to function as they should with full funding and resourced-----THEY PROVIDE THE BROADEST AND DEEPEST EDUCATION AND RIGOR.  America ranked #1 in the world with people of color excelling when democratic education was thriving.



April 5, 2014 · 4:14 pm ↓


Jump to Comments
Quick: send your kids to charters lest they be “tossed in the lion’s den with the special needs student!”

Today, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by journalism professor Andrea Gabor that essentially describes a “two-tier” educational system: one created by the presence of charters that leaves the neediest students behind. And although many official charter spokespeople wouldn’t dare say it, it’s the practice of driving out children with special needs that accounts for lots of the “success” charters brag about.

Gabor devotes a good deal of her attention to charter school attrition, focusing on the effects “no-excuses” policies have on students with special needs:

Some students with I.E.P.s find charters, which often foster a no-excuses culture, a poor fit, and leave voluntarily. But sometimes there’s pressure: Administrators may advise parents that the school can’t support a child’s disability, or punish kids for even the slightest disciplinary infractions. However it happens, it leads to rising special-needs populations at nearby public schools.

Chrystina Russell, the founding principal of Global Technology Preparatory, a Harlem middle school, says charter-school “refugees” often showed up at her school after Oct. 31, when the Department of Education makes key funding decisions for traditional public schools based on head counts. This means that it can be difficult for the schools to hire additional teachers or support personnel when new students show up (though some funding is updated for special-education students who transfer by Dec. 31).

Global Tech had no post-October transfers this year, but had as many as eight two years ago. Nearby Isaac Newton Middle School for Math and Science has had about a dozen so far this year.

Global Tech, where more than one-third of the students have I.E.P.s, does impressive work despite the challenges. If special-education kids — most of whom are black and Hispanic boys — are segregated when they get to high school, they are unlikely to graduate. So Global Tech is committed to mainstreaming them in general-education classes by the eighth grade. Instead of suspending disruptive students, the school takes away extracurricular sports privileges and holds lunchtime detentions and meetings with parents. Some of its special-needs students have been accepted to the best public high schools in the city.

Gabor further notes that the charters which push out special needs students are often the very same ones to claim that they enroll the same types of students as do district schools.  Those charters aren’t, however, bound to “most regulations governing traditional public schools,” and their enrollment and financial policies allow them to manipulate the populations they serve.

Gabor ultimately concludes that “if charter schools are allowed to push out existing public schools, they should, at the very least, be subject to the same accountability measures for enrollment, attrition and disciplinary procedures, to ensure that the neediest students are being treated fairly.”

Amen.

Shortly after its publication, Gabor’s piece was flooded with comments, many echoing her sentiments about the misleading nature of charter schools’ “success.”  (Yay to the NYT for actually publishing a piece with this type of content; it seems, given the support for traditional public education voiced in the comments, that it was a welcome addition to the op-ed section.)

But perhaps most interesting is that the few commenters who advocate for charter expansion highlight exactly what’s wrong with charters in the first place: in general, they are publicly-funded experiments in resegregation. And, disturbingly, many people seem to be okay with that.

Here are some comments, copied and pasted from the NYT page, which show that many charter supporters condone the segregation of our nation’s children–whether it be in terms of race, class, socio-economic status, or ability/special needs.  All emphasis here is mine; misspellings and typos are not!



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As schools in Baltimore are closed because Carl Stokes and City Hall have decided that public funding of public schools will end and all schools will be tied to corporations and private funding......Baltimore adds its next round of national charter chains that have as a goal ending high school education and replace this with vocational job training.  Now, who goes to these schools?  It depends how your child tested in pre-K and the track that Johns Hopkins decides they see best.  This is what school privatization is about.  Restructuring schools with the complete drive being the cheapest vehicle producing made-to-order workers who will have no ability to move beyond the scope of that career focus and most of this leads to poverty wages.

This will hit communities of color first as they have no one speaking out for them.  Wall Street uses the fact that many people will think this will only happen to underserved schools.  Keep in mind-----WALL STREET INTENDS THIS TO REPLACE ALL PUBLIC EDUCATION AND ASK AS WELL....WILL MY CHILDREN BE MIDDLE-CLASS IN A WORLD WHERE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT----TPP----IS LAW?  OF COURSE NOT.

As I said, urban areas like Baltimore and Philadelphia are being used to create a privatized structure that will be expanded all across the state of Maryland and Pennsylvania.  For those wanting to be rid of Brown vs Board of Education giving equal opportunity and protection with Race to the Top remember, conservatives are shouting because of Common Core and loss of control of their public schools and charters....so this is a bipartisan issue and it hurts all Americans regardless of class, race, or region.


Below you see that a plan to have students graduate with an associates degree......remember, what they have in community college now is simply corporate job training.  These students will graduate with a certificate equivalent to training received by any Human Resources program and every time a person changes jobs,......and we know that jobs are now on contract.....you have to go back to these community college job training programs to start another job. 

YOU WILL BE TRACKED INTO A CAREER LINE FOR LIFE BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD, NOR WILL YOU BE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.


Adding a Baltimore Public School to its portfolio?  Sounds like consolidation of a school system readying to become a private national charter chain.


Four new schools apply to open in city Applicants include early college program



Erica L. Green 7:00 p.m. EDT, April 8, 2014  Baltimore Sun

Four new schools are vying to open in Baltimore in the next two years, including an early college high school that would bring a successful model to the city that allows students to earn a college degree by the time they graduate.

The Bard High School Early Colleges network, which operates five tuition-free college programs in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, applied to open a campus in Baltimore in the 2015-2016 school year.

The organization applied to operate a "contract school," meaning it would have an entrance criteria, that would serve 500 students in grades nine through twelve. Its college-preparatory programs focus on a liberal arts and sciences education, and allows students to complete an associate's degree by the time they graduate high school.

The Baltimore Curriculum Project, which currently runs three charter schools in the city, applied to add Govans Elementary School to its portfolio.

The school would serve 459 students in grades Pre-K through fifth grade. The application says that the BCP would bring an "array of experiences" such as visual and performing arts and physical activities.

Morgan State University has applied to save the Bluford Drew Jemison STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) Academy, which has been on the district's radar for closure.

The school was one of two all-male academies started for young men in the city -- and highly sought after by parents -- but whose operators faced several challenges and recently had their charter licenses revoked. The city school board, however, has searched for a way that the school could stay in operation.

Morgan has proposed to operate the school, which would be called the Morgan State STEM Institute, for 644 boys in grades six through twelve. The school would continue to focus on the sciences and has the goal that "all students will be able to graduate within a five to six year period with a high school diploma and an associate's degree in a STEM area.

In 2016-2017, the National Education Partners has applied to operate William C. March Elementary School. The school would serve 850 students in East Baltimore.

The applicants will participate in a public review over the next several weeks. The school board will vote to accept or reject the applications on May 27.

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Returning to warehousing of people with special needs and disabilities because corporations and the rich will no longer pay taxes will include not only students with physical disabilities.....it will include students who are low achievers.  Remember, THE BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD are the people getting what has been standard public education in America.  Not many students are going to test into Advanced Placement.



Governor Cuomo and charter lobby 'strong-arming' bid to evict special needs students in favor of corporate education expansion

NYC Parents vs. Wall Street-Backed Charter Schoolswww.commondreams.orgParents protest on the steps of the New York City Department of Education on Tuesday, April 8. (Photo: @NYChange/ Twitter)Parents and public school advocates staged a dramatic protest outside the..


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March 21st, 2014

3/21/2014

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Corporate NPR/APM made the news of the day surround new Federal Reserve Chief Yellen and her taking of the FED baton from Bernanke at a time that the US economy is ready to collapse for the same reasons as in 2007.  So, her concern lies with protecting bank wealth and she states that Bernanke's FED policies have made sure the banks are so well capitalized and removed from the US economy that any domestic downturn or collapse will not be felt by banks!  You see her concerns.

MEANWHILE THE FED POLICY IS DESTROYING THE PEOPLE'S WEALTH FROM ALL DIRECTIONS.  THINK YOU MADE SOME GAINS ON YOUR 401K THIS BULL MARKET---WELL, IT'S GETTING READY TO CRASH AND PENSIONS AND 401Ks will lose most of those gains.

Unemployment nationally is 35-45%, banks leveraged above $600 trillion involving the bond market this time with the FED unable to contain another crash.  Now, it is the FED's mission to keep unemployment low and the economy stable.

THIS IS MALFEASANCE.


Regarding FED Chair Yellen's first policy statement:

This is my interpretation with paraphrase:


'I AM THROUGH PRETENDING THIS FED POLICY IS ABOUT ADDRESSING HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT AND MARKET STABILITY-----WE ARE PROUD TO BE A CRONY AND CORRUPT BRANCH OF WALL STREET WORKING ONLY TO ENRICH THE RICHEST'! 

This was Yellen's announcement and it even made the most corporate of mainstream anchors----Scott Pelley of CBS hang his head in shame.

We all have known the FED's policies had nothing to do with its stated mission of controlling unemployment and stabilizing the US economy, but after several years of the Obama's term and policy that created economic stagnation and an unemployment rate of 35-45% across the country with an economy ready to implode from a bond market bubble-----Yellen said, heck, we can no longer hide it.

 IT IS IMPORTANT TO SHOUT AND DOCUMENT THAT IT IS ILLEGAL FOR THE FED TO MOVE AWAY FROM ITS STATED MISSION.  IT CANNOT JUST ARBITRARILY CHOOSE TO EMBRACE POLICY THAT HARMS THE PEOPLE IT IS SUPPOSED TO PROTECT.


So, where Greenspan shouted 'LET THE MASSIVE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE FRAUD CONTINUE AT RECORD SPEED', Bernanke served saying THE CRONY WALL STREET MARKET SERVES TO MAKE A FEW THE RICHEST IN WORLD HISTORY AND THAT IS WHAT THE FED IS ALL ABOUT UNDER ME!  Yellen is posturing that she will super-size wealth inequity by using the FED in crony finance just as Bernanke did.  What the heck, US has no public justice system right now they say!  You know, Trans Pacific Trade Pact makes US law enforcement against corporations NULL and VOID and Wall Street considers TPP already in place!

Let's take a look at what Yellen is telling you and I.  After all we are peasants waiting to have law and policy pushed upon us and not citizens who write law the works in the public interest.

Manipulating inflation rates and interest rates to zero are near zero works to give corporations free money while keeping the public impoverished.  So, zero interest rates make it impossible for people to place their money in a savings account -----the goal is to force everyone back into a stock market we all know is criminal and corrupt.  If you lose money to inflation unless you place it in the stock market-----you are being fleeced.  So, for several years now the American people have lost millions of dollars to manipulated interest rates of zero.  Meanwhile, corporations are being paid by the FED not to work.....hire.....by giving them free money to invest in the stock market and expand overseas instead of growing the domestic economy.  WAIT UNTIL THESE CORPORATIONS GET RICH ENOUGH AND THEY WILL ALLOW IT TO TRICKLE DOWN WALL STREET SAYS.  Remember when Obama ran in 2007 saying he did not believe in trickle-down and yet-----that is the entire enchilada of his administration.


ZERO PERCENT INTEREST MAKES FOR PUBLIC LOSS OF MONEY IF TRYING TO SAVE IN A SAVINGS ACCOUNT.  IT IS MEANT TO FORCE YOU BACK INTO THE STOCK MARKET AND REMEMBER.....IT IS READY TO IMPLODE!

The next important issue regarding deliberately claiming low inflation when inflation is not low is that when the FED is forced to stop these manipulations inflation will soar.  Now, moderate inflation around 5% has always been a goal and is good for public wealth and the economy.  What is coming will be much higher inflation and that is really bad for the public.  Don't worry says the FED, the big banks are prepared to weather the next recession!



'Negative effects of inflation include an increase in the opportunity cost of holding money, uncertainty over future inflation which may discourage investment and savings, and if inflation were rapid enough, shortages of goods as consumers begin hoarding out of concern that prices will increase in the future.

Is the Fed Waging War on Bank Savers?

By: Brian O'Connell

NEW YORK (BankingMyWay) — A new white paper on Federal Reserve economic policy draws the sharp conclusion that the Fed is waging a three-pronged war on bank savers.

Obviously, the Fed, led by chairman Ben Bernanke, has held fast to its low interest rate policy since the Great Recession began in 2008, and hasn’t let up since. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the national average savings account rate is in the basement, at 0.14% , and the BankingMyWay Weekly Savings Rate tracker mirrors that number closely, at 0.15%.

If there’s any upside to the story, it’s that the Fed has decided to end the latest round of its monetary easing program and will likely no longer use artificial means to tamp down U.S. interest rates. But for bank savers, the damage is already done, and it’s not all just about interest rates.


Here’s a look at what one research outfit is calling Ben Bernanke’s “war on bank deposit savers” and the three ways it’s already under way:

Paltry savings rates at big banks. Big banks like Bank of America (Stock Quote: BAC) and JP Morgan Chase (Stock Quote: JPM) are offering savings rates at below 0.05%, points out FedUpUSA.org, a consumer financial advocacy organization. Since the 1960s the Fed has gone out of its way to give Americans a viable investment and savings alternative to the stock market, often keeping the key Fed Funds rate above 5%. But those days are long gone and bank deposit investors are paying the price.

Inflation is crushing bank deposit yields. In its April 2011 white paper, “Federal Reserve Punishes Savers By Subsidizing Big Banking Bailouts,” FedUSA.org argues that the Fed is trying to steer U.S. investors into the stock market, in large part by keeping interest rates so low that it isn’t worth it for investors to place their money in bank savings vehicles like certificates of deposits and money market accounts.

"The Federal Reserve is doing everything within its power to get people to spend or speculate in the stock market and hopefully over time create enough inflation to devalue our current debts,"
the FedUSA paper says. "This is why mortgage lending has gotten tougher (aside from government backed loans), getting a credit card is now for credit worthy customers and getting a small business loan is much more stringent. The purpose is to work through the current banking led fiasco by pushing on the debt to working and middle class Americans through lower savings rates and a push for higher inflation."

When inflation rises, as it has so far this year, bank CDs and money market accounts can’t keep up and thus are significantly reduced in value.

A smaller choice of consumer banking programs. Big banks and the Fed are currently entangled in a vicious wrestling match over bank fees. Front and center in that war are swipe fees that banks charge merchants who accept debit cards. The Federal Reserve is dropping those fees, from 44 cents per transaction to 12 cents per transaction, and in response, banks with $10 billion or more in assets are cutting bank credit card reward programs and are amping up bank deposit and ATM fees. The Fed just hasn’t learned a lesson that consumers already know too well – never get between a banker and his fee revenues.

Going forward, can consumers look forward to a break on the so-called ‘war on bank savers”? Probably. As rates rise, which they eventually will now that the Fed has taken its foot off the low-rate pedal, bank depositors will earn more on their savings and investments. But it won’t happen overnight. It’s going to take a while for things to wind down.

—For more ways to save, spend, invest and borrow, visit MainStreet.com.

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EVERYONE KNOWS INFLATION HAS RISEN THESE SEVERAL YEARS AS PRODUCTS COST MORE ----YET, THE FED HAS STATED INFLATION IS ZERO OR 1%.

Whether you are a supporter of CPI-E which changes the way COLA are calculated to address the Cost of Living today or if you are someone who knows inflation today is far greater than even CPI-E would calculate, the point is that the manipulation of inflation and COLA has gotten too far out of hand.  As we watch cereal boxes shrink considerably while prices rise....when my cat litter jumps from $6 to $10....we have considerable inflation.  Health care costs are of course the biggest inflation cost for Americans and it is not even included in the current CPI.

AS WE REBUILD THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE WE NEED TO REMEMBER THESE LOSES TO SOCIAL PROGRAMS LIKE SOCIAL SECURITY AND VETERAN'S BENEFITS!


Do not think it is hyperbole when economists predict US inflation will soar when the FED is forced to change these manipulations.  Inflation may indeed hit 10-15% or higher.





 Manipulated inflation rates by government leading to lower COLA on Social Security for 2013


10:50 AM  John Williams, Shadowstats,

With the Federal Reserve and Federal government blatently manipulating the true rate of inflation in the economy, the results for 2013 are going to be a 1 or 2% COLA increase for Social Security recipients next year.



Charts courtesy of Shadowstats

Social Security recipients shouldn't expect a big increase in monthly benefits come January.

Preliminary figures show the annual benefit boost will be between 1 percent and 2 percent, which would be among the lowest since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975. Monthly benefits for retired workers now average $1,237, meaning the typical retiree can expect a raise of between $12 and $24 a month.

The size of the increase will be made official Tuesday, when the government releases inflation figures for September. The announcement is unlikely to please a big block of voters _ 56 million people get benefits _ just three weeks before elections for president and Congress.

According to John Williams and Shadowstats, true inflation for 2012 is between 5 and 9%, dependent upon which model (1980 or 1990) one chooses to reference.  The government has manipulated real price inflation for more than two decades to ensure COLA increases are not in line with real inflation, to both save 10's of billion of dollars in benefit payouts, and to hide the fact that their deficit spending is causing massive inflation on essentials people need like food, energy, and rents.

Going into the 2012 election, the current administration doesn't want you to see the 30-80 rise in food prices over the past four years, and are making sure their media propagandists lie to you on what the real inflation rate is in the economy.


___________________________________________________________________

Bernanke and neo-liberals in Congress along with Obama have tried to pretend inflation is at zero or close when everyone knew it wasn't.  Inflation has been at 3-5% just as always with the inflation rate ready to explode as soon as the FED ponzi scheme of QE has maximized the FED's debt ratio to its limit, which is coming now.  This is why Yellen is having to back out of QE----the FED is maxed with debt.  When Yellen does this the manipulation of inflation rate will end and they will not be able to hide the fact that inflation has been higher than stated and will grow to a very high rate when QE ends and interest rates rise to normal.

Remember, inflation was manipulated to zero to make it look as though the FED policy was not hurting the economy.  At the same time these manipulated inflation rates did a number on the public's wealth yet again!  THOSE NEO-LIBERALS TRYING TO SUCK ALL THE WEALTH THE PUBLIC CAN AMASS ANY WAY POSSIBLE.  That is what FED policy has been about since the 2008 crash.  So, the zero COLA for several years lowered senior's Social Security payments by on average a hundred dollars a month as did the Veteran's payments.  This is big money for a class already teetering below the poverty line.  It is why the national debt fell during Obama's term---a success to Wall Street.  National debt paid by falling social safety net cuts while Wall Street fraud stays with the looters.

ARTIFICIALLY MANIPULATED INFLATION RATES OF ZERO CREATED THE LARGEST CUTS TO SOCIAL SECURITY IN THE PROGRAM'S HISTORY COURTESY OF NEO-LIBERALS IN CONGRESS AND OBAMA.

This is no surprise.....Obama laid out these plans in 2009.....the question is why have no democrats shouted out against all of this.  If your incumbent has not sounded the alarm these few years....THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND GET RID OF THEM.



Keep in mind these inflation rates of zero are fake.....all articles on the subject show everyone knows inflation was the normal 3-5% yet the FED listed it at zero and the Federal government under Obama allowed this fake inflation rate be used for SS and Vet COLAs. 

IT WAS DELIBERATE TO IMPOVERISH FURTHER PEOPLE RECEIVING MONEY FROM A PUBLIC TRUST.

So, we need labor and justice politicians to keep in mind seniors and Vets will need these several years of losses to monthly payments replaced with higher COLAs for several years.  We may need 7% COLAs for example over a decade to make up for losses these several years.  This actually fits with progressive policy that sees Social Security increases by larger amounts as we replace all the stolen pensions and retirements with Social Security
.



Social Security COLA Doesn't Match Inflation

Retirees are falling further behind each year as medical costs rise by more than overall inflation.


By Philip Moeller Aug. 9, 2010

Last week's annual trustees' report on the financial health of Social Security showed the program did not suffer serious erosion during the past year. Current Social Security resources are sufficient to pay all benefits for the next 27 years. That's hardly the self-sustaining funding model that we'd like to see but it's good news nonetheless. However, it won't stop efforts to "fix" the program. And it won't halt the discussion over the adequacy of the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) with which Social Security tries to keep retirees' benefits from being eroded by inflation.

Low rates of inflation in the year ended last fall caused the COLA to be zero for the first time in the 25-year history of these annual adjustments. Recipients received a one-time $250 payment, which helped compensate for that and was also pitched as an economic stimulus program.


Now, we're coming up on a second year with little if any inflation, as measured by a version of the Consumer Price Index used to determine the Social Security COLA. The index measures price changes for working people. Legislation has been introduced for another $250 payment, and AARP and other groups are lobbying for its approval.

However, the fiscal picture is much darker than it was even a year ago. And while Social Security's finances may have held up, the same is not true of the government's budget. We are awash in red ink with no end in sight to deficits. With mid-term elections this fall, just about everyone has found religion when it comes to government spending. So, the argument for another round of make-good Social Security payments is a tougher sell in 2010 than it was last year.

However, according to a recent academic study, the fairness of such a payment is beyond dispute. The study reviewed Social Security payments over many years, backed out spending on basic Medicare premiums (for part B physician and outpatient services) and other out-of-pocket medical spending, and then compared the remaining amounts with money that recipients paid for other goods. Researchers studied a group of older retirees who turned 65 in 1983 (the year the COLA began), and a second group of persons born in 1928. The authors -- Gopi Shan Goda and John B. Shoven at Stanford and Sita Nataraj Slavov at Occidental College -- found the value of recipients' benefits for non-healthcare spending had eroded by about 20 percent for men and nearly 27 percent for women. Those are big cuts: one out of every five dollars in benefits is effectively gone for men; one of every four dollars for women.

And their findings probably understate the actual ground lost, because the study did not include the cost of other health insurance premiums when considering out-of-pocket healthcare spending. Besides Part B premiums, other insurance includes Medicare Supplement, Medicare Advantage, Part D prescription drug coverage, and other private coverages. To the extent that the rise in premiums for such insurance has exceeded the overall rate of inflation, the study's findings would need to be adjusted to show further erosion in the effective non-medical buying power of Social Security benefits. And by all accounts, health insurance price inflation has far outpaced the rise in overall prices.


"Of course, these results assume no other income besides Social Security," the researchers say, "but a sizable fraction of the elderly depend on Social Security for the majority of their income: 64 percent of beneficiaries rely on Social Security for 50 percent or more of their income, and 35 percent of beneficiaries rely on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income."

Even if funds were available, fixing this situation is no easy matter. This is because there are two root causes for how healthcare expenses erode the true value of Social Security benefits. The first is the rate of inflation for such expenses. The second is the fact that people simply use more healthcare as they age. "Even if medical costs did not rise faster than the prices of other goods," the study says, "as retirees aged, their medical spending would still tend to increase as a share of income."

There is an experimental government price index called CPI-E that is designed to measure the actual spending of retirees. It thus includes more weighting for medical costs. "The CPI-E has increased faster than the CPI-W over the past 20 years," the study says, "due primarily to the relative rise in health costs, and the fact that the elderly spend more on health care than the non-elderly, even after taking into account the availability of Medicare." Using the CPI-E to determine the annual COLAs for the study's subjects would have narrowed the gap, with men falling only 11 short of maintaining their effective buying power for non-medical items, and women falling 18 percent short.

But the financial consequences of even this seemingly simply shift are huge. Remember that 27-year estimate for Social Security sufficiency? According to one study, using the CPI-E to set annual COLAs would slice five years from that cushion all by itself. Further, like all measures of price change, the CPI-E does not even try to factor in changes in product quality. The $1,000 television set you buy today is vastly superior to the $1,000 set you could have bought 20 years ago. Such qualitative improvements have been enormous in healthcare.

With all the talk about changing Social Security, it would seem to make great common sense to take a careful look at the COLA mechanism. What good is it to put the program on a sound 75-year trajectory again if the interests of seniors aren't appropriately considered and protected in the process?

______________________________________________

You will not hear corporate media explain to you that Obama's myRA is Social Security privatization -----a republican plan to end yet another public Trust only a politician running as a democrat is doing it.  You will hear corporate NPR advertise this policy as a good thing for the impoverished masses who just cannot seem to save money themselves.

THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL FOR YOU AND ALL MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS!

Wall Street wants all of the Social Security and Medicare Trusts back in the stock market where Wall Street can use the money to maximize profit with leveraging that always sends public money out to act as fodder in investments with huge losses over and over and over.  Who wouldn't want Social Security tosses into the stock market?  EVERYONE!!!!!



'The same plan may be in the works for Social Security. In his speech, the President announced a new retirement savings program, MyRA. Although the details of MyRa are not clear, it is based on creating individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for workers who don’t currently have them'.



Obama Lays Groundwork to Destroy another Social Insurance


by MFlowers   

By Margaret Flowers

Originally published in GreenShadowCabinet.us

President Obama’s comments about the health law in his State of the Union speech lacked substance and were primarily focused on selling his law, and more insurance, to the public. He avoided discussing the root causes of our ongoing healthcare crisis and set the ball in motion to destroy another pillar of our social infrastructure, Social Security.

The bottom line of President Obama’s comments on the health law was that more people have health insurance and insurance companies can’t deny people based on pre-existing conditions. He urged everyone to make their friends and family buy insurance.

What he didn’t say is that people with health insurance in the United States still can’t afford the care they need and face bankruptcy if they have a serious health problem. And although insurance companies cannot deny policies to people with pre-existing conditions, they have a number of ways to avoid paying for peoples care.


The health law perpetuates a health system that treats health care as a commodity so that people only receive the amount of health care they can afford rather than treating it as a public good, as does every other industrialized nation. This is the root cause of the health crisis in the US. Any system that leaves healthcare in the marketplace, because it is based on generating profits for investors, will result in inequalities of access to care and rising healthcare costs.

Using a market-based model for social insurances sets a dangerous precedent. Traditional social insurances are provided by the government and are paid for through taxes. They are designed to meet the needs of the public rather than to provide a profit and so they guarantee a universal set of benefits for everyone. Each pays in according to their means.

The health law is doing the opposite. It is driving our entire health system to one that is provided by private entities and is paid for by individuals. Each person gets the amount of coverage they can afford. Those who cannot afford what they need are left to suffer. Since the health law was signed, there has been greater privatization of Medicaid and Medicare and billions of taxpayer dollars have been used to sell and subsidize private insurance. If we continue on this path, down the road Medicaid and Medicare will be rolled into the health exchanges and only private insurance will be available.

The same plan may be in the works for Social Security. In his speech, the President announced a new retirement savings program, MyRA. Although the details of MyRa are not clear, it is based on creating individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for workers who don’t currently have them.

What we do know is that Social Security has been under attack throughout the President’s time in office. Rather than doing what is needed, raising the cap, or going beyond that and raising benefits, there have been attempts to cut benefits and raise the age of eligibility. The public is being told that Social Security is in a crisis but is not being told that this ‘crisis’ is intentional. Unlike Social Security, IRAs are managed by financial institutions that profit from them. MyRa is another gift to Wall Street by President Obama.

We are living in an era of big finance capitalism, a predatory capitalism, based on the neoliberal economic model. It is being applied to every aspect of our society through dismantling of our public programs and privatization of our resources and services. Under this system, the basic necessities of each person are not guaranteed. Instead, it is designed to funnel wealth to the top by making everything into a commodity, a profit center for investors.

This path will continue until we rise up to challenge it. We must understand what is happening and that the destruction of our public programs is intentional, but not inevitable. There are solutions to the crises we face. For example, a health care system based on a non-profit Medicare for all model and a retirement system based on a stronger Social Security. These are obvious solutions, supported by a majority of Americans and logistically easy to put in place – if the government actually represented the people.

The President closed his remarks on health care by saying, “So again, if you have specific plans to cut costs, cover more people, increase choice, tell America what you’d do differently.” The last time he said that in a State of the Union speech, I tried to respond and was arrested. This time we must respond together by working to build a mass social movement that has the power to make our demands a reality.

~ Margaret Flowers MD, Serves as Secretary of Health in the General Welfare Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet.


____________________________________________

It has been a sad state of affairs to watch the neo-liberal media and economists send out all kinds of propaganda on Social Security and threats to its future.  Keep in mind, neo-liberals are committed to ending all War on Poverty and New Deal programs----that has to happen for Trans Pacific Trade Pact to become enacted.  So, neo-liberals are creating drama around Social Security to hide the ultimate goal----myRA.  As we are fighting Chain CPI and fake inflation rates and direct cuts to how much Social Security payments will be, the policy neo-liberals are pushing simply ends Social Security as a Federal program.  You do not hear one neo-liberal economist saying anything about how myRA will end Social Security-----they are saying we won the fight to protect Social Security from Chain CPI.  Chain CPI was not good but myRA ends SS for goodness sake!


IF YOUR PUNDIT OR POLITICIAN IS NOT SHOUTING THAT myRA FROM OBAMA IS ABOUT ENDING SOCIAL SECURITY-----THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS!

Baker, Reich, Krugman are all neo-liberal economists feeling the American people's pain yet never quite able to shout that neo-liberalism is the killer.
  They never speak to the Social Security and Medicare Trusts being raided either.  I have shown often that payroll taxes diverted to the US Treasury to the tune of almost $4 trillion dollars has been spent building the Homeland Security network and private military.



Social Security COLA to increase by 1.5 Percent in 2014
   
Written by Dean Baker  
Wednesday, 30 October 2013 10:00


Changing the basis of the COLA to the chained CPI would cut an already modest cost-of-living-adjustment.

The Social Security Administration has announced the Social Security cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) will be 1.5 percent in 2014. Beneficiaries will begin seeing the increase in their checks in January.

It is worth noting that this COLA based on the consumer price index for wage and clerical workers (CPI-W) is likely to be lower than the rate of inflation shown by the BLS experimental elderly index (CPI-E), which is designed to reflect the purchasing patterns of the elderly. The biggest differences between the two indices are the weights assigned to health care and housing, with both components accounting for a much larger share of the CPI-E than the CPI-W.

The price of medical care services was up 3.1 percent in August from its year-ago level. The price of the CPI’s shelter component was up 2.4 percent from its year-ago level. As a result of the more rapid price increases in these components, the CPI-E would likely show a rate of inflation that 0.1-0.2 percentage points higher than the CPI-W. This would suggest that the rate of inflation seen by seniors is somewhat higher than the COLA they are now getting for Social Security.

However, this gap would increase if the COLA indexation switched to the chained CPI (CCPI-U). This index typically shows a rate of inflation that is 0.2-0.3 percentage points lower than the CPI-W. The reason for the difference is that CCPI-U incorporates the impact of substitution on consumption costs. If the price of apples rises less rapidly than the price of oranges, and people switch from consuming oranges to apples, then the CCPI would lower the weight it assigns to oranges and increases the weight it assigns to apples. This leads it to show a lower measured rate of inflation, which arguably reflects actual patterns in consumption.

While the CCPI-U may be picking up substitution patterns for the population as a whole, it is not clear that it accurately reflects substitution patterns among seniors. The goods disproportionately consumed by seniors, health care and housing, don’t lend themselves to easy substitution. Furthermore, it is not clear that seniors can substitute for other goods with the same ease as the rest of the population.

Unfortunately, neither BLS or the proponents of adopting the chained CPI for the COLA have done research on this topic.

In short, there is some reason to believe that the current COLA already does not adequately compensate seniors for the rate of inflation they experience. This problem would be worse if the basis for the COLA is changed to the chained CPI.


__________________________________________


ISN'T THIS LOL----IT IS THE FED'S REFUSAL TO SEEK JUSTICE AND RECOVER FRAUD THAT HAS SUPER-SIZED THE BANKS WITH SO MUCH WEALTH AND EXPANSION THAT WALL STREET IS NO LONGER CONNECTED TO THE US ECONOMY OTHER THAN CONTINUING TO IMPLODE IT WITH BOOM AND BURST BUBBLES.



Well, the FED policy was all about feeding free money at zero percent so corporations could do nothing for the last several years but merge and acquire and expand overseas. The FED policy was crony and corrupt by every measure and professionals have shouted for years that the FED's actions are no longer matching the goals of its mission. The banks, rather than be nationalized so as to complete investigations, recover tens of trillions of dollars in fraud, and prosecute the criminals that are systemic in the financial industry so as to start to rebuild a healthy economy were instead simply allowed to keep the loot, use it as investments in a BULL market all of which made them extraordinarily rich with other people's money! How crony is that?

The reason the FED notes that banks and corporations will not be effected by the next recessions is just that.....the FED and Obama/Congressional neo-liberals have allowed the banks to grow separate from the US economy and while still working to implode the US economy from fraud and corruption, a collapse for you and me will see Wall Street simply move its money elsewhere until it is over. The FED, Obama, and Congressional neo-liberals have indeed allowed the banks to get to just the same place as 2007 as regards collapse by super-sized leverage and fraud and corruption, this time in the bond market.

The good news for WE THE PEOPLE is that since the banks still have those tens of trillion in massive fraud and made a killing investing our money.....we get all that fraud and the gains Wall Street made from the BULL market back as soon as Rule of Law is reinstated and fraud recovered to government coffers and individual's pockets.

When we do nationalize the Wall Street banks to do this, they will become the regional banks they are meant to be. So, they may weather the coming recession caused by the implosion of the bond market, but they will not weather justice delayed! Remember, when a government suspends Rule of Law, it suspends Statutes of Limitation!



Nearly all top U.S. banks could withstand severe recession, Fed says

WASHINGTON -- Only one of the nation's 30 largest banks would not be able to withstand a severe recession and the firms collectively are in better financial position to handle economic shocks than five years ago, according to Federal Reserve stress test results released Thursday

Under the most extreme of three economic scenarios, Zions Bancorporation of Salt Lake City would be the only large bank at risk of failure because a key measure of financial strength would fall below the Fed's standard.

The Fed conducts two rounds of stress tests and next week will give what amounts to pass/fail grades for the banks after factoring in each firm's plans for dividend payments or stock buybacks this year.



“The annual stress test is one of the Federal Reserve’s most important tools to gauge the resiliency of the financial sector and to help ensure that the largest firms have strong capital positions,” said Fed. Gov. Daniel K. Tarullo, who oversees the central bank's regulatory functions.

“Each year we are making substantial improvements, which have helped make the process even stronger than when we first conducted the stress tests in the midst of the financial crisis five years ago,” he said.

The banks have a combined $13.5 trillion in assets, nearly 80% of the U.S. industry.

Under the Fed's severely adverse economic scenario, those 30 firms would lose about $501 billion over 27 months.

That scenario, designed to replicate a downturn similar to the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, involves a sharp rise in the unemployment rate to 11.25%, a 25% decline in home prices and a nearly 50% drop in the stock market.

Under such conditions, Zions would fall below a Fed gauge of bank health. The firm's ratio of capital to its risk-weighted assets would fall to 3.5% from the 10.5% level as of Sept. 30.

Banks are supposed to stay above 5%.

The next weakest bank was M&T Bank Corp., with a ratio of 5.9%. The nation's two largest banks fared only slightly better: Bank of America Corp.'s ratio was 6% and JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s was 6.3%.

The best performers under the scenario were State Street Corp, at 13.3% and the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and Discover Financial Services, both at 13.1%

Overall, the combined ratio for the 30 largest banks would fall to 7.6% from 11.5%. Those same banks had a ratio of 5.5% at the beginning of 2009, the Fed said.

The Fed's two stress tests are designed to determine the strength of the nation’s largest financial institutions.

The first, whose results were released Thursday, were required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and measure the firms in three economic scenarios -- normal conditions, a moderate recession and a severe economic downturn.

This year, as required by the Dodd-Frank law, the Fed expanded the tests to the 30 largest bank holding companies.

Previous stress tests, which began after the crisis, looked at the top 18 banks.

The second test looks at each bank's plans to pay dividends or buy back stock. The results of the first stress test will be applied to those plans.

On Wednesday, the Fed will announce which banks will be allowed to proceed with their plans and which would first have to raise more capital. The Fed also will determine if the planning processes of the banks, which include how they project revenue and losses, are sufficient.

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February 06th, 2014

2/6/2014

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Stand Up for Teachers & Students:

Vote No on Baltimore Merit Pay Contract
.



The negotiations have been completely opaque. The merit pay system is hurting students and driving good teachers out. WE MUST VOTE NO!

Attention Baltimore teachers, students, parents, and all those concerned about public ed in this town: City Schools teachers and staff will, this Thursday, be called upon to sign a new version of our merit pay contract. WE MUST VOTE NO! The negotiations have been completely opaque--we hearn almost nothing throughout the 7 or so months of negotiations. Now, we're being bribed with a 1% "stipened" and scared with the threat of working without a contract.

Teachers in Baltimore are not so easily fooled! This contract does not represent the needs and desires of the rank and file members of the BTU. We must vote no, and demand that the new round of negotiations be open for all to see what is being done at every stage of the process.

Let's take our time to find the right solution, and not be forced to jump up in one week and sign a contract we were only made privy to today.

Spread the word! Let us help each other vote our conscience, not our fears!


The Baltimore teacher's union has negotiated a contract that kills the membership and students and this group of teachers passionate about their profession are standing up.  STAND UP FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS is a Facebook group that I encourage all to check out.  You don't have to have a FB account and will not be tagged for just looking.  They are referencing the most recent contract that was announced before the union membership had even been shown the terms and have not voted to accept the contract.  This is what the group means by ......'this is not how a union works'.


Tentative Agreement 2014www.docdroid.net

TENTATIVE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE BALTIMORE TEACHERS UNION, AFT LOCAL 340, AFL-CIO AND THE BALTIMORE CITY BOARD OF SCHOOL COMMISSIONERS


'This letter is all wrong. Isn't it supposed to say "While of course we can't guarantee anything in negotiations, we are commited to fighting for the best contract for Baltimore's teachers. If the contract does not pass, we'll open the process to input from our rank and file members, the backbone of our union." They're so confused about what a union is'. --


Let's start with the premise that Maryland intends to privatize all public education, having done so with higher education and now they are going after K-12. Let's continue the premise that Baltimore is building the privatization structure that privatizers need to expand this system across the state and this is why Baltimore is filled with charters, school choice, online classes, and tons of Teach for America and graduates of privatization education administrators. This is why you do not hear teacher's unions in Maryland and Baltimore shouting out against these policies....half the teaching staff are hired to replace public education structures. Maryland State Education Association is used by O'Malley as supporting these policies as I speak with these union members with MSEA I hear Baltimore and other teacher's unions say this state union does not speak for them. It is indeed captured as I spoke with officials at MSEA who are silent.

WOW YOU SAY! INDEED, BALTIMORE IS ONE GREAT BIG CAPTURED EDUCATION SYSTEM.

This is what I tell teachers and teacher's unions in the state....which is why I know MSEA is captured....

THE GOAL OF RACE TO THE TOP AND EDUCATION PRIVATIZERS HERE IN MARYLAND IS TO END PUBLIC EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS BY FORCING THEM TO ATTACH TO PRIVATE CORPORATIONS FOR SUPPORT. AT THE SAME TIME, THE GOAL IS TO MAKE EDUCATION FOR MOST....90% OF CITIZENS CHEAP AND STANDARDIZED VOCATIONAL TRAINING MEANT ONLY TO GET STUDENTS WORKING. ONLINE LESSONS GIVEN TO LARGE GROUPS OF STUDENTS MEANS TEACHING PROFESSIONAL ARE NOT NEEDED.....ONLY EDUCATION TECHS THAT ADMINISTER ONLINE LESSONS NEED APPLY. CHARTER SCHOOL LAWS ALLOWING UNIONS IN CHARTERS WILL DISAPPEAR AS WILL TEACHER'S PENSIONS IN THIS COMING CRASH.

So, I asked this MSEA representative if the goal is to get rid of teachers and to get rid of unions......WHY WOULD A MARYLAND STATE TEACHER'S UNION SUPPORT IT FOR GOODNESS SAKE?
I asked if they understood that this was the goal and indeed they did. If you ask Baltimore Teacher's Union leader English why, while all across the country teacher's unions are leading the fight against this, she and leaders will say that too many teachers and administrators have been loaded into the system by Alonzo and now his surrogate. THAT IS WHAT ALONZO'S TENURE WAS ABOUT...BUILDING THE PRIVATIZATION STRUCTURE THAT NYC'S BLOOMBERG AND WALL STREET HAVE PLACED IN NEW YORK CITY FROM WHERE ALONZO CAME. See why Maryland needs all these independent contractors brought into the state to tell us what we need to do?

As we know already, Baltimore has a long history of underfunded and under-resourced schools and teachers in the city had all they could do to keep discipline in the classroom with underserved students having many behaviors needing attention and learning skills needing to be developed. So, there was no way existing teachers these few decades could have addressed the problems of achievement in the schools and Johns Hopkins and Baltimore's school privatizers know this. THE PROBLEM IS FUNDING AND RESOURCES AS CLASSROOMS NEED AIDS AND PARENTS HELPING THESE TEACHERS AND MULTIPLE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AVAILABLE IN EACH SCHOOL. This is what Baltimore City School teachers need to be successful. They instead had Alonzo pass the rule of tiered funding that has underserved and special needs students funded less per pupil than performing students.....they are doing the opposite of what needs to happen. Tying these students to these online lessons with very little interaction and with all the emphasis of reading and math to the detriment of all other subjects places these students and their teachers at extreme disadvantage. IT IS CLEAR THAT THIS IS THE CASE AND IT IS DELIBERATE.

You see, Baltimore's privatizers do not want strong teachers, they want education techs and Teach for America temporary teaching -----people coming and going-----as they did with adjuncts at university level. When you keep schools filled with people not from a community....you lose yet another cornerstone of democracy and people's voice and place to grow politically.....which is the point. So, this is why Baltimore is going full court in moving these policies forward with teachers, students, and parents silenced by the threats of lost jobs, lost ability to get into schools, and captured writing of public policy. WOW.....YOU CAN SEE THE PROBLEM WE HAVE IN MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE!

What the rest of Maryland needs to know is all of this structure will be expanded to your neck of the woods. It is not only for Baltimore, or for underserved students....it will become the only kind of public schools your children will access in Maryland if you are middle/working class or poor. Don't think that cute and fuzzy charter in your community will remain as such. These charters will be handed to national corporate charter chains that are Wall Street through and through. Profit-driven education means that 90% of people will not be deemed worth having liberal arts and humanities that do nothing but build good citizens. Chinese-style K-college does not bode well for anything other than autocracy.

SHAKE THE BUGS FROM THE RUG AND GET RID OF MARYLAND'S NEO-LIBERALS.....THEY ARE NOT DEMOCRATS AND DO NOT WORK  FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE.



Large number of city teachers receive unsatisfactory evaluations

Teachers believe it is attempt to avoid pay raises, but system says it is effort to help them become more effective

February 07, 2012|By Erica L. Green, The Baltimore Sun

A significant number of Baltimore teachers — in some schools as many as 60 percent of the staff — have received unsatisfactory ratings on their midyear evaluations as the system moves to implement a pay-for-performance contract that's considered a bellwether for a national movement.

Teachers contend that the high number of "performance improvement plans," which can be a precursor for dismissal, is an attempt to avoid paying raises. But city school officials say that putting teachers on such plans is part of broader efforts to help them become more effective in the classroom.

Baltimore is one of a handful of districts at the forefront of a national debate on how to root out the worst teachers and reward the most effective. The city has joined a growing number of districts looking to implement new evaluation systems that link teacher ratings and pay to students' academic progress.

"Nationally, it is indisputably true that the teacher evaluation system is broken, that teachers have not gotten meaningful feedback, or the respect to be given clear standards and expectations," said Dan Weisberg, vice president of policy at the New Teacher Project, a national nonprofit that trains teachers.

Baltimore's school system declined to say how many teachers have been placed on PIPs because of unsatisfactory evaluations. But school and union officials confirmed that in some schools around the city, more than 60 percent of teachers received one.

Tisha Edwards, chief of staff for the school system, said the recent spate of PIPs doesn't mean that more than half of the teachers in certain schools would be fired. However, she said, given the low student test scores around the city, some teachers should expect their jobs to be in jeopardy.

"We do have schools where that should be a reality," Edwards said.

In 2013, every teacher in Maryland will be evaluated based on student performance, as state education leaders continue to hammer out on a new evaluation system that will base 50 percent of teacher evaluations on student achievement. Baltimore was the first locality in the state to include pay for performance in a contract.

PIPs have traditionally represented an agreement between a teacher and a principal on areas of improvement. If a teacher fails to meet the goals, the district can begin taking steps toward dismissal. Edwards said the evaluation process in the past has lacked consistency, feedback and a paper trail of efforts to help teachers improve.

"We have more people on PIPs, and we're proud of it," she added. "We're not saying we're going to fire everybody, but we're using PIPs the way they were supposed to be used, but never were: to communicate where we need to develop, and get better about documenting the development of our people."

But the new approach has spurred backlash from city teachers who feel vulnerable under a contract that, now in its second year, has yet to be fully fleshed out. Union and district officials are still hammering out the most critical piece of the pact: how teachers will be evaluated.

Educators for Democratic Schools, a group of 85 who opposed the contract, believes the district's strategy of giving a large number of teachers an unsatisfactory evaluation midway through the year is intended to make it harder for them to be rated proficient at the end of the year.

Teachers who are rated proficient receive an automatic pay raise under the Baltimore Teachers Union contract, ratified in October 2010.

"We thought it would be great if we all made 80 grand, and we think there are lots of teachers who should, but we never believed there was enough money to support that," said Iris Kirsch, spokeswoman for the group.

Kirsch, in her sixth year as an English teacher, was placed on a PIP along with several teachers at Heritage High School.

"We always said this contract is going to make the evaluation process into a much bigger deal, where personal attacks can turn into pay cuts and threaten people's job security, and that seems to be exactly what is happening," she said.

But Edwards dismissed claims that the new strategy is a cost-saving measure. District officials have maintained that the city can afford the contract, estimated to cost $50 million over three years, though they have never detailed where the money would come from. In other districts, like Washington, D.C., private funds had to be solicited to afford a similar merit-pay pact.

Edwards said the new PIP strategy reflects that "things matter today that didn't matter yesterday."

A national issue

National experts say that the mere increase of PIPs in a school district undergoing such reforms shouldn't raise red flags because they can provide critical information to teachers.


_______________________________________________
I'm telling you Maryland, this is already used in Baltimore!
Having a corporate-run school system that uses pre-K testing to track your child into career paths is not democratic education and it has no goal in achievement other then giving that child the skill for one job set. This is not simple vocational training classes we used to have the last few years of high school. THIS IS ONE LONG K-COLLEGE VOCATIONAL TRACK.

Below you see one good source in what is happening with school reform----this one in Philadelphia----THE NOTEBOOK!

YOU KEEP VOTING FOR THE POLS ALLOWING THIS!!!!! RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE


Philadelphia School Partnership pushes for private management of student placement
by Helen Gym on Oct 24 2013 Notebook

For months, the Philadelphia School Partnership (PSP) has been working to put in place a new citywide process for placing students in schools. Most troubling is that PSP wants this process to be run by an outside, private entity that is created by PSP and could eventually charge a per-pupil fee from participating systems.

“Universal enrollment,” as it is called, would match students to either a District, charter, or parochial school whenever they decide to transfer, move, or transition to another school level.

The PSP proposal would not only take the current student-placement program out of the District’s hands -- unprecedented in any other city -- it would also include parochial schools and coordinate the selection process with the availability of scholarships, which are now often provided through two controversial, voucher-like business tax subsidy programs in Pennsylvania.

PSP’s audacious plans were unveiled at a briefing before City Council last month. I spoke with several attendees at the briefing, including a member of Parents United for Public Education, and received a copy of PSP's PowerPoint presentation.

PSP, which describes itself as a philanthropic organization interested in the movement of students into "high performing" seats, had aimed to launch a pilot universal enrollment effort this year with parochial schools and some charters. Since the briefing, PSP has now decided to delay the program until next year, when it proposes to assume enrollment responsibilities for all District schools, including special admission schools as well as charter and parochial schools.

The program raises serious questions about students' privacy rights, church-and-state separation, and public disclosure issues. It also potentially weakens the guarantee of a neighborhood school option and removes from District control a central mission and function – all without any meaningful public disclosure, discussion, or oversight.

District officials are distancing themselves from PSP’s independent effort. Spokesperson Fernando Gallard told me the District is using its own enrollment process this year.

“There has been no decision made regarding the high school selection process for future years,” Gallard wrote in an email. “The use of a third party and the per pupil fee is a question that should be answered by PSP since we are not part of that effort.”

Lobbying council on universal enrollment

PSP introduced its independent universal enrollment program in a briefing before City Council on Sept. 18. According to attendees, the presentation sparked controversy, leading to a pointed back-and-forth between a number of Council staff and PSP leadership.

The briefing was led by PSP’s executive director Mark Gleason, a one-time publishing entrepreneur and former South Orange-Maplewood, N.J., school board member. Gleason identified PSP’s chief consultant in the project as Ramsey Green, a real estate investor and consultant from New Orleans, where a similar program has been criticized by a number of public education advocates.

Sources told me that Gleason promoted the new process as a way to “outsource the enrollment and placement” of all students in the city’s District, charter, and, in a surprising twist, Catholic schools. In most cities with a universal enrollment plan, the effort has focused on the public sector, presumably to avoid First Amendment conflicts.

At the Council briefing, Gleason announced that the District in August had pulled out of the universal enrollment process for this year, saying officials have "a lot on their plate right now.” As a result, he said, PSP would take on the effort unilaterally by setting up a separate nonprofit called PhillySchoolApp.

PhillySchoolApp will be overseen by a private entity, the Compact Working Group, whose members represent the Great Schools Compact, a body that includes District and charter school leaders, and which PSP also staffs. Gleason said PSP was already interviewing applicants for the executive director position of PhillySchoolApp.

Private philanthropy would cover the effort for the first three years, after which PhillySchoolApp would charge a per-pupil fee for participating schools. When asked about the potential cost by a Council aide, Gleason said it could be in the range of $10 per student, according to several people who were at the briefing.

According to the PowerPoint presentation made at the briefing, PhillySchoolApp would run a “centralized lottery and school matching service” that would assign each student only one option for a school.

Under the current system, students at the high school level are assured a neighborhood school option, can be admitted to as many as five District schools, and can apply to as many charter and private schools as they want. Under PSP’s proposed system, students would be matched to a single school. Students would have a right to refuse that school, but would lose their opportunity in the selective first round, then bump down to a second- and third-match round, where fewer schools are offered.

The PowerPoint said PSP had intended to secure the participation of “50-plus charter and Catholic schools” this year. Students assigned to Catholic schools would be matched "only if it was determined that scholarship assistance would be available." The tax-credit programs, Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) -- often deemed similar to vouchers -- are increasingly the most common means of scholarship assistance.

Attendees at the briefing said at least one staff aide asked a question about potential church-and-state conflicts.

“The question was asked, but it felt like it wasn’t taken seriously,” said one attendee. “They [PSP] just shrugged it off. They said there was no real conflict and started talking about the nature of the process, and how involved they were, and so on.”

Kristen Forbriger, communications manager for PSP, told me last week that, although the effort has been delayed till next year, the Compact Committee has “developed a common application,” which has been made available to District, charter, and Catholic schools. District officials said they are using their own application that is completely separate from an application through the Compact.

“The goal is to introduce the full system [“PhillySchoolApp”] in the future, hopefully by next year,” Forbriger wrote in an email.

One attendee at the briefing said Gleason asked Council members and staff to support the effort by putting their name behind neighborhood meetings to promote PhillySchoolApp. Forbriger explained over email that the purpose of the Council briefing was to “ensure Council members and staff were fully briefed on the program should it have rolled out this year, so they could share information with families.”

Susan Gobreski, executive director of Education Voters PA, said her organization had supported a common enrollment process, which could deal with inequities. For example, some charters have been flagged for complicated application processes that create "barriers to entry" for some students.

But Gobreski expressed surprise at PSP’s newly forged, independent role.

“While we support the implementation of some form of common enrollment for high school students with an eye on equity, I am very concerned about it being run by a private entity,” Gobreski said. “School placement for public education must be the function of a public entity and changes to our current process need to be thoroughly examined in a public manner with an opportunity to raise questions.”

An untested experiment in school choice

Universal enrollment is another untested reform initiative coming from the Gates Foundation, which has a history of funding experimental, and often controversial, ideas in K-12 education (requiring student test scores as a major part of teacher evaluations, for example) and higher education. The most established universal enrollment programs are in New Orleans and Denver. Newark and Washington, D.C., recently announced they intend to introduce universal enrollment in 2014-2015.

Karran Harper Royal, a New Orleans parent advocate, shared her concerns with me this week about how the universal enrollment program has rolled out in her hometown. Harper Royal said that, in New Orleans, parents are handed a long list of school names with letter grades, which give little information about the quality of school services. Parents have raised concerns that universal enrollment actually limits choice options by directing families into a single computer-generated selection. Parents no longer have the guaranteed option of their nearby neighborhood school, even if it is a few blocks away and desired.

One mother, who lived on the West Bank of New Orleans, only listed schools on the West Bank, which were all full “according to the computer,” Harper Royal said. That parent was assigned to an “F”-rated school on the far east side of New Orleans slated for closure the following year.

“I’d be concerned that this is just another tool to segregate schools and steer some families to some schools and other families to other schools,” Harper Royal said. “This isn’t an informed choice that families are making.”

In New Orleans, where more than 70 percent of students are in charters, the “OneApp” (as it is dubbed) is a daunting 20-page package requiring two to four written pages per child. Notably, PSP’s PowerPoint presentation before City Council included a sample application form from the New Orleans OneApp. One report said that more than one in five families simply don’t participate in the process.

Tomika Anglin, a leadership member of Parents United for Public Education who attended the City Council briefing, said she was concerned that universal enrollment would “further starve already emaciated neighborhood schools.”

“This is another way of telling people to get out of the public schools, and then blaming people if they don’t,” she said.

Anglin said she was most alarmed at the role of a private entity formed by PSP controlling the enrollment process.

“How can parents be assured that this is about my child and not the agenda of PSP?” Anglin asked. “They are creating a process that, once implemented, will render the District and participating schools dependent – and then the bill will come. They have created their own source of profit, and the city’s schoolchildren will be held hostage.”

PhillySchoolApp will have unrestricted access to private student data in order to mine student information to facilitate their placement. A “central database can integrate with every school’s student data system,” one slide of the PSP PowerPoint shows.

Student data systems contain highly sensitive information, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, grades, test scores, race, students' economic status, special-education status, disciplinary status, and much more. They can also contain information that is appropriate for a school but may not be appropriate for third-party vendors, such as reasons for leaving a school or parental status (custody rights, foster care, etc.). Granting access to such information to a third party outside the School District could violate the confidentiality of such information.

New York City parents, for example, have launched a major battle around privacy rights against a private contractor, which collects student data and has the right to sell that information, recently highlighted in a New York Times article.

Privacy and First Amendment concerns aside, providing meaningful choices to Philadelphia’s families will take more than a clever computer algorithm. Choice advocates make a mistake in presuming that parents have real options when there is a dysfunctional school system that reformers largely refuse to improve.

Harper Royal, in New Orleans, said: “They’re not talking about leveling the playing field. They’re not talking about providing transportation, or dealing with school fees, or addressing quality of services, especially for students with special needs."

“They have hijacked the word choice. This is not choice. It’s the illusion of choice.”

Part 2 coming soon: “Public money, private gain: Philadelphia School Partnership's expanding role in political lobbying”

Helen Gym is a founder of Parents United for Public Education and a Notebook blogger.


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If you look at New York City and their teacher's union website and Chicago Teachers union website and PURE, a parent group and as you see, from Seattle and Portland, Los Angeles to San Francisco, Chicago to NYC.....everyone knows these reforms are bad. We need to strengthen our public schools with funding and resources and accountability is not bad if done fairly. We are finding that all of the stats these education privatizers are using are later found false or skewed as happens in Maryland.

Washington with Michelle Rhee and the privatization crowd are the same as O'Malley and the Maryland/ Baltimore School Board crowd.  We simply have media that report discrepancies  and EDITORIAL STAFF that provide the accolades.

The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is still haunted by policies from the failed Michelle Rhee era, this time with the revelation of flawed IMPACT scores, a teacher evaluation system that relies heavily on standardized tests.

DCPS is telling us there are two different errors in the way the District has calculated IMPACT scores: some teachers who got high scores weren't that good, and some teachers who received low scores weren't that bad. In other words, we now know that IMPACT’s flaws are even worse than we feared. As AFT President Randi Weingarten said following the revelation of these miscalculations, it should be clear to all now that you can’t simply take data, apply an algorithm, and use whatever pops out of a black box to judge teachers, students and our schools.

We cannot let this pattern continue. Write Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Mayor Vincent Gray and urge them to change the high-handed way DCPS operates and to involve teachers and parents in the decision-making process.

These miscalculations have created a significant problem for everyone in the community—teachers, students and parents--because IMPACT scores determine which teachers are retained, rewarded and even fired. Nearly 600 DCPS teachers have been fired in recent years, most because of IMPACT scores. And, this latest arithmetic mistake appears to have affected 1 out of 10 teachers whose evaluations include student test results.

DCPS needs to work with teachers and parents—not with technocrats and bean counters—to figure out how we can help provide better schools for all children in D.C. Write Mayor Gray and Chancellor Henderson today.

We believe in D.C. public schools, and have worked with this mayor in many constructive ways, including on the district's very successful pre-K program. But there's something very troubling when the district continues to reduce everything about students, educators and schools to a nameless, faceless algorithm and test score. This was clear in the Rhee era and led to widespread allegations of cheating. And now we see it with the troubling news that teachers' evaluation scores were miscalculated—with a tremendous impact on the employment and wages of teachers and on our schools and students.

If we are going to reclaim the promise of public education for all children, Chancellor Henderson and Mayor Gray must change the high-handed way DCPS operates and involve teachers and parents in the decision-making process. Write them today.

In unity,
Elizabeth Davis
Washington Teachers' Union President

P.S. Read our full statement on the flawed IMPACT scores here.

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IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE THE ARTICLE BELOW ABOUT OREGON RELATES TO CONDITIONS HERE IN BALTIMORE.....THINK AGAIN.
Teachers across the country are being held captive by neo-liberals who hold pensions and union rights over their heads as these Race to the Top policies are forced on schools. Fearful of jobs, parents fearful of getting their children into limited schools.......COMMUNITIES MUST SHOUT OUT AGAINST THESE PRIVATIZING ISSUES AND SUPPORT YOUR TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS!

THIS IS NOT GOING TO STAY IN POOR SCHOOLS.....IT WILL TAKE ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS!


AlterNet / By Aaron Cantú

High School Students in Portland Protest on Behalf of Their Teachers As Portland Public Schools try to lift limits on class size and reduce benefits for teachers, students are joining the fight.

January 15, 2014 | High school students from Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon are joining their teachers in the fight against a reduction in benefits and worse working (and learning) conditions.

The campaign began with a walkout of about 200 students from the high school on last Friday, January 10th, and continued with a forced interruption of a meeting convened by Portland Public School district (PPS) on Monday evening.

"If you strike, we do too," chanted a group of students and parents outside of the building, in solidarity with the teachers. The district meeting was quickly cancelled, and school board members moved into a closed-door executive session.

The protesters had gathered out of fear that PPS was going to ram through a contract that would have eased limits on classroom sizes and made it more difficult for teachers to secure health insurance through the district. Currently, the school district is hoping to uncap the current limit of 180 students per teacher for six to seven classes, and let it rise all the way up to 50/1 per class, as has happened in nearby Beaverton school district after officials removed such limitations. Furthermore, the changes to the district's health insurance policy may end up costing each teacher about $11,000 more in coverage over a four year period.

Oregon teachers currently take on about 35% more students per class than the national average, and the state has ranked among the five worst states in the country in staffing cuts.

Jefferson High School has been villified by education "reformers" in Portland as a failed school, and more K-8 schools in the Jefferson "cluster"--the group of schools that feed into Jefferson--have been closed than in any other clusters in the district.

Compounding the pressure are federal funding initaitives tied to President Obama's Race to the Top campaign that have sapped money from Jefferson because of students' low marks on standardized tests. As the money has dried up, students have left the school in droves, and those left behind have had to make-do with fewer resources, programs, and teachers.

Said Jefferson High School sophomore Mikey Garcia, who attended the protest last Friday, to Socialist Worker:

"I'm here because I love my teachers, and I love my school. But you know what's not fair? It's not fair that there are 43 kids in my anatomy class. It's not fair that my teachers don't have prep time to prepare lessons for me. It's not fair that the district is trying to take these things away, not give them more."

As of now, the haggling between PPS and the Portland Association of Teachers continues, with a resolution no nearer than it has been during the last nine months of negotiation.


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We do not want to lessen minority and special needs students as they work their way through school and graduate..but we need to correct the statistics because if allowed to stand, then sub-par education programming will gain hold. O'Malley has a history of fudging stats and this is one. The problem is that the Baltimore Sun allows these articles to go out without question. So, you will see this headline in O'Malley's 2016 campaign which is what this article is for.

We have had numerous articles, government watchdogs, parents and social justice advocates shout that the underserved and special needs are being warehoused and given horrible education opportunities since Race to the Top and O'Malley ended Brown vs Board of Education equal access and opportunity. How is that for a headline? Does it sound like the one on this article? Of course not. The tiered funding/use of charter schools to segregate and vocationalize the underserved in Balt is horrendous and the definition of what can be termed high school graduation has been watered so that off campus classes in non-profits that do not meet standards..even going as far as sending students to PA for graduation is absurd.

These students are encouraged to stay home for state/national tests so MD will look higher in stats than it is. We are spreading the word!

I have friends in BAltimore taking their children out of special needs schools and homeschooling because conditions are so bad now for Baltimore students it is unacceptable.

Students are sitting in front of canned computer lessons checking boxes with no attempt to make learning interesting in many schools. So, if you are going to create a tiered system of education warehousing the underserved and special needs....you need to state that so people do not confuse MD with states giving equal opportunity and access public schooling!


Md. excluded large number of special-education students in national test Scores on NAEP were likely inflated

Maryland's scores on a national reading test may have been inflated because the state's schools excluded a higher percentage of special-education students than any other state, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.


Maryland students show no significant gains on national tests Major progress seen in other states on nation's report card


By Liz Bowie, The Baltimore Sun 10:10 a.m. EST, November 7, 2013

Maryland students scored slightly lower in math on a national test of skills compared to two years earlier, however, the state's pass rates still remain above the national average in both math and reading.



So, if you look at the headlines Maryland is leading the nation with all kinds of achievement yet as we see above......there is never any achievement when testing and data is looked at by national groups.  That is because Maryland skews all data and media gives the headlines and all of it is false.
  Ask any parent of children with high school students and they will tell you education is atrocious.  Students are being given watered-down testing and rule changes identifying high school graduation have been expanded and lowered so much so as to move students on.  THIS IS HOW GRADUATION RATES ARE INFLATED.  Now, for parents of children being exposed to such a poor quality of schooling, having their child graduate under these conditions is not an achievement, it is a disgrace.
   Special education families find Baltimore so bad for their children they are taking them out of the system and homeschooling.  That's one way to reduce cost and inflate grades.

All of this is done to make it appear these reforms are working.......BUT CONDITIONS ARE FAR WORSE IN THE CLASSROOM AND WITH ACHIEVEMENT.


Maryland graduation rate rises to 85 percent More African-Americans, special-education and Hispanic students graduated in 2013

By Liz Bowie and Erica L. Green, The Baltimore Sun 8:26 p.m. EST, January 28, 2014

Maryland's high school graduation rate has been climbing steadily for the past four years and reached nearly 85 percent — far above the national average — this past June, according to data released Tuesday.

More students from every corner of the state are staying in school to earn a diploma, but the increases were most pronounced among Hispanic and African-American students.

State education officials credited the passage of Maryland's Dream Act, which gave hope to Hispanic students who want to attend college in the state, as one of the factors for the 2.5 percentage point increase in the graduation rate for Hispanics.

The Dream Act, which offers in-state tuition to undocumented college students, "has given a level of hope and possibilities for the future," said state school Superintendent Lillian Lowery.

The use of technology and online classes in helping students catch up as well as a general sense among parents that a high school diploma is necessary for any job have also helped boost the graduation rates, officials said.


Statewide, the graduation rate is up 1 percentage point from last year, to 84.97. In addition, the dropout rate has fallen to 9.3 percent, the lowest on record.

"The challenge now is: What is it going to take to get everyone to 90 percent or higher, and can we do that any quicker than 1 point a year," said Robert Balfanz, co-director of the Everyone Graduates Center, which researches and analyzes national graduation and dropout trends. "There is no job to support a family in the 21st century without a high school diploma. We need to be preparing at least 9 out of 10 of our students for that reality."

Balfanz said Maryland's upward trend in the last three to four years mirrors the nation's.

The national graduation rate for the class of 2010 was 78 percent, the latest data available. Vermont graduated 91.4 percent of students, the highest rate in the country.

Balfanz said Maryland's increases in the rates for minority and special education graduates were particularly encouraging.

The graduation rate for African-Americans rose nearly 2 percentage points to 78.3 percent, and the rate for students who are economically disadvantaged was 75.8 percent.

Baltimore, Baltimore County and Howard County had some of the largest increases in the graduation rate. Howard County increased its four-year graduation rate to 93.25 percent, up nearly 3 percentage points. Baltimore and Baltimore County rose 2 percentage points and 2.5 percentage points, respectively.

After he arrived 18 months ago, Baltimore County Superintendent Dallas Dance made a strategic plan to help students catch up who were just a few credits shy of graduation and to address the dropout rate. City officials said they have spent the past two years focused on improving instruction, adding a more demanding curriculum and encouraging more students to go to college.

At Overlea High School in Baltimore County, which has a high percentage of minority students, the graduation rate rose from 75.4 percent to 81.2 percent in one year.

Overlea Principal Marquis Dwarte said the district made sure every school had a committee that met regularly to focus on how to help students who were in danger of dropping out and "engage families and students in a conversation saying they are not on track to graduate."

Baltimore County's graduation rate increase was the largest single-year gain in four years and a jump of nearly 5 percentage points in three years. Only three of the county's 24 high schools didn't see gains, and two of those already have rates over 98 percent.

Nearly every demographic group saw increases in the county, and the gap between the percentage of white and black graduates narrowed to less than 3 percentage points. There were large jumps for students whose second language is English, as well as special education students.

Mark T. Bedell, assistant superintendent for high schools in Baltimore County, has taken the charge personally, going to schools to tell students his own story of growing up the eldest of eight children among "a lot of poverty, neglect and abuse."

He has encouraged students to stay in school and said he hopes to make a home visit to a student who dropped out just one credit shy of graduation to support a new baby. He would like to persuade the student to come back and finish.

Bedell said the school system has successfully spread its use of online classes to students who have fallen behind. For example, a student who enters senior year having failed some classes can catch up by taking online classes during school hours. In addition, teachers have worked in small classes after school and on Saturdays to teach students concepts they were lacking so they could catch up.



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February 05th, 2014

2/5/2014

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I wanted to take today to look at what many people will consider dry and boring.....yet it is what makes you and I citizens.....civics 101 is knowing your Constitution and what your elected officials are legally bound to do in your name.  What I have shown is that none of this is happening at the Federal, state, or local level. 

YOU CANNOT BE A CITIZEN IF YOU DO NOT KNOW THE CONSTITUTION AND DO NOT HOLD YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS RESPONSIBLE.  STOP BEING A COUCH POTATO.....WAKE UP.....AND GET ENGAGED!!!!!


Regarding Maryland acting as if TPP is already in force:

Now that everyone knows that neo-liberals have as a goal to end national sovereignty and create a system of City States in the US with global corporations running these fiefdoms......Johns Hopkins obviously being the Medici of our region, its good to know all of this can and will be reversed as all of it was built with a suspension of Rule of Law, Equal Protection under Law, and elections of politicians knowing acting against the public's interest....politicians are public servants required to work in the public's interest our they are committing public malfeasance.


Today I would like to give a brief civics lesson on State Constitutions to show how the state of Maryland politics today has absolutely no legal and Constitutional standing as public officials are openly allowing massive fraud and corruption permeate the business and government systems in the state and where all public policy is now written by corporate interests in the guise of quasi-governmental organizations I am sure are not legal in and of themselves.  The public has been locked out of public debate, writing public policy, and even have private corporate-run non-profits running our communities.  NONE OF THIS IS LEGAL------IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL -------AND THE PUBLIC ASSETS AND WEALTH BEING LOST THROUGH THE NEGLECT OF RULE OF LAW CAN AND WILL COME BACK.

What this means is that Johns Hopkins does not get to run the Baltimore region.  It does not get to write law, to have politicians hand all that is public into the hands of Johns Hopkins, or to openly allow massive fraud and corruption keep we the people and our government coffers empty.  ALL OF THIS IS ILLEGAL AND CAN BE REVERSED.

So, Johns Hopkins as VEOLA ENVIRONMENT taking control of water and waste......Johns Hopkins as Port of Baltimore taking all control of Inner Harbor commerce.....Johns Hopkins as public health taking control of all health care administration with no public transparency or input ................ Johns Hopkins taking control of all public education and schools with corporatization policy that sends profit directly to Hopkins-related education businesses........and Johns Hopkins as solicitor and installer in chief of national private corporate non-profits taking control of all aspects of public policy with directors in place to support all policy moved by the Hopkins-run Baltimore Development Corporation.


FOLKS......IT LOOKS AS IF IT IS DAUNTING TO TAKE CONTROL BACK FROM WHAT WE CAN A GREAT BLOOD-SUCKING SQUID WITH TENTACLES AROUND EVERYTHING.....BUT IT IS EASY PEASY.

All we have to do is break up the political machines in Baltimore and Maryland that keep these henchmen and women in office allowing all of this consolidation and control to be taken.  ALL OF MARYLAND'S POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS...THEY ARE NOT DEMOCRATS AND WE SIMPLY NEED TO RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL ELECTIONS.....STOP ALLOWING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY MACHINE IN THE STATE TO CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES WHILE IT IS CONTROLLED BY NEO-LIBERALS!

THESE POLITICIANS ARE SWORN TO SERVE THE PUBLIC!


You do not need to be a rocket scientist to know that handing all that is public to consolidated private hands at great loss to the public and a suspension of Rule of Law with no public justice is NOT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST AND ALL CONTRACTS SIGNED UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES ARE NULL AND VOID.  So, handing the Port of Baltimore and all its tens of billions in profit once coming to the state and now going to HighStar's leading shareholder Johns Hopkins.....NOT LEGAL.
NO CONTRACT DOING THAT IS LEGAL.

Handing all of the region's water and waste to VEOLA ENVIRONMENT with HighStar's leading shareholder Johns Hopkins ........NOT LEGAL.  NO CONTRACT DOING THAT IS LEGAL.

Billions of dollars lost to the State of Maryland and City of Baltimore from massive and systemic fraud and corruption for years and years.....NO STATUTES OF LIMITATION BECAUSE GOVERNMENT SUSPENDED RULE OF LAW AND EQUAL PROTECTION.


Now, if you look at Maryland's


WIKILEAKS
Malfeasance in office, or official misconduct, is the commission of an unlawful act, done in an official capacity, which affects the performance of official duties. Malfeasance in office is often grounds for a for cause removal of an elected official by statute or recall election.

The Maryland Constitution's Requirement to take the Oath of Office

and The Actual Oath of Office Public Servants in Maryland are Required to Take

Article 1, Elective Franchise

SEC. 9. Every person elected, or appointed, to any office of profit or trust, under this Constitution, or under the Laws, made pursuant thereto, shall, before he enters upon the duties of such office, take and subscribe the following oath, or affirmation: 

I, _______________, do swear, (or affirm, as the case may be), that I will support the Constitution of the United States; and that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the State of Maryland, and support the Constitution and Laws thereof; and that I will, to the best of my skill and judgment, diligently and faithfully, without partiality or prejudice, execute the office of ________________, according to the Constitution and Laws of this State, (and, if a Governor, Senator, Member of the House of Delegates, or Judge,) that I will not directly or indirectly, receive the profits or any part of the profits of any other office during the term of my acting as ___________ (originally Article I, sec. 6, renumbered by Chapter 681, Acts of 1977, ratified Nov. 7, 1978).




Statutory Law Listing Which Public Servants Must Take This Oath

§ 16-102. State Government

(a)  The oath prescribed by Article I, § 9 of the Maryland Constitution shall be taken and subscribed before the Governor by:

(1)  the Adjutant General;
(2)  the Attorney General;
(3)  the Comptroller;
(4)  the judges of the Court of Appeals and their clerks;
(5)  the judges of the Court of Special Appeals and their clerks;
(6)  the Secretary of State;
(7)  the State Reporter; and
(8)  the Treasurer.

(b)  On or as soon as practicable after the third Monday of January next after the election for Comptroller, the successful candidate for that office shall qualify by taking the oath prescribed by Article I, § 9 of the Maryland Constitution.

(c)  The Secretary of State shall maintain a book that records the oaths taken and subscribed under this section.

And, yes, the Governor must take the same oath:


§ 16-101. State Government

(a)   The Governor and Lieutenant Governor shall take and subscribe the oath prescribed by Article I, § 9 of the Maryland Constitution:

And Many Other Public Servants Must Take This Oath, as well

§ 16-105. State Government

Except for an officer specified in §§ 16-101 through 16-104 of this title, an officer elected or appointed to any office of trust or profit under the Maryland Constitution or a law of this State, including a mayor or other chief magistrate of a municipal corporation, shall take and subscribe the oath required by Article I, § 9 of the Maryland Constitution before a clerk of the circuit court or before a sworn deputy of the clerk.

Appointed Officials Must Take Constitutional Oath

§ 4-908. Governor - Executive and Administrative Departments

Each person appointed under this subtitle, within thirty days after his certificate of appointment has been issued and before entering upon the duties of his office, shall take and subscribe the constitutional oath of office before the clerk of the court in the county or Baltimore City, where the commission may be received. The clerk of the court shall transmit to the Secretary of State a certificate indicating that the person commissioned has taken the constitutional oath of office.



§ 3-202. State Personnel and Pensions


(b)  Before taking office, each appointed member shall take the oath required by Article I, § 9 of the Maryland Constitution.


Treasurer Must Take Another Oath in Addition to This Oath

§ 5-101.1.  State Government

In addition to the oath specified in Article I, § 9 of the Maryland Constitution, the Treasurer shall take an oath to discharge the duties of the Office of Treasurer faithfully, diligently, and honestly.




_____________________________________________



CONSTITUTION OF MARYLAND


DECLARATION OF RIGHTS. We, the People of the State of Maryland, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberty, and taking into our serious consideration the best means of establishing a good Constitution in this State for the sure foundation and more permanent security thereof, declare:

Article 1. That all Government of right originates from the People, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole; and they have, at all times, the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their Form of Government in such manner as they may deem expedient.

Art. 2. The Constitution of the United States, and the Laws made, or which shall be made, in pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, are, and shall be the Supreme Law of the State; and the Judges of this State, and all the People of this State, are, and shall be bound thereby; anything in the Constitution or Law of this State to the contrary notwithstanding.


Art. 4. That the People of this State have the sole and exclusive right of regulating the internal government and police thereof, as a free, sovereign and independent State

Art. 6. That all persons invested with the Legislative or Executive powers of Government are the Trustees of the Public, and, as such, accountable for their conduct: Wherefore, whenever the ends of Government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the People may, and of right ought, to reform the old, or establish a new Government; the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

Art. 7. That the right of the People to participate in the Legislature is the best security of liberty and the foundation of all free Government; for this purpose, elections ought to be free and frequent; and every citizen having the qualifications prescribed by the Constitution, ought to have the right of suffrage (amended by Chapter 357, Acts of 1971, ratified Nov. 7, 1972). Art. 8. That the Legislative, Executive and Judicial powers of Government ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other; and no person exercising the functions of one of said Departments shall assume or discharge the duties of any other.

Art. 9. That no power of suspending Laws or the execution of Laws, unless by, or derived from the Legislature, ought to be exercised, or allowed. Art. 10. That freedom of speech and debate, or proceedings in the Legislature, ought not to be impeached in any Court of Judicature.

Art. 18. That no Law to attaint particular persons of treason or felony, ought to be made in any case, or at any time, hereafter. Art. 19. That every man, for any injury done to him in his person or property, ought to have remedy by the course of the Law of the Land, and ought to have justice and right, freely without sale, fully without any denial, and speedily without delay, according to the Law of the Land.


_____________________________________________

Keep in mind that it is the Governor and the Mayor of Baltimore charged with assembling a legal team to serve the interests of the public.  It is the same who would shout loudly and strongly if a State or City Attorney could not see fraud.  Could you imagine massive fraud and corruption going without justice if O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake used their bully-pulpit to out the AIDING AND ABETTING of crime?  Of course not.  So, these are the two executive offices that are failing to serve and as such are guilty of malfeasance.  If the entire system is corrupt what does a citizenry do?  First, make sure these executive positions are working for you and me.

The next problem for citizens at both the national and state/local level is the suspension of public justice.  Now, Congress and the Maryland Assembly can cut funding to public justice but as we all know RECOVERING CORPORATE FRAUD PAYS FOR ITSELF....NO FUNDING NEEDED.  So, while O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly pretends to fund public justice in the form of paying private lawyers to do PRO-BONO WORK.....which is where all the state's funding goes for public justice......the National Lawyers Guild....with state and local offices are supposed to be protecting WE THE PEOPLE against all of what I speak.



The Maryland Bar Association is so corrupt that if you look at all the fraud that happens in the state....it is the lawyers in the state getting much of the wealth.  Subprime mortgage loan fraud with MERS at the center?  Mostly involving Maryland Bar lawyers.

Now, every single Maryland Bar lawyer is not crooked of course, but to practice law in Maryland you must be a member of the Maryland Bar and as we know.......THERE IS NO PUBLIC JUSTICE COMING FROM EITHER THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD OR THE MARYLAND BAR.
  Also remember, that the judge appointed by O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly nominating committee are choosing from this Maryland Bar population for the positions.  When you have a corporate state enforcing law selectively as if corporations run the state.....then the lawyers and judges will run their offices as such. 

YET, NONE OF THIS IS LEGAL.  LAWYERS CANNOT SIMPLY SUSPEND US CONSTITUTIONAL LAW TO PRETEND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION WITH PACIFIC TRADE DEALS IS ALLOWED AND THEN FOLLOW THOSE TRADE DEAL LAWS....WHICH IS WHAT IS HAPPENING IN MARYLAND BEFORE THE TPP IS EVEN PASSED.


Judges who knowingly facilitate unconstitutional law with rulings that pretend to be subjective when they are completely re-writing law are doing so illegally.  DOES ANYONE BELIEVE THAT THE MERS OPERATION IN MARYLAND'S WASHINGTON SUBURBS WAS A LEGAL METHOD OF TRANSFERRING HOUSE TITLE?  ABSOLUTELY NOBODY BELIEVES THAT and this needs to be appealed to higher court.  This is an example of courts ruling in ways that have nothing to do with existing law just to protect corruption in the state.

WE THE PEOPLE MUST GET ALL THESE SYSTEMS BACK TO WORK AND IT IS NOT HARD.  WE SIMPLY NEED TO SHAKE THE BUGS FROM THE RUG BY RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES AND STOP ALLOWING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTROLLED BY NEO-LIBERALS CHOOSE OUR CANDIDATES!


I want to end by saying that lawyers within the National Lawyers Guild are not bad people for not taking this on.  It is a huge problem that needs the whole of the communities to provide the support for these lawyers wanting to do good.  I  am a skeptic about the capture of these kinds of private organizations by people with no intent of serving the mission....so no doubt a little of both is happening!

National Lawyers Guild

From Wikipedia

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States. The group was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association (ABA) in protest of that organization's exclusionary membership practices and conservative political orientation. They were the first US bar association to allow the admission of minorities to their ranks.

The group declares itself to be "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system . . . to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests."[1]



National Lawyers Guild

409 Washington Ave, Baltimore, Maryland
(410)494-8119
University of Maryland School of Law
This page developed and maintained by National Lawyers Guild, University of Maryland Law Student Chapter


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I speak to people I know are lawyers about running for State/City Attorney to put public justice back on the map in Maryland and I hear time and again.....the problem with corruption and the suspension of public justice is that the Maryland Assembly is full of lawyers.  Indeed, it is.  Lawyers have always been the butt of jokes about trustworthiness and ambulance chasers.  Their job is to serve a client by making the law work in ways that benefit that client.  In Maryland, the Maryland Assembly is working for global corporations and corporate profit so whether is is written law, legal oversight, enforcement.....they will work against you and I to maximize profit for corporate shareholders.  Keep in mind, US corporations have spent these Obama years getting all kinds of free money from the FED and Congress and are buying back their corporate shares as fast as they can.  That means shareholders are increasingly Corporate Board members all part of that cabal of the richest.  So, when I say a neo-liberal is working for shareholders......that increasingly means only a very few people.  We know our pensions are simply used as fodder so when that is the case....you really are not a shareholder.

NOTE THAT ALL THE CANDIDATES FOR STATE AND CITY ATTORNEY ARE ALL PART OF THIS CRONY POLITICAL SYSTEM....WE NEED REAL PUBLIC JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN THIS COMING PRIMARY.....FEBRUARY 25TH IS THE DATE FOR FILING!


Lawyers in the Maryland General Assembly

SENATE OF MARYLAND (12). Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr. (D), Calvert & Prince George’s Counties; Senator Brian E. Frosh (D), Montgomery County; Senator Norman R. Stone, Jr. (D), Baltimore County; Senator Allan H. Kittleman (R), Carroll & Howard Counties; Senator Robert J. Garagiola (D), Montgomery County; Senator Lisa A. Gladden (D), Baltimore City; Senator Robert A. Zirkin (D), Baltimore County; Senator Jamie Raskin (D), Montgomery County; Senator Joseph Getty (R), Baltimore & Carroll Counties; Senator Victor Ramirez (D), Prince George’s County; Senator Roger Manno (D), Montgomery County; Senator Bill Ferguson (D), Baltimore City.

HOUSE OF DELEGATES (32). Delegate Kevin Kelly (D), Allegany County; Delegate Jon S. Cardin (D), Baltimore County; Delegate Elizabeth Bobo (D), Howard County; Delegate Frank S. Turner (D), Howard County; Delegate Kathleen M. Dumais (D), Montgomery County; Delegate Brian J. Feldman (D), Montgomery County; Delegate Susan C. Lee (D), Montgomery County; Delegate Luiz R. S. Simmons (D), Montgomery County; Delegate Joseph F. Vallario, Jr. (D), Calvert & Prince George’s Counties; Delegate Mary-Dulany James (D), Cecil & Harford Counties; Delegate Susan K. McComas (R), Harford County; Delegate Michael D. Smigiel, Sr. (R), Upper Eastern Shore; Delegate Jill P. Carter (D), Baltimore City; Delegate Samuel I. (Sandy) Rosenberg (D), Baltimore City; Delegate Curtis S. (Curt) Anderson (D), Baltimore City; Delegate Keith E. Haynes (D), Baltimore City; Delegate Doyle L. Niemann (D), Prince George’s County; Delegate Dana Stein (D), Baltimore County; Delegate Jeff Waldstreicher (D), Montgomery County; Delegate Ben Barnes (D), Anne Arundel & Prince George’s Counties; Delegate Joseline Pena-Melnyk (D), Anne Arundel & Prince George’s Counties; Delegate Aisha N. Braveboy (D), Prince George’s County; Delegate Stephen W. Lafferty (D), Baltimore County; Delegate Kirill Reznik (D), Montgomery County; Delegate C. William (Bill) Frick (D), Montgomery County; Delegate H. Wayne Norman, Jr. (R), Harford County; Delegate Sam Arora (D), Montgomery County; Delegate Geraldine Valentino-Smith (D), Prince George’s County; Delegate C.T. Wilson (D), Charles County; Delegate Cathy Vitale (R), Anne Arundel County; Delegate Keiffer J. Mitchell, Jr. (D), Baltimore City; Delegate Luke Clippinger (D), Baltimore City.

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February 03rd, 2014

2/3/2014

0 Comments

 
TPP is the worst of economic situations as Americans would lose their sovereignty and rights, but the build up in consolidations since Obama took office.....you thought all that money the FED was given for free was for corporate stabilization and not just to further consolidate all US industries.  Trillions have been spent by the few at the top to gain control across industries.
The American people have been reduced to shouting to stop taking all of our wealth and retirements even as neo-liberals are indeed doing just that!

IS YOUR POLITICIAN, MEDIA OUTLET, OR LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS SHOUTING OUT AGAINST THIS?  WELL, THAT MEANS THEY ARE WORKING FOR NEO-LIBERALS AND NOT YOU AND ME!  THIS IS NEO-LIBERALS DOING MORE DAMAGE THAN REPUBLICANS!

I have referenced how corporations are now the welfare queens with so much corporate welfare as to make our taxpayer money an income for shareholders.  I want to look at development since the crash to show that all those tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud we have not gotten back are now being used for merger and acquisition in ever greater consolidation that gives us this situation of only a few global corporations owning all.  Maryland is ground zero for this so as I point out how Maryland citizens are affected negatively by these policies and how the neo-liberals you elect over and over are working to do great harm to you and me and our communities.....know that the same thing is happening in your neck of the woods!

The concern today is the energy sector consolidation.  We know that the same people owning the oil companies are the ones doing the natural gas fracking and as a result, when Obama and neo-liberals talk about funding an national infrastructure project, it will be these same corporations and investment firms getting all the money as natural gas lines, wind mills, processing plants will all be the infrastructure funded.

O'Malley has handed the most public assets over to corporate interests than any other -------BGE going to Exelon.....HighStar and Veola getting incinerator and waste management that will produce a small amount of energy, and now the wind farm project I wanted to emphasize today.  I've spoken about the wind mills as a loser for jobs and taxpayers/ratepayers, but I wanted to look at how deeply Maryland is tied over and over to Wall Street investment vehicles and the few shareholder corporations tied to all this privatization of public assets.

REMEMBER, THIS IS HAPPENING BECAUSE MARYLAND HAS THE SAME NEO-LIBERALS ELECTED EACH TIME OVER DECADES WHO WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AT OUR EXPENSE.  YOUR POL IS NOT CUTE AND FUZZY HANDING OUT A PROGRESSIVE BONE NOW AND THEN.  THEY ARE GREAT BIG GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS BENT ON HANDING ALL PUBLIC ASSETS AND REVENUE TO CORPORATE PROFIT ESPECIALLY FOR MARYLAND'S 1%.


Regarding wind farms and McCord's ode to Ocean City views:

As an environmentalist recently from Seattle, I have always pushed wind and solar. The idea was to move away from fossil fuel and carbon emission. The problem with any progressive issue in the age of neo-liberal control of the democratic party is that none of it is done for the environment....it becomes public subsidy of another corporate industry. When O'Malley and the corporate Maryland Assembly did their usual sell of jobs and environment to push public subsidy of a wind farm that will do absolutely nothing for global warming....it became a pay-to-play. There will be no jobs created from a Federal program outsourced to private contractors with a wind turbine factory from Germany. As with all these subcontracted projects....the workers are brought from out of state or the work is done in a Right to Work state where workers are impoverished....not a real job.

As this article shows, the amount of energy created by a Maryland wind farm is so small that the public subsidy for building and operating these farms will far exceed the value of energy produced. It is like subsidizing mid-west farms for crop loss during prolonged drought from global warming. IT SIMPLY SETS A PATH OF TAXPAYER SUBSIDY TO AN INDUSTRY NO DOUBT OWNED BY THE GLOBAL CORPORATE GROUP. These turbines not only kill birds and wildlife but as the article below shows, the need to keep them running burns more electricity than running a gas-fired plant. It is the money made by building these turbines and the ongoing public subsidy that drives this industry.

If we were indeed moving away from fossil fuel this would be a good move. As I have said time and again, neo-liberals want to make the US a third world source of raw energy by exporting the worst carbon-emitters......oil, natural gas, coal, and raw timber. Maryland wants to do all of the above. So, the goal is not environmental, it is profits. The citizens of Maryland should be offended that O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly tied them with yet another corporate subsidy and in the very least, making this a public utility.

MARYLAND NOW HAS A TAX TO PAY FOR INFRASTRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS OF A NATIONAL ELECTRICITY AND GAS CORPORATION EXELON EARNING BILLION IN PROFIT EACH YEAR.......WE ARE GOING TO PAY HUGE INCREASES IN WATER AND SEWAGE TO BUILD A NEW SYSTEM FOR WHAT NEO-LIBERALS INTEND TO HAND OFF TO VEOLA ENVIRONMENT-JOHNS HOPKINS.....AND NOW THIS WIND FARM TAX SUBSIDY TO OPERATE THIS ENERGY SOURCE. NONE OF THESE ARE PUBLIC UTILITIES BRINGING PUBLIC VALUE AS WAS ONCE THE CASE.


The solution is voting neo-liberals out of office by running labor and justice. ......WAKE UP AND GET RUNNING!

January 30
MAINE COMPASS: Industrial wind power a catastrophe on every level
Mike Bond

As a lifelong Democrat, environmental activist and renewable energy advocate, I commend Gov. Paul Le Page’s recent criticisms of the huge taxpayer-funded industrial wind power scam, which will ruin Maine unless it is stopped.
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Though initially a proponent of industrial wind, I’ve learned it’s a catastrophe on every level — environmental, fiscal, social and economic. And now with Maine’s southern neighbors halting industrial wind in their states, they’re paying to build thousands of turbines in Maine, to devastate every magnificent Maine ridge, pinnacle and mountain with howling machines more than 50 stories high, some so tall they’ll be the third-tallest structures in New England.

Industrial wind projects have been clearly proven to slaughter millions of birds and bats, destroy scenic beauty, lower property values and tourism, sicken people and drive them from their homes, increase erosion and raise electric rates. But they make billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies for the investment banks that develop them.

Yet the biggest trouble with industrial wind is it doesn’t lower greenhouse gas emissions or fossil fuel use. Not one molecule. The reason is that winds (particularly in Maine) are erratic, and as a result, industrial wind “farms” have to be backed up constantly by “fixed” generation, e.g, fossil fuel plants. This problem, called spinning reserve, basically invalidates any claim that wind projects lower fossil fuel use or carbon dioxide generation.

Online one can find numerous scientific, utility and environmental studies showing that, despite nearly three decades of huge federal subsidies, industrial wind projects don’t lower greenhouse gas emissions or fossil fuel use, and in some cases even increase them. In Germany and Britain, for instance, development of wind projects has led to an escalation in coal use.

This is without even considering the extensive greenhouse gases produced by constructing these huge towers, shipping them across the ocean, trucking them to wherever the wind industry has overridden the local folks and imposed a wind farm and building them.

Consider a typical Maine wind farm advertised as 100 megawatts, about 35 turbine towers. Because Maine winds are poor, turbines run at a low rate, sometimes as little as 4 days a month. Even industrial wind developers admit the capacity of wind projects in Maine is only 25 percent of their advertised amount. Thus a 100MW project creates only 25MW.

Even when the turbines are turning, however, the power can’t always be used, such as at night, so utilities curtail or dump it. In Maine, this reduces our wind projects used power to barely 17MW. And because most wind electricity will be transmitted out of Maine to Connecticut or Massachusetts, the transmission loss could exceed 5 percent, lowering this to 16.6MW.

One also has to deduct the fuel to run the spinning reserve, which means the real power provided to electricity consumers by a 100MW industrial wind project is barely 8 percent of advertised capacity — 8MW, not 100MW.

This 8MW is disastrously low for a project that could cost taxpayers $300 million. By comparison an 8MW gas-fired power plant could be built for less than $15 million and would create far less carbon dioxide. Or, for the same $300 million, we could equip 20,000 Maine homes and businesses with rooftop solar, and significantly reduce Maine’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Ever noticed the turbines turning when there’s no wind? To keep them from seizing up, they have to be turned by buying electricity. This is why three of the largest electricity consumers in Maine are wind projects. They each use more power than Maine’s largest pulp mill.

I may not agree with LePage about everything, but he has clearly enunciated an absolute truth for Maine. If we care about the beauty of our precious state, the superb individuality of our Maine people, and the enormous economic engine that this beauty and cohesion represents, then we must all, Democrats, Republicans and independents stand for what is right for Maine, and reject what is wrong.

We hear a lot of pro-wind commercials on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, and a lot of pro-wind talk from groups such as Maine Audubon, the Sierra Club of the Maine and the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Guess why? Many such organizations get major funding from industrial wind developers.

Years ago, I learned a lot about life as newspaper boy, delivering it sometimes in a blizzard at 30 below, but I made sure my customers got their papers. That’s a spirit Maine inculcates: fairness and reliability. Industrial wind projects have neither.

Mike Bond of Winthrop is an environmental activist, renewable energy advocate and author of a wind industry exposé, “Saving Paradise.”

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It's not that wind energy was never a good idea or could be implemented on small scale to good return. It's that it is profit-driven and the money made is not re-invested to wean from public subsidy.....it increases public subsidy to maintain profit.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS WIND FARM SCAM WILL DO IN MARYLAND. WHATEVER COMPANY IS SELECTED TO RUN THIS BUSINESS....THEY WILL SEE PROFITS GROW AS PUBLIC SUBSIDY GROWS. If a state and country is not serious about global warming with policy that exports the worst of emitters of carbon....this is all a corporate profit-driven hoax.


January 13, 2014 • Germany
German wind farm operator Prokon warns of imminent insolvency

Credit: UPI | Jan. 13, 2014 | www.upi.com ~~

The controversial German wind farm operator Prokon has warned 75,000 retail investors of imminent insolvency, perhaps by the end of the month.

Prokon, based in Itzehoe, Germany, warned in a letter to investors published on the Internet that if they don’t waive repayment of the money, it will be bankrupt by the end of January, making it one of the largest bankruptcies ever in the German “grey capital” market, Suddeutsche Zeitung reported.

Consumer advocates have long warned against the company, which spends heavily on online advertising and direct mail solicitations promising incentives of 8 percent returns on its over-the-counter shares, the German newspaper said.

In the letter, the wind farm operator’s board appealed to its investors for further financial help.

“If our investors do not succeed, together with you, to stabilize the liquidity situation very quickly, by the end of January, we will probably be forced by law to initiate an insolvency plan for threatened bankruptcy,” it said.

The shares are essentially unsecured loans, without the participation rights of regular shareholders – thus the investors are threatened with a loss of their capital.

Over the years Prokon says it has collected nearly $2 billion through such advertising. It has built wind farms and sold the electricity into the German grid, and also invests in biodiesel and biomass.

For several years its has faced criticism from investors, consumer advocates, the media and prosecutors. They suspected the company could not keep its promise high returns and that investors’ money would possibly be lost in the wind farm projects.

Critics have asked where the profits that have been paid out to investors have been coming from – now those fears could be borne out.

In the letter, the company used dramatic language in an appeal to investors asking them to accept delays in paying out the millions of dollars owed to them under a profit participation plan, the newspaper said.

“An insolvency plan can only be prevented if we receive the agreement of at least 95 percent of the profit participation capital that you will not (demand) your capital at least until Oct. 31, 2014, and a payment within 12 months, which may be paid out in installments,” it said.

At the end of the letter, company president Carsten Rodbertus escalated the request into an open call for help.

“Don’t let there be an insolvency plan!” he wrote, urging investors to not let “locusts” and negative media reports destroy “a flagship” green energy company.

The Higher Regional Court of Schleswig-Holstein in September upheld an unfair advertising complaint against Prokon made to the government consumers affairs office in Hamburg, Deutsche Welle reported.

It found a company prospectus contained misleading statements about the supposed safety of the advertised participation rights after claiming the investments were “as safe as a savings account.”

In December Prokon called on its investors to forgo their returns for the second half of 2013 to ease what it called a temporary liquidity crunch.

Officials of the company could not be reached for comment on Saturday, the German broadcaster said.
Source: UPI | Jan. 13, 2014 | www.upi.com



Turbine Trouble: Ill Wind Blows for German Offshore Industry

By Michael Fröhlingsdorf
August 2, 2013

Only recently, the offshore wind industry was seen as an opportunity to regenerate Germany's coast. But amid changing political attitudes and spiraling costs, several companies are struggling to survive. Is the wind boom over before it even really began?

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Below is an example of what this Maryland wind farm will look like with all the Wall Street financial instruments and investment firms owning and running it. One way these wind farms have proved useful is when a corporation like Google builds its own wind farms to augment the super amount of power it burns running its main frames. So, having corporations buying and building these systems is the first step. But no, we need the public paying for all the costs and getting soaked with a bad deal as these articles show! You see these investment firms are getting Federal subsidies to build these things.....they get greening tax breaks for being environmental.....and they get the Maryland taxpayers and ratepayers subsidizing the operations.

RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU KNOW BLACKSTONE GROUP IS INVESTED IN ALL KINDS OF FOSSIL FUEL PROJECTS THAT NEGATE ANY CARBON-SAVING THIS PROJECT WILL BRING------EVERYONE.

STOP VOTING FOR CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS WHO DO NOTHING BUT WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT!


Blackstone blows $3.5B into German wind farms


by Jonathan Braude | Published August 5, 2011 at 10:18 AM

New York private equity house Blackstone Group LP brushed up its green credentials on Friday, Aug. 5, with the announcement of a gusty €2.5 billion ($3.5 billion) investment in two offshore wind farm projects, one 50 kilometers and the other 100 km off the German North Sea coast.

The deal taps into a government-backed commercial lending program set up through state-owned development bank KfW Bankengruppe as part of a consortium of German and international banks. The banks will provide €822 million for the first €1.2 billion project, known as Meerwind, or Seawind. The equity has been committed by Blackstone funds and initial permit holder Windland Energieerzeugungs GmbH.

Blackstone vehicle WindMW GmbH said the completed funding would come from Commerzbank AG, KfW IPEX-Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., Dexia SA, Lloyds Banking Group plc, Banco Santander SA and Siemens Bank GmbH together with EKF, the export credit agency of Denmark, and KfW Bankengruppe. About half the financing will reportedly come from KfW.

The 80-turbine, 288-megawatt Meerwind project is scheduled for completion in 2013 and is expected to produce enough electricity to power 400,000 households, although, even in the North Sea, wind output can fluctuate dramatically. It is expected to help Germany eliminate approximately 1 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year.

The Meerwind operation includes the installation of turbines supplied by Siemens AG and the connection to the national power network by grid operator Tennet TSO GmbH.

Sited northwest of the island of Helgoland, Meerwind will be followed by a second 64-turbine project, requiring a further investment of €1.3 billion and situated much further out at sea. The second project, known as Nördlicher Grund, will be completed in 2016.

Blackstone's and the banks' funding for Meerwind follows the German government's decision to phase out nuclear energy in the country by 2022 in the panic following the Japanese tsunami earlier this year. Although widely criticized as a hasty decision that will do more to promote investment in fossil-fuel generation than renewable energy, the government has also committed itself to a program of rapid adoption of new technologies.

The German government looks for renewable energies' share of power generation to rise from the current 17% of power consumption to at least 35% in 2020. On its website, the Environment Ministry also says, "The German government will strive to ensure this share is 50% by 2030, a figure that should rise to 60% by 2040, then 80% by 2050," though critics argue that is neither a firm commitment nor a sufficiently ambitious target.

WindMW was established in 2008 as a Blackstone portfolio company to develop German offshore wind farms. Meerwind first obtained the permit to build its wind park in 2007.

WindMW was advised by Green Giraffe Energy Bankers, KfW IPEX-Bank and Dexia with legal advice from Gleiss Lutz. The lenders were advised by Watson, Farley & Williams LLP.

Blackstone's announcement comes as its New York rival Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP reportedly agreed to invest a further $75 million in Indian fossil-fuel power company Avantha Power & Infrastructure Ltd. to take its share in the company from 9% to 20%. It invested the initial $50 million in October.

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As we see here.....Blackstone is getting all kinds of tax breaks for this wind farm while it is invested in natural gas and coal-fire stations. The key here is that it is cornering the energy market and these wind turbines will be using tons of electricity to keep the turbines running when no wind will. It is a money-making deal with you and I paying the tab.


NEO-LIBERALS ARE WORKING TO CONSOLIDATE THE ENERGY MARKET SO THAT YOU AND I WILL BE CAPTURED FOR ANY KIND OF ENERGY NEEDED FOR EVERYDAY LIFE.....REMEMBER, THIS ALL USED TO BE PUBLIC.

FERC approves Blackstone's acquisition of Dynegy
EBR Staff Writer Published 02 November 2010


The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved a joint application of Dynegy and an affiliate of The Blackstone Group relating to the acquisition of Dynegy by an affiliate of Blackstone. Dynegy Inc. is an electric utility company based in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It owns and operates a number of power stations in the U.S., all of which are natural gas-fired or coal-fired.


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As we see with Blackstone Group capturing a monopoly on all energy sources, Maryland's policies are being directed by HighStar and Johns Hopkins as a major shareholder. Below you see why Maryland is tapped to be a natural gas exporter ----a raging global warming policy tied to these windmills------

O'Malley and Maryland Assembly has tied all of Maryland public utilities to mega-corporations and this windmill project will not be any different. Good idea to have one global investment firms controlling all the regional energy? OF COURSE NOT. WE ARE GOING PUBLIC WITH OUR UTILITIES IN THE FUTURE!


Highstar Capital to invest in Caiman Energy

EBR Staff Writer Published 28 July 2011

Private equity firm Highstar Capital IV has entered into an agreement to invest up to approximately $270m in US-based midstream energy firm Caiman Energy through a preferred equity investment.

This investment will provide Caiman with additional growth capital for the ongoing expansion of its midstream infrastructure network in the Marcellus shale.

Highstar Capital founder and managing partner Christopher Lee said that Caiman will continue to play a key and growing role in helping Marcellus producers get their gas and liquids to market.

Caiman provides midstream services including natural gas and condensate gathering, compression, dehydration, measurement, treating and conditioning, processing, liquids transportation and fractionation.

Highstar Capital currently manages over $5bn of investments on behalf of its managed funds and co-investment vehicles in a diversified portfolio of energy, transportation and environmental/waste management assets and businesses.

About Highstar

Highstar is a group of investment professionals specializing in value added equity investments in infrastructure assets and businesses. Since 2000, the Highstar has led or co-led infrastructure investments totaling in excess of US $10 billion in enterprise value, including investments in power generation, water and waste water, natural gas transmission and storage, waste management, waste-to-energy, transportation logistics and port concessions and operations. Currently, Highstar is managing a portfolio of assets valued in excess of US $3 billion.

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This is a look with whom is all this energy and infrastructure going and as we know Blackstone is BUSH and AIG/HighStar is the Harvard/Hopkins cabal. Blackstone/AIG are partnered in many deals and as we know, AIG spun off HighStar to gut AIG of assets as it was ready to collapse from the AIG subprime mortgage loan fraud and CDS insuring of what all knew to be toxic mortgage loans. So, much of that profit from the massive mortgage fraud including all the homes lost to the American people from fraud was spun off as HighStar and Harvard, Hopkins and other Ivy Leagues have billions in their endowments from it.

THIS IS WHAT DRIVES MARYLAND POLICY IN ENERGY AND UTILITY PRIVATIZATION AS O'MALLEY SENDS ALL PROJECTS AND I DO NOT DOUBT THESE WIND FARMS WILL BE WITH THIS WALL STREET GROUPS AS WELL.

The citizens of Maryland had a system of public utilities that worked fine and employed workers getting a strong wage and benefits with corporations paying taxes and supporting community. It was William Donald Schaffer that started handing over Maryland public agencies with O'Malley supersizing it and all this is driven by Hopkins' profit.


Blackstone IPO: Mega-Payday for Bush Cabal (continued)

by ELITEWATCH.911REVIEW.ORG

Blackstone IPO: Mega-Payday for Bush Cabal

NIST, asked by INN World Report in February 2004 in New York, answered, they would look into these circumstances.



"In 1985 Blackstone opened its first small office with a staff of four, including the two founders Peter G. Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman and a balance sheet of $400,000.

"Strictly friendly private equity investing in corporate partnerships has been a signature form of investing for The Blackstone Group since 1987 and accounts for 69% of the firm's private equity investments in terms of equity capital invested. The firm, investing side-by-side with 32 corporations and their management teams, has invested over $3.5 billion in such partnerships with a total transaction value of more than $40 billion. Such partnerships have included AT&T (Bresnan transaction), AOL Time Warner (Six Flags transaction), Union Carbide, Union Pacific (CNW transaction), USX, Vivendi, IBM, BP Amoco, Arthur Andersen and many others.�

Blackstone Group & 7 World Trade Center

"New York, NY October 17, 2000: Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, the global real estate investment and management arm of The Blackstone Group, L.P., announced today that it has purchased, from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, the participating mortgage secured by 7 World Trade Center, a commercial office complex controlled by real estate developer Larry Silverstein" (source)

"But before the building can rise further than the substation, major financing issues have to be resolved by Larry Silverstein, who controls the long-term lease on 7 World Trade Center as well as the World Trade Center complex.

The good news for Mr. Silverstein is that the company that insured 7 World Trade, Industrial Risk Insurers, has indicated that it will make a full payment under its $861 million policy. But it's not clear whether Mr. Silverstein can use those proceeds to start building without first reaching an agreement with the mortgage holder on 7 World Trade Center, Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. (source)

Blackstone - Kissinger McLarty Associates - American International Group

Kissinger McLarty Associates has a "strategic alliance" with the Blackstone Group. The Blackstone Group describes their relationship thus:

"Blackstone's alliance with Kissinger McLarty Associates is designed to help provide financial advisory services to corporations seeking high-level strategic advice. The relationship was announced in 2000 and recently completed its first strategic advisory assignment on behalf of a NYSE-listed company." (source)

In fact the alliance also incorporates Maurice Greenberg�s American International Group, as per this press release on February 21st 2000:

"American International Group, Inc. (AIG), The Blackstone Group L. P. and Kissinger Associates Inc. announced the establishment of a new venture to provide financial advisory services to corporations seeking high-level independent strategic advice. The venture will operate globally and will take advantage of the existing relationships between the partners:

- AIG has an ownership interest in Blackstone and is an investor in several of Blackstone's private equity funds;

- AIG and Blackstone have a joint venture, specializing in restructuring and M&A advisory services in selected Asian countries;

- Henry Kissinger chairs both AIG's International Advisory Board and the advisory boards of several AIG-sponsored Infrastructure Funds.

The AIG-Blackstone-Kissinger Associates venture recently completed its first advisory assignment on behalf of a New York Stock Exchange listed U.S. company." (source) (note: "M&A" means �Mergers and Acquisitions�)

Indeed: "In 1998, American International Group ("AIG") acquired a 7% non-voting interest in The Blackstone Group for $150 million and committed to invest $1.2 billion in future Blackstone-sponsored funds." (source) And Maurice Greenberg sits on Blackstone�s Domestic Advisory Board.

(& an anecdotal story about Blacktone�s Peter G Peterson & Enron)

"When Enron executives started dumping stock, and the warning signs that Enron was in deep trouble were everyone except on the evening news, Winokur and Rubin called Peter Fisher, the current undersecretary of the Treasury to determine the practicality of artificially supporting Enron's credit rating in order to enable Enron to borrow enough money to stave off bankruptcy. Fisher, a former New York Fed governor, called his former boss, Peter G. Peterson, the New York Fed chairman - and the current chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. Peterson was also a top Enron financial advisor through his own company, Blackstone Group. Peterson was also against the idea of artificially supporting a phony credit rating for Enron." (source)
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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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