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August 14th, 2014

8/14/2014

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WE CAN REVERSE ALL OF THESE POLICIES EASY PEASY BY SIMPLY VOTING FOR POLS THAT SHOUT OUT AGAINST GLOBAL CORPORATIONS DRIVING MARYLAND'S ECONOMY AND FOR REBUILDING RULE OF LAW


I have been speaking with and handing my research to Baltimore police officers for a few months now making sure they understand that Johns Hopkins has told City Hall and the Chief of Police Batts to move towards privatization of Baltimore police and fire departments.  Since the economic collapse Baltimore has seen an explosion of fraud and corruption that is taking a billion dollars a year from city coffers and we cannot afford to support public sector employees as middle-class when all the money is being sent to corporate fraud and subsidy.  The public union-busting by neo-liberals and neo-cons in Baltimore and Maryland-----those neo-liberals O'Malley/Brown and the Maryland Assembly with the neo-cons Rawlings-Blake and the Baltimore City Hall are now getting rid of our public police and fire.  Remember, Clinton, Bush, Obama have almost finished privatizing the US military.....the manufactured sequestration cuts for the military were all about getting rid of public military and their benefits so now these global corporate pols are doing the same at the state and local level.  When you are bringing a formerly first world nation to third world status you must have all security working for corporations and not loyal to the public as public sector employees say Johns Hopkins.


Baltimore Chief of Police Batts was brought to Baltimore to do just that.  The Hopkins-owed SAIC surveillance and security systems Batts installed in Oakland, California are now being installed in Baltimore.  Batts is paid a salary that looks like the corporate executive he is.  The Baltimore Police have been battered with wage and benefit cuts and changes in shifts and hours that have Baltimore police one of the worst work environments and pay in the state and that doesn't even include the crime and violence and chronic intra-departmental problems.  If one didn't know better it almost seems like they are trying to get Baltimore police officers with tenure and pensions to leave the city!  Talking with officers that is indeed what is happening.  Police officers with ten years invested in pensions are leaving because of the hostile environment brought by Hopkins and their pols at City Hall.  The more stress on the police the more stress on the job.  Baltimore City is a tinderbox as citizens are tired of crime and violence and the police ignoring civil rights and liberties in the communities.  All of this is caused by the public policy written at Johns Hopkins and played out in City Hall.  Deliberately high unemployment and a stagnant economy is impoverishing people and the police department is headed by a chief known for abuse inside and outside of the department.  Remember, injustice necessitates chaos and that is what neo-liberals and neo-cons are allowing to happen under the guise of budget cuts and small government.

The Baltimore Police Department has sent representatives to Europe to contract with an International Security Corporation to send private security workers to Baltimore to replace existing public forces.  The fire department will go next.  The citizens already have trouble with police acting outside of the Constitution and when International security forces come----they will be working under Trans Pacific Trade Pact-----which replaces the US Constitution say the neo-liberals and neo-cons. 

ONLY THE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION SO ANY ATTEMPTS TO INSTALL TPP CAN BE REVERSED AS ILLEGAL.



What does life under International Security forces look like?  Well-----third world.


State Police, or Police State? --Nathan

Eleven facts about police militarization:
1. It harms, and sometimes kills, innocent people.
2. Children are impacted.
3. The use of SWAT teams is often unnecessary.
4. The “war on terror” is fueling militarization.
5. It’s a boon to contractor profits.
6. Border militarization and police militarization go hand in hand.
7. Police are cracking down on dissent.
8. Asset forfeitures are funding police militarization.
9. Dubious informants are used for raids.
10. There’s been little debate or oversight.
11. Communities of color bear the brunt.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/13/not-just-ferguson-11-eye-opening-facts-about-americas-militarized-police-forces/


_____________________________________________

A police representative going to Europe to talk International Security contracting for the Baltimore City Police force would no doubt find an organization like the one below.  This is a US global corporation that does much of its work overseas but we see these operations moving into Western nations under the guise of 'terrorism'.  The threat of 'terrorism' falls squarely with dissent and protest---crime and violence by American citizens.  As 70% of Americans fall into poverty from the massive corporate frauds and the deliberate global corporate stagnation of our domestic economy-----and with that 70% growing to 80% and more----this third world society will see people WAKING UP and this is the structure O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly and Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Hall are building.  It is of course coming to your neck of the woods as well!

As important as a militarized government structure is we need to think as well how much taxpayer money is being spent on all of this Stalin-like security buildup.  The article below states that so much taxpayer money was funneled
to SAIC to create this Hopkins corporation that much of what all taxpayers paid in taxes for years went into building this surveillance structure unrolling in cities like Oakland, Calif, NYC, and Baltimore, Maryland.


You can see the job categories to see this organization will take over all public security duties as a global corporation.  Our Bank of America in Charles Village Baltimore already has contracted International Security outside their bank branch.

ISIO - INTERNATIONAL SECURITY INDUSTRY ORGANIZATION
Security Case S
tudies and
Applications


Belong to the most formidable International NETWORK for Security Professionals

ISIO Demographics

Reach
increases world-wide. Security Directors, Managers, General Managers, Trainers, Staff in all sectors, namely, Military and Defence, Buildings, Mall and Security, Law Enforcement, Prisons, Investigators, Assessors, Consultants and Advisors for Ports and Cargo, Hotel and Casino Security landside and on ships. Location (289071)United States, (89152)United Kingdom, (38194)India (34709)Canada, (31546)South Africa


The Focused Security Professional, is able to identify companies that have experience in providing security solutions for [Their] region of interest.

* Bank Security

* Border Security

* Building Security

* Business and Commercial Security

* Cargo Security

* City Security

* Control Station Security

* Event Security

* Homeland Security

* Hospital Security

* Hotel, Casino & Landmark Security

* Military and Defense Security

* Industrial Security

* Law Enforcement Security

* Oil and Refinery Security

* Port Security

* Prison Security

* Rail/Tunnel and Subway Security

* Retail and Store Security

* School Security


PROVIDING INTERNATIONAL SOLUTIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES. ISIO Global is a boutique, international solutions provider headquartered in the U.S. with operations in North and South America, Africa and Asia. The ISIO Global team of Principals and associates is comprised of a unique and diverse set of professionals with backgrounds in government security, intelligence, logistics, political strategy, energy, finance, international trade, risk management, and the military.

ISIO Global provides comprehensive custom-tailored solutions to meet our clients’ needs. Our client list includes countries, presidents and other high ranking officials from both the private sector and the military, high net worth individuals, and Fortune 100 companies. Through our vast international experience and contacts, ISIO Global is uniquely positioned to quickly and efficiently design and implement comprehensive solutions for the most pressing problems and exciting opportunities around the globe.

______________________________________________
You can see how neo-con SAIC and Hopkins is with this connection to Bush/Cheney and Halliburton----the biggest fraudsters in the world.  The reason I speak now about what most people who study this knows is that this is what will be brought to Baltimore -----and has been in the works for a while-----and it is completely ineffective, corrupt, and will work with no transparency or with any regard to Rule of Law.  If you think Baltimore Police Department is lacking transparency or attention to Constitutional policing wait until this ISIO/SAIC consortium comes our way.

THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CON FOR YOU----THIRD WORLD SOCIETY
. 

STOP VOTING FOR THEM.  REMEMBER, IN MARYLAND WE HAVE LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS BACKING THESE NEO-LIBERALS EVERY ELECTION.  VOTE FOR BROWN OR GANSLER SAY BALTIMORE MINISTERS AND MARYLAND LABOR UNION LEADERS----WELL, THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE PUSHING ON THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND.



This is an attempt to make a blog in which I comment on scientific issues.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Who or what is SAIC? Vanity Fair has a quite interesting article about SAIC, a company I had never heard about before.

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow
Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.
The article goes on to describe SAIC, and their less than stellar record. The article also touches on why such companies exist.
It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS.
This is hardly a new trend. In his 1980 book, Fat City, Donald Lambro describes much the same going on. It goes without saying that this is not a cost effective way of running things, and that it creates problems with oversight and conflict of interest, as the article also explains.
In Washington these companies go by the generic name "body shops"—they supply flesh-and-blood human beings to do the specialized work that government agencies no longer can. Often they do this work outside the public eye, and with little official oversight—even if it involves the most sensitive matters of national security.

[....]

SAIC's relative anonymity has allowed large numbers of its executives to circulate freely between the company and the dozen or so government agencies it cares about. William B. Black Jr., who retired from the N.S.A. in 1997 after a 38-year career to become a vice president at SAIC, returned to the N.S.A. in 2000. Two years later the agency awarded the Trailblazer contract to SAIC.
I highly recommend the article - go read it, and see what the US taxpayers' money is really used on.


__________________________________________

SAIC is Johns Hopkins and represents billions of taxpayer dollars sent to Hopkins in development funding and as you see below-----it operates world-wide just as Baltimore Board of Estimates operates here in Baltimore.  The corruption in cost overruns and bid-rigging is breath-taking and you see the same ethics permeates all of what these Ivy League Universities are involved. 

SAIC is the spying network behind the NSA that Snowden exposed to the world and it is in the consortium of security and surveillance groups that operate as ISIO above.  ISIO would be an example of what the police privatization in Baltimore would look like.  For decades SAIC and ISIO have operated in developing worlds but they are now moving into Western countries to control dissent of Americans et al to being taken third world.


Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin have worked hard to send Federal funds to build these kinds of systems through Hopkins.  HOW TOTALITARIAN OF THEM!


The article states that despite the known corruption in SAIC that Bloomberg of NYC handed a multi-million contract to the same and the reporter wonders why give business to a known criminal element-----WELL, HOPKINS IS BLOOMBERG.

'SO INEFFECTIVE'-----DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE GOVERNMENT IN MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE???


Just How Corrupt is SAIC?

Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 7:23PM
David Callahan The latest revelation in the CityTime corruption case offers yet more evidence that the Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, may have an unethical organizational culture. SAIC is one of the largest and most well-connected government contracting firms in the country, with 45,000 employees worldwide. It's incompetence in handling the CityTime contract, with hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns, appears to be part of a pattern -- with other clients, like the FBI, reporting similar experiences.

But now comes evidence of something darker. According to a files unearthed by New York City Controller John Liu, SAIC tried to exert improper influence over the top city official monitoring its work. Juan Gonzalez, the New York Daily News reporter who has been on top of this story all along describes the new revelations about SAIC:

On Jan. 28, 2002, Richard Valcich, then the director of the Office of Payroll Administration, wrote a one-page note to William Russell, a senior vice president for Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).

"I appreciated meeting with you to discuss SAIC issues that are pending with the Office of Payroll Administration," Valcich wrote. He then apologized to Russell "if I seemed rude and abruptly shortened your discussion on a future post city-employment position with SAIC."

"[I]t is inappropriate to discuss any post employment with a company that I do business," Valcich warned him.

Valcich went on to say that he was "flattered you would consider me for such a position with SAIC but there are restrictions due to the city's conflicts of interest rules."

Such restrictions include a lifetime ban against working on the same "matter" that a city employee handled while in government. 

Wow. Of course, those familiar with how big contractors and lobbyists corrupt government officials will not find any of this surprising. There is a long history of companies using offers of lucrative jobs to exert improper influence. These deals are simple and often hard to scrutinize: Do our bidding now, companies say, and we'll give you a job paying a million dollars a year (or whatever) down the road. A big focus of ethics reform in recent decades has been to crack down on "revolving door" enticements.

SAIC's tactic in this episode raises questions about its corrupt dealing around other contracts. Stay tuned for more on that topic. 

Gonzalez's latest article on the subject of SAIC includes a kicker near the end: 

Amazingly, despite years of red flags on the CityTime project, the Bloomberg administration confirmed yesterday it recently awarded a new $40 million contract to SAIC.

So what is it about Michael Bloomberg and SAIC?
Why is a mayor so famously focused on efficiency so forgiving to a contractor that is so ineffective? That is a question that deserves closer attention. 

 
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July 22nd, 2014

7/22/2014

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Now that universities are corporations we need to get rid of all that public protection stuff that will keep them from being profitable.  Forget all that silly stuff about educating Americans to be citizens and leaders......forget equal opportunity and access for the disabled......you cannot maximize profits that way.  Let's open our universities to the world's rich and let them attend simply because they can pay higher and higher tuition.  THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CON FOR YOU.....IT'S ALL ABOUT PROFIT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

As you can see it is Maryland behind this deregulation attempt just as it leads in corporatization of universities into global systems. 


LOOK----THERE'S MIKULSKI -----MISS NEO-LIBERAL HERSELF.  SHE HANDED A COOL TRILLION OF TAXPAYERS MONEY OVER TWO DECADES TO MAKE JOHNS HOPKINS A GLOBAL CORPORATION AFTER ALL.

Also at the lead is University of Maryland Chancellor Kirwan-----you know----the one Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland is taking to court for rigging the elections for governor by choosing which candidates were heard on public university campuses across the state-----all of which is illegal.  Sure, we solve this corruption by fewer regulations!


WE WILL SELECT ANY CANDIDATE WE CHOSE FOR THESE ELECTION FORUMS FOR GOVERNOR SAYS CHANCELLOR KIRWAN.


Oh, that's how you keep installing legislation no one wants ----you rig the system so we cannot get people in office that will reverse these policies!  THAT'S KIRWAN FOR YOU-----A TRUE GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL/NEOCON.  Public universities as the hotbed of democratic political debate?  That's no way to maximize corporate profits!

A New Deregulatory Push

February 13, 2014
By Michael Stratford  Inside Higher Education

WASHINGTON -- The last time the Higher Education Act came up for a vote in Congress in 2008, Senator Lamar Alexander trotted out a five-foot stack of cartons onto the Senate floor to show the enormity of existing regulations governing higher education.

Now that lawmakers are once again contemplating how to rewrite that massive piece of legislation -- which authorizes, among other things, the $150 billion-a-year federal student aid program -- Alexander is returning to his props.

Speaking to a group of community college leaders Wednesday, Alexander unfolded the full paper version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which was taller than he is, to underscore his distaste for the federal government’s bureaucratic reach onto college campuses. And last week he made the same demonstration before a group of private college presidents.

Alexander said Wednesday that his goal is to “simplify and deregulate” higher education in the upcoming renewal of the Higher Education Act -- a process he has said should “start from scratch.”

“What we’re trying to do is establish a continuous process for deregulation to overcome the continuous momentum for overregulation,” he said, noting that the “inertia” for creating new regulations comes from across the political spectrum.

“The conservative senators, from my party, they’re sometimes the worst,” he said, describing how he has to remind his colleagues that they are “the party of federalism, the 10th amendment” when they want to impose conservative ideas on how colleges should be run across the country.

All of their ideas “sound good, but you know what happens when you have to comply with it: it takes time and money away from your mission,” he told a group of community college trustees and presidents.

Alexander has formed, along with three other senators, a task force to recommend ways to reduce federal regulations on colleges and universities.  

That group of higher education leaders gathered behind closed doors at the offices of the American Council on Education on Wednesday to begin producing recommendations on how to deregulate the industry. The panel consists of college presidents from a range of sectors and higher education associations.

Reducing or eliminating regulations on colleges has long been a goal of the higher education lobby in Washington, though previous efforts have largely been unsuccessful.

William E. (Brit) Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland and co-chair of the task force, said he was encouraged by the Congressional interest in reducing regulations.

“What seems different this time is the very strong commitment of these four senators,” Kirwan said. “They are determined to address this issue and get our help in finding some meaningful reforms.”


Alexander and Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, attended Wednesday’s meeting, and two other lawmakers -- Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, a Democrat, and Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a Republican -- are also on board.

The panel will focus on identifying “the most egregious, excessive regulations," but will also make recommendations on the Education Department’s rule making process in general, Kirwan said.

“The hope is that we can make some suggestions that will enable us to meet our obligations and be accountable to the federal government but to do so in a way that is cost effective and not excessively bureaucratic,” he said.

Kirwan said that one example of the type of regulations that his task force would be targeting is a campus safety rule that requires colleges to collect crime information from local police jurisdictions when students study abroad or when athletes travel to an out-of-town hotel.

The task force hopes to produce a report on its recommendations within the next 12 months, Kirwan said. The group will also be coordinating with the National Research Council, which was directed by Congressional appropriators last month to conduct a $1 million study of the cost of regulations on higher education.

Kirwan, who also chairs the subcommittee at the NRC that will oversee the study, said that work would be focused on all federal regulations that affect higher education, while the Congressional task force would focus only on Education Department regulations.

_______________________________________
This is what Kirwan and his group of global corporate bosses think they are going to do with our universities and deregulating gets rid of all that public justice and civil rights stuff....you know----THE US CONSTITUTION AND OUR STATUS AS AN EQUAL PROTECTION DEMOCRACY.  Who in the world wants people like this deciding what is good.


That is what testing from K onward is about----the state determining how a child will be tracked and into what vocation from elementary school on. Remember, school privatization means the entity deciding will be corporations. This is already happening in Baltimore and it is nothing but autocratic.

O'Malley has made his career as Governor of Maryland building these tracking systems into our schools at every level......it is failing miserably although spin will make it sound a great success.


It is the for-profit colleges AND THAT DEREGULATION that distorted who and how students went to college last decade and it is infused with fraud and corruption so it is not our decades-old system of allowing families to decide where and what that child will pursue that failed----

IT IS THE SAME PEOPLE WRITING THESE PRIVATIZATION POLICIES THAT DISTORTED A GOOD SYSTEM.


This article is long but please glance through!


College material or not: who should decide?


By Valerie Strauss March 26 (The Washington Post)

College, of course, isn’t for everybody, but who should decide — and how and when — which students should go and shouldn’t? In this post, Kevin Welner and Carol Burris ask whether the decision should be made by policy makers and school officials or parents and students after young people have had equitable opportunities to learn in elementary and secondary school.

Welner is the director of the National Education Policy Center, located at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. He is the author of the 2008 book, “NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling.” Burris is the award-winning principal of South Side High School in New York. She was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State.


By Kevin Welner and Carol Burris

Robin should become a printer. That’s what Robin Calitri’s school counselor told his dad in 1965. Robin thought his counselor’s advice was just swell. He wasn’t a motivated high school student. But his dad, who was a professor of English Literature at Hofstra University, made it clear to the counselor that his son was going to college.

Robin later became the principal of Long Island’s South Side High School and was a finalist for the national principal of the year in 1999. He would tell that story about the counselor whenever he explained the harm done by tracking—the sorting of some students into classes that are not designed to prepare those children for post-secondary education.

If his dad had gone along with the counselor’s recommendation, his son would likely have ended up in a trade that was becoming obsolete. To his credit, Robin understood that this was precisely the situation faced by children in working-class and poor families. Research on tracking and choice confirms this; working-class and poor families, as well as parents without a college education, are more deferential to the advice of school authorities and less willing to push back on the system. Robin also understood that a young person’s future hangs in the balance when school authorities are making rules that will cut off college as an option.


Yes, we can all agree: college is not for everybody. But should school officials and top-down policy makers decide based, for example, on Common Core college readiness test scores, or should the decision be left to parents and students after schools have given them meaningful, enriching, equitable opportunities to learn?


While college is not for everybody, opportunities to be prepared for college definitely should be.
When college-educated parents have the capacity to secure the college advantage, they certainly seize it for their own children. It is not unusual, for example, to see upper middle class parents spend thousands on tutoring—including tutors for the SAT and the college essay. College-educated parents understand that a four-year diploma is key to securing financial success.

That’s just one reality that Mike Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Fordham Institute, refuses to confront in his article in Slate, with the man-bites-dog title, “Kid, I’m Sorry, but You’re Just Not College Material” Is exactly what we should be telling a lot of high school students.”

The “we” who are the deciders is left somewhat undefined, but it’s safe to assume that the use of “we” does not give power and capacity to the students themselves.

Before continuing, this is a good spot to pause and acknowledge when we are talking about other people’s children. The two of us, like Mr. Petrilli, represent families where post-secondary education is a given. Accordingly, we’re essentially debating what’s best for those “other” families. As we contemplate tinkering with their fate, it is wise to remember John Dewey’s axiom:

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.”

Perhaps we are unwise in working our tails off for our children to go to college. But unless and until we acknowledge this, we should be wary of sending other families down a different path.


The vocational education push isn’t coming from just Mr. Petrilli. As he notes, it’s also coming from a project headquartered at Harvard University (apparently with no irony intended) as well as from policymakers throughout the nation. The Education Commission of the States recently studied the “State of the State” addresses from the nation’s governors and found that “at least 13 governors and the D.C. mayor outlined proposals improving or expanding CTE [career and technical education, aka vocational education] options for students.”

Mr. Petrilli and the governors are correct to the extent that they are simply acknowledging that not all children will go to college and that those who do not should nonetheless have opportunities to thrive. It is also true that the decision to forgo or delay college should be made before graduation day.

From that point on, however, the “sort and select” advocates get almost everything wrong. Their fundamental two-part assumption is, first, that they can and should identify children who are beyond academic hope. Second, they believe that it is possible and beneficial to identify these children early, separate them from their academically oriented peers, and put them on a track that hopefully prepares them for post-secondary employment but does not prepare them for college.


Equitable schools reject such tracking policies because they believe in the American Dream and because they have learned from past mistakes.
History tells us that schools should not be in the business of foreclosing children’s options. At the start of the 20th century, schools faced an influx of immigrants, and policymakers responded by creating programs for those who were called the “great army of incapables.” Vocational tracks prepared immigrants to be factory workers, while the children of well-off parents were given a college preparatory education. This pattern of separating students into different classes was repeated during the era of racial desegregation as a way to maintain segregated classrooms—and then again in the 1970s when students with special needs were increasingly enrolled in mainstream schools.

History and research show that when schools sort in this way, it is the disadvantaged children who are directed toward lower-tier tracks. No matter what criteria are used—scores, recommendations or even choice—the same patterns of stratification occur. Accordingly, when lawmakers adopt these misguided policies, they open up opportunity gaps that inevitably lead to the achievement gaps that these same lawmakers then decry.

Mr. Petrilli concedes that he understands the danger. Describing the bad old days, he writes, “Those high school ‘tracks’ were immutable, and those who wound up in ‘voc-ed’ (or, at least as bad, the ‘general’ track) were those for whom secondary schooling, in society’s eyes, was mostly a custodial function.” Yet he turns back to voc-ed because, as he contends, the odds are otherwise too long for disadvantaged students.

Beginning with the statistic that only 10 percent of these disadvantaged students earn a four-year degree, Mr. Petrilli asserts that if we work really hard as a society maybe this number would rise to 30 percent, which for Mr. Petrilli is not good enough. Since recent data show that 33.5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 29 have at least a bachelor’s degree, that sounds like a pretty good outcome to us. By the way, that’s the highest percentage ever for Americans, and it doesn’t include those who earn two-year degrees as well as certificates in our community colleges and post-secondary technical schools.


The “You’re Not College Material” approach is the same one we use far too often in schools.  Too many kids hear--You’re not ‘honors’ material, or Challenging science and math isn’t for you. And every time that strategy is used, we see the same results—classes that are stratified by social class and race. It’s an approach that reinforces existing inequalities. To say in a supposedly neutral way that not all students will go to college is disingenuous without first acknowledging something else: that what’s really being said is that we should accept that college is for the already advantaged.

On some level, Mr. Petrilli grasps these concerns—when he acknowledges the past harms of tracking and that “when judgments were made on the basis of ZIP code or skin color, the old system was [deterministic, racist, and classist].” What he doesn’t acknowledge is that his new system would be the old system.

It’s interesting to us that the Petrilli article’s argument relies in part on the German system of tiered schooling, where college-bound students head to the Gymnasium while vocation-bound students head to the Hauptschule or Realschule. Yes, it’s true that students attending the German vocational schools do better than voc-ed students here, in part because of a more equitable job sector following graduation. But a team of German psychologists recently published an article in The Journal of Educational Psychology on the effects of the German vocational track on the development of student intelligence—and they found that students in the academic track experienced substantial IQ gains as compared to those voc-ed students. Not only did the learning gap grow, so did the very capacity to learn between German academic and vocational students. That outcome should give us pause.

Our quarrel is not with offering vocational opportunities in high schools. Rather, we favor a smart and fair approach that works for children and families who, at the right time and place, make the choice for a career after high school.
We might, for example, retool our two-year colleges so that they offer more programs in technology and other marketable areas, without making students jump through remedial hoops to stay. We might also follow the lead of Finland and prepare students with a strong and equitable academic education without tracking until age 16, and then allow them to make meaningful career and life choices. We may even look at promising models, such as California’s Linked Learning schools, which integrate career preparation while still preparing students for college. High schools have an obligation to do their best to prepare students for college and career; preparation for both has more overlap than often assumed.


We reject, however, No College for You! proposals that sort  14 year olds into vocational high schools. South Side High School, one of the best in the nation, would likely be a very different place if co-author Carol Burris’ predecessor, Robin Calitri, had obliged his counselor when he was told “Kid, you are not college material.”  That counselor did not have the right to make that decision—and neither does Mike Petrilli.



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Neo-liberals installed the education policy in South Korea after the Korean war that it is trying to install in the US today.  The difference is that the US has a history of public education and people as citizens with the rights to legislate and equal protection laws.  From Korea this policy traveled to China and Singapore and involves very autocratic and pedantic learning where parents in these countries have been fighting for decades to get rid of it.  NO ONE LIKES THESE NEO-LIBERAL EDUCATION POLICIES.  Look below and you see the AFT union leader Weingarten with Arne Duncan praising this neo-liberal model.  Weingarten allowed the AFT to support these Race to the Top and Common Core policies for the first years of Obama's terms but the public outcry and teachers grew too large for Weingarten to follow the neo-liberal lead and as you see in the article after this one-----the AFT is now fighting Obama's and Wall Street's education reform.

IT WAS THE PUBLIC OUTCRY THAT FORCED THIS UNION LEADER TO STOP FOLLOWING NEO-LIBERALS.  WE MUST HAVE THE PUBLIC PROTESTING LOUDLY AND STRONGLY TO SUPPORT TEACHERS IN KILLING THIS VERY BAD EDUCATION REFORM.  NEITHER REPUBLICANS NOR DEMOCRATS WANT THIS REFORM.  IT IS ONLY ABOUT MAKING EDUCATION INTO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.



I spoke at great length about the Finland model for education that has made Finland number 1 in education.  Finland embraced the American model of the 1950s and 1960s while the US was dismantling the best in the world public education to make this corporatized model they are pushing today. 

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE GOING BACK TO THE PUBLIC EDUCATION BUILT FOR DEMOCRACY AND AWAY FROM THIS AUTOCRATIC CORPORATE MODEL.




Which winning ideas could the U.S. steal from Singapore?


Singapore has one of the best education systems in the world, according to international assessments. President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan talk about its performance. United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten visited in 2012 and her counterpart at the National Education Association, Dennis Van Roekel, has praised its teacher training. And in 2012, Singapore was featured in the first-ever International Summit on the Teaching Profession as a country that many places – including America – could learn from.



In light of all this hype, I spent the past week in Singapore visiting schools to find out why they are so successful. But, not surprisingly, there’s no big secret or magic trick that the United States could simply copy tomorrow. Rather, my impressions were of a nation where education is respected, where educators and administrators think critically about their jobs and the qualities they want their students to develop and where self-reflection is ingrained. Those are qualities already found in many American schools, and that reformers are trying to spur in others.

But some of Singapore’s latest strategies go beyond or challenge some of the most popular ideas right now for improving American schools. At the same time, it’s important to remember the vast differences between the two countries that make it difficult to transfer ideas. Here are my main takeaways from my conversations with educators, students and education officials:

- Singapore is looking to revamp their standards. As most states in America continue the rollout of the Common Core State Standards, an internationally benchmarked guide laying out what students are supposed to learn in each grade in math and English, Singapore also has changes planned. But education officials there are more concerned about some less tangible skills, like collaboration and creativity, and coming up with ways to systematically introduce those into the curriculum. In theory, the end goals of Common Core and Singapore’s newest push are similar. They both aim to create individuals with critical thinking skills who can thrive in a modern economy. But as we try to copy Singapore’s methods, like their math sequencing, educators there are already moving on to new ideas.

- Lots of Singaporean students are stressed. The country is looking for ways to reduce this and trying to decrease the emphasis on grades and test scores. The Ministry of Education is trying to reduce the emphasis on the primary school exit exam, which all students have to take to determine which secondary school they will attend, for instance. But many people told me one of the biggest challenges will be changing the mindset of parents. Not all students in Singapore worry endlessly about exams, but several people said that for those that do, parents are a primary source of their anxiety.

- Singapore is small. As several people pointed out to me, if you drive for an hour in any direction, you arrive at the water. While some people told me the small size of the country has disadvantages for education – it severely limits options for field trips for instance – it also has its benefits. Most notably, the country’s size, along with the fact that the schools are run by a centralized authority, allows the Ministry of Education, the National Institute of Education – which trains every teacher in the country – and the schools to be in close communication about research and new strategies. New programs can be implemented quicker and the National Institute for Education can easily keep track of what is actually happening in classrooms to tweak its offerings when needed.

- The schools are big. Half a million students are enrolled in the island’s schools, but most schools have student populations of more than a thousand – even at the primary level. With that many students, classes of 35 to 40 are typical, but nothing seemed disorderly. The atmosphere in the classrooms that I visited switched between formal and relaxed. Students bowed to greet visitors and again to thank them for coming. They stood up to speak whenever called upon, and chatter while a teacher was talking was almost nonexistent. At the same time, though, laughter was common. Teachers would gently tease students and discussion was highly encouraged.

Not everything Singapore does would apply to our much larger, decentralized education system and not everything they do should be emulated. But there are some inspirations we could draw from the country, such as trying to get more high-performing students into the classroom as teachers or being more explicit in the character qualities we want students to develop – without obsessing over how to measure them.

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As a social democrat I do not want to break from the Democratic Party-----I want to take the Democratic Party back from corporate neo-liberals.  The important thing is that more and more people are understanding where this is going and know we can stop and reverse this no matter what political stance you take.  We need Republicans pushing against this as these policies are written by neo-conservative and neo-liberal think tanks.

'The way forward for teachers requires a complete break with the pro-corporate trade unions and Democratic Party.


.......calling for Duncan’s resignation, saying he had championed a “failed education agenda” consisting of policies that “undermine public schools and colleges, the teaching education professionals, and education unions.”




Seeking to regain credibility, US teachers unions criticize Obama’s education secretary
By Phyllis Scherrer
22 July 2014


After spending the last five-and-a-half years collaborating with the Obama administration’s attack on teachers’ jobs and conditions, the two teachers’ unions in the US recently passed resolutions seeking to distance themselves from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his anti-public education policies.

The National Education Association (NEA) passed a resolution at its national convention in Denver, Colorado, on July 4, calling for Duncan’s resignation, saying he had championed a “failed education agenda” consisting of policies that “undermine public schools and colleges, the teaching education professionals, and education unions.”

This was followed by a July 13 resolution at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conference in Los Angeles, California, which called on President Obama “to implement a secretary improvement plan” for Duncan, modeled on the punitive testing measures used to fire “failing” teachers. “If Secretary Duncan does not improve, and given that he has been treated fairly and his due process rights have been upheld, the secretary of education must resign,” the statement read.

The conventions were held just weeks after Duncan’s enthusiastic support for the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Vergara v. California case, which attacks tenure and another job protections won by teachers over decades of struggle. At the time Duncan hailed the right-wing forces behind the lawsuit, saying, “millions of young people in America” are “disadvantaged by laws, practices, and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students.”

The NEA and AFT resolutions, however, were nothing more than an exercise in damage control by the unions, aimed at reviving the credibility of both unions, which have been undermined by their collaboration with Duncan and the administration’s pro-corporate “school reform” agenda. The resolutions will have no affect whatsoever on the continued collaboration of the teachers’ unions with the Obama administration.

In fact, the day the NEA convention passed its resolution, officials from the rival AFT were at the White House meeting with Duncan to collaborate on the implementation of a new “teacher equity plan,” another teachers “evaluation” plan to rid poor school districts, with the assistance of the unions, of higher paid, more senior teachers.

Duncan dismissed the NEA resolution with the contempt it deserves, saying, had NEA officials not been at their convention, “I think they would have stood with us on this” today, too. He congratulated new NEA President-elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia and added, “We’ve had a very good working relationship with the NEA in the past.”

In addition to concealing their own role, by presenting Duncan as the author of this anti-teacher agenda, the unions are seeking to protect President Obama and the Democratic Party. The teachers unions promoted the lie that Obama would reverse the attacks of his Republican predecessor. In fact, the Democratic president has gone well beyond the attacks associated with Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001.

Under Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT) the administration allocated $4.35 billion to fund a “competition” designed by the Bill & Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, Boeing, Walton Family and other Foundations. School districts were forced to vie against each other for funds already severely reduced under Bush’s NCLB—federal funds that under the War on Poverty reforms of the 1960s were allotted directly to districts serving high percentages of students in poverty.

Under RTTT “winning” districts are those who agree to fire teachers and close or privatize schools based on poor standardized test scores, which are chiefly the result of poverty and decades of budget cutting, not bad teachers. Since the implementation of RTTT, public schools have been starved of funding, 330,000 teachers and other public school employees have lost their jobs, at least 4,000 public schools have been closed, and the number of students enrolled in charter schools has doubled.

Obama and the Democratic Party have embraced the anti-teacher nostrums long associated with the most right-wing sections of the Republican Party. This is underscored by the fact that former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and several other former Obama aides are spearheading a national public relations drive to support lawsuits in New York and other states, modeled on Vergara, to overturn teacher tenure, seniority and other job protections.

On the local level, Democratic mayors and school officials from Chicago, Philadelphia and New York to Detroit, New Orleans and Washington, DC, have spearheaded the attack on public education and expansion of for-profit charters.

The well-heeled executives who run the teachers’ unions--including AFT President Randi Weingarten and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel who received salaries of $543,150 and $306,286 respectively in the last year alone—are not opposed to the pro-corporate school “reform.” On the contrary, they are only looking to be partners in this process, as the AFT slogan, “School reform with us, not against us,” makes clear.

Both the NEA and the AFT were direct recipients of Gates’ money for the implementation of the so-called Common Core curriculum, which will be used to further attack teachers, while subordinating public education to the needs of profit-making technology and publishing companies. In 2012, the AFT accepted $4.4 million in order to “work on teacher development and Common Core Standards.” In July 2013 the NEA endorsed the Common Core and was awarded $6.3 million to assist with developing the Common Core Curriculum.

As teachers became wise to the character of Common Core, and every more disdainful of the AFT’s support of it, AFT officials tried to distance themselves from Gates last March by refusing to take any additional money from the Gates Innovation Foundation Fund, only one of several conduits of the billionaire’s money to the AFT.


Part of the grandstanding against Duncan is the increasing turf war between the AFT and NEA and their competition for dues money among a shrinking number of teachers. The AFT convention passed a dues increase by 45 cents per month this year and 55 cents per month next year, for a total monthly dues bill of $18.78 for each member by September 2015—largely to offset the loss of Gates money—and is increasingly seeking to get a foothold among low-paid charter teachers, as well as non-teaching members like nurses.

The NEA, the nation’s largest union, with just over three million members, including teachers, paraprofessionals and higher education instructors, has seen a significant drop in membership. Since the 2010-2011 school year, which coincides with the recession and the election of Obama, union membership for the NEA is down by 201,000 of its teacher members.

Under conditions in which more states are enacting Republican-backed “right-to-work” laws, which end automatic dues deduction from teachers’ paychecks, and sections of the Democratic Party are openly discussing dispensing with the services of the unions altogether, the AFT and NEA are doubling down to ensure state and local officials that they can be relied on to slash costs, destroy teachers’ conditions and suppress opposition to the closing of schools and the attack on education.

Over the last five years there have been growing struggles of teachers—in Wisconsin, Chicago, Portland, Oregon, St. Paul, Minnesota, and other cities—which have led to a direct clash between teachers on the one hand and the Democratic Party and their servants in the trade unions on the other.

Well aware of the growing anger of rank-and-file teachers, a section of trade union bureaucracy and its supporters in pseudo-left movements like the International Socialist Organization, whose supporters have gained union positions in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and other districts, are doing everything they can to refurbish the image of the teachers’ unions.

Their model of “social justice unionism” has proven to be a dead end as the betrayal of the 2012 teachers strike, by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis and Vice President Jesse Sharkey, a supporter of the ISO, showed. The CTU shut down the nine-day strike by 26,000 Chicago teachers before it could develop into a direct political confrontation with Mayor Rahm Emanuel—Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff—and the White House.

This betrayal gave Emanuel the green light to close 50 schools and lay off 3,500 teachers and school workers. As a reward, an AFT-affiliated union was given the franchise to “organize” low-paid teachers at the Chicago United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) charter schools run by one of Emanuel’s closest supporters.

Lewis and the CTU are now promoting the idea of running “independent” political campaigns in Chicago. Far from challenging the Democratic Party and advancing any independent political strategy for the working class, these campaigns fully accept the domination of society by the corporate and financial elite and are solely aimed at pressuring the Democrats to more effectively use the unions as partners in the dismantling of public education.


The way forward for teachers requires a complete break with the pro-corporate trade unions and Democratic Party and the fight to mobilize the working class as a whole against the profit system and to defend all of the democratic and social rights of the working class, including access to high quality public education.


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Below you see how other states still have democratic debates and open elections while in Maryland any politician that speaks against neo-liberals and neo-cons are censured.  We must fight for free and fair elections to make sure we can vote these neo-liberals out of office.

Remember, Common Core is not about quality education.....it is about controlling what is taught.  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are already standardized and we do not want our humanities and liberal arts standardized because that is what makes the US a plurality and democracy-----differing points of view.  So this is simply a policy meant to give global corporations control of what our children learn in classrooms.

We have the AFT, the CTU, and it looks like the UFT moving against these education reforms and now we need parents and communities fighting with them.  It does not matter your political stance----these policies hurt all Americans.


New York Now Leads the Way in the Movement Against Common Core- At The Polls | With A Brooklyn Accent
20 Jul 2014   | Common Core · New York Share NPE News Briefs

Something truly extraordinary has happened in the New York State Gubernatorial race-something with broad national implications.  A big money Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo, who thought he was going to make himself a front runner in the 2016 Presidential Race by ramming through legislation requiring teacher evaluations based on Common Core aligned tests, has generated so much opposition among teachers and parents that there are now three different Gubernatorial candidates who oppose Common Core- the Republican candidate, Rob Astorino, the Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins, and the new and quite formidable challenger in the Democratic Primary, Zephyr Teachout.

There are two reasons this situation is “game changer”

First, it shows how much opposition to Common Core is emerging  across the political spectrum.  For the last year, Common Core supporters in the media, the corporate world, and the US Department of Education have tried to portray Common Core opponents as extremists whose views should be rejected out of hand, but the what we have in New York is a mainstream Republican, a strong candidate on the left, and a liberal Democrat all saying that Common Core is untested, undemocratic and a threat to strong, locally controlled public schools.  And this position is going to be put forward strongly from now until election day. Even if Andrew Cuomo wins the Democratic primary, he will be facing two strong anti-Common Core voices in the general election.

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July 15th, 2014

7/15/2014

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

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

Check out this Facebook page:   the movement is growing!

US Uncut
June 30 ·


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

Share to break corporate media's censorship.


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

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

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






Wednesday, Feb 19, 2014, 3:10 pm

UIC Faculty Rekindle Fight for Public Education With Historic Strike

BY Rebecca Burns

University of Illinois----Chicago



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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Wednesday, Apr 30, 2014, 8:10 pm

College Adjuncts Union Scores Victory at Maryland Institute College of Art

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

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


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

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


UPS, FedEx owned by most of the same monopoly banks


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


Nurses walk out at Quincy Medical Center

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


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

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

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

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

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

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

PROTECTING UNION MEMBER'S WEALTH IS AS IMPORTANT.   

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

Friday, Apr 11, 2014, 1:01 pm

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


BY Jonathan Leavitt

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



BHS Students on the picket line beside their CCTA drivers.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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May 16th, 2014

5/16/2014

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LEAVING THE PUBLIC AND PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNMENT COFFERS IN DEBT CREATED BY MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD ACROSS ALL INDUSTRIES=====THIS IS THE TOP PRIORITY FOR ALL AMERICANS REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT----DO YOU HEAR YOUR CANDIDATE SHOUTING THIS!?



I spoke earlier of how US graduates are experiencing the highest level of unemployment after graduation in modern history and student loan debt has placed many in the hands of a Department of Education run by Wall Street credit collection businesses making these loans as predatory as credit cards.  We know global corporations and their pols are deliberately keeping the US economy stagnant because high unemployment moves Americans deeper into poverty and keeps them desperate for jobs.  This entire industry of internships with VISTA and Teach for America is designed to steer youth from starting careers and gaining wealth to doing the job of what was the public sector.  This is killing the middle-class and it creates a system of indenture for our children.  Remember, the US had a strong economy before Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism because our economy was driven by domestically with small and regional businesses and strong wages and benefits that allowed families to have disposable income-----THE OPPOSITE OF WHERE NEO-LIBERALISM TAKES US.


I want to talk more about our children and college grads with student loans.  First, let's look to how the 1% actually marketed college students into college debt at the same time privatizing student loans from Federal loans to Wall Street loans.  Remember, the students feeling this loan debt are the working/middle class and poor.  The cost for college is going up for these students as the cost for the affluent goes down.  The goal in education reform in America right now is a tiered system that keeps the working/middle class and poor out of strong 4 year universities and tracked into the cheapest higher education opportunities like community college and online degrees.  After all, education is wasted on 90% of Americans say the 1%!

Below you see how student loan debt worked just as subprime loan debt.....a complete relaxing of terms for loans when loans were made private.  Mind you, student loans when Federal were a well-run and public interest.  George Bush and public media pushed the idea last decade that your child must get a masters degree or above to land a job at the same time they were building the global structures that would crash the economy and hand off power to global corporations everyone knew would create this stagnant job market.  IT WAS DELIBERATE.  So, loading people with debt knowing the economy will crash---sound like the subprime mortgage fraud?  You betcha.  Meanwhile they were raising the price of tuition to build the corporate structures that took universities from academics for US students to being corporations marketing and recruiting students from around the world.
So, once again, it is the working/middle class desperate for financial relief falling into the hands of predatory lending because there is no public justice or oversight and accountability protecting the American people.

The poor are being used simply to funnel public money to for-profit higher education with high tuition mostly paid by taxpayer money and no receiving no benefit in employment for the most part.  Same as subprime mortgage loans.  In both the subprime mortgage scam and this for-profit mortgage scam the goal is simply to move public money to the same people at the top while loading debt onto citizens. 

This is happening because all of the public sector designed to protect the public and provide stability have been dismantled.

Of course it is the TV stations geared toward low-income audiences loaded with these loan predators.  I called the Maryland Attorney General about the level of fraud and predatory advertizement on media in America and was told they did not get involved until millions of dollars were lost to these frauds.


  1. Student loan debtors targeted by fraudsters- MSN Moneymoney.msn.com/...student-loan-debtors-targeted-by-fraudsters   CachedThose shackled with student loan debt are increasingly being targeted by scams and shady companies promising relief.


    _____________________________________

    Remember, a corporate nation seeks revenue from its citizens to be used to maximize profits for corporations.  That's why trillions of dollars in corporate subsidy and corporate fraud are making profits soar as neo-liberals pretend there is a government debt and deficit---tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud recovery would pay all government debt.

    We know in Baltimore the government has now become predatory on its citizens for revenue as massive amounts of corporate subsidy take all public revenue.  That's what is happening with our children and student loans.  Corporate bankruptcy allows corporations to shed almost all debt-----no bankruptcy for a social good---student loans.  Ideally, higher education should be free for goodness sake.

    STOP VOTING FOR CORPORATE POLITICIANS IN PRIMARIES----WE MUST REBUILD THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WITH LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES!

    We are being led to believe that Congressional democrats are doing all they can and are thwarted at every turn by republicans on these issues.  The problem is who the President appoints as head of Department of Education----in this case Arne Duncan who is privatizing the heck out of this agency-------and the failure to pursue massive for-profit education fraud.  Doing just that would greatly reduce pressure on students and families.

    DO YOU HEAR YOUR POLS SHOUTING THIS?  IN MARYLAND ALL POLS ARE CORPORATE AND WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND NOT PUBLIC JUSTICE.


Obama Student Loan Policy Reaping $51 Billion Profit

Posted: 05/14/2013 11:18 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/15/2013 3:49 pm EDT  Huffington Post



  1. Figures made public Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office show that the nonpartisan agency increased its 2013 fiscal year profit forecast for the Department of Education by 43 percent to $50.6 billion from its February estimate of $35.5 billion.

    Exxon Mobil Corp., the nation's most profitable company, reported $44.9 billion in net income last year. Apple Inc. recorded a $41.7 billion profit in its 2012 fiscal year, which ended in September, while Chevron Corp. reported $26.2 billion in earnings last year. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo reported a combined $51.9 billion in profit last year.

    The estimated increase in the Education Department's earnings from student borrowers and their families may cause a political firestorm in Washington, where members of Congress and Obama administration officials thus far have appeared content to allow students to line government coffers.

    The Education Department has generated nearly $120 billion in profit off student borrowers over the last five fiscal years, budget documents show, thanks to record relative interest rates on loans as well as the agency's aggressive efforts to collect defaulted debt. Representatives of the Education Department and Congressional Budget Office could not be reached for comment after normal business hours.

    The new profit prediction comes as Washington policymakers increasingly focus on soaring student debt levels and the record relative interest rates that borrowers pay as a potential impediment to economic growth. Regulators and officials at agencies that include the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Reserve Bank of New York have all warned that student borrowing may dampen consumption, depress the economy, limit credit creation or pose a threat to financial stability.

    At $1.1 trillion, student debt eclipses all other forms of household debt, except for home mortgages. It's also the only kind of consumer debt that has increased since the onset of the financial crisis, according to the New York Fed. Officials in Washington are worried that overly indebted student borrowers are unable to save enough to purchase a home, take out loans for new cars, start a business or save enough for their retirement.

    Policymakers also are worried about the effect that high interest rates on outstanding student debt may have on the broader economy. Congress sets interest rates on federal student loans, with rates fixed on the majority of loans at 6.8 and 7.9 percent.

    But as the Federal Reserve attempts to lower borrowing costs for everyone from households and small businesses to large corporations and Wall Street banks, student borrowers have not been able to benefit.

    Compared to a benchmark interest rate -- what the U.S. government pays to borrow for 10 years -- student borrowers have never paid more, increasing the burden of their student debt as wage increases and yields on investments and bank accounts fail to keep up with the relative increase in student loan interest payments.

    President Barack Obama recently asked Congress to tie federal student loan interest rates to the U.S. government's borrowing costs. In a possible sign of congressional intent, leading Democratic senators on Tuesday proposed legislation that would keep existing interest rates on some student loans for the neediest households fixed at 3.4 percent, rather than allowing them to revert back to their original 6.8 percent rate.

    The legislation, dubbed the "Student Loan Affordability Act" and proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), aims to help a small subset of future student borrowers who take out loans over the next two years. The bill does nothing for existing student debtors.

    "Today's figures from the CBO underscore the urgent need for Congress to prevent the July 1 interest rate hike and address the crushing debt placed on students," said Tiffany Edwards, spokeswoman for Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee.

    Rohit Chopra, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official overseeing the regulator's student debt efforts, has warned policymakers to not focus solely on future borrowers.

    “The whole student loan problem is a problem that should be of deep concern to this body,” said Richard Cordray, CFPB director, during testimony last month before the Senate Banking Committee. “These are young people that we should care a great deal about.”


    “They’re the ones with the ambition, aspirations and dreams, and they're getting saddled with debt that they don't understand,” Cordray said of student borrowers. “It's holding them back and it's making them unable to rise and succeed and become leaders in our society.”


    He added: “It's a significant problem and we're going to be doing everything that we can to address it at the bureau.”

    The CFPB has been focusing on helping existing borrowers refinance high-rate debt or modify the terms of their loans. In a report earlier this month, the CFPB lamented that borrowers are unable to refinance their obligations after they have graduated from college and secured well-paying jobs.

    "Corporate entities, homeowners, and many others have been able to refinance debt at quite low rates, and student loan borrowers are wondering why they can't do the same," Chopra said.

    The CFPB suggests that increased concentration in the student loan market may inhibit refinancings and debt workouts. Lenders and the Education Department profit when borrowers pay higher rates than they otherwise would in a normally-functioning market.

    Unlike traditional lenders, though, the Education Department's profits are barely dented by loan defaults. For loans made in 2013 that eventually default, the department estimates it will recover between 76 cents and 82 cents on the dollar. Bankruptcy rarely discharges student debt.


    The Education Department's collection efforts are aided by loan default specialists, including NCO Group Inc., a company owned by JPMorgan.
  2.  The Obama administration is forecast to turn a record $51 billion profit this year from student loan borrowers, a sum greater than the earnings of the nation's most profitable companies and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.

    _______________________________________

    We all know that the massive frauds of last decade were centered in large extent in neo-liberal states----from New York to California, from Maryland to Illinois.  Nancy Pelosi's district in California is ground zero for for-profit education fraud and the subprime mortgage fraud for instance.  Maryland has record subprime mortgage frauds and foreclosures and for-profit education frauds because it allows these corporations to come to Maryland and openly prey on the public.  Republicans of course do the same, but the democratic party is the people's party and tasked with protecting labor and justice.


    Insider Trading by Congress throughout these massive corporate frauds was exposed and Congressional response was----to pass a law that Congress cannot be charged with Insider Trading and to make sure Rule of Law remains suspended with no public justice.....which by the way is itself illegal in a Equal Protection/Rule of Law nation.

    THIS IS THE PROBLEM FOR STUDENT LOAN DEBT AND REINSTATING RULE OF LAW AND REBUILDING PUBLIC JUSTICE IS THE SOLUTION.  SEE WHY CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND AND HER JUSTICE PLATFORM CANNOT GET MEDIA AIRTIME IN MARYLAND AND ESPECIALLY BALTIMORE WHERE ALL THIS FRAUD RUNS RAMPANT?

    Keep in mind this one corporation mentioned in this article is the very tip of a massive iceberg in fraud in the education/financial  industry and NOT ONE WORD IS MENTIONED OF THE NEED FOR JUSTICE FOR THE PUBLIC.



TruthOut.org / By Danny Weil
 For-Profit Education Fraud Tied to Political Elite

A bipartisan group of the nation's political leaders have close ties to for-profit college scams. Now, an $11 billion lawsuit is forcing some of them into the spotlight.

         On Friday, April 13, 2012,

  1. The lead plaintiff in the class-action suit, Chinea Washington, claims The Art Institute of California, Hollywood, led her to believe that federal grants and loans would cover the entire $89,000 cost for a bachelor's degree in interior design.

    In November 2011, after three years of study, Washington was provided notice by the "college" that she had reached the federal loan/grant aggregate limit of $52,340 and that it would cost $37,000 to complete the degree. Washington dropped out with $52,160 in debt. Because The Art Institute's credits are not transferable, Washington has been swindled out of $52,000 and three years of her life.

    The only way to describe $89,000 for a four-year degree with non-transferable credits from a non-academic college is as a fraud and a swindle, and that characterization possibly fails to convey the frustration and downright victimization students like Washington must feel.

    Like subprime mortgages, for-profit colleges are a scam driven by payment of commissions to sales staff known as recruiters. The payment of commissions to high-pressure salespeople is so central to the scam that the umbrella trade group for for-profits, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU), has sued the federal government to overturn its ban on incentive pay.

    It cannot be stated strongly enough: for-profit colleges could not engage in the ongoing exploitation of students and theft of federal money without the direct cooperation and assistance of the federal government in what can only be termed an immoral economy. The same forces that demonize everything government does or attempts to do are busy feeding from the government trough. The hypocrisy is untenable, the federal subsidies unfathomable and the lack of criminal prosecution unconscionable.

    For-profit colleges are a kickback scheme where politicians enact favorable legislation and regulations that allow for-profit colleges to maintain access to student loans and grant money. The for-profit colleges then "give" a small cut of the federal money back to the politicians to enact favorable legislation.

    In the cases of Senator Snowe and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), their husbands have operated under the cover of their wives as they directly benefited, and continue to benefit from, their positions as shareholders in for-profit college companies. Snowe and Feinstein are accomplices in the ongoing evisceration and defrauding of citizen taxpayers and students, which explains the pair's complete silence on this matter.

    The so-called ruling class of government officials and elected politicians, to which Feinstein and Snowe clearly belong, is little more than a gaggle of white-collar criminals which facilitates and benefits from the diversion of taxpayer money into private coffers. It all takes on the appearance of legitimacy. Unfortunately, this is not a victimless crime. Like Washington, thousands of students who attend these subprime institutions are left with tens of thousands of dollars of nondischargeable debt which ends up ruining their lives.

    There is a vast network of former and current government officials who actively participate in the for-profit college swindle. Some of the conspirators are well known, and include: Mitt Romney, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina), John Kline (R-Minnesota), Alcee Hastings(D-Florida), Trent Lott (R-Mississippi), Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), Steve Gunderson (R-Wisconsin), Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Brian Moran, Snowe, Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi (D-California), and John Boehner (R-Ohio). The group also includes Obama administration officials and supporters such as Lanny Davis, Anita Dunn, Hilary Rosen, Anthony Miller and Charles Rose.

  2. Courthouse News reported a class-action lawsuit by students filed in federal court against the Art Institute of California and its owner, Educational Management Corporation (EDMC). As reported in Truthout, Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) husband, former governor of Maine John McKernan, is chairman of the board of EDMC and a former CEO of the company.  The company also faces an $11 billion false claims lawsuit by the federal government and 11 states.

    _______________________

    Not surprisingly we have solutions to student loan debt that work to maximize bank profits and protect education industry profits----and we have other policies that may work to the public's advantage.  This is what needs to happen.

    Bankruptcy needs to happen because this entire decade was about predatory lending---handing money out that should not have been given.  Banks have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure loans will be repaid.  So, discharge all private student loans in bankruptcy and make the banks take the losses.  They can then go after the for-profit education industry for massive fraud. 


    There is a problem with bankruptcy if the Federal and state governments never try to address the fraud.  The for-profit industry keeps the fraud and Wall Street comes back to hit the American people for their losses.  So, we must have Rule of Law address the fraud while pursuing bankruptcy.  You are hearing only the bankruptcy mantra.

    The Loan Forgiveness policy pushed by Obama is yet another attempt to corner the student into a repayment program that will be bad for the student in the long run.  It is also designed to hit the working/middle class with full debt payment----because $20,000 over 10 years would be paid in full while Ivy League school debt of $100,000 to $250,000 would be largely forgiven after ten years.  It is not a coincidence that over the last decade Ivy League parents have largely used private student loans to pay tuition rather than cash. 

    Tying the working/middle-class to this Forgiveness policy that as this article shows is infused with restrictive requirements is not good for the public.

Bankruptcy, Not Forgiveness, for Student Loans
Inside Higher Ed  
December 7, 2012 By Jenna Ashley Robinson

While many approaches have been taken to the problem (trying to cut university costs, for example), there seem to be just two proposals for lessening the burden on the students themselves. These are to allow the loans to be discharged in bankruptcy or to forgive the loans altogether. Both have been the subject of Congressional bills.

Only one of these has the proper long-term incentive effects, and even it should be hedged with some restrictions: restoring limited bankruptcy protection. That is, students should be allowed to get out of their student loan burden as part of bankruptcy proceedings, just as they are able to get out of car loans now. However, this option should be restricted to private loans and should be allowed only after a set amount of time, such as 5 or 7 years, as it was prior to 2005.

While Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has proposed the idea of restoring bankruptcy protection for borrowers of private student loans several times, it has gone nowhere. Instead, there’s a growing chorus in favor of loan forgiveness. U.S. Representative Hansen Clarke (D-Mich.) introduced H.R. 4170, the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012, earlier this year.

The law would allow students to pay just 10 percent of their discretionary income for 10 years, whatever their total loan amount; then, the remaining debt would be canceled. This is the “10-10 standard.”

In addition, under this bill, the current 3.4 percent cap on undergraduate student loan interest rates (enacted by Congress as a temporary measure) would be made permanent. Private borrowers whose educational loan debt exceeded their income would be allowed to convert their private loan debt into federal Direct Loans, and then enroll in the “10-10” program.

A critical part of the bill is to reward graduates for entering public service professions -- like teaching and firefighting -- with even greater forgiveness. Already, under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, some graduates can have their loans forgiven if they work in public service for ten years. Few students use the current programs, however, because the rules dictating structure of repayment are relatively restrictive, as Inside Higher Ed recently reported.

The Clarke bill would lower the public service requirement to five years. Similarly, medical graduates would be rewarded for working in underserved communities by reducing the service requirement to 5 years from its current 10 years.

While this bill would benefit the small proportion of students who have extremely high debt levels, it would enormously distort incentives for students and universities -- causing larger problems in the long run.

The problem is that loan repayments will be the same whether students borrow cautiously to attend a state school or borrow extravagantly to attend an exclusive private university. Their payments will be capped at 10 percent of discretionary income for ten years. Because future students will know about the option of loan forgiveness, it will destroy any incentive for them to borrow prudently. They will have no reason to consider the varying costs of higher education.

Their unfettered willingness to borrow will have a ripple effect. Because the federal government will ante up (until it runs out of money), more and more money will flow to the schools through these loans, spurring them to continue to raise tuition and minimizing pressure on cutting costs. (Greater demand typically leads to higher prices.) Students would be simply middlemen -- passing government largesse on to colleges and universities that can’t stop their habit of seeking revenue wherever possible.

Limited bankruptcy protections would send a better message to both graduates and lenders. In 2005, Congress prohibited private student debt from being discharged through bankruptcy, except in rare cases. Government student loans have not been subject to bankruptcy protection since 1976, when Congress exempted them following reports that new doctors and lawyers were filing for bankruptcy to avoid paying student loans.

Indeed, if bankruptcy were available, many young graduates -- who often have no major assets such as a house or a car -- would be tempted to walk away from loan obligations. The federal government lends money to any student who meets minimum standards; it does not evaluate whether the student is likely to pay the money back.

Thus, restrictions are needed to make bankruptcy “work.” First, there should be a waiting period before students become eligible for bankruptcy protection -- perhaps five years after beginning to make payments on student loans.

Second, only loans from private lenders would be dischargeable through bankruptcy. The famous cases of student debt in the $100,000-plus realm tend to include large amounts of private loans. Lenders were able to rely on federal laws preventing bankruptcy -- so the sky was the limit. Federal loans, on the other hand, are capped at $31,000 for dependent undergraduates and $57,500 for independent undergraduates.

By making private loans dischargeable in bankruptcy, there would also be a ripple effect -- a good one. Lenders would become much more cautious. They would actually consider the likelihood that the student would be able to pay back the loan. Instead of relying on government policy to guarantee their profits, banks would have to return to time-tested, responsible banking practices. In the end, fewer students would take private loans and total debt would decrease.

Current student loan policy has led young people down the wrong path -- away from frugality and prudence to profligacy. It’s time to start sending better signals.




December 7, 2012 By Jenna Ashley Robinson

Student loan debt is soaring.

Since 1999, average student loan debt has increased by more than 500 percent, and in 2010, it exceeded outstanding credit card debt for the first time in history. Total outstanding student loan debt, by some counts, exceeded $1 trillion this year.


__________________________________________
We want to be clear----the target of people of color happened with this for-profit education scam as was the subprime loan scam.  It is the middle-class who feels the brunt of inflated university tuitions created from corporatized universities.  So, corporate pols are allowing the government coffers to be soaked with the frauds against the low-income families and then killing the middle-class with corporatized university tuition and unregulated loan amounts.

Again, this was not only a republican policy-----it is a neo-liberal policy.  All of this began with Clinton and deregulation and global market building that allowed banks and corporations the power to become unaccountable and large enough to effect the entire nation.  IT WAS DELIBERATE AND IT INVOLVES CONGRESSIONAL PROFITEERING.

So, Clinton teed the loaded golf ball, Bush took a huge whack sending that loaded ball all over the course and into the rough, and Obama came along and declared the loaded ball lost and simply dropped a new ball on the course as if the first ball was never loaded.

SUSPENDED RULE OF LAW AND DISMANTLING OF OUR PUBLIC JUSTICE SYSTEM HAS BEEN HAPPENING SINCE CLINTON-----AND IT ALL TIES TO TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT THAT ENDS OUR ABILITY AS CITIZENS TO PROTECTION UNDER LAW.

Keep in mind in Maryland, TV stations aimed at low-income are still saturated with for-profit education industry advertizements from the very institutions shown to be defrauding and offering little value to students and taxpayers.  For-profit schools run continuous advertizement while receiving most of their money from taxpayer aid.  It is not that we do not want low-income to have the aid-----we want to be sure these programs help them----that is what a democracy and democratic party does!
Below is a great article ====it is long, but try to glance through. Remember, Obama ran on holding the for-profit education industry accountable and this article refers to steps taken by Obama in addressing this-----

THAT NEVER HAPPENED.  THEY WATERED DOWN THESE POLICIES TO HOLD THE INDUSTRY ACCOUNTABLE AND HAVE NEVER RECOVERED THE FRAUD.


The Subprime Student Loan Racket

With help from Washington, the for-profit college industry is loading up millions of low-income students with debt they'll never pay off.

By Stephen Burd   Washington Monthly
 
At the age of forty-three, Martine Leveque decided it was time to start over. For several years, she had worked in the movie business, writing subtitles in Italian and French for English-language films, but her employer moved overseas. She then tried her hand at sales, but each time the economy dipped sales tumbled, along with her income, and as a single mother with a teenage son, she wanted a job that offered more security. She decided to pursue a career in nursing, a high-demand field where she could also do some good.

While researching her options online, Leveque stumbled on the Web site for Everest College, part of the Corinthian Colleges chain, which pictured students in lab coats and scrubs probing a replica of a human heart and a string of glowing testimonials from graduates. “Now I know exactly where I am going. And now I’m making very good money,” enthused a former student named Anjali B. The school, near Leveque’s home in Alhambra, California, offered a Licensed Vocational Nursing program that would take her just one year to complete. When Leveque contacted the admissions office, she was told she would receive hands-on training from experienced nurses in state-of-the-art labs with the most modern equipment—including a recently purchased $30,000 mannequin that could simulate the birthing process. She also says recruiters told her that she would be able to do rotations at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, one of the nation’s best hospitals.

Leveque was intrigued, though she was initially put off by the $29,000 tuition. But the school’s recruiters assured her there was nothing to be concerned about: Everest had an exceptional track record of helping students find employment—they claimed the typical Everest College LVN graduates landed a job paying between $28 and $35 an hour straight out of school. And the school would arrange a financial aid package to cover her costs.

In the end, Leveque decided to enroll. The day she came in to fill out her paperwork, she says, the recruiters rushed her through the process and discouraged her from taking the forms home to look over. They told her that she would be taking out private loans in addition to federal loans that are traditionally used to pay educational expenses, but did not explain what the terms of those loans would be. “They just kept telling me that ‘we’re with you,’ and that they would try to get me the maximum amount of federal loans allowed,” she says. Only later did she learn that those private loans—which made up 42 percent of her “financial aid” package—carried double-digit interest rates and other onerous terms*.

To make matters worse, the program did not come close to delivering on the promises that had been made. The instructors had little recent medical experience. Instead of really teaching, she says, they usually just read textbooks aloud in class and sometimes offered students the answers on tests ahead of time. On the rare occasions when Leveque and her class were given time in the lab, she found that the equipment was broken down and shoddy—except for the expensive new mannequin, which no one knew how to use. Instead of the promised rotations at UCLA Medical Center, her clinical training consisted of helping pass out pills at a nursing home. (A spokeswoman for Corinthian Colleges denied many of Leveque’s allegations, insisting that the company does not condone cheating, that all LVN instructors at Everest College have “at least the minimum qualifications” set by the California Board of Vocational Nursing, and that UCLA Medical Center “is not and has never been” one of the school’s official clinical training sites.)

Since graduating in 2008, Leveque has been unable to find a nursing job, perhaps because she never learned how to perform basic tasks such as giving shots. Instead, she works as an occasional home health care aid earning at the most $1,200 a month—not enough to pay her rent on the cramped apartment she shares with her sister and son or keep gas in her car, much less pay off her student loans. As a result, her loan balance has ballooned to approximately $32,000, and she has no idea how she will ever pay it off*. “My credit is ruined,” Leveque says. “I made one mistake, and I will be paying for it for the rest of my life.”

Leveque’s story is far from unique. Each year, more than two million Americans enroll in for-profit colleges, also known as proprietary schools, and their popularity has only grown since the financial crisis. While traditional four-year colleges are struggling with dwindling student bodies and budget gaps, proprietary schools are reporting record enrollments as the newly unemployed try to retool their skills so they can wade back into the job market. Some of the largest for-profit chains say their numbers have doubled over the last year.

The students who are flocking to these schools are mostly poor and working class, and they rely heavily on student loans to cover tuition. According to a College Board analysis of Department of Education data, 60 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients at for-profit colleges graduate with $30,000 or more in student loans—one and a half times the percentage of those at traditional private colleges and three times more than those at four-year public colleges and universities. Similarly, those who earn two-year degrees from proprietary schools rack up nearly three times as much debt as those at community colleges, which serve a similar student population. Proprietary school students are also much more likely to take on private student loans, which, unlike their federal counterparts, are not guaranteed by the federal government, offer scant consumer protections, and tend to charge astronomical interest—in some cases as high as 20 percent.

These figures are all the more troubling in light of these schools’ spotty record of graduating students; the median graduation rate for proprietary schools is only 38 percent—by far the lowest rate in the higher education sector. What’s more, even those students who make it through often can’t find jobs. The reason for this is simple: while some proprietary schools offer a good education, many more are subpar at best. Thus large numbers of students leave with little to show for their effort other than a heap of debt. Not surprisingly, students at proprietary schools are far more likely to default on their loans than those at other colleges.

The appalling treatment of disadvantaged students at the hands of proprietary schools ought to be a national scandal, especially at a time when America desperately needs more college graduates to stay competitive. But the problem has barely registered in Washington. That’s partly because the proprietary school lobby has enough clout among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to keep the issue quiet. But Congress and the Obama administration have also had their hands full advancing other higher education reforms—in particular, legislation to kick private lenders out of the federally subsidized student loan program. This will create tens of billions of dollars in cost savings that will go toward larger Pell grants for low-income students. But that measure, vital as it is, affects only lending within the federal student loan program. It leaves untouched the private loans that are increasingly being foisted on students like Leveque and the loosely regulated schools that are profiting as a result.

The for-profit higher education sector is no stranger to scandal. In the 1980s and early ’90s, it came to light that hundreds of fly-by-night schools had been set up solely to reap profits from the federal student loan programs, in part by preying on poor people and minorities. The most unscrupulous of them enrolled people straight off the welfare lines, and got them to sign up for the maximum amount of federal student loans available—sometimes without their knowledge or consent.

The rampant abuses caught the attention of the news media, sent shockwaves through Capitol Hill, and led to a year-long, high-profile Senate investigation led by Senator Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat. The standing-room-only hearings had all the trappings of scandal, with trade school officials pleading the Fifth and a school owner, who had been convicted of defrauding the government, brought to the witness table in handcuffs and leg irons.

Key lawmakers considered kicking all trade schools out of the federal student aid programs—a virtual death sentence given the institutions’ heavy reliance on these funds. But Congress ultimately stepped back from the brink and instead strengthened the Department of Education’s authority to weed out problem institutions. Under the new rules, for-profit colleges had to get at least 15 percent of their tuition money from sources other than federal loans and financial aid. Also, if more than a quarter of a school’s students consistently defaulted on their loans within two years of graduating or dropping out, the school could be barred from participating in federal financial aid programs. The idea was to get rid of those schools that were set up solely to feed on federal funds and didn’t provide the meaningful training students needed to get jobs and pay off their debt. As a result, during the 1990s more than 1,500 proprietary schools were either kicked out of the government’s financial aid programs altogether or withdrew voluntarily. In an effort to rein in abusive recruiting tactics, in 1992 Congress also barred schools from compensating recruiters based on the number of students they brought in.

These changes shook up the industry. The old generation of trade schools gradually died off and were replaced by a new breed of for-profit colleges—mostly huge, publicly traded corporations. The largest, the Apollo Group, owns the University of Phoenix, which serves more than 400,000 students at some ninety campuses and 150 learning centers worldwide. Others include the Career Education Corporation, which serves 90,000 students at seventy-five campuses around the world, and Corinthian Colleges, which serves 69,000 students at more than 100 colleges in the United States and Canada.

Not only did these companies promise that their schools would be more responsive to the needs of students and employers than the previous generation, they also said they would be more accountable to the public because, as publicly traded companies, they were heavily regulated. “We’ve seen a fire across the prairie, and that fire has had a purifying effect,” Omer Waddles, then the president of the Career College Association, told the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1997. “As our sector has weathered the storms of recent years, a stronger group of schools is emerging to carry, at a high level of credibility, the mantle of training and career development.”

In reality, the new breed of schools had quite a bit in common with their predecessors; in some cases, they even operated out of the same buildings and employed the same personnel. What’s more, rather than making them more accountable, the fact that they were publicly traded created a powerful incentive for them to game the system. After all, to keep their stock prices up and investors happy, the schools had to show that they were constantly expanding, which meant there was intense pressure to get students in the door and signed up for classes and financial aid.

With so much at stake, these schools quickly found ways to skirt the new rules. To get around the caps on student loan default rates, for instance, many of them began hiring agencies to help former students get forbearances or offering lines of credit so alums could make their student-loan payments—but only during the initial two-year window, when defaults were counted against the school by the Department of Education. After that, students were left to wrestle with the debt on their own. As for the rule requiring schools to get at least 15 percent of tuition from nongovernment sources, it had some unintended consequences. Rather than, say, enrolling people who could afford to pay some tuition out of pocket, many schools started pushing students to take out private student loans.

Previously, this kind of loan had gone exclusively to graduate and professional students pursuing careers in high-paying fields like law and medicine. The financially needy students who attend for-profit institutions couldn’t qualify for them because of their less-than-stellar credit records, their lousy graduation rates, and their spotty record of finding work in their field. But this began to change around 2000. At the time, college tuition was skyrocketing—a trend that has only accelerated—and federal grants and loans weren’t keeping pace. To fill the gap, financial aid officers started cutting deals with lenders to bring in private loan money. In the case of proprietary colleges, most of the large publicly traded chains forged arrangements with Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student loan company. (Once a quasi-government agency like Fannie Mae, it became entirely private in 2004.) In exchange for pots of private student loan funds that they could dole out at will—meaning without regard for students’ ability to repay the debt—the schools gave Sallie Mae the right to be the exclusive provider of federal student loans on their campuses. Lenders vie fiercely for this privilege because federal loans are guaranteed by the government, meaning the Treasury pays back nearly all the money if the borrower defaults. Thus lenders get to pocket generous fees and interest and bear almost no risk.

Sallie Mae clearly understood that these private loans were going mostly to subprime borrowers who might not be able to pay them back; in 2007, Senate investigators uncovered internal company documents showing that executives expected a staggering 70 percent of its private student loans at one for-profit school to end in default. Investigators concluded that Sallie Mae viewed these loans as a “marketing expense”—a token sum to be paid in exchange for the chance to gorge on federal funds.

From the schools’ perspective, it didn’t much matter whether students would be able to pay off their debt any more than it mattered if they stuck with the program or graduated with the skills they needed. As long as students were enrolled long enough to be considered a “start,” meaning that they attended classes for a week or two, the schools got to keep some of the money, and they got to include students in their official enrollment tally, which gave Wall Street the impression they were expanding. Having a cache of private loan funds to dole out also allowed the schools to clinch the deal right away—no need to grind through a stack of forms or wait for a third party to approve the loan application. Thus recruiters could lock students in before they experienced buyer’s remorse.

At best, the George W. Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress turned a blind eye to these schemes. At worst, they made it easier for the schools to carry them out. In his first term, Bush packed the Department of Education with allies of the proprietary colleges. Before becoming the assistant secretary for post-secondary education, for example, Sally Stroup worked as a lobbyist for the University of Phoenix. Under her leadership, the agency took the teeth out of regulations that were designed to rein in abuses of the 1990s, including the incentive-compensation ban for recruiters.

Not surprisingly, many schools began resorting to hard-sell tactics to bring students in. In 2004, the Department of Education found that corporate bosses at the University of Phoenix routinely pressured and intimidated their recruiters to put “asses in the classes.” At some of the campuses, enrollment counselors who didn’t meet their targets were sent to the “Red Room,” a glassed-in space where they worked the phones under intense management supervision. What’s more, in recent years dozens of former students have filed suits alleging they were misled about classes and programs proprietary schools offered, as well as about their prospects for graduating and getting jobs in their fields of study. While the seriousness of the abuses vary, in some cases they amount to outright fraud, with recruiters pressuring students to sign up for classes that don’t actually exist or to enroll in programs where the instructors lack even basic expertise in the field. The push to get students in the door also created more pressure to steer people into private loans.

The frenzy only intensified after Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act in 2005. This made it almost impossible for those who took out private student loans to discharge them in bankruptcy and, not surprisingly, turned the private student loan market into a much more appealing target for lenders.

s a result of these changes, private loan borrowing has skyrocketed. In the last decade alone, it has grown an astounding 674 percent at colleges overall, when adjusted for inflation. The growth has been most dramatic at for-profit colleges, where the percentage of students taking out private loans jumped from 16 percent to 43 percent between 2004 and 2008, according to Department of Education data.

The spike in private loan borrowing is dismal news for students. Unlike traditional student loans, which have low, fixed interest rates, private educational loans generally have uncapped variable rates that can climb as high as 20 percent—on par with the most predatory credit cards. Private loans also come with much less flexible repayment options. Borrowers can’t defer payments if they suffer economic hardship, for instance, and the size of their payment is not tied to income, as it sometimes is in the federal program. Private loans also lack basic consumer protections available to federal loan borrowers. With a traditional federal student loan, for example, if a borrower dies or becomes permanently disabled, the debt is forgiven, meaning they or their kin are no longer responsible for paying it off. The same goes if the school unexpectedly shuts down before a student graduates. But none of this is true of private loans. Also, because it is so difficult to discharge private student loans in bankruptcy, when students take them out to attend schools that provide no meaningful training or skills they can find themselves trapped in a spiral of debt that they have little prospect of escaping.

Theresa Sweet, a thirty-three-year-old California resident, took out about $100,000 in private loans between 2003 and 2006 to study photography at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, which is owned by the Career Education Corporation. At the time, she says the Brooks recruiters—who have frequently been accused of misleading students—told her that graduates of their photography program typically made at least $60,000 straight out of school. In fact, since graduating three years ago she has been unable to find paid work in her field, and, while she has managed to get forbearances on her student loans, the interest has continued to stack up. She now owes more than $200,000.

Looking back, Sweet admits that she was naive in trusting the recruiters. But she can’t help but wonder how she ever qualified for the loans in the first place, especially given that when she applied she was unemployed. “If it were me, I never would have loaned me the money,” she says. “Who in their right mind would lend $100,000 in unsecured debt to an art major?”

Like Sweet, graduates of proprietary colleges often struggle to find jobs in their fields. This is because, in many cases, they don’t get the skills they need to compete. After all, it’s far easier and less expensive for schools to boost enrollment numbers through aggressive advertising and recruitment than to expend the resources to build quality schools. Corinthian and Career Education, which own the schools Leveque and Sweet attended, have faced the most damning allegations when it comes to educational quality and steering students into shady private loans. Other chains have better reputations on these fronts, among them the University of Phoenix and DeVry University. But even they have a spotty record of graduating students.

or awhile it looked like the meltdown on Wall Street, and the ensuing credit crunch, would put an end to predatory lending at for-profit schools. In 2008 Sallie Mae quit offering subprime private loans to students at for-profit colleges because the astronomical default rates had helped throw its stock price into a nosedive. But the proprietary college industry has found a way around this roadblock, namely making private loans directly to students, much the way used-car lots loan money to buyers rather than going through a third party. For example, in a recent earnings call with investors and analysts, Corinthian said that it plans to dole out roughly $130 million in “institutional loans” this year, while Career Education and ITT Educational Services Inc., another for-profit chain, have reported that they expect to lend a combined total of $125 million.

These loans could prove to be even more toxic than the private ones offered by Sallie Mae. This is because some schools are packaging them as ordinary consumer credit, which has even fewer built-in safeguards than private student loans, especially when it comes to disclosure requirements. This makes it easier for schools to mislead borrowers about the terms of the debt they are taking on. In one class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year, former students of Colorado-based Westwood Colleges allege they were duped into borrowing institutional loans at a staggering 18 percent interest. According to the complaint, the college’s corporate bosses advise their admissions officers to sign students up for these loans without revealing how costly they are going to be. Thus borrowers don’t learn about the steep interest until after they leave school and receive their first loan bill. Worse, the lawsuit alleges that some students have been signed up for loans without their permission.

Jillian L. Estes, a Florida lawyer who represents the plaintiffs in the case, says she has been approached by two dozen former Westwood admissions representatives who admit that they deliberately avoided telling students about the terms of these loans. “They knew they’d never be able to enroll these students if they were up front with them,” Estes explains. (In their written response to the lawsuit, Westwood College officials offered a “categorical rejection” of the allegations brought by Estes and her clients.)

Significantly, many proprietary schools are pushing institutional loans even when they know students won’t be able to pay them off; Career Education and Corinthian Colleges only expect to recover roughly half of the money they distribute through their institutional lending programs, according to communications with shareholders. Why would they lend knowing they won’t get the money back? Because any loss is more than offset by federal loans and financial aid dollars, which, despite the surge in private educational lending, still fund the bulk of tuition at proprietary schools. Say a student gets a $60,000 federal financial aid package and supplements it with a $20,000 institutional loan. The school comes out $40,000 ahead even if the borrower ultimately defaults. Plus, getting students in the door pumps up enrollment numbers, which makes for happy shareholders.

Meanwhile, as the credit crunch eases, traditional lenders may well go back to making private loans to proprietary school students, especially given the changes afoot in the industry. President Obama aims to get rid of the program that allows lending companies to collect lucrative fees and interest for serving as the middleman on federal student loans and instead have the government offer the loans directly. Once forced out of the federal student loan program, traditional lenders will have a powerful incentive to seek profits by wading deeper into the private student loan market, and for-profit schools, with their exponential growth, could once again be an appealing target.

The good news is that the Obama administration seems more inclined than its predecessor to stand up against the abuses of proprietary schools. In May, the Department of Education revealed that it was considering reversing changes the Bush administration made to weaken the incentive-compensation ban. It is also thinking about adding teeth to the rules requiring proprietary colleges to show that graduates are finding “gainful employment” in their field and cracking down on schools that willfully mislead prospective students. “Our overall goal at the Department of Education in post-secondary education is to make sure that students … have the information they need to make good choices,” Robert Shireman, the deputy undersecretary of education, told financial analysts and investors during a conference call earlier this year.

These proposals are a good start, but more steps will be needed. For starters, the Department of Education should publish the data that it already collects on the number of students at each school who default over the lifetime of their loans. At the moment, it only releases the number who default during the first two years after leaving college, which is of limited value, not only because this is such a short time span, but also because the rates can be easily manipulated by schools.

Just publishing lifetime default rates would give prospective students a clearer picture of the risks of enrolling in a particular school. But the impact would be far greater if Congress used this data, along with graduation rates, to weed out abusive institutions; ideally, any school that failed to meet a certain threshold should be kicked out of the federal financial aid programs.

At the same time, Congress should require companies that offer private student loans to give the same kinds of flexible repayment options and consumer protections as are available through the federal student loan program, including allowing borrowers to repay their loans as a percentage of their income. Lawmakers also need to revisit changes Congress made to the bankruptcy code in 2005, which make it exceeding difficult for financially distressed borrowers, including those with private student loans, to discharge their debt in bankruptcy.

These changes would go a long way toward helping people like Martine Leveque escape their mountains of debt and ensuring that future students don’t wind up in the same situation. It would also guarantee that taxpayers don’t go on bankrolling giant companies that profit by exploiting those who are struggling to build better lives.
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I want to end by emphasizing----if you look at media you will think Obama and Congress tried to reform this industry-----it was the courts that stopped them for example.  Yet, simply enforcing Rule of Law and recovering trillions of dollars in fraud from this industry would have put them all out of business!  THAT IS HOW YOU TAKE CARE OF THIS PROBLEM.....WE DO NOT NEED NEW LAWS----WE NEED RULE OF LAW.

You will see the long list of for-profits that stole the trillions of dollars and they are still going strong in Maryland.  What you do not hear is that they are killing union apprenticeship programs----the best in the world at training for all kinds of workplace employment -----being dismantled by these for-profit schools----which is the point.  Both republicans and neo-liberals are trying to kill unions and labor and these privatizations do just that.


SEE WHY THE MEDIA CONTROLS SO COMPLETELY WHICH CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR GET AIRTIME?  ALL CANDIDATES EXCEPT CINDY WALSH HAVE BEEN SILENT AND WILL CONTINUE TO IGNORE MASSIVE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION!



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May 04th, 2014

5/4/2014

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

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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


Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO

2014 Primary Election Endorsements
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GOVERNOR Anthony Brown

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Ken Ulman

COMPTROLLER Peter Franchot

ATTORNEY GENERAL Brian Frosh



MARYLAND STATEWIDE

MD District 1 No Recommendation

MD District 2 Dutch Ruppersberger

MD District 3 John Sarbanes

MD District 4 Donna Edwards

MD District 5 Steny Hoyer

MD District 6 John Delaney

MD District 7 Elijah Cummings

MD District 8 Christopher Van Hollen

District of
Columbia At Large: Eleanor Holmes-Norton




Education:

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

Health Care reform:

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

Public Private Partnerships:

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


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


Corporate taxation:

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

Using Wall Street financial instruments to fund state projects:

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

Private and Public Sector Pensions:

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

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



Privatizing public transportation:

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



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

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

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


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



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

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



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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

French giant run from Connecticut

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

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

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

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

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

Cost of capital

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

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

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

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

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

How about a ‘Franco-French’ solution?

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

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


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

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

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

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


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April 25th, 2014

4/25/2014

0 Comments

 
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 22nd, 2014

4/22/2014

0 Comments

 
PLEASE CHECK BELOW MY BLURB ON PUBLIC MEDIA'S ATTACK ON FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS AND ELECTION VIOLATIONS!  I WILL SPEAK TODAY ON BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON AS GLOBAL CORPORATE CHAMPIONS REEKING HAVOC ON THE WORLD WITH ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER AND IMPOVERISHMENT!


Below you see that WYPR is about to block my campaign from speaking about the issues of this election. Mind you, my comments are always factual where the comments of the politicians given media coverage are not. This violates Federal Election laws. As you heard this morning, WYPR is no longer stating where a governor's forum was held because, as I state, all 501c3/4 political debates and forums must invite all candidates for office. At a time when elections are being bought.....at a time when candidates running for office are working for corporations in pay-to-play, it is critical that America has a public media that is not involved in this corporate corruption. I will be contacting all businesses that advertize with WYPR to ask why they support this suspension of Rule of Law and free and fair elections!




'Congratulations on your decision to run for the office of governor of Maryland . WYPR always supports diverse opinions and we wish you well in your campaign.
By the rules of the Public Broadcasting Act and by WYPR policies, the use of WYPR's airways, website, or social media outlets by ANY political candidate during an election campaign is strictly prohibited. We very much appreciate your cooperation with these restrictions AND you are welcome to contact our general manager who would be happy to provide further explanations. Therefore, we ask that you not make further postings as we are required to remove all of your posting to date and in the future so long as you are a candidate for public office.
Thank you for understanding'.



If a candidate cannot make comments on a public media site and those same candidates are excluded from all election coverage on public media in Maryland then how does that meet with Federal Election Laws requiring all 501c3/4 organizations to give all candidates for election a forum for their campaigns?  Do you think constantly referring to all but the global corporate candidates meets that requirement?  Of course not------I will continue to post my research information on policy as my organization Citizens Oversight Maryland does.  Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland looks forward to WYPR giving all campaigns and platforms access to public media airwaves!




Here in Maryland all the media is preparing to block any comments about Bill and Hillary Clinton as the 2016 will see an onslaught of political advertizing and social media/email campaigning. As a candidate for governor of Maryland I was just told by WYPR that I cannot comment on their facebook page about election issues and at the same time they are refusing my campaign any media coverage.  My campaign is completely blocked.  Meanwhile, the candidates who are going to advance these global corporate policies of Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) and Clinton's global corporate rule has unlimited airtime on public media.  BELOW YOU SEE WHAT BILL AND HILLARY HAVE BEEN UP TO SINCE ENDING GLASS STEAGALL AND PUSHING NAFTA-----THEY ALLOWED DEVELOPING WORLD'S TO BE ENSLAVED BY US CORPORATIONS AND WHEN THOSE NATIONS KICKED OUT THESE US CORPORATIONS NEO-LIBERALS ARE NOW MOVING INTO AFRICA, THE CARIBBEAN, AND IF TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IS PASSED.,......INTO THE US. It is people of color who are being enslaved whether Asian, black, or Hispanic, but the Trans Pacific Trade Pact will take all Americans to the developing world level.  See why it is so important for WYPR to block my campaign?



Haiti has been made the new sweat shop of the West.  Clinton is bringing US manufacturing from Asia and installing them in the West.....first in the Caribbean and then in the US when TPP is installed.  US labor unions know this is what will happen and they know that all of Maryland candidates for Governor of Maryland except Cindy Walsh for Governor will do this....Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur as well as the republicans.

Bill Clinton: Haiti’s Neo-Colonial Overlord

Tue, 11/16/2010 - 14:03 — Ashley Smith

by Ashley Smith

Bill Clinton is no friend to Haiti. The former president, who inflicted great harm to the Haitian people while in office, now acts as a kind of regent, “promoting sweatshops, tourism, and export-oriented agriculture.” A primary actor in stripping Haiti of its sovereignty, Clinton “is putting Haiti up for sale to multinational capital.”

 

Bill Clinton: Haiti’s Neo-Colonial Overlord

by Ashley Smith

Ashley Smith is a featured speaker at a “Day of Outrage in Harlem” rally and march in support of the people of Haiti, on November 20. The theme of the protest is, “U.S. Out of Haiti – Clinton Out of Harlem.”

“Clinton has betrayed all his humanitarian promises and failed to collect even a fraction of the promised $10 billion for reconstruction.”

The corporate media portrays former President Bill Clinton as a great humanitarian friend of Haiti. The truth could not be more different. He has always supported policies in the interests of multinational corporations and the Haitian ruling class at the expense of the country’s workers, urban poor and peasantry.

After the 1991 coup that toppled Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Clinton as President did maintain relatively ineffective sanctions. But he violated his campaign promise and continued George Bush Sr.’s policy of jailing Haitian refugees in Guantanamo. He also pressured Aristide to adopt free market economic policies as the condition of restoring him to power in 1994.

Clinton succeeded in getting Aristide to moderate his program of social reform and drop tariffs on rice to the advantage of U.S. Agribusiness. He then compelled Aristide’s successor, Rene Preval, to further deregulate the economy successfully turning Haiti into the most free market economy in the Western Hemisphere, and consequently its poorest.

“Clinton pressured Aristide to adopt free market economic policies as the condition of restoring him to power in 1994.”

Confronted with this evidence, he recently apologized for impoverishing the lives of peasant farmers in Haiti. But as always with Clinton, his rhetoric could not be more different than his policies. After the second U.S.-backed coup against Aristide in 2004, Clinton has worked with former World Bank employee Paul Collier, multinational corporations and the Haitian elite to impose another free-market plan on Haiti. While U.N. troops have occupied Haiti since 2004, Clinton and Collier toured the country promoting sweatshops, tourism, and export-oriented agriculture.

After the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Port au Prince, Clinton became co-chair of Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. He is now the country’s neo-colonial overlord. He has betrayed all his humanitarian promises and failed to collect even a fraction of the promised $10 billion for reconstruction. And his reconstruction plan is the same free market plan he has been touting since 2004. He is putting Haiti up for sale to multinational capital.

The last thing Haiti needs is more “help” from Bill Clinton and the U.S. Instead, the U.S. and other imperial powers including the U.N. should get out of Haiti and pay reparations so that Haitians can rebuild their country in their own interests.

Ashley Smith can be reached at: ashley05401@yahoo.com. For information on the November 20 “Day of Outrage in Harlem,” contact Nellie Bailey at harlemtenants@gmail.com


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Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) is a neo-con/neo-liberal effort to end the national sovereignty of all nations signing this pact and handing control of all public policy and law enforcement to global corporate tribunals.  This is all courtesy of Bill and Hillary Clinton who, with Reagan embraced neo-liberalism and took the people's democratic party and handed it to corporations.  This is why labor and justice, 80% of the democratic base has been silenced.  We need labor unions to stop backing these neo-liberals and in Maryland all candidates other than Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland will push TPP.

Below you see the Neo-conservative think tank and the neo-liberal think tank all getting their dander up because the nations around the world being forced into TPP are fighting it and kicking the leaders out who signed this treaty.  Don't think for one minute that any neo-liberal pol will not vote to pass this!  Obama has built the lobby structure to push it through.  Also note that NGOs are included in this TPP stakeholder deal.  NGOs are simply corporations made to be non-profits controlling public policy!

IN THE US THAT WOULD BE OBAMA AND IN MARYLAND ALL OF THE MARYLAND ASSEMBLY AND CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR ARE PASSING LAWS SUPPORTING TPP!



Don't think that because a few democratic Congress people have shouted against Fast Track for TPP that it is not advancing------all of the policies passed during Obama's Administration have been TPP related.  Bush set the stage and Obama is super-sizing it. 

WE ARE AT THE CROSSROADS IN STOPPING TPP-----STOP ELECTING GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS!


Crunch Time for the Trans-Pacific Pact — and for U.S. Leadership in Asia

By Claude Barfield
Thursday, October 10, 2013

Filed under: World Watch, Economic Policy

At a crucial time in U.S.-Asian relations, China is stealing the limelight. America needs to get back in the game. Admittedly, one can overreact to the negative consequences of President Obama’s decision to cancel his trip to Asia and forego participation in the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ meeting and the East Asian Summit. But it would also be a mistake to underestimate the blow — at least in the short term — to the ability of the United States to project a confident leadership role in the region. Headlines such as “Obama cancels Asia trip. Is the U.S. ‘pivot’ in jeopardy?” and “As Obama’s Asian ‘pivot’ falters, China steps into the gap” are all too representative of the reaction both within Asia and around the world. 

My AEI colleague Michael Auslin has suggested that the real danger to U.S. leadership does not stem from the past week’s debacles but rather from the fact that the Obama administration is presiding over a decimated defense budget that in future years cannot sustain U.S. security promises and obligations in Asia — let alone around the world. The point is well taken, but my analysis will concentrate on the short and medium term effects relating to soft diplomacy and prestige and, in more detail, to the implications for the major U.S. regional economic initiative, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

Short-Term Losses 

In the immediate future, the image embodied in Hillary Clinton’s robust announcement of an American ‘pivot’ to Asia and her comment that ‘We are back to stay’ will take a credibility beating. In the immediate future, the image embodied in Hillary Clinton’s robust announcement of an American “pivot” to Asia and her comment that “We are back to stay” will take a credibility beating. The White House had planned both practical deliverables in the TPP negotiations and also highly symbolic visits by the president to Malaysia and the Philippines. The picture of President Obama twiddling his thumbs in the White House and haggling over a looming U.S. default while Asian leaders meet in Bali and in Brunei will be hard to erase in the short term. 

Worse, partly by coincidence, Chinese leaders stood ready to fill in the gap. Though long-planned, visits by President Xi Jinping to Malaysia and Indonesia captured headlines around the region, not least from the largesse dispensed along the way — a $15 billion currency swap agreement with Indonesia and a promise to triple trade with Malaysia to $160 billion by 2017. In a tag team display, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is now off on follow-up official visits to Vietnam, Thailand, and Brunei. Though President Xi was circumspect at the two summit meetings, the Chinese press was euphoric and scornful. Typical was the comment of the Hong Kong-based Communist party newspaper, Ta Kung Pao: “Chinese President Xi Jinping has become the brightest star on the Asian diplomatic platform. . . . The influence of the U.S. is questioned more and more.” 

Looking back over the week, even a former administration official and loyal Obama supporter, Kenneth Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution, was led to conclude: “This is a serious blow to U.S. diplomacy” that will raise doubts about the president’s “ability to deliver on commitments.” 

Moving on, the potential impact of the president’s no-show at TPP negotiations is a likewise negative development but not necessarily a fatal one to the successful conclusion of the agreement. With or without Obama’s presence, the situation with regards to the negotiations stands as follows. Since 2010, when serious bargaining began, there have been 19 negotiating sessions. At this point, most if not all of the technical underbrush has been cleared away by the trade bureaucrats from the 12 member states. What is left is a group of at least a dozen highly sensitive political questions and judgments that must be settled by political leaders. Among the issues outstanding are rules and commitments related to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the environment, labor, market access and rules of origin, intellectual property (IP), government procurement, services and investment, regulatory coherence and coordination, and data flows and protection, among others. (The list will vary from observer to observer and cannot be conclusive since no actual potential text has been made public). 

Throughout 2013, TPP members have steadfastly maintained the goal of completing the negotiations by the end of the year, even though all knew that this was more a tactic to keep up momentum than a realistic endpoint. Neither President Obama nor other national TPP leaders could be expected to iron out the specific details of all of the aforementioned politically sensitive issues in the single day allotted to the TPP in Brunei. Rather, what Obama missed was the opportunity to push personally for a successful conclusion of the talks soon after the new year — and to weigh in with individual leaders on a limited number of issues where only the highest national leaders can seal the deal.

The Endgame

Neither President Obama nor other national TPP leaders could be expected to iron out the specific details in the single day allotted to the TPP in Brunei. Rather, what Obama missed was the opportunity to push personally for a successful conclusion of the talks. Without crying now over spilt milk, it will be crucial for the president and the administration to turn full attention to the TPP endgame. Trade policy and negotiations have been described by political scientists as a “two-level game.” On the first level, political leaders have to fix their own goals and bargain with their counterparts from other nations. In this case, the White House must decide quickly in coming weeks what its top offensive and defensive priorities will be. Will we demand, for example, quite detailed competition rules for SOEs? Will we push for greater IP protection for biotechnology products? Will the United States want enforceable rules in the environmental chapter and for health and safety provisions? And will the United States at this late date suddenly demand trade rules to curb currency manipulation? Defensively, the White House must make judgments on what we will give in return (and the offensive/defensive moves are linked): for instance, Vietnam has made it clear that it will not move on SOEs without U.S. concession on shoes and textiles. Further, what can the United States give on sugar or cotton? How much continued protection will it defend for the U.S. automobile industry? And what can we concede from our highly protected dairy sector?

Political timing is now crucial. U.S. companies with both offensive and defensive issues at stake are aware that it is crunch time for key decisions on the products and services they hold dear, and they have begun high-powered lobbying campaigns to achieve their disparate goals. While the administration has worked diligently with domestic stakeholders (including NGOs), its own domestic political actions in this two-level game must be redoubled. This means moving forward quickly with Congress to pass new trade promotion authority that sets out congressional trade priorities and guarantees a timely up or down vote for a future TPP agreement. Down the line, it will also mean that the president himself must be willing to spend the political capital to craft a coalition that can assure congressional approval of the TPP (most particularly with congressional Republicans, who will almost certainly provide the majority of the votes).

At a news conference in the wake of the Pacific summits, President Obama ruefully admitted that missing the Asian leaders’ meeting was “almost like not showing up” for his own party, and that this inevitably “created a sense of concern” on the part of U.S. allies and trading partners. But on the larger canvass of U.S. leadership in Asia, the damage is not irreparable. Despite the burst of Chinese triumphalism, Asian nations certainly are aware that Beijing has in reality not backed off it belligerent stands and demands regarding the East and South Chinas seas — nor its bullying of smaller nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines. The ongoing, huge buildup of Chinese military prowess only underscores the perceived necessity for an enduring U.S. defense presence as a counterbalance. 

In addition to committing full diplomatic and political resources to completing and passing the TPP, the president should also move with dispatch to assuage the “sense of concern” in Asia by quickly rescheduling the cancelled trips to Southeast Asia and add on Japan and Korea. For the TPP, there might be a quick payoff for the negotiations, as Korea was widely expected to announce at the Brunei summit that it would join the talks, but apparently backed off when Obama cancelled. A visit to Seoul might just seal that deal and further tip the balance toward the TPP as the lead institution in a new regional economic architecture.

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Right now the only thing saving Americans from this third world agreement is that citizens of other nations are in the streets and kicking their political leaders out of office to stop this Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP).  In the US .......labor and justice leaders are backing the same neo-liberal candidates who will push these policies through.  In Maryland, all the candidates for governor......especially Gansler, Brown, and Mizeur will push TPP through EXCEPT CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND!



As you hear, Clinton is stating the lifting of democratic and labor conditions even as ALL INTERNATIONAL LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS ARE SHOUTING LOUDLY AND STRONGLY AGAINST IT!


Clinton Announces Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement

Clinton Announces Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement Video Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Vietnam to pursue democracy while announcing details of a a new trans-Pacific trade agreement focused on south Asia, during a visit to Hanoi on Tuesday. (July 10)

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press



Clinton Announces Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement

AssociatedPress
441,355 781 views 14     24 Published on Jul 10, 2012

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Vietnam to pursue democracy while announcing details of a a new trans-Pacific trade agreement focused on south Asia, during a visit to Hanoi on Tuesday. (July 10)



Here in Maryland all media is captured by corporations and we are seeing the Clinton machine locking up all areas of campaigning and election exposure. Public media needs to be the one source of free and fair elections and in Maryland------WYPR and MPT controls most public media and they are completely blocking all candidates that do not support pushing TPP through.


Bill Moyers on why the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement is death for democracy
11/5/2013 10:05am by Gaius Publius

Many of you know
I’ve been covering TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement) for a while now — for example, here. Obama and the rest of the neoliberal (“free-trade”) Democrats are dying to implement it, and the Republican servants of the same fine CEOs are not far behind.

But the TPP is complicated — at least in appearances — and the public is having a hard time bottom-lining it, in between taking kids to soccer and paying bills in the evening. By comparison, characterizing Keystone is easy — “Want to drink goo from your faucet and watch the earth cook? Support Keystone.”

It’s not really hard to understand TPP though, once you see the pattern — TPP puts the ruling class (and the corporations they control) in charge of most aspects of our economic and regulatory life. It rewrites the laws of every nation that signs it, all to increase the wealth of our pathological betters. We just need more people saying that.

Now comes Bill Moyers with an excellent, listenable primer on what TPP is and why it spells death to democracy (literally) and breathes even more life into the predator 1% of the 1%.

Governments involved with our betters in implementing the TPP “corporate-rule” agreement. These are the perps.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Moyers’ great introduction, then to the discussion with Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism and Dean Baker of CEPR. This is one of the best ways to come up to speed on TPP I’ve found — very tight, very clear:

From the video’s introduction at Vimeo:

A US-led trade deal is currently being negotiated that could increase the price of prescription drugs, weaken financial regulations and even allow partner countries to challenge American laws. But few know its substance.

The pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is deliberately shrouded in secrecy, a trade deal powerful people, including President Obama, don’t want you to know about. Over 130 Members of Congress have asked the White House for more transparency about the negotiations and were essentially told to go fly a kite. While most of us are in the dark about the contents of the deal, which Obama aims to seal by year end, corporate lobbyists are in the know about what it contains.

And some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the negotiations with sources they trust, including Dean Baker and Yves Smith, who join Moyers & Company this week. Both have written extensively about the TPP and tell Bill the pact actually has very little to do with free trade.

Instead, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “This really is a deal that’s being negotiated by corporations for corporations and any benefit it provides to the bulk of the population of this country will be purely incidental.” Yves Smith, an investment banking expert who runs the Naked Capitalism blog adds: “There would be no reason to keep it so secret if it was in the interest of the public.”

Suitable for sharing with your friends and online associates. Seriously; help to make TPP a household name ahead of the Senate hearings on it and the Fast-Track legislation that will introduce it.

We’ll be following this closely as well. At some point soon, we’ll all need concerted and raucous citizen opposition. As Moyers and company show, this is as big a deal as stopping Big Carbon in its tracks. If we don’t prevent this, TPP will rewrite constitutions across the globe, including here at home.

And believe me, our poor Constitution has taken on a lot of rewriting lately. Save the Constitution. Help kill the TPP “corporate-rule” agreement. (More information here.)


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Bill and Hillary Clinton were the head cheerleaders for Monsanto and are now major shareholders in chief of this global disaster waiting to happen.  Yes, Bill Gates is now partnered with all of this and is behind global PHARMA and killing public health around the world.  You know......public media's 'good billionaire'.


The reason you will see corporate NPR/APM keep all political comment to neo-liberals and neo-cons is that they want only global corporate pols to get airtime even is the only media outlet that should promote free and fair elections and -----PUBLIC MEDIA.   


WYPR IN MARYLAND HAS DELIBERATELY CAPTURED ALL PUBLIC MEDIA AND SILENCES ELECTION RACES NOT COMMITTED TO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS!



Monsanto and Hillary Clinton's Redemptive First Act as Secretary of State
  • By Linn Cohen-Cole
    Op-Ed News, February 9, 2009
    Straight to the Source

For those who hope Obama will bring something different to the world, we must first see clearly what is happening, and make demands of him that are profound, not show.

Liberals are pleased he may appoint a White House farmer to plant an organic garden. That is empty show.

Meanwhile corporations like Monsanto are moving rapidly to take control of food supplies ... and democracies, including ours. www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/1/192127/2714/736/691835


Obama chose Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. We cannot know what deals were struck to make her stop her destructive campaigning long after it was apparent she had lost. But we do know that Mark Penn, CEO for Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's large PR firms representing Monsanto.
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=392
advised her for years and ran her campaign. And when she showed up again, by Obama's side, suddenly so did a man named Michael Taylor ... also again.


MIchael Taylor is a Monsanto lawyer Bill Clinton once put in charge of the FDA where he approved Monsanto's rBGH. Hillary was back, andObama was putting Taylor on his transition team. www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15710.cfm

Using the transition team's advice, Obama appointed Tom Vilsack to head the USDA, overriding 20,000 opposing "grassroots" emails. The objection to Vilsack? His deep Monsanto connections.

www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15573.cfm

Hillary Clinton's connections to Monsanto go way back the Rose Law Firm where she worked. Rose represents Monsanto, Tyson, and Walmart -the world leaders in#genetic engineering, animal production and industrialized food. She received favors there, as did Bill. In office, Bill's USDA immediately and significantly weakened chicken waste and contamination standards, easing Tyson's poultry-factory expansion, www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html , and his USDA head, Espy, was indicted for bribes, money laundering, and much more, with Tyson was the largest corporate offender.

What happened specifically with Monsanto?
Bill appointed Michael Taylor head of the FDA and put other Monsanto employees in as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, onto International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more ...  

Original story, more: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-and-Hillary-Cli...




By MBD June 29, 2013
Yes, Monsanto Actually DID Buy the BLACKWATER Mercenary Group!


A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (later called Xe Services and more recently “Academi“) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State “security services,” that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

  Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training – for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of “public disclosure” of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a “totally separate entity from Blackwater.”

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become “Monsanto’s intelligence arm,” spying on activists and other actions, including “our people to legally integrate these groups.” Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the “science of death” as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of “philanthropy.” Another association that is not surprising.

It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of “market competition” of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really “donating” anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions.
On the contrary, their “donations” finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.

Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.




So why were so many media outlets, editorialists and bloggers clamoring to say that the purchase was a “hoax”?

That’s a good question. The more cynical among us might suspect a financial incentive from Monsanto itself to such “journalists.” Monsanto indeed has hired a public relations team to seek out critical blogs and websites reporting on their crimes against both Nature and humankind. We have seen this first hand in comments on PoliticalBlindSpot.com articles on Monsanto. It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that they have created blogs where seemingly legitimate authors write organic thoughts, observations and rebuttals. The public presumes these are real-world people, when in fact they are working PR for the company.

But the core argument of those who claim that the Monsanto purchase of Blackwater is not true lies in the fact that we can only officially document Blackwater being hired by Monsanto for years. Immediately following this extensive work that Blackwater did for Monsanto, they sold the company. Because of the nature of how the sale transpired, it is impossible to document who the sale was to. The obvious and logical conclusion to insiders (particularly in the private security industry), however, is that the sale was in fact to Monsanto who had been employing the group.

Xe (now Academi) has, indeed, been purchased, and while there’s no way of DOCUMENTING who the new owners really are, the logical conclusion would be that Monsanto, who had been employing them prior to the sale are the new owners. This, of course, would also make sense of the secrecy surrounding the deal and the identity of the new owners. The company was bought out by private investors via private equity companies that don’t have to divulge any of their dealings, with Bank of America providing much of the $200 million in financing for the deal.

New York-based USTC Holdings said it will acquire Xe and its core operating subsidiaries, but did not disclose the price or terms of the agreement in a statement.

USTC Holdings is an investor consortium led by private equity firms Forte Capital Advisors and Manhattan Partners.

Various researchers have been trying to document the buy via a paper trail, but so far without much luck. That, of course, is the point…

Keeping it private

One thing that is known: Forte Capital Advisors is the baby of long-time Blackwater ally Jason De Yonker:

DeYonker has unique experience with the Company that dates back to its founding in the late 1990s. He advised the Company through development of its early business plan and expansion of the Moyock training facility as well as supporting negotiations of its first training contracts with U.S. government agencies. Between 1998 and 2002, Mr. DeYonker co-managed Xe founder, Erik Prince’s family office which included management of Mr. Prince’s portfolio companies.

What does that mean? The guy is a glorified accountant.


Prior to joining Forté, Jason co-managed a +$100 million family office. In addition to actively managing various platform companies, Jason was a part of the executive team responsible for family wealth management.

Jason has spent the last 18 years advising on various mergers, acquistions and divestitures with an aggregate transaction value greater than $1 billion. Jason’s experience include: transaction advisory, portfolio management, real estate development, venture capital and cross border dealings. Jason began his career with Arthur Andersen Corporate Finance Group, and was a Director in Deloitte & Touche’s Corporate Finance Group. He also was the Finance Director for the West Family Trust, a venture capital group focused on cross-border transactons.

Jason recieved a Bachelor of Business Administration, with a concentration in finance and accounting, from the Univeristy of Michigan.

The other investor? It looks like the very junior partner will be Manhattan Partners, a private equity company – a shop that gathers money from anonymous rich investors and uses the pool of cash to  leverage buyouts of big companies they wouldn’t have been able to take over on their own.

Manhattan Partners invests in “compelling growth and special situation transactions,” but this will be their first known foray into defense industries – WarIsBusiness.com reports (via Spencer Ackerman):

Manhattan Growth Partners is led by Dean Bosacki and Patrick McBride. Bosacki serves on the board of “the world’s largest commencement photography business,” among other companies. Manhattan Growth Partners, which describes itself as “a progressive thinking private equity firm,” also holds a majority interest in Hugo Naturals, a line of organic, vegan-friendly soaps, lotions, scents and soy candles sold at Whole Foods and other greenwashed retailers.

At the end of the day, it would seem the logical conclusion is that in spite of arguments to the contrary, Monsanto in fact did by the Blackwater mercenary group… or at least the renamed Blackwater Xe (now Academi) Services group. The big question now is why?


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All over the world Monsanto and GMO are tied to massive crop failures as industrial agriculture and Monsanto's patented seed controls all the world's food when a nation allows it to enter their country.  This is why Monsanto has needed to become militarized and it is why Bill and Hillary Clinton has had to make the Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) about forcing nations to allow industrial farming into nations signing these pacts.  SEE WHY THE CITIZENS OF THE WORLD ARE FIGHTING THESE TRADE DEALS?

 The American people are relying on nations of the world to force these neo-liberal policies down while US media captures all journalism on this fight against global trade agreements!


Scientists Warn EPA Over Monsanto’s GMO Crop Failures, Dangers

by Anthony Gucciardi
March 12th, 2012
Updated 11/04/2012 at 12:07 am

A group of scientists is calling for major federal action in order to deal with the threat posed by Monsanto’s GMO crops, now petitioning the EPA to address the issue head on. The group of 22 academic corn experts are drawing attention to the immense failure of Monsanto’s genetically modified corn, which is developing mutated and resistant insects as a result of its widespread usage. Corn is critical not only as a food staple, but is heavily used in ethanol production, animal feed, and much more. As GM corn becomes the norm, currently taking over 94 percent of the supply, these scientists are seriously concerned about the future of corn production.

Joseph Spencer is one outspoken member of the group, a corn entomologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, part of the University of Illinois. Spencer states that what is happening is no surprise, instead it is something that needs to be addressed. Warning the EPA over the dangers, the experts sent a letter on March 5th to the agency explaining their worries regarding long-term corn production prospects in light of GMO crops failures. Specifically, the experts are worried about the lack of protection presented by GMO crops against rootworms.

The EPA has already acknowledged that Monsanto’s GMO crops are creating resistant rootworms, which are now ravaging the GMO crops as they mutate to the biopesticide used known as Bacillus thuringiensis (BT). The EPA found that the resistant rootworms, which are evolving to resist the insecticide,  are currently found Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska. After the EPA evaluated documented cases of severe crop damage as well as reports from entomologists, the EPA stated “Monsanto’s program for monitoring suspected cases of resistance is ‘inadequate’”.

Essentially, the GMO crops are doing the opposite of their supposed purpose — leading to more damage from rootworms as they become mutated to resist the defense of the crops. And Monsanto has answered by simply further genetically modifying the Bt, which research shows is extremely ineffective.

“When insecticides overlay transgenic technology, the economic and environmental advantages of rootworm-protected corn quickly disappear,” the scientists wrote.

It’s time for the EPA and other agencies to address the serious threats to nature and human health presented by Monsanto’s genetically modified creations.



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April 16th, 2014

4/16/2014

0 Comments

 
Today I would like to look at not only the new approach the American people must take to elections in America but to look at how the global corporations have prepared to squelch any avenue the American people have to organize.....and that is the SYSTEM OF PRIVATE NON-PROFITS......

MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE IS GROUND ZERO FOR CAPTURE BY CORPORATE NON-PROFIT.



AS WE ORGANIZE WE WILL BE CIRCUMVENTING ALL OF THE CORPORATE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS AND IN BALTIMORE THIS MEANS THOSE CREATED BY JOHNS HOPKINS TO CONTROL ALL PUBLIC POLICY AND ORGANIZING.


If you look at the establishment of Maryland's system of private non-profits it coincides with the Reagan/Clinton agenda of moving to neo-liberalism and global corporate empire.  This of course meant that the rich would not be citizens or taxpayers but patrons just as Medici's time.  So, these two decades have seen corporate and wealth taxation erode in Maryland as these private non-profits grew in number.  Today, corporations not only do not pay taxes in Maryland, they are given our tax revenue as corporate welfare to augment profits even further. 

MARYLAND IS ONE GREAT, BIG THIRD WORLD COLONY RUN BY NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGO'S).


In Baltimore the head honcho of private non-profits is Baltimore Development Corporation run by Johns Hopkins and the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (ABAG) is the mechanism for Baltimore Development Corporation to control all public policy and public organization.

THIS IS THE SAME AMERICAN NGO SYSTEM YOU HEAR ABOUT IN DEVELOPING WORLDS AND NOW HERE IN AMERICA WE SEE WHY THESE NATIONS HATE AMERICA.  THESE NGOs ARE ALL ABOUT BUILDING STRUCTURES TO CONTROL A REGION AND FUNNEL ALL MONEY INTO THEIR POCKETS.

So, two decades after starting to build this patronage structure preparing for the great economic collapse of 2008 as the excuse of government debt handing all control of funding to these private non-profits------in Baltimore and Maryland they are in full swing and control everything.

So, why is this important to elections?  As I have said, removing the public sector and replacing with private non-profits removes the ability to meet and discuss policy and promote agendas.  With these non-profits headed by directors working for corporations, these non-profits will not allow any policy or discussion other than what the corporation funding the non-profit wants.  I've spoken at length about how Johns Hopkins does this in Baltimore.  What is equally important is that these private non-profits control communications and mailing lists as well.  So, all communications for a group of thousands of people wanting to support a certain issue is made confidential.  In the end, this private non-profit then will promote the issue of the corporation no matter what the group as a whole felt was the mission.  SEE HOW THIS CAPTURES THE ENTIRE PUBLIC SPACE?  I have given examples with Maryland Health Care for All capturing the universal care issue by promoting Affordable Care Act knowing the ACA would kill Medicare and Medicaid.  Then there is the Baltimore Education Coalition BEC that is the Michelle Rhee/Bill Gates education privatization group that is the only voice of education in Baltimore and they are an extension of Johns Hopkins.


THE POINT IS THIS:  CITIZENS OF MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE MUST STOP ALLOWING THESE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS CONTROL YOUR COMMUNITIES.  YOU MUST BECOME ACTIVISTS AND ADVOCATES AND MAKE TIME TO BUILD YOUR OWN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS.


An organization that makes its email lists private or that restricts its membership to invitation only-------as the ABAG does, is not working for the people.


About The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (ABAG)

ABAG's mission is to maximize the impact of philanthropic giving on community life through a growing network of diverse, informed and effective grantmakers.

The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers is the region’s premier resource on philanthropy, dedicated to informing grantmakers and improving our community. ABAG was founded in 1983 to provide a forum in which colleagues could address common problems, approaches and interests.

Our members include more than 145 private and community foundations, donor advised funds, and corporations with strategic grantmaking programs - representing the vast majority of institutional giving in our area.

ABAG is …

  • The Resource on Grantmaking
ABAG provides critical information and services to the philanthropic and nonprofit communities.

  • The Network for Givers
ABAG convenes grantmakers and others to address issues and create lasting solutions.

  • The Voice for Philanthropy
ABAG represents the philanthropic sector to key audiences, including the media, legislators, and national organizations, raising public awareness and understanding about the role and impact of philanthropy on our society.

Knowledge. Connections. Leadership.

ABAG's Core Values Are:

  • Generosity: We believe generosity is one of the most important values. It is essential to communal welfare and something everyone should practice in some form.
  • Inclusive and Respectful: We value the perspectives and contributions of all people, and incorporate the viewpoints of diverse communities in our work.
  • Diversity: We are committed to supporting a funding community that encompasses differences in the attributes of both individuals (such as race, ethnicity, age, socio-economic status, gender, physical ability, sexual orientation, and religion) and organizations (foundations and giving programs of differing sizes, missions, geographic locations, and approaches to grantmaking).
  • Welcoming: We create an open, compassionate and trusting environment that facilitates learning, dialogue and healthy debate to inform and strengthen philanthropy.
  • Forward-Thinking: We seek strategic opportunities to meet new and existing needs in new ways.
  • Forthright Stewards: We conduct our business with honesty and integrity and utilize best practices in the stewardship of our resources and accountability for our results.




History The Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations

("Maryland Nonprofits") was established in 1992 as a result of a comprehensive statewide organizing effort in the nonprofit and philanthropic community involving hundreds of nonprofit executives and volunteer leaders.  Today, we are one of the largest and most successful nonprofit associations in the United States with more than 1,400 nonprofit organization members, 300 associate members, and 23 staff to serve them from two locations (Baltimore and Silver Spring). 

Maryland Nonprofits is statewide and sector-wide. Our members hail from every county of Maryland and from all sub-sectors of the nonprofit community, including human services, health, educational, cultural, environmental, religious, and other charitable organizations and foundations. The size of these organizations is also diverse, ranging from all volunteer organizations to major institutions. The association truly represents the diversity of Maryland's nonprofit community.


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Neo-liberalism with Reagan/Clinton started this privatization of all that is public.  This was sold to republican voters as small government but as we see today it is the Tea Party and its true conservatism that now sees how this drive to the bottom in small government has created a systemically criminal and corrupt corporate and government structure.  Tea Party want free markets and they are assaulted by naked capitalism full of cronyism and corporate welfare.  Labor and justice of course are completely demolished by neo-liberalism.

Here in Maryland we have Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur all shouting to further push public private partnerships as all of the public sector must fall to this neo-liberal drive to hand all to the few at the top.  University of Maryland Medical Center for example has a long-established quasi-governmental designation and acts as a corporation, not a state university and hospital and of course we have Baltimore Development Corporation controlling all development with absolute authority with City Hall in its pocket.  Lastly, we see the public private status of corporations like the Hilton and Hyatt that subsidize all the operational costs of those corporations to the public and makes City Hall in the business of profiting off of impoverishing its own citizens.
  Right now the City of Baltimore has structures that prey of the residents of the city in order to gather revenue in lieu of collecting taxes from corporations and the wealthy.

THIS IS COLONIALISM PEOPLE!!!!!!!

WHEN WE ALLOW OUR GOVERNMENT AT ALL LEVELS TO CREATE STRUCTURES THAT THRIVE FROM PROFITING OFF OF THE PUBLIC-----WE DO NOT HAVE A DEMOCRACY.



The Quasi Government: Hybrid Organizations with Both Government and Private Sector Legal Characteristics

This report provides an overview of federally related entities that possess legal characteristics of both the governmental and private sectors. These hybrid organizations (e.g., Fannie Mae, National Park Foundation, In-Q-Tel), collectively referred to in this report as the “quasi government,” have grown in number, size, and importance in recent decades.A brief review of executive branch organizational history is followed by a description of entities with ties to the executive branch, although they are not “agencies” of the United States as defined in Title 5 of the U.S.Code. Several categories of quasi governmental entities are defined and discussed: (1) quasi official agencies,(2) government-sponsored enterprises (GSE), (3) federally funded research and development corporations,(4) agency-related nonprofit organizations, (5) venture capital funds, (6) congressionally chartered nonprofit organizations, and (7) instrumentalities of indeterminate character.The quasi government, not surprisingly, is a controversial subject. To supporters of this trend toward greater reliance upon hybrid organizations, the proper objective of governmental management is to maximize performance and results, however defined. In their view, the private and governmental sectors are alike in their essentials, and thus subject to the same economically derived behavioral norms.They tend to welcome this trend toward greater use of quasi governmental entities.Critics of the quasi government, on the other hand, tend to view hybrid organizations as contributing to a weakened capacity of government to perform its fundamental constitutional duties, and to an erosion in political accountability, a crucial element in democratic governance. They tend to consider the governmental and private sectors as being legally distinct, with relatively little overlap in behavioral norms.Congress is increasingly engaged with the quasi government. The issues run the gamut from enacting legislation to encourage the creation of nonprofit organizations to promote individual national parks, to proposals to strengthen regulation of government- sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae, to oversight hearings respecting national security issues at Los Alamos Laboratory. There is nothing modest about the size,scope, and impact of the quasi government.Time will tell whether the emergence of the quasi government is to be viewed as a symptom of decline in our democratic government, or a harbinger of a new, creative management era where the purportedly artificial barriers between the governmental and private sectors are breached as a matter of principle.This report will be updated at the beginning of each Congress


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In Baltimore we have a system of community organizations created by O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake headed by directors that will move forward all policy put forward by Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins.  You might think a community organization for a community would be good, but if you look closely what happens is that these organizations are filled with VISTAS brought from all over the country taking leading roles in these communities they know nothing about and often in which they have no intention of staying.  Our schools are filled with the same set of private non-profit entities from Teach for America to the private Parent Teacher Organization.

Now, you may think that underserved communities need help getting on their feet but in Baltimore the entire city has its community voice supplanted by this occupation by PRIVATE NON-PROFIT.  Johns Hopkins has been allowed to consume so much of the taxpayer's revenue it is a global corporation built in a matter of the few decades from Reagan/Clinton and now.  It owns the City of Baltimore and runs it with these private non-profits.

In each case, every time a citizen in Baltimore wants to get involved in their community the only way to get government funding for a program goes through these private non-profits who, of course, will not fund a group working against this occupation.


FOLKS, YOU ARE ALLOWING EVERY AVENUE FOR PUBLIC ORGANIZING AND SPACE FOR PUBLIC POLICY-MAKING BE TAKEN.



Community centres
generally perform many (though rarely all) the following functions in its community (Note this list is intended to define which meaning of the phrase community centre is covered by this article rather than being facts about what some other sources associate with that phrases, though adding source confirming that other sources use the phrase in a similar way would be nice).

  • As the place for all-community celebrations at various occasions and traditions.
  • As the place for public meetings of the citizens on various issues.
  • As the place where politicians or other official leaders come to meet the citizens and ask for their opinions, support or votes ("election campaigning" in democracies, other kinds of requests in non-democracies).
  • As a place where community members meet each other socially.
  • As a place housing local clubs and volunteer activities.
  • As a place that community members (and sometimes others), can rent cheaply when a private family function or party is too big for their own home. For instance the non-church parts of weddings, funerals etc.
  • As a place that passes on and retells local history.

Below we see a community organization that is working to provide for low-income employment and services that was required by the Enterprise Zone give-away to Johns Hopkins in its East Baltimore Development.  Hopkins received a billion in taxpayer money and did not meet any of its obligations to help the residents surrounding the area.  I know this organization does some good although I do not support some of its advocacy.  This point here is that a gathering of local citizens are having to vie for city funds at a time when billions are being given to national private non-profits who the mayor is saying offer better value.  Only, when you actually look at what these private non-profits accomplish-----they almost always fail in their 'mission'.

The problem in Baltimore is that organizations like BUILD placate Johns Hopkins which is of course the source of all the mayor's policies.  So, rather than expose Hopkins as the source of the problem, BUILD takes the stance against the mayor.  Now, don't get me wrong....I'm glad at least they are shouting against the mayor, but it is the entire system that is corrupt.  Remember, we do not want all the money to go to private non-profits----we want a strong public sector.  If BUILD would advocate for public employees to do the work of Baltimore City Parks rather than allow a private prison contractor to work prisoners for next to nothing.....you would hire thousands to do city-wide public service jobs.

WHY IS BUILD NOT SHOUTING TO HIRE PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYEES TO DO THE JOB OF PUBLIC WORKS, ENDING THE OUTSOURCING OF STRONG, MIDDLE-CLASS JOBS IN THE CITY?

At election time, organizations like BUILD will support the pols we all know are working for Johns Hopkins.


Mayor says she won't fund job-training program, sparking debateRawlings-Blake declines to provide $594,000 for plan to employ 50 East Baltimore residents

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is shown in this… (Kim Hairston / Baltimore…)April 08, 2014|By Luke Broadwater, The Baltimore Sun

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has declined to fund a proposed East Baltimore job-training program backed by an influential community group, sparking a war of words over whether City Hall is doing enough to help the unemployed.

The interfaith coalition Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development says its leaders have a proposal to provide 50 members of the Oliver neighborhood with jobs and want $594,000 in funding over three years from the Rawlings-Blake administration. The program would target ex-offenders and others chronically unemployed.

The mayor rejected the proposal, telling the organization in a letter Monday that the city "is not in a position to provide funding for the program at this time."

About 200 people packed Memorial Baptist Church in Oliver Tuesday evening to protest the decision, at times booing a photograph of Rawlings-Blake.

"We raised $1.2 million ourselves," said Melvin Wilson, leader of the BUILD Citywide Jobs Team, who said the group's request to the mayor would only amount to $200,000 per year. "She said no."

On Tuesday, Rawlings-Blake called BUILD a "trusted partner" but said she can't simply cut checks to every well-meaning organization that asks for money and can only provide small reimbursements to job-training organizations approved by the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

She encouraged BUILD to apply for grants from charitable organizations.

"They have a proposal that just doesn't work," Rawlings-Blake said. "I have continuously supported efforts to connect previously incarcerated people with jobs. I don't take this lightly. I understand there are barriers to employment."

BUILD proposed that the 50 workers — deemed some of the hardest to employ — would be trained on construction job sites in East Baltimore while making $10.69 an hour. After a one-year training program, the workers would begin apprenticeships with the International Painters Union.

Community leaders noted that the city government has a $2.5 billion operating budget and has funded millions of dollars for development subsidies.

"We are angry with this mayor. We are tired of what this mayor is not doing," said the Rev. Marshall Prentice, pastor of Zion Baptist Church in Oliver. "If she doesn't like our plan, then what's her plan? We've got to get Baltimore working, and we want a meeting about it."

Rawlings-Blake called a news conference Tuesday to highlight some of her administration's efforts to employ local residents. She's signed an executive order called "Employ Baltimore" to assist companies in applications for city work if they have hired city residents.

She said BUILD is welcome to work with the Mayor's Office of Employment Development to reach a resolution of the dispute.

"I don't think it would be the most effective and efficient use of more than $500,000," she said of the BUILD plan. "I get frustrated because their response is, 'We're angry and we're not going to take it anymore.' Anger doesn't make progress. Sitting down at the table and doing the hard work, that's how you make progress."




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Cities all across America are now filling with private corporate non-profits wanting to help the unfortunate now that these hedge funds sucked all of the wealth of the country through massive corporate fraud and left 70% of families in America is poverty.  Baltimore is ground zero for these national private non-profits that are being allowed to become our public sector.....from mental health to wellness, from prison labor to youth employment......all of these involve those gracious hedge funds wanting to do good in our communities.  The only thing we need to do in return------is let them write all the policy, operate with impunity, control all property and institutions, and fleece WE THE PEOPLE at every turn.  Then, they will go to Associated Grantmakers of Baltimore to 'donate' to a program to help those they keep impoverished as with all third world societies.

Baltimore has such a level of corruption that corporate tax breaks and designation of corporations as non-profits allow corporations to not only operate with no cost, but now has a system where in lieu of taxes corporations 'donate' to these private non-profits for more tax write-offs and then direct that non-profit in a way that sends more money to their corporations.  So, donate to a youth employment program in Baltimore and you get matching funds from the city and a youth to work for free. 


THAT IS WHAT THIS NETWORK OF PRIVATE NON-PROFITS DOES.....IT ALLOWS CORPORATIONS THE ABILITY TO CIRCUMVENT ALL REVENUE EXPENDITURES AND ACTUALLY GIVES THEM A CHANNEL TO BRING EVEN MORE MONEY THEIR WAY.


Global Corporate PatronSponsorship

Global Corporate Patrons support global operations and the infrastructure that enables Hedge Funds Care to award grants in 11 cities throughout the United States, Canada, the Cayman Islands, and the United Kingdom.Becoming a Global Corporate Patron is an excellent way to increase your firm’s visibility in the hedge fund community while simultaneously demonstrating a strong commitment to corporate responsibility and our mission to prevent and treat child abuse in our communities. Marketing BenefitsYear-round logo recognition on HFC website with link to sponsor’s websiteAnnual e-mail to HFC database of +18,000 financial professionals recognizing corporate sponsors Inclusion in Sponsor recognition PowerPoint at most events or applicable signageRecognition in Annual Report 4 Full Page Journal Ads in event program journal of sponsor’s choice (Events include New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Toronto, Cayman Islands, Atlanta, and Denver.)Rights to host 1 Cocktails & Commentary event annually with Hedge Funds Care $7,500Annual Contribution To become a Corporate Patron, please contact Sarah Blaker, Development Director atSBlaker@HedgeFundsCare.orgor 212-991-9600 ext. 342


__________________

Baltimore is losing every public space in the city.  Here we have a private corporation overseeing our public markets and it outsources what used to be public sector jobs that employed many in the city.  Now, the people working are impoverished and the communities around these markets have no control over development.


Those familiar with the Baltimore Washington International Airport owned by the Maryland State Authority know about AIRMALL -----the private contractors handed control of what used to be public sector employment and now the worst of impoverishment for citizens of Maryland.  As a state agency the people should be protected and have a strong voice over how this airport operates and it has none.

The same conditions occur below.  Again, the community has no voice because a public space has been handed to private non-profit oversight.


Baltimore Public Markets Corporation
( BPMC) was established in 1995 as a non-profit
organization, to operate the public markets in a manner beneficial to the City of Baltimore
and it's citizens. We are proud to be part of Baltimore's many hard working agencies,
associations and organizations that are largely responsible for making Baltimore the
extraordinary city it is today.

In March 2005, BPMC and Lexington Market Inc. entered into a co-teaming agreement. Mr.
Casper Genco was appointed as the Executive Director of Lexington Market Inc. and BPMC.
The teaming agreement is not a merger and the two entities are separate and distinct.

BPMC operates five of the city's old fashioned markets. Come and experience the
personality of unique boutiques, eateries and fresh food, produce and bakery shops, all in
the heart of Baltimore's neighborhoods.

Our office handles all matters pertaining to the operation of the markets. This includes
issues such as leasing, vendor concerns, etc. For further information,
contact us.

Our Goal
At Baltimore Public Markets Corporation, we pride ourselves in knowing that Baltimore has
the oldest continually operating public market system in the nation. It is our goal and desire
to maintain the markets as a part of the City's heritage. We strive to provide you with
buildings that are safe and clean. We will continue the tradition of providing the patrons of
our markets with food and service that is of high quality and standards that you deserve. So
come on by, for a little personal service and be pampered at our markets in Baltimore City's
most historic neighborhoods.

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April 07th, 2014

4/7/2014

0 Comments

 

As I showed last blog on private sector pensions, most pension portfolios had pension investments in the bond market because previously the bond market was stable and a safe investment.  You can see from this snippet from an article that a deliberate move of private sector pensions in this massive Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp happened as the stock markets crashed in 2008. 

THIS WAS DELIBERATE AND PUBLIC MALFEASANCE WITH 1/2 OF PENSION VALUE LOST FROM THE FRAUD AND LOSS OF GAINS FROM THE BULL MARKET THAT FOLLOWED.




Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

'The PBGC regularly updates its investment strategy. In 2004, it chose to invest heavily in bonds.[6] Under new leadership, the agency in 2008 shifted a substantial portion of its assets into stocks.[7] Because of the market decline, PBGC's equity investments lost 23% during the year ending September 30, 2008.[8]'

Today we want to look at public pensions and know that the same thing happened at state and local level as these public pensions also were thrown into a crashing market in 2007.  So, it was Bush/Obama who made sure Federal pensions were used as fodder and in Maryland it was Baltimore City and Maryland public agency heads that made sure they hit the stock market as the crash was occurring.  THIS IS FACT.  When we hear corporate NPR/APM tell us that all of American savings and retirements were lost and now they have nothing going into their old age and have to work until they drop-------THEY ARE LYING TO YOU.

DO YOU HEAR YOUR INCUMBENT SHOUTING TO BRING PENSION FRAUD BACK TO FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL PUBLIC PENSION FUNDS?  EVERYONE OF THEM KNOWS THIS HAPPENED! 

As I have said before pensions were underfunded for decades with the idea that they would be eliminated.  This move in 2007-2008 was designed to cripple pension funds and to buoy the Wall Street banks that were crashing.  Throwing the American people's pensions into bank stocks allowed these investment firms to earn billions of dollars more.  I want to emphasize that the same is about to happen this year as pensions are now being used in a sovereign/municipal bond fraud as this market is now ready to implode.  EVERYONE KNOWS THIS!

It was not only the losses to these pensions at the time of the collapse, it involves all of the gains those pensions would have had in the following BULL market.  You heard about Wall Street making great gains these few years----pension gains worked with 1/2 the value and they will again lose most value with this next collapse.  The rich are moving their investments out of US stocks while pensions are used to buoy the economies overseas and state and city credit bond schemes.



YOUR UNION LEADERS AT STATE AND NATIONAL LEVEL SHOULD BE TAKING THIS TO COURTS AND IF WE HAD A FUNCTIONING PUBLIC JUSTICE ERIC HOLDER AND DOUG GANSLER WOULD BE FIGHTING FOR PENSION JUSTICE.  THEY ONLY WORK FOR SHAREHOLDER LOSSES AND WE KNOW SHAREHOLDERS PROFIT ON PENSION LOSSES.

WHAT KIND OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION GOES BACK TO THE SAME PEOPLE WHO DEFRAUDED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO MANAGE RETIREMENT SAVINGS?




May 28 2013 | 12:10pm ET  FIN Alternatives


A Maryland public pension fund has a new hedge fund consultant and a pair of new private equity managers.


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

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE STATE RETIREMENT & PENSION SYSTEM

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Nancy K. Kopp, State Treasurer, Chair (chosen by Board in June, 1-year term)
Peter V. R. Franchot, Comptroller of Maryland, Vice-Chair (chosen by Board in June, 1-year term)
Appointed by Governor with Senate advice & consent to 4-year terms: Robert R. Hagans, Jr., 2015; Harold Zirkin, 2015; Thurman W. Zollicoffer, Jr., Esq., 2015; David S. Blitzstein, 2016; Linda A. Herman, 2017; F. Patrick Hughes, 2017.



_________________________________________
As we know Governor O'Malley was central in all public pension losses first at the level of city and then state.  We know as well he is a great big Wall Street pol who based his entire political career moving the public's wealth to the top earners.  While states handle these shortfalls in pensions victimized by massive fraud and corruption by cutting what the people receive.......O'Malley/Brown pulls their regular routine of saying one thing and doing another.  Pension contributions were cut from what the article below suggests.  Remember, this coming economic crash will gut all these pensions again especially how they are currently invested.  Above you see the State of Maryland went immediately to the Wall Street investment firms who fleeced the public in 2007/2008 to hand our pensions for investment again.  O'Malley/Brown doubled-down on Wall Street financial instruments right after this crash from massive Wall Street fraud acting as nothing had happened.  SEE WHY BROWN IS THE DARLING OF MARYLAND 1%?

The LIBOR frauds, stock transaction frauds, and illegal stock management fees all took lots of money from the people's pensions, both public and private and has yet to get justice.  A governor would be shouting this if he/she worked for the public and not wealth and profit. 

DO YOU HEAR ANY OF THE CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR SHOUTING AS CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND HAS FOR YEARS?


Governor Martin O'Malley Announces Plans to Put Pension System on Path to Sustainability


ANNAPOLIS, MD (January 21, 2010) –
Governor Martin O’Malley outlined plans today to address Maryland’s unfunded pension and retirement liabilities and begin to put the public system on a path of sustainability.  In introducing the FY 2012 budget proposal today, Governor O’Malley committed approximately $1.5 billion to the pension system next year, nearly $1 billion more than in FY 2003.

“Some of the toughest choices we face in this legislative session are the choices we make to fix our pension system,” said Governor O’Malley.  “We owe it to our police officers, teachers and other hardworking state employees and we also owe it to our children and our taxpayers, to find a sustainable way forward that protects our commitments and maintains fiscal responsibility.  This is a bill that we have to pay and all of us have a vested interest in finding the most fair and equitable way to keep our pension commitments.”

Governor O’Malley has outlined the basic principles on which pension reform is based:

  1. Continue to maintain a public system as a critical component of recruiting and retaining the best teachers.
  2. Improve the funding level in the State and Teacher retirement system.
  3. Reduce the pension and retirement liability, and therefore, we must ask current and future members of the system to contribute more to strengthen the system and preserve benefits.
  4. Identify certain milestones so as our economic circumstances change, we can revisit some of these reforms.
Find the Governor’s full pension reform presentation here.

In each of his first four years, Governor O’Malley has submitted budgets that fully funded the State’s required pension contribution.  But despite rapid increases in this contribution, the funded status of the pension system has dropped from 95% ten years ago to a project 59% next year. 

The Governor’s proposed reforms will allow the state to reinvest more than $1 billion into the retirement system over the next six years.  These reforms will achieve 80% funding of the pension system by FY 2023 and require bi-annuals reports assessing the financial health of the pension system, including recommendation for adjustments to state funding and/or future benefits.

Current employees and retirees The Governor’s proposed pension reform has no impact on current retirees and no impact on benefits already earned by active or former employees and teachers.

For benefits earned for service in FY 2012 and future years, active employees and teachers are offered a one-time choice between:

  1. Continue to pay 5% of salary towards retirement with adjusted benefit (1.5% benefit multiplier for each future year of service rather than current 1.8% benefit multiplier).
  2. Increase contribution to retirement from 5% to 7% of pay and continue to earn benefits at the current level (1.8% benefit multiplier for each future year of service).
Future employees and teachers New employees will automatically be required to contribute 7% of salary and receive a 1.5% benefit multiplier.  In addition, year of benefit vesting will move from the current five years of service to ten years.  Early retirement age will increase from the current 55 to 60, and the benefit will be calculated on the highest five years of salary rather than the highest three years.  Finally, cost of living adjustments will be based on investment benchmarks.

In addition, the Governor announced plans to direct the appropriate Compensation Commissions to review pensions for elected officials for sustainability and fairness.

Health benefits Almost half of the unfunded liability associated with retiree health benefits relates to Maryland’s prescription drug benefit.  For current retirees, the proposes reform plan establishes a state-run Medicare Part D-like plan that mirrors the federal program but fills the current coverage gap.  In 2020, the plan transitions these retirees to Medicare Part D coverage in 2020 when the coverage gap is phased out. 

For active employees, the proposed plan aligns co-pays with national trends and raises out-of-pocket caps from $700 to $1,000 for individuals and $1,500 for couples.

The current unfunded liability of retiree health insurance stands at $16 billion.  After the proposed reforms, that figure drops by almost 50%.



____________
The articles below show that states actually having public justice and unions working for their membership are exposing massive statewide fraud and demanding justice.  The same conditions here in Maryland have silence from both politicians and union leaders.

I bet if a governor was elected who shouted out for justice-----labor and justice would shout as well. 

STOP ALLOWING SYSTEMIC FRAUD AND CORRUPTION END DEMOCRACY IN MARYLAND AND AMERICA!

Take a look below at the other raging Wall Street pol thinking of running for President in 2016 with O'Malley.  Now, the State of New York Attorney General was the one responsible for holding Wall Street banks accountable and as we all know------CUOMO LET THEM ALL KEEP THE LOOT. 

Below you see Cuomo feeling the pain of the people he was elected to protect but didn't.  WHAT, FRAUD IN THE PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM?

Cuomo declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for New York State Attorney General in 2006
He won the general election against the Republican nominee, former Westchester District attorney, Jeanine Pirro on November 7, 2006, winning 58% of the vote.



NEEDLESS TO SAY ALL OF THE BRAVADO IN THE ARTICLE BELOW USED TO GET HIM ELECTED GOVERNOR NEVER MATERIALIZED IN CONVICTIONS OR RECOVERING FRAUD.  IT WAS AN ELECTION YEAR SCAM JUST AS THE CONGRESSIONAL FINANCIAL REFORM BILL HAS TURNED OUT TO BE.


Hedge Fund Donor List Raises Question: Is Cuomo "Governor 1% ...www.wnyc.org/blogs/empire/2012 Between June 1, 2007 and December 21, 2011, hedge fund employees, founders and their families have given Cuomo more than ...

WHY DO YOU NOT HEAR ABOUT MARYLAND'S PENSION FRAUD THAT WERE AS BAD AS NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIA?  DOES MARYLAND HAVE A PUBLIC MEDIA?  NO!



Systemic Fraud at Public Pension Funds?

New York's Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday that his office was issuing more than 100 new subpoenas to investment firms and intermediaries who brokered deals with public pension funds, in the latest expansion of his corruption investigation:

Mr. Cuomo said a preliminary review by his office found that as many as half of the intermediaries in pension fund transactions in New York State and New York City were not properly licensed and registered with a broker-dealer, as required by federal securities laws. Failing to register could violate both federal securities laws and the Martin Act, a sweeping state securities law.

“The troubling pattern of unlicensed agents highlights yet another systemic weakness in New York’s pension fund, creating a situation which is fraught with peril and prone to abuse,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement.

He also conferred with the offices of 35 other attorneys general Friday afternoon by teleconference. The pension corruption inquiry has raised questions about public investment practices in other states, in particular New Mexico and California.

Afterward, Mr. Cuomo said the group had “decided to create a multistate task force to explore pension fund abuse.”

Mr. Cuomo’s office has been working with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is conducting a parallel investigation. Federal investigators are also reviewing public investment transactions in New Mexico, and the S.E.C. is reviewing pension transactions in California.


Among the firms being scrutinized in the latest round of Mr. Cuomo’s inquiry is Wetherly Capital Group, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry. Investigators are scrutinizing whether employees of Wetherly and other firms were properly licensed when they arranged deals with pension funds in New York.

Wetherly is a Los Angeles-based placement agent firm run by Dan Weinstein, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser. In a statement, Wetherly said it was fully registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the S.E.C.

Wetherly has come under scrutiny in California for paying a firm affiliated with Hank Morris, a top aide to Alan G. Hevesi, the former New York State comptroller, as part of an investment deal it brokered for Calpers, the giant California pension fund.

Another California firm being scrutinized in the latest round of the investigation is Gold Bridge Capital, which has acted as a placement agent on at least one deal involving the New York State pension fund.

The inquiries by Mr. Cuomo and the S.E.C., under way for two years, have focused on the millions of dollars that friends, relatives and aides of Mr. Hevesi’s gained by selling access to the $122 billion New York State pension fund. Mr. Morris and David Loglisci, another former top aide to Mr. Hevesi, have been indicted on a variety of corruption-related fraud charges, and Raymond B. Harding, the former head of the state Liberal Party, has also been charged in the case. All three have pleaded not guilty. Mr. Hevesi has not been charged.

The inquiries took on more national relevance on Thursday when Mr. Cuomo charged a top consultant to pension funds around the country, Saul Meyer, with a fraud-related felony. Mr. Meyer and his firm, Aldus Equity, which is based in Dallas, were also charged in a civil complaint by the S.E.C. Both Mr. Meyer and Aldus denied wrongdoing.

The new phase of the inquiry focuses on lobbyists, political consultants and others who brokered deals between investment firms and the New York pension funds but were not properly registered to do so.

In a preliminary investigation, Mr. Cuomo’s office found that from 2003 to 2006 — the period when Mr. Hevesi was comptroller — 22 of the 45 intermediaries used in deals at the state pension fund were not registered. In the New York City pension funds, 17 of 41 intermediaries were unregistered in deals from 2003 to this year, a review found.

While acknowledging that there could be exceptions, Mr. Cuomo said during a separate teleconference with reporters on Friday, “If you’re brokering a security, you need to be regulated.”

Thomas P. DiNapoli, the New York State comptroller, and William C. Thompson Jr., the New York City comptroller, both said this week that they would move to ban placement agents from deals with their pension funds.


Mr. Cuomo also highlighted a shortcoming in state lobbying rules, which do not require lobbyists to register with the state’s Commission on Public Integrity when they appear before the state comptroller.

The increased scrutiny on placement agents in recent years has led to concerns that lobbyists and political consultants are trying to find ways to perform similar services without registering as placement agents.

In 2007, Mr. DiNapoli met with the chief partner of the private equity firm InterMedia Partners, Leo J. Hindery Jr., and Roberto Ramirez, a lobbyist and former colleague of Mr. DiNapoli’s from the Assembly. The goal for the meeting was to convince the state comptroller’s office to increase its investment with InterMedia, which it later did. A spokesman for Mr. Ramirez has said he was not paid by InterMedia and appeared only as a friend of Mr. Hindery’s.

Mr. Cuomo would not say which lobbyists or consultants were being scrutinized, but said the intersection of unregistered agents and the pension fund was potentially “the Wild West of government relations.”Mr. Cuomo also said that pension kickbacks are a national problem:


New York state's criminal probe of kickbacks paid by companies eager to manage its $122 billion state pension fund has exposed "a national network of actors" whose schemes are ongoing, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday. "This is all across the nation, and it's continuing today," the Democratic attorney general said on a conference call.

The probe, which began two years ago, has fixed the spotlight on the use of placement agents hired by investment firms to open the doors of the New York State Common Retirement Fund. Cuomo said he is also is scrutinizing lawyers and lobbyists.

The investigation is another effort to stamp out graft and the practice of "pay to play," which involves giving gifts or campaign donations to win public contracts. So far the probe has looked into the web of relationships and business contracts involving money managers, politicians and pension officials spanning the country from New York City and the state capital, Albany, to Texas, New Mexico and California.

On Thursday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is working with Cuomo, charged that Dallas-based Aldus Equity Partners won New York pension business because of "its willingness to illegally line the pockets of others."

The state pension fund had aimed to hire more women and minority-owned investment firms and had begun talks with one. But Aldus was chosen, Cuomo said, when the minority-owned firm "allegedly refused to pay kickbacks to Morris and another associate."

Aldus, a private equity firm, says it manages over $5 billion, and the probe already has cost Aldus clients in New Mexico and New York. Cuomo said Aldus also is active in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, California, and New York City.

ANOTHER VIEW OF GIVE AND TAKE

Both Cuomo and the SEC charged that Saul Meyer, an Aldus founder, paid about $320,000 to a shell company owned by Henry Morris, a top fund-raiser for New York's former state comptroller. This led the New York state pension fund's then-chief investment officer, David Loglisci, to invest $375 million with Aldus from 2004 to 2006.

Demonstrating the power that Morris wielded over pension investments, Cuomo said Morris told a Meyer intermediary: "Tell that little peanut of a man that I can take business away as easily as I provided (it)."

Lawyers for Morris and Loglisci, who were indicted in March, say they are innocent.

On Thursday, Meyer was charged with a state securities felony and released on $200,000 bail. His lawyer Paul Shechtman said: "Time and evidence will show that Saul Meyer did nothing wrong."

Aldus knew that Morris was "working both sides of the deal," Cuomo said, by marketing funds for investments in the Aldus/NY Emerging Fund in which Morris had a 35 percent stake.

Aldus Equity lawyer Matthew Orwig faulted the SEC for acting before finishing its probe, calling the threatened legal action "appalling and careless with the law and with people's reputations." Aldus partners said they were disappointed by the "unexpected legal developments."

Aldus could face more legal peril. The New York state pension fund is weighing legal remedies against Aldus and Meyer after ending its investment with the firm. New York City pensions could cut ties with the firm, while New Mexico's governor called on the state Education Board to drop its contract with Aldus a day after ordering the state investment officer to do so.

Cuomo said that while Meyer was seeking more business with New York's pension fund, he helped Daniel Hevesi, a son of Alan Hevesi, the former state comptroller whose oversight of the state pension fund is being probed, earn a $250,000 fee on a New Mexico pension deal.

Alan Hevesi's lawyer Bradley Simon has said the former comptroller "has not been charged with any misconduct with respect to mismanagement of the New York state pension fund."

Bloomberg reports that L.A. pension is baffled by fees paid to firm in probe:


Los Angeles retirement plan managers say they’re baffled over fees paid by Quadrangle Group LLC to a key player named in New York’s pension fund kickback probe for helping the private equity firm land work in California. Quadrangle paid Searle & Co. $150,000 in connection with the Los Angeles Department of Fire and Police Pensions fund’s $10 million investment with the New York firm, which was co- founded by Steven Rattner before President Barack Obama appointed him to oversee the auto industry rescue.

Searle employed Hank Morris, a political adviser accused by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of using the Greenwich, Connecticut, brokerage to collect “sham” placement fees from firms that manage New York pension plan money.

After the SEC this month said Quadrangle paid Morris a “finders fee” related to a New York pension fund investment, Quadrangle told the Los Angeles fund that it also had paid placement fees to him for work there. The Los Angeles fund publicly disclosed the fee April 24.

“We don’t know how or why a placement fee related to our investment in Quadrangle was made,” Michael Perez, the general manager of the Los Angeles pension, said in written responses to questions from Bloomberg News.

‘Shocked’ at News

Perez said the fund’s investment in Quadrangle was arranged through Pension Consulting Alliance Inc., which evaluates investments on its behalf. Allan Emkin, that company’s founder and managing director of its Los Angeles office, said it didn’t have any contact with Searle or Morris and worked directly with Quadrangle. Emkin said he had been unaware that Searle was paid a fee in connection with the deal.

“We were shocked when we heard about it,” Emkin said in a telephone interview.

Morris, who faces a civil SEC complaint and criminal charges by Cuomo, has denied wrongdoing. Quadrangle and Rattner haven’t been charged. Adam Miller, a spokesman for Quadrangle, declined to comment. Searle referred calls to Peter Anderson, an attorney, who didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The SEC has asked the Los Angeles fund and two of its board members for information about investment decisions and firms tied to the New York probe.

Cuomo said today that New York was formalizing agreements to coordinate its investigation with authorities in California, as well as with Connecticut, Illinois and New Mexico.

Los Angeles Connection

“We are disclosing a national network of actors, who often acted in concert,” Cuomo said. “They collaborated, they often partnered and victimized states and taxpayers all across the country.”

The SEC and Cuomo today charged Saul Meyer, the managing partner of one of the firms in the New York probe, Aldus Equity Partners, with paying Morris to secure investment business with New York. Aldus has served for more than a year as a private equity consultant to the Los Angeles pension fund. Meyer met with the fund’s board at least once, city records show.

Morris, the one-time chief fundraiser and political adviser to former New York City Comptroller Alan Hevesi, has been charged by the SEC with collecting $15 million in kickbacks from money managers doing business with New York’s pension fund. The SEC says the kickbacks were masked as placement fees and that he “rarely, if ever” provided legitimate services.

Quadrangle hired Morris as a placement agent before winning a $100 million investment from New York, the SEC said in an April 15 complaint. The firm paid Searle $1.125 million, and 95 percent of that went to Morris, the SEC said.

The Los Angeles pension approved investments in 10 private equity funds linked to the New York investigation, according to an April 2 memo to the board. Two of the investments were later canceled. Aldus Equity Partners, which was drawn into the New York probe, also advised the fund on private equity investments.

I have already written about the Mother of all stealth scams. Nothing like a huge financial crisis to bring out all the cockroaches. This hardly surprises me and remember my dire warning: Madoff was the tip of the iceberg. There will be many more fraudsters that will get nabbed in the next few years.

Just how systemic is fraud in the financial industry and at public pension funds? We don't know, but when you mix greedy placement agents with public pension fund managers who control billions, the potential for kickbacks is huge.

What can pension funds do to stop abuse before it happens? First, they should segregate duties so the person(s) making the investment has to pass through several checks, including an internal auditor, before the decision is cleared. Importantly, there should also be clear segregation of duties between those making the investment decisions and the finance professionals valuing them.

Second, pension funds need to beef their whistleblower policies so people are encouraged to report abuse. This is one of the most effective ways to stop fraud. Maybe there should be a direct link between public pension fund employees and the state's Attorney General's office or the provincial or federal Auditor General's office.

Third, have your fraud procedures verified by a certified fraud examiner (read more on CFEs by clicking here). This should include someone who scrutinizes travel/meal/entertainment expenses to make sure there is no abuse going on when some hedge fund or private equity manager is trying to woo a pension fund manager to invest with them.

Fourth, there should be tight rules governing the relationships between investment managers and the funds they invest with. If you are investing billions with Fund Z, then you should not be allowed to go work for them for a period of five years after you leave a public pension fund. This is just common sense, but you'd be surprised how common sense often falls by the wayside.

Fifth, all board decisions should be made public so they are open to scrutiny. Several of the large U.S. state plans already do this. For example, Alaska's Permanent Fund publishes its board schedule, their minutes and their consultants on their website.

Finally, on the legal front, I would ban all placement agents and place tight rules on pension consultants who recommend funds to pension funds. Do not underestimate the abusive practices of pension consultants and the potential for fraud with them. They are the gatekeepers at most U.S. pension plans.

It truly is the Wild West out there, but I am glad to see the Attorney General of New York is pursuing the pension probe and trying to clean up public pension funds.


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Corrupting public officials is a crime so as the public officials who we know were involved in these frauds are exposed we know these investment firms buying favor committed these crimes too.  You have yet to hear of these private equity people charged and prosecuted because that takes public justice.  Whether it is blowing up the Federal Housing Agency with fraud, the Federal Student Loan Agency with fraud----we are being told by Moody's and S and P -----the rating agencies that were ground zero for all of this fraud-----that public and private pensions
are just not viable anymore.

OH REALLY????????


If your incumbent politician goes after the people's pensions as the problem------if your incumbent is silent about all of this, they are neo-liberals working for wealth and profit.  These pensions are not a burden on the public-----all fraud recovery comes from these corporations.


I listened to a Governor's Forum on Education (to which I was not invited obviously) where Heather Mizeur says that the way to fund school building in Maryland is to have public employees give back some of their pensions.  THIS IS THE PHONY PROGRESSIVE IN THIS GOVERNOR'S RACE!



Monday, March 14, 2011

Corruption at CalPERS?

Marc Lifsher and Stuart Pfeifer of the Los Angeles Times report,


Scathing report alleges corruption at CalPERS
:
In a scathing report, a former chief executive of the California public employee pension fund was accused of pressuring subordinates to invest billions of dollars of pension money with politically connected firms.

A 17-month investigation also found that Federico Buenrostro Jr. — along with former pension fund board members Charles Valdes and Kurato Shimada — strong-armed a benefits firm to pay more than $4 million in fees to consultant Alfred J.R. Villalobos, who later hired Buenrostro.

The report, prepared for the California Public Employees' Retirement System by Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson, comes amid widening attacks on public employee pension funds in California, Wisconsin, Iowa and other states for providing lavish benefits that cash-strapped governments can no longer afford.

The findings of insider dealings at CalPERS could provide fresh ammunition to Republican lawmakers here who want Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown to convert traditional pensions with guaranteed payments for life into 401(k)-type plans that rely heavily on employees' own contributions.

"Fixing California's pension problem is difficult enough without the stench of corruption and collusion that saps public confidence and gives taxpayers a reason to withhold support," said Dan Pellissier, president of Californians for Pension Reform, a group that is pushing a 2012 ballot initiative that would diminish state employee pension benefits.

Shimada, Buenrostro, Valdes and Villalobos either declined to comment or did not return calls.

Buenrostro served as CalPERS chief executive for six years, leaving in August 2008. The day after quitting, he went to work for Villalobos — a former CalPERS board member and deputy Los Angeles mayor who acted as an agent for investment firms seeking CalPERS money. The report said Villalobos hired Buenrostro with a $300,000 annual salary and gave him a Lake Tahoe condominium.

While at CalPERS, Buenrostro repeatedly "inserted himself in the investment process in a manner inconsistent with prior practice at CalPERS, pressing its investment staff to pursue particular investments without evident regard for their financial merits," the report said.

It said Buenrostro intervened with staff on behalf of Aurora Capital Group of Los Angeles to obtain investment money. Buenrostro told subordinates that Aurora was politically powerful, and that Aurora principal Gerald Parsky served on a state commission dealing with public employee benefits, the report said.

Aurora was a Villalobos client, and Buenrostro told CalPERS staffers that he would represent it once he went to work with Villalobos, the report said.


The report also noted that Buenrostro often intervened on behalf of favored private equity funds that staff called "friends of Fred."


Staffers ultimately complained about Buenrostro to the board, and those complaints "became a basis for the board's efforts to replace him as CEO," the report said.

CalPERS is the nation's largest public pension fund, with $228 billion in assets, providing benefits to about 1.6 million state and local government employees, retirees, spouses, children and other beneficiaries.

In May 2010, the California attorney general sued Villalobos and Buenrostro, accusing them of scheming to enrich themselves through self-dealing and other misconduct in seeking CalPERS investment money on behalf of clients.

According to the report, one of those investment funds — Apollo Global Management — asked Buenrostro to sign documents acknowledging that CalPERS was aware of so-called placement agent fees it was paying to Villalobos.

Several CalPERS investment officers refused to sign the disclosures, the report said — but Buenrostro did, using pasted-on letterhead to make them look more official.

Buenrostro made "representations regarding placement agent fees and related deal documents that are either demonstrably false or sufficiently suspect," the report said.

The report, citing Buenrostro's ex-wife and an unnamed girlfriend, described Buenrostro as "a puppet" of Villalobos, who the report said earned more than $50million in placement agent fees.

During his six years as head of CalPERS, Buenrostro received many valuable gifts from people and firms with financial interests in doing business with CalPERS, the report said.

When he was married in 2004, he allowed Villalobos to host the wedding at his Zephyr Cove, Nev., home. Buenrostro also traveled with Villalobos and Valdes to the Middle East and Asia — with Villalobos picking up much of the costs, the report said.

"Buenrostro does not appear to have ever disclosed these gifts or recused himself from any CalPERS matters based on any of these apparent relationships," the report said.

Valdes also pressured CalPERS investment staff to do business with Villalobos' firm, Arvco Capital Research, the report said.

In September 2000, Valdes was close to being ruled out of order for raising his voice in support of a Los Angeles real estate investment firm, CIM Group, the report said. CalPERS staff had recommended a smaller investment than originally proposed. Arvco and Villalobos received a $9-million commission on the investment transaction.

CIM also provided Academy Awards tickets to Valdes and other CalPERS people, the report said. Valdes attended in 2005 and 2006 but did not report the gifts on state financial disclosure documents.

The report also provided new details about CalPERS dealings with Medco Health Solutions Inc. before the firm was awarded a $26-million contract to provide drug benefits to members.

In May 2004, Villalobos hosted a meeting at his Lake Tahoe home with Medco CEO David Snow. Buenrostro attended.

"Soon after the May 2004 meeting at the Villalobos home, Medco agreed to retain Villalobos as a consultant and pay him $4 million," the report said.

Villalobos received a final check for $1 million immediately after the CalPERS board approved the contract, according to the report, and also received a $20,000-a-month retainer until sometime in 2009.


Last year Villalobos filed for personal bankruptcy protection, citing nearly $5million in debts to Nevada casinos. It was his second personal bankruptcy.

The report recommended that CalPERS improve accountability and reduce the risk of future abuses, including providing additional training to board members so that board business is not conducted in clandestine meetings with managers, and prohibiting the release of sensitive CalPERS information outside the organization.


This is a perfect example of serious governance gaps leaving a fund vulnerable to fraud. There is absolutely no accountability when this type of abuse goes on at the highest level. And trust me, it's not hard for a couple of guys at the top to collude and award sweet contracts to some consultant, hedge fund manager or private equity manager in return for "future favors". When you're in charge of billions, power gets to your head and you start thinking you're invincible.


This type of fraud makes me sick to my stomach. It's not common but it's going on a lot more often than people want to admit. How do I know? Let's just say I've seen things that made my skin crawl. It doesn't matter whether the investment officer has a CFA, FRM, PhD, etc., if they're crooked, they're crooked and they'll do whatever it takes to profit by abusing the power they have within a pension fund. And it's not just the large funds; in fact, some of the worst abuses happen in dinky city pension plans where corruption is rampant.

That's why I believe you have to properly compensate senior pension officers to deter this type of corruption. But that's not enough because some people are so sleazy, so greedy, they'll look to game the system and will stop at nothing to profit by abusing their power. One of the best ways to root out corruption is simply to segregate duties and implement iron clad whistleblower policies where employees can anonymously inform board members or better yet, the FBI or RCMP. That should make these idiots think twice before they abuse their power at a public pension fund.

Finally, this is a particular case that in no way reflects what's going on at CalPERS now. I think it's disgusting that some would use this report as "ammunition" to break up CalPERS or to dissolve other public pension funds. Get the governance right and you can root out corruption at most public and private pension funds.
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April 05th, 2014

4/5/2014

0 Comments

 
PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT IS BEING DONE WITH PENSIONS AND RETIREMENT TO KNOW MUCH OF IT INVOLVES FRAUD AND CORRUPTION THAT CAN BE REVERSED WITH RULE OF LAW.  WE SIMPLY NEED TO HAVE PEOPLE IN OFFICE THAT WANT TO WORK FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE TO RESTORE MUCH OF PENSIONS AND RETIREMENTS LOST!

ALL OF MARYLAND CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR EXCEPT CINDY WALSH WILL WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT! 

Are your labor leaders shouting about this?

Below you'll see what looks pretty boring but please glance at all the articles.  What I am showing is how private pensions shed decades ago should now be receiving lots of money from these corporations that are now earning billions of dollars each year.  The bankruptcy laws placed most of private sector pensions into the Federal Agency below with the requirements that the corporation do its due diligence and the Federal government work in the public interest.  What we see is public malfeasance by the government and a failure to collect needed revenue for these pension funds.  Without justice, all of this is being left to implode with debt just as we see happening with public pensions.

I want to look at what has been allowed to happen these several years of Obama and neo-liberal control of government....it is worse than with George W Bush.  These mergers

DO NOT MEET ANTITRUST LAW AND ARE ILLEGAL AND CAN BE MADE NULL AND VOID.  MERGERS MUST BE APPROVED ACCORDING TO PUBLIC INTEREST.

So, as much as Obama and his administration simply want to say all of these global market deals are in the public interest----they are not.  The same is happening in Maryland with O'Malley and Maryland Assembly saying all of these state contracts are creating jobs and revenue.....when they are not.

WE CAN REVERSE THESE POLICIES BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT LEGITIMATE.  IF YOU KEEP ALLOWING YOUR POLS TO ACT ILLEGALLY AS IF THE US CONSTITUTION DOES NOT EXIST----IT WILL NOT EXIST AND YOU WILL NOT BE A CITIZEN.


Republicans are doing the same so the answer is not to vote for another party-----the answer is to shake these neo-liberals out of the people's democratic party!

Today, I look at private pensions lost during the corporate bankruptcy years that started with Reagan/Clinton as a way to eliminate all labor gains.
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Regarding merger and acquisitions creating global corporations in the US:

THIS IS ONE EXAMPLE OF AN INDUSTRY AND HOW NEO-LIBERALS ARE ALLOWING RULE OF LAW TO BE IGNORED AT CONSUMER/CITIZEN EXPENSE:

I am listening to corporate NPR/APM explain the latest merger this time with airlines Delta and UK's Virgin. At the same time NPR/APM tells us that this merger is being passed by US antitrust laws and it is proper because it enhances quality and service for US consumers and it increases competition. OH, REALLY???????

CONSOLIDATION AND BECOMING A GLOBAL FORCE IS GOOD FOR THE CONSUMER? YOUR TAX MONEY IS GOING FOR THIS KIND OF PROGRAMMING.


We all know consolidation has been joined with price-fixing giving US consumers no choice but to pay whatever the market will bear. That is Wall Street for SOAKING CONSUMERS FOR ALL THEIR WORTH. This has nothing to do with antitrust.....free markets....are competition to lower prices. Instead, airlines have reconfigured their cabins so that coach passengers look like sardines paying unnecessary fees, no food and lots of delays and time schedule problems----you know----like Maryland Transit Authority. They do this because Americans have no choices and this shows that all of these mergers and acquisitions break US Commerce law protecting the public. Below you see these laws state these consolidations are limited as to whether they BENEFIT THE CONSUMER. These deals are illegal. Obama and your neo-liberal pols ran in 2008 on the platform of holding corporations accountable and stopping the merger and acquisitions and then they ignored this.

THIS IS NOT DEMOCRACY, IT IS NOT LEGAL, AND YOUR INCUMBENT IN MARYLAND IS PART OF THIS BECAUSE IT INVOLVES ALL OF MARYLAND'S ECONOMY.

I want to make another point with this Delta/UK Virgin merger deal. Delta, as with all US airlines all went through bankruptcy just to shed labor union contracts and wages and benefits. All have come out of these bankruptcies earning billions of dollars in profit while labor benefits sit in a Federal agency created just to hold these legally binding contracts. Health care benefits that include strong quality care are now being handled in this Federal agency as though these plans were the equivalent of Medicaid. Taxpayers are footing the costs of these corporation's health care contracts while they grow to earn billions in profits. This is good they say because shareholder wealth is soaring.

The answer to all of these legal labor contracts being shed and creating cost for the taxpayers is to provide the lowest quality and access of health care to these millions of US citizens.


THE REAL COST BELONGS BACK WITH THESE CORPORATIONS THAT CAN NOW EASILY MAKE THEIR CONTRACT COMMITMENTS.


Antitrust law in America:

United States antitrust law is a collection of federal and state government laws, which regulates the conduct and organization of business corporations, generally to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers. The main statutes are the Sherman Act 1890, the Clayton Act 1914 and the Federal Trade Commission Act 1914. These Acts, first, restrict the formation of cartels and prohibit other collusive practices regarded as being in restraint of trade. Second, they restrict the mergers and acquisitions of organizations which could substantially lessen competition. Third, they prohibit the creation of a monopoly and the abuse of monopoly power.

The Federal Trade Commission, the US Department of Justice, state governments and private parties who are sufficiently affected may all bring actions in the courts to enforce the antitrust laws. The scope of antitrust laws, and the degree they should interfere in business freedom, or protect smaller businesses, communities and consumers, are strongly debated. One view, mostly closely associated with the "Chicago School of economics" suggests that antitrust laws should focus solely on the benefits to consumers and overall efficiency, while a broad range of legal and economic theory sees the role of antitrust laws as also controlling economic power in the public interest.[1]


____________________________________


Now, all of the soaring fuel costs were created by Wall Street market manipulation and if we had Rule of Law reinstated all of these gains would have been stopped and no soaring fuel prices would have occurred. Remember, Wall Street used market manipulation of fuel on and off for a decade having the US consumer as an ATM machine anytime oil corporations around the world had market slowdowns. This is not free market and it is illegal. Who owns all these oil corporations? Bush/Cheney and it is these same people who are the shareholders of these now global corporations. So, you gut the profits of a healthy corporation to restructure it for maximized profit----the Bains Capital approach.

Labor contracts are just like any business contract. Every time your neo-liberal says the state or city must honor its contracts it signs with businesses-----this is what makes Rule of Law and Equal Protection. It is also what makes antitrust laws work as it makes no sense to have businesses able to gut another simply to eliminate a competitor. So, Bush/Cheney wanted to consolidate the airline industry into global corporations and they allowed their oil corporations to manipulate the markets to create the environment to do this.

THIS IS ALL ILLEGAL AS IT FAILS IN ALL ASPECTS OF RULE OF LAW, EQUAL PROTECTION, AND ANTITRUST.

When your neo-liberal says -----the people in power make the laws-----that does not allow them to decide the US Constitution and Rule of Law is NULL AND VOID. They cannot selectively enforce the laws they want.

STOP ALLOWING NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS TO OPENLY SUSPEND RULE OF LAW AND IGNORE THE US CONSTITUTION. LABOR UNIONS SHOULD BE TAKING ALL OF THIS TO COURT.

We do not say-----well, the courts are fixed because we want all of this on record for when they are not fixed. Remember,

WHEN A GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW IT SUSPENDS STATUTES OF LIMITATION!

Below, you see Delta was competing with smaller airlines and the economy was running as it should. Costs were contained by competition and lots of businesses were in the mix. Then, the illegal activity of the fuel market took down the smaller businesses, allowed larger businesses to use fuel costs as an excuse to enter bankruptcy to shed labor contracts and amazingly using fuel as hostile takeover is now past.


Delta Air Lines files for bankruptcy


No. 3 airline hit by fuel costs, low-fare competitors; No. 4 Northwest follows it into bankruptcy.

September 15, 2005: 9:55 AM EDT
By Chris Isidore, CNN/Money senior writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Delta Air Lines filed for bankruptcy, making it one of two major carriers to seek protection from creditors Wednesday.

Delta (Research), the nation's third-biggest airline, has been hurt by the recent spike in jet fuel prices and growing competition from lower-cost, low-fare carriers. Less than half an hour after Delta's filing, Northwest Airlines also filed for protection from creditors.

Delta and Northwest followed United Airlines (Research) and US Airways (Research) into bankruptcy. United, the No. 2 airline, has been in bankruptcy court for almost three years. US Airways has been in bankruptcy court twice since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that shook the airline industry.

With those four major airlines and some smaller ones already in bankruptcy, nearly half of the industry's capacity is on carriers operating under bankruptcy court oversight.

Delta said it expects to keep flying while it seeks to cut costs and reorganize, so the immediate impact on flyers should be minimal. It is also expected to keep its frequent flyer program intact. But some smaller cities now served exclusively or primarily by Delta could be hurt as the airline trims its operations going forward.

The Atlanta-based airline, which has not had a profitable quarter since 2000, filed under Chapter 11 of federal bankruptcy laws. In Chapter 11, a company is protected from creditors while it tries to reorganize.

Analysts said this year's spike in jet fuel prices forced Delta's bankruptcy filing.

"Hurricane Katrina was probably the last straw," Ray Neidl, analyst with Calyon Securities, said shortly before the widely expected bankruptcy filing. "Nobody could have predicted $60-, $70-a-barrel oil. Things just developed that were uncontrollable factors."

But Delta's problems predate not only the hurricane, but the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The company has lost some $6.1 billion since the start of 2001 from its airline operations, according to First Call, which tracks corporate earnings.

Some analysts said that Delta waited longer than some of its rivals to trim costs. It did not win cost concessions from its pilots union until last October, after paying them the highest wages in the industry under a contract reached months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"They are another example of a company that started out in a relatively stronger financial position than their peers, and they felt they were in better position to survive a shakeout," said Philip Baggaley, Standard & Poor's senior airline credit analyst. "They didn't pursue cost-cutting as aggressively as they would have if they were heading toward bankruptcy early in the (industry's) downturn."

The airline has nearly 60,000 employees and flies about 340,000 people daily in its mainline operations, which includes Delta, the Delta Shuttle and Song, its attempt to compete in the growing low-fare market.

Another problem for Delta is that it has less international traffic than the nation's other big carriers. That means it faces competition on more routes from low-fare carriers such as AirTran, JetBlue and Southwest than some of its rivals.
Scramble to cut costs

Delta had been scrambling through the strong summer travel season to cut costs and raise cash.

Last week it completed the sale one of its feeder airlines, Atlantic Southeast Airlines, for $425 million. It also announced it was cutting flight capacity at its Cincinnati hub by 26 percent.

But these and other cost-cutting moves made over the last year could not stem losses, which are forecast by analysts to extend into 2007. The company has not reported a quarterly profit, excluding special items, since 2000.

Delta flirted with a bankruptcy filing in October 2004, before getting the Air Line Pilots Association to agree to cut wages by about a third � a move that saved about $1 billion a year. The airline also cut some 5,000 jobs in the year ending in June, aside from the sale of Atlantic Southeast.

Its second quarter payroll costs were 18 percent below a year earlier, as the company spent nearly $300 million less on salary and benefits.

But soaring fuel costs caused ongoing losses. Delta's cost per gallon soared 50 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, and has kept climbing.

The increased costs came as Delta and other carriers found it difficult to win higher fares from passengers, who have more options with the growth of low-fare rivals.

The average fare Delta received from passengers fell 1 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, even as the proportion of empty seats on Delta jets fell.

The final cash crisis came when the bank that was processing the airline's Visa and MasterCard ticket purchases started holding back money as protection in case of a bankruptcy filing. The airline warned in August that such a move by the bank could cost $650 million by the end of October, straining its already thin cash reserves.

________________________________________


Why did a US airline and US regulators allow a merger that gave a majority ownership to another country? 49% for Delta to Virgin's 51%? Because that takes this US airline out of US corporate oversight and on to UK corporate oversight and the UK has complete deregulation and corporate tax protection. So, a major US business was handed to a global corporation that will not follow US laws. Is that consumer friendly and does that meet US labor protections?

NOT AT ALL. SO, THIS MERGER SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED.

The reasoning is that the London-New York commuters will see a benefit while the rest of the US will not. Remember, the Federal government cannot simply ignore Rule of Law and allow all of this and neither can the courts. It doesn't matter who is in charge-----EQUAL PROTECTION AND RULE OF LAW DOES NOT CHANGE. This means all of this can be reversed when Rule of Law is reinstated.


All Things Travel: Delta-Virgin Atlantic Merger Could Mean Changes For Boston Flights

By Bob Weiss, CBSBoston.com Travel Contributor July 8, 2013 5:29 PM

BOSTON (CBS) — Sir Richard Branson, the world’s best-known man in aviation, now has a new partner.

Delta Air Lines now owns 49 percent of Virgin Atlantic Airways and that means more changes will most likely happen on Boston’s number one international route.

British Airways, Delta and Virgin offer six daily flights from Logan to London’s Heathrow Airport this summer.

British Airways flies more than 50-percent of passengers flying to the UK. The flights are important for both business and leisure travelers. Great Britain also sends more visitors to New England than any other European country.

Under the new arrangement, the new code-sharing agreement will allow Delta to sell seats on Virgin flights by the end of the year. Virgin passengers will be able to connect to Delta flights in the U.S.

Delta passengers will be able to earn miles on Virgin Atlantic flights.

Delta operates in Terminal A at Logan Airport while Virgin uses Terminal E. Whether Virgin will transfer its operations to Terminal A remains to be seen. Delta is a member of The Sky Team Alliance.

The agreement gives Delta the chance to expand at Heathrow Airport where more gates will now be available. That is especially important for its New York operations; Delta is also a partner with Air France and their flights to Paris.

Next year the merger between American and US Airways should be completed. At that time, US Airways will move from the Star Alliance to the Oneworld Alliance that includes British Airways. This summer American dropped their flights to London and BA increased its service.

Alliances and code-sharing agreements are important for frequent business travelers that like to accrue mileage points for family leisure travel.

Virgin America, which is a separate company, will continue to fly routes from Boston to the West Coast. The airline was the first to offer Wifi on its flights.

Delta has been upgrading its Business Class service that now includes flat beds. Virgin features an Upper Class product. Both airlines have been increasing their on-board entertainment options.

Virgin Atlantic has its U.S. headquarters in Norwalk Connecticut.

__________________________________________


Virgin America is simply a global airline corporations taking spaces at all airports that the smaller airlines used to have. This is what antitrust laws are supposed to stop. This consolidation is leading to less choice which allows price-fixing and is all anti-consumer no matter how many times corporate NPR/APM tells you this is all about the US consumer.


ALL IT TAKES IS A PRESIDENT WHO REINSTATES RULE OF LAW AND APPOINTS A HEAD OF THE TRADE COMMISSION. HILLARY, BIDEN, CUOMO, AND O'MALLEY ARE READY TO KEEP THE GLOBAL GRAVY TRAIN RUNNING. MAYBE BERNIE SANDERS WILL NOT.

I KNOW CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND WILL BE TAKING THESE ISSUES TO COURT! DO YOU HEAR YOUR LABOR LEADERS TAKING THIS TO COURT?

Why the American Merger Deal Could Make Virgin America a Big Winner

BY Ted Reed | 03/05/14 - 10:35 AM EST

DALLAS (TheStreet) -- Six-year-old Virgin America saw a big opportunity when the Justice Department required divestitures from American (AAL_) and US Airways in return for allowing them to merge.

Virgin America already has won the right to operate six daily round trips at New York's LaGuardia Airport and four at Washington Reagan National, using slots that American and US Airways were required to divest.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based carrier said it will seek two gates at Dallas Love Field that American was required to divest. Delta (DAL_) and Southwest (LUV_) are also seeking the two Love Field gates. Southwest already occupies 16 of the 20 Love Field gates.

Virgin America said that if it is awarded the gates, it would begin new service from Dallas to LaGuardia and National. Arguably, that represents a convincing case to the Justice Department that consumers would derive maximum benefit from the merger.

In particular, Love Field-National service by a new low-fare entrant would provide an alternative to American service on what became hub-to-hub flying in the merger, when Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Washington National became hubs for the same airline. Hub-to-hub flying is typically an area where ticket prices are high.

Like LaGuardia and National, Love Field is a desirable and constricted close-in airport. It is just six miles from downtown Dallas. In October, flight restrictions imposed in 1979 will be lifted. Southwest has already said it would add flights to LaGuardia and National. Delta has said it will add LaGuardia and LAX if it gets the two gates.

Some observers questioned whether the Justice Department got all it could when it challenged the American/US Airways merger in August. The settlement was announced in November, two weeks before the parties were scheduled to go to trial.

Launched in 2007, Virgin America has built a niche as a hip, technologically advanced West Coast carrier. After moving last year to slow growth, it has started to show profits: In the third quarter, it produced net income of $37.5 million and an operating margin of 11.5%. It is said to be preparing for a public offering.

Virgin said Wednesday that if it wins the gates it would serve Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco as well as LaGuardia and National. It already serves Los Angeles and San Francisco from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, but that service would end in October and Virgin would limit its Dallas operations to Love Field.

In a press release that seemed to summarize the case it will make to the Justice Department, Virgin America said it "would be the only carrier at Love Field to offer guests three classes of service, Wi-Fi, in-seat power outlets and touch-screen seatback entertainment (including live TV) on every flight." It said it "operates a new fleet of Airbus A320-Family aircraft, which are significantly quieter than the commercial aircraft currently in use at Love Field."

Also, Virgin said it "would provide vigorous competition in a market where at present one carrier controls 80% of the gates."

As part of the press release, Virgin CEO David Cush declared: "As the last major airline launched in the U.S., we've seen firsthand what happens when new entrant airlines have a chance to come into markets where a few big airlines dominate -- service improves and fares drop.

"The opening of access to these slot-constrained and gate-constrained airports is an infrequent occurrence at best, and we hope to have the opportunity to expand our network and continue doing what we do best: deliver the best product in the domestic skies, and inject sorely needed fare competition in business markets where it is currently lacking," Cush said.

When Virgin America entered the San Francisco-Chicago market in 2011 and the San Francisco-Dallas market in 2010, fares dropped in each market at the time by more than 30%, the carrier said. After Virgin America entered Newark Liberty International Airport in April 2013, fares to San Francisco and Los Angeles dropped by more than a third, the carrier said. Newark, San Francisco and Los Angeles are all United (UAL_) hubs.

__________________________________________



Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

Eastern to let federal agency pay out retirement benefits


September 19, 1990|By New York Times News Service

Eastern Airlines cleared a critical hurdle yesterday in its attempt to reorganize under bankruptcy laws by reaching an agreement to have Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a federal agency that oversees pension plans, take over the payment of the retirement benefits of Eastern employees.

But to satisfy the agency's concerns, Continental Holdings Inc., the parent of Eastern Airlines, must secure the payments with its assets -- a liability that some officials said could total more than $500 million-plus interest because of a shortage in the financing of the pension plan.

This could strain Continental's finances when the carrier is making progress toward building itself into one of the nation's leading carriers.

Continental's liability could beless, however, depending upon how much the assets in the pension fund earn from interest on investments.

Martin R. Shugrue Jr., Eastern's court-appointed trustee, called the settlement yesterday a "major milestone on the way to the reorganization of Eastern under Chapter 11."

Since he took over the airline in April, Mr. Shugrue has struggled to win back customers by offering low fares and promotions to stem the carrier's losses.

The agreement is good news for the 51,000 former and current Eastern workers, whose pensions are now guaranteed in full.

James B. Lockhart, the executive director of the federal pension agency, said yesterday that the settlement would "protect retirees and the insurance program from one of the largest potential losses we faced -- almost three-quarters of a billion dollars before today's agreement."

__________________________________________


As you see below this Federal agency that supposedly works in the interests of American citizens really has allowed these pensioners to lose all of the value of their pensions. I read a few years ago that individuals having their pensions in this agency were receiving Medicaid-level care. We see as well, as with public sector pensions.....these funds were shifted into the Wall Street stock market just at the time the market crashed. Now, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has almost $300 billion in pension liabilities and has been imploded with debt just as public pensions and 401Ks were.

None of this meets the terms of labor contracts, terms of these bankruptcy agreements, and we can be sure that corporate contributions from airlines in this case are not happening.

ALL OF THIS IS ILLEGAL!

The Affordable Care Act is designed to send all of these plans to private state health systems where all Federal responsibility for public health, from this pension benefit guaranty corporation to Medicare will end and all of what was strong, well-funded health plans will become Medicaid for All. The coming economic crash will make the level of debt for these pensions unsustainable----WHICH IS THE POINT.


ALL POLITICIANS/LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS KNOW THIS AND ALL MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT. THEY ARE PROMOTING THESE CONDITIONS. STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DNC CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES. RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES.


Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

'The PBGC regularly updates its investment strategy. In 2004, it chose to invest heavily in bonds.[6] Under new leadership, the agency in 2008 shifted a substantial portion of its assets into stocks.[7] Because of the market decline, PBGC's equity investments lost 23% during the year ending September 30, 2008.[8]'

According to commentator Nicholas Brannick, "Despite the appearance of protection for the PBGC's interest in the event of termination, the Bankruptcy Code frequently strips the PBGC of the protection provided under ERISA. Under ERISA, termination liability may arise on the date of termination, but the lien that protects the PBGC's interest in that liability must be perfected [to be protected in bankruptcy]". Nicholas Brannick, Note: At the Crossroads of Three Codes: How Employers Are Using ERISA, the Tax Code, and Bankruptcy to Evade Their Pension Obligations, 65 Ohio St. L.J. 1577, 1606 (2004). The retention of title as a security interest, the creation of lien, or any other direct or indirect mode of disposing of or parting with property or an interest in property is a "transfer" for purposes of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (see 11 U.S.C. § 101(54)). Some transfers may be avoidable by the bankruptcy trustee under various Code provisions. Further, under ordinary principles of bankruptcy law, a lien or other security interest that is unperfected (i.e., a lien that is not valid against parties other than the debtor) at the time of case commencement is generally unenforceable against a bankruptcy trustee. Once the bankruptcy case has commenced, the law generally stays any act to attempt to perfect a lien that was not perfected prior to case commencement (see 11 U.S.C. § 362(a)(4)). Thus, the PBGC with a lien that has not yet been perfected at the time of case commencement may find itself in the same position as the general unsecured creditors.

No insurance for defined contribution plans

One reason Congress enacted ERISA was "to prevent the 'great personal tragedy' suffered by employees whose vested benefits are not paid when pension plans are terminated."[19] When a defined benefit plan is properly funded by its sponsor, its assets should be approximately equal to its liability, and any shortfall (including benefit improvements) should be amortized in a relatively short period of time. Before ERISA, employers and willing unions could agree to increase benefits with little thought to how to pay for them. A classic case of the unfortunate consequences of an underfunded pension plan is the 1963 shutdown of Studebaker automobile operations in South Bend, Indiana, in which 4,500 workers lost 85% of their vested benefits.[19] One of ERISA's stated intentions was to minimize underfunding in defined benefit plans.

Defined contribution plans — by contrast and by definition — are always "fully funded." Thus Congress saw no need to provide insurance protection for participants in defined contribution plans. The Enron scandal in 2001 demonstrated one potential problem with defined contribution plans: the company had strongly encouraged its workers to invest their 401(k) plans in their employer itself, violating primary investment guidelines about diversification. When Enron went bankrupt, many workers lost not just their jobs but also most of the value of their retirement savings. Congress inserted trust law fiduciary liability upon employers who did not prudently diversify plan assets to avoid the chance of large losses inside Section 404 of ERISA, but it is unclear whether such fiduciary liability applies to trustees of plans in which participants direct the investment of their own accounts.

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

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