I'LL BE TALKING ABOUT THE NEXT SAFETY NET ISSUE----FOOD STAMPS MONDAY!!!!!!!
PLEASE WAKE UP AND ENGAGE IN POLITICS.....WE CAN REVERSE THIS EASY PEASY IF GOOD PEOPLE RUN FOR OFFICE AND VOTERS VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN ALL PRIMARIES!
Before the New Deal addressed poverty with social safety nets with money collected by the Federal government from corporations made wealthy from a massive and systemic fraud that caused the economy to crash and gave us the Great Depression----70-90% corporate and wealth tax recovered the massive fraud that created wealth inequity-----THERE WERE POOR FARMS AND DEBTOR'S PRISONS. If you were poor and made desperate to survive you were assigned a track that included prison labor and growing food on public farms.
Clinton neo-liberals and Republicans are working as hard as they can to end New Deal and War on Poverty. What happens when the tens of millions of Americans made unemployed by Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism and global markets as they teamed with Republicans to move wealth and power to corporations? With the coming bond market crash and the implosion of our SS Disability and SS Trust with these bond market policies and FED manipulations of inflation and interest rate-----we see the movement away from these FDR New Deal programs and that will bring us back to poor farms and debtor's prisons. 70% of Americans are at or near poverty before this coming economic crash----unemployment will jump again pushing that number closer to 80%. Those are the families who will live right on the line and escaping that level of poverty happens only if you get a REAL PROGRESSIVE FDR THAT WANTS TO SEE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WITH A BETTER LIFE.
Welcome to Texas justice: You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
'Poor Farms': On the historical conflation of poverty and criminality At County magazine, Liz Carmack recently had a fascinating piece (Nov. 8) on "poor farms" in Texas, which for decades doubled as support systems for the indigent and punishment systems for low-level offenders. In Kaufman County, remarkably, the last residents didn't leave the poor farm until the 1970s.
Since then, the county has repurposed much of the land for other uses — the county’s library, emergency children’s shelter, appraisal district offices and courthouse annex. But Kaufman County kept the core 27 acres of the farm intact with what remain of its 19th and 20th century buildings, including residents’ living quarters, the farm superintendent’s house, barns, a silo, a well and pump house, a chapel, a jail, a hen house and several pieces of farming equipment.
The poor farm received a Texas Historical Commission Subject Marker in 1997, which the Kaufman County Historical Commission dedicated a year later. Today, the site is one of the few county-owned poor farms in Texas. The story offered up some history of which I was personally unaware:
Poor Farm Cemetery, Hallettsville, TX (source) The hardships of the Civil War and concurrent demise of charitable organizations that served the indigent left many more needy Texans at war’s end. To help them, an 1869 addendum to the Texas Constitution charged the state’s counties with providing a Manual Labor Poor House “for taking care of, managing, employing and supplying the wants of its indigent and poor inhabitants.” It also specified that “all persons committing petty offences in the county may be committed to such Manual Labor Poor House, for correction and employment.”
Several Texas counties established poor farms as an efficient way to aid their indigent residents, who would live and work on the farms to support themselves. County inmates often worked off their sentences on the farms and were jailed there as well.
A 1987 Texas Historical Commission Survey of county clerks revealed that at least 65 of the state’s 254 counties at one time had poor farms. According to the survey, most were in the state’s central, northern and eastern counties. Fascinating the way "poor" and "criminal" were conflated back in the day, a notion that dated from 17th century "poor laws" in Elizabethan England. Outside of convicts, most poor farm residents were elderly and white. (With few exceptions, "Mexicans and blacks were simply told that they were not eligible for relief and would have to find assistance elsewhere," according to one historical account.) Poor farms were also used to house the infected during contagious epidemics. The flood of poor folk during the Great Depression and the enactment of national and state-level supports for the indigent elderly rendered poor farms either obsolete or mainly work farms for county jail inmates after the 1930s. A dark, grim history indeed. Amazing that the one in Kaufman County continued to operate into the 1970s.
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California is number 1 in the world for incarceration and that would be because of zero tolerance. Baltimore City had zero tolerance under Martin O'Malley that I am told gave 100,000 city residents criminal records for minor crimes. California is a Clinton neo-liberal state and Maryland is as well. While O'Malley was Mayor of Baltimore, he worked for Johns Hopkins and their very neo-conservative policies. So, War on Drugs and zero tolerance were clearly installed to create a free labor industry at the same time US corporations moved overseas to escape US labor and justice protections. Remember, this is when great levels of unemployment hit with NAFTA and global market economic policy and it was at the same time Welfare to Work was installed----knowing there were no jobs to go to work. So, Clinton neo-liberals set up the Democratic base of labor and justice to fall into poverty and resurface fighting this War on Drugs and zero tolerance as people were forced into a black market to survive. This was Clinton neo-liberals creating a third world society forcing levels of crime to grow, jailing these people unable to find work, and then profiting from them while serving these long sentences. THIS WAS A PLAN FOR MAXIMIZING CORPORATE PROFITS AND BREAKING DOWN THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS AND FIRST WORLD QUALITY OF LIFE. It's unimaginable that people live that think of these kinds of goals but that is why they are called sociopaths.
Flash forward to today and we have Maryland passing prison labor laws at the same time Baltimore is dismantling all of social programs and deliberately leaving government coffers with no revenue and the huge level of credit bond leveraging that will take the city into a deep financial collapse----probably bankruptcy.
THIS IS THE GOAL OF BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION AND JOHNS HOPKINS PUBLIC POLICY THAT LEVERAGES DEBT TO THE GILLS AND STARVES GOVERNMENT COFFERS OF ANY CORPORATE REVENUE.....MAKING CORPORATE SUBSIDY RULE!
Baltimore always avoided New Deal and War on Poverty by allowing systemic fraud and corruption move social services/public funding around----but now they say is the time to rebuild these structures that used to handle the poor before FDR and New Deal.
Friday, Mar 14, 2014 08:00 AM EDT Salon
Are prison labor companies lobbying to keep prisoners in jail for nonviolent offenses? A group called Correctional Vendors Association is attempting to influence a new bill reforming minimum sentencing
Lee Fang, Republic Report
This piece originally appeared on Republic Report. In recent months, a broad, cross-ideological coalition has pressed forward to reform mandatory minimum prison sentencing. In some cases mandatory minimum sentencing can lead to a lifetime in jail for nonviolent offenders. But a strange group has appeared on lobby disclosure forms reviewed by Republic Report. Prison labor companies are attempting to influence the bill, and they refuse to reveal what they’re doing and why.
The group is called the Correctional Vendors Association, an organization that represents companies that use prison labor to produce everything from furniture to clothing goods. CVA has spent $240,000 on lobbying over the past year, and forms show the organization is interested in shaping the outcome of the Justice Safety Valve Act, or S.619, a bill proposed Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) to allow judges to impose a sentence below the mandatory minimum in certain drug-related cases.
The prison labor group, which is managed and represented by a lobbying firm called the Leonard Group, has refused to answer multiple e-mails and phone calls from Republic Report. We have attempted to reach the Leonard Group for comment since early January.
We e-mailed every major group working to pass the Justice Safety Valve Act, and no one could tell us what the Correctional Vendors Association is up to.
“I don’t know its position, and I don’t know who they’ve been lobbying,” says Molly Gill, a lobbyist for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, when asked about the efforts of the Correctional Vendors Association.
“Our government affairs counsel doesn’t recall running across these folks,” says Larry Akey of the Constitution Project.
Other groups working on mandatory minimum reform were similarly puzzled. “I do not know,” says Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Interesting that they would be lobbying on this though.”
“I don’t, Lee, but I bet we can both guess,” replied Thomas Sussman of the American Bar Association.
In theory, prison labor companies could stand to benefit from harsh sentencing. The more prisoners in the system, the more cheap labor to produce goods for pennies on the dollar.
Federal Prison Industries Inc, a government-owned corporation that is part of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, employs thousands of federal inmates to work at an assortment of prison factories and workshops that produces over $900 million in goods for various contractors, including military clothing. Critics have accused the system for exploiting prison labor — many earning between 12 cents and 40 cents per hour — to the detriment of American businesses and free labor.
The prison labor program has survived many challenges over the years thanks in large part to a lobbying of the Correction Vendors Association, a coalition of contractors that work with Federal Prison Industries, also known as Unicor.
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Everyone knows this school to prison pipeline has existed since this Clinton neo-liberalism placed money and profits over people and jobs with justice. Why do I out Clinton as the bad guy? BECAUSE REPUBLICANS LIKE REAGAN HAVE A PLATFORM OF PROFITS OVER PEOPLE AND MAXIMIZING WEALTH. The Democratic Platform protect people not profits. When Clinton took the Democratic Party by posing as a progressive liberal------and serving as a Neo-liberal----
HE DELIBERATELY SET IN MOTION THE DISMANTLING OF NEW DEAL AND WAR ON POVERTY.
Maryland is a conservative state as most southern states are so some say----GOOD RIDDANCE TO THESE POVERTY PROGRAMS TAKING ALL OF OUR TAXES! Not surprisingly it is those same states with the highest usage of these Federal programs. I am asking my readers and friends to think what life without safety nets looks like with global corporations running the government. This is not the plantation family with servants and enslavement-----this is the global corporation taking anything it wants and giving only enough to keep people able to work. That is what US corporations have been up to since Clinton sent them overseas-----working developing nation citizens just as these articles on prison labor show.
THIS IS WHAT TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT SEEKS TO BRING TO THE US AND YOUR CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL AND BUSH NEO-CON ARE BUILDING THE STRUCTURES THAT END OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND ALLOW GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO DO JUST THAT.
So, is Congress really working to lower prison sentencing and emptying prisons as states are made poor by one economic crash after another and tons of credit bond leverage? If you look at Maryland and Baltimore which cannot even provide justice for people victim of zero tolerance and trumped up criminal records-----and just passing the ability to have prison labor outsourced to private contractors-----THE ANSWER IS NO.
I want the current middle and upper-middle class to keep the wealth inequity and suspended Rule of Law situation that keeps people from keeping their wealth-----DON'T THINK THIS IS A CLASS OR RACE ISSUE----THIS WILL BECOME 90% OF THE US POPULATION IF TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IS ADOPTED.
By the Numbers: The U.S.’s Growing For-Profit Detention Industry
Photo by Michal Czerwonka/Getty Images file photo
by Suevon Lee
ProPublica, June 20, 2012, 1:41 p.m.
The growth of the private detention industry has long been a subject of scrutiny. A recent eight-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune chronicled how more than half of Louisiana’s 40,000 inmates are housed in prisons run by sheriffs or private companies as part of a broader financial incentive scheme. The detention business goes beyond just criminal prisoners.
As a Huffington Post investigation pointed out last month, nearly half of all immigrant detainees are now held in privately run detention facilities. Just this week, the New York Times delved into lax oversight at industrial-sized but privately run halfway houses in New Jersey.
We’ve taken a look at some of the numbers associated with the billion-dollar and wide-ranging for-profit detention industry—and the two companies that dominate the market:
General Statistics:
1.6 million: Total number of state and federal prisoners in the United States as of December 2010, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics
128,195: Number of state and federal prisoners housed in private facilities as of December 2010
37: percent by which number of prisoners in private facilities increased between 2002 and 2009
217,690: Total federal inmate population as of May 2012, according to the Bureau of Prisons
27,970: Number of federal inmates in privately managed facilities within the Bureau of Prisons
33,330: Estimated size of detained immigrant population as of 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Corrections Corporation of America
66: number of facilities owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest private prison company based on number of facilities
91,000: number of beds available in CCA facilities across 20 states and the District of Columbia
$1.7 billion: total revenue recorded by CCA in 2011
$17.4 million: lobbying expenditures in the last 10 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
$1.9 million: total political contributions from years 2003 to 2012, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics
$3.7 million: executive compensation for CEO Damon T. Hininger in 2011
132: recorded number of inmate-on-inmate assaults at CCA-run Idaho Correctional Center between Sept. 2007 and Sept. 2008
42: recorded number of inmate-on-inmate assaults at the state-run Idaho State Correctional Institution in the same time frame (both prisons at the time held about 1,500 inmates)
The Geo Group, Inc., the U.S.’s second largest private detention company
$1.6 billion: total revenue in year 2011, according to its annual report
65: number of domestic correctional facilities owned and operated by Geo Group, Inc.
65,716: number of beds available in Geo Group, Inc.’s domestic correctional facilities
$2.5 million: lobbying expenditures in the last 8 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
$2.9 million: total political contributions from years 2003 to 2012, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics
$5.7 million: executive compensation for CEO George C. Zoley in 2011
$6.5 million: damages awarded in a wrongful death lawsuit against the company last June for the beating death of an inmate by his cellmate at a GEO Group-run Oklahoma prison. An appeal has been filed and is pending.
$1.1 million: fine levied against the company in November 2011 by the New Mexico Department of Corrections for inadequate staffing at one of its prisons
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Put together the attack on pensions by fraud and unemployed forced to access their pensions and 401 Ks to survive------think about how people's homes were lost from the subprime mortgage fraud often people simply extending credit thinking they had twenty years to repay these loans as was told them. They did not know a massive mortgage fraud was underway with the intent of imploding the economy to add tens of millions of more in unemployed. Remember, the participation in the US workforce is at a modern record low at 63%-----meaning at least 25% and more are already unable to earn a living.
As I said with people heading to another retirement resource----Social Security Disability------they have locked into far lower payments and have a Trust running dry----Social Security under attack by the FED and Congress.
PLEASE REMEMBER, THIS WAS ALL PLANNED BYCLINTON NEO-LIBERALS AS THEY TEAMED WITH REPUBLICANS TO MOVE ALL WEALTH TO THE TOP AND LITERALLY DO A VISIGOTH RAIDING OF OUR PUBLIC ASSETS AND WEALTH. MOST OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED WAS FRAUDULENT AND ILLEGAL AND WILL COME BACK WHEN RULE OF LAW IS RESTORED.
I want people who are silent to think what life may be like in just a decade. Those already in the system of school to prison pipeline are heading for prison labor if not already there. People depending on Disability and/or Social Security and social services will not have these resources and there will be poor farms. As important is that Trans Pacific Trade Pact tied to national infrastructure building will see Americans working on the railroad so to speak-----roads, bridges, railroads, city sidewalks----just as in the Robber Baron days with Chinese and Irish immigrant labor becoming today's workers.
Remember, pension fraud is the single largest reason for these losses and none of that pension fraud was ever recovered........in most cases.
Retirement Dreams Disappear With 401(k)s 60 Minutes: Older Americans' 401(k)s Have Plummeted; Many Fear They Will Never Get To Retire
The effects of the current economic crisis have touched everyone. Even if you still have a good job and a paid up mortgage, chances are your monthly 401(k) statement will remind you that you've lost a good chunk of your savings.
Trillions of dollars have evaporated from those accounts that have become the prime source of retirement funds for a majority of American workers, affecting their psyche and their future. If you are still young enough, there's time to rebuild and recover, but if you are in your 50s, 60s or beyond the consequences can be dire, and its drawing attention to the shortcomings of a retirement system that has jeopardized the financial security of tens of millions of people.
It was a gray, chilly morning in midtown Manhattan and a line of unemployed, mostly white-collar workers, stretched for blocks around the Radisson Hotel. More than 1,000 middle managers, stockbrokers, consultants, secretaries and receptionists had come hoping to find a job.
It was called a career fair, but there was no merriment - only a whiff of desperation.
Many of the people at the career fair have been out of work for months and burned through their liquid assets; their future, even bleaker than the present.
Alan Weir, who turns 60 this month, showed 60 Minutes his latest 401(k) statement, which he hadn't had the courage to open up.
"I'm afraid," he told correspondent Steve Kroft.
There's good reason for his trepidation: nearly half of his life savings have vanished in a matter of months.
"It went down again," Weir told Kroft, after opening the statement.
Overall, he said he was down about $140,000.
Asked if he thought he'd ever get that money back, Weir said. "I probably never see it come back. I was looking to retire, probably, when I hit 62. Can't do it now. I'll probably be working until I'm at least 70."
Until she lost her job, Kathleen Coleman had spent nearly 30 years working as an executive assistant on Wall Street. She doesn't have much to show for it.
She told Kroft her 401(k) was worth less now than it was in 2005. "And another one went down almost $40,000. One was 80 - 88,000. And then, and then it went down to 50(k)," she told Kroft, crying.
Coleman is 54 years old and lives alone. "I don't have any children. I've been a career girl all my life. And it's been a great career, and I don't deserve this," she said.
Asked if there had been some "nibbles" - potential job opportunities - she told Kroft, "All the nibbles I've had I get beat out by top models who can type. I have experience and dedication and loyalty, and I can make any boss shine. I can, if you're out there, I'll relocate anywhere for you."
"Psychologically, what does this piece of paper do to you?" Kroft asked.
"Oh, it crushes any rest I may get when I'm 65. I'll have to work for the rest of my life," she replied.
The saddest part of this story is that it is being repeated all over the country. In eastern Pennsylvania, 59-year-old Iris Hontz lost her accounting job and half of her 401(k) investments. She's now back in the workforce as a part-time cashier in a grocery store.
In Dearborn, Mich., Terry and Donna McNally are barely holding on; he lost his sales job in August. The condo they bought 15 years ago is worth less than their mortgage, and 40 percent of his 401(k) retirement savings is gone. Donna is the main provider now, running a daycare center out of their home.
Terry considers himself fortunate to have found part-time work greeting the bereaved at a funeral home and making lattes at Starbucks, where colleagues young enough to be his grandchildren have taken him under their wing.
Asked what the hardest part is, Terry McNally told Kroft, "I'm no longer sitting at a computer or driving in a car to a call. You know, suddenly I'm standing for four to six hours and greeting people or makin' drinks or tryin' to learn the process and the food business thing, which is very difficult."
"It's tough," his wife added. "But I'm proud of him at his age to be doing what he's doing."
"The 401(k) drop was tremendous, is tremendous at this point in time. And that's where the savings was, you know. That's our hurt right now," Terry McNally explained.
"We can't live our vision of our dream of retirement. That's the worst part. Many people can't," Donna McNally said.
That dream, Donna McNally told Kroft, was to have a log cabin in northern Michigan and live a nice quiet life. "And we can't do that," she said.
Neither one of them thought that they might be able to retire. "Can no longer see that day," Terry McNally said.
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Let's take a look today-----we again have an influx of Chinese labor and lots of other immigrants and they too are here because they work for less. Neo-liberal California has super-sized this Asian immigration and immigrant population in California is a majority. Please consider what this economic picture will look like if Trans Pacific Trade Pact is installed at the same time a Great Infrastructure Works Project hits. Remember, these two items are at Congress waiting to be passed into law and Obama and Republicans are ready to roll! California says we are already rolling!
What these Asian immigrants that come to take lower wages in the US that are probably higher than wages in China do not know----is that TPP will allow global corporations to operate in the US as they do in developing nations so once this structure is installed, these immigrants will work as if they were in there own nation----and US workers will have all labor and wage laws ignored and do the same. Think as well what happens to prison labor and poor farm citizens?----they head to this infrastructure project working as Robber Baron workers did ----
THAT IS TOWARDS WHAT YOUR CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS AND BUSH NEO-CONS HAVE BEEN WORKING THESE FEW DECADES.......THE NEO-LIBERALS PRETENDING ALL THE TIME TO BE PROGRESSIVE LIBERALS!
Workers of the Central Pacific Railroad
Colorado Historical Society
Chinese workers
Chinese peasants from the Canton Province began arriving on California's shores in 1850, pushed by poverty and overpopulation from their homeland -- and pulled forward by rumors of the Gum Sham, the Mountain of Gold, that awaited them across the ocean. Initially, they took five-year stints in the mines, after which they prospected or accepted jobs as laborers, domestic workers, and fishermen. As their presence increased, the Chinese immigrants faced growing prejudice and an increasingly restrictive laws limiting opportunity. When Leland Stanford was elected governor of California in 1862, he promised in his inaugural address to protect the state from "the dregs of Asia." Stanford, at least, would change his tune. Labor Shortage
In early 1865 the Central Pacific had work enough for 4,000 men. Yet contractor Charles Crocker barely managed to hold onto 800 laborers at any given time. Most of the early workers were Irish immigrants. Railroad work was hard, and management was chaotic, leading to a high attrition rate. The Central Pacific management puzzled over how it could attract and retain a work force up to the enormous task. In keeping with prejudices of the day, some Central Pacific officials believed that Irishmen were inclined to spend their wages on liquor, and that the Chinese were also unreliable. Yet, due to the critical shortage, Crocker suggested that reconsideration be given to hiring Chinese. He encountered strong prejudice from foreman James Harvey Strobridge.
Impressive Workers
California State Library A group of chinese laborers at workStrobridge's attitude changed when a group of Irish laborers agitated over wages. Crocker told Strobridge to recruit some Chinese in their place. Instantly, the Irishmen abandoned their dispute. Sensing at least that fear of competition might motivate his men, Strobridge grudgingly agreed to hire 50 Chinese men as wagon-fillers. Their work ethic impressed him, and he hired more Chinese workers for more difficult tasks. Soon, labor recruiters were scouring California, and Crocker hired companies to advertise the work in China. The number of Chinese workers on CP payrolls began increasing by the shipload. Several thousand Chinese men had signed on by the end of that year; the number rose to a high of 12,000 in 1868, comprising at least 80% of the Central Pacific workforce. "Wherever we put them, we found them good," Crocker recalled, "and they worked themselves into our favor to such an extent that if we found we were in a hurry for a job of work, it was better to put Chinese on at once." "Celestials"
The Chinese workers were punctual, willing, and well-behaved -- sometimes referred to as "Celestials" in reflection of their spiritual beliefs. They were quite unlike their Caucasian counterparts, who quickly resented the growing competition and harassed the foreigners. Crocker and Strobridge made clear to the Irishmen that they could work alongside the Chinese crews or be replaced by them. The ultimatum may not have cured the anger of the white crews, but it sufficed to quell rebellion.
Less Pay
The Chinese teams were organized into groups of 20 under one white foreman; as the difficulty of construction increased, so often did the size of the gangs. Initially, Chinese employees received wages of $27 and then $30 a month, minus the cost of food and board. In contrast, Irishmen were paid $35 per month, with board provided.
Healthier Habits
The Bancroft Library, University of California Work crews constructing the railroadWorkers lived in canvas camps alongside the grade. In the mountains, wooden bunkhouses protected them from the drifting snow, although these were often compromised by the elements. Each gang had a cook who purchased dried food from the Chinese districts of Sacramento and San Francisco to prepare on site. While Irish crews stuck to an unvarying menu of boiled food -- beef & potatoes -- the Chinese ate vegetables and seafood, and kept live pigs and chickens for weekend meals. To the dull palates of the Irishmen, the Chinese menu was a full-blown sensory assault. The newcomers seemed alien in other ways: they bathed themselves, washed their clothes, stayed away from whiskey. Instead of water they drank lukewarm tea, boiled in the mornings and dispensed to them throughout the day. In such a manner they avoided the dysentery that ravaged white crews. A Famous Retort
As work crews approached the summit, Strobridge continued to doubt the suitability of Chinese to certain tasks. When a group of Irish masons struck for higher wages, Crocker suggested using Chinese men in their place. The foreman objected. Famously, Crocker replied, "Did they not build the Chinese Wall, the biggest piece of masonry in the world?" Strobridge acquiesced, and Chinese crews were soon laying stone.
The Ten-Mile Day
Toward the end of the line, Crocker was so convinced of the skill of his Irish and Chinese workers that he decided to try for a record by laying 10 miles of track in one day. April 28, 1868 was the appointed day, and Crocker had prepared well. "One by one, platform cars dumped their iron, two miles of material in each trainload, and teams of Irishmen fairly ran the five-hundred-pound rails and hardware forward," writes author David Bain. "Straighteners led the Chinese gangs shoving the rails in place and keeping them to gauge while spikers walked down the ties, each man driving one particular spike and not stopping for another, moving on to the next rail; levelers and fillers followed, raising ties where needed, shoveling dirt beneath, tamping and moving on...." Watching the scene was a team of soldiers. Its commander praised Crocker and his workers for their effort to lay so much rail in so little time. "Mr. Crocker, I never saw such organization as that; it was like an army marching over the ground and leaving a track built behind them."
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'Let’s be clear: the TPP is much more than a “free trade” agreement. It is part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs; undercutting worker rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws; and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system'.
The American people are not being told what the goals of TPP are by Congress and State House elected officials that KNOW what the goals are. When you read that TPP gives global corporations the right to challenge a nation's laws in a global tribunal court, what they are saying is that any law a nation has that cuts into the profit of that corporation doing business in another country tied to these treaties can be challenged and the court can allow these laws be ignored. Think what laws cut into a global corporation's profits? Labor and justice laws. So, minimum wage, paid vacations, paid sick leave----all of labor union wins last century. Then, all of Equal Protection laws, Americans with Disability laws, rights of women in the workplace----new mothers----affirmative action and minority preference employment laws......
ALL OF WHAT LABOR AND JUSTICE HAS ACCUMULATED THROUGH NEW DEAL, WAR ON POVERTY, CIVIL RIGHTS AND WOMEN RIGHTS, CHILD LABOR LAWS......AND THE BIGGEST COST TO PROFIT FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS----ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS.
A global corporation headquartered in Africa or Malaysia----countries having no labor or citizen protections would expect to operate the same doing work in the US. As TPP states-----all nations tied to TPP will be given equal access to Federal, state, and local government contract work so a small business in Baltimore competing for a contract against a global corporation headquartered in Africa---will not win that contract. Neither will regional American businesses because they have to abide by the US Constitution and labor and justice laws while global corporations do not. So, what happens when US corporations want work? They find ways around US labor and justice laws to work just as these global corporations OR GO OUT OF BUSINESS. See why wage theft in the US operates openly?
Again, think what all this means to a US population that has 70% and soon to be rising to 80% of families at or near poverty-----you will be fighting for work at third world standards.
Your national labor and justice know this. This information has been available since 2010 to me and anyone looking for it so your leaders know this is what is coming. When they keep supporting Clinton neo-liberals every election at all levels of government-----as they do in Maryland----this is what they are supporting. The dismantling of all New Deal----War on Poverty -----and embracing TPP. In fairness----US labor unions are captured and under duress because Clinton neo-liberals threaten their union rights and contracts just as Republicans do----but, there is no longer any doubt that unions will not be around and US workers will be third world if they continue to support these Clinton global corporate neo-liberals and/or Bush neo-cons.
DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN BECAUSE THESE ARE REPUBLICAN POLICIES!
‘The Trans-Pacific Trade (TPP) Agreement Must Be Defeated’ –
US Senator Bernie Sanders Tuesday, January 6, 2015
By US Senator Bernie Sanders, 5 January 2015 – Reader Supported News*
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world.
**Photo: Bernie Sanders
The TPP is a treaty that has been written behind closed doors by the corporate world. Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process.
Further, all Americans, regardless of political ideology, should be opposed to the “fast track” process which would deny Congress the right to amend the treaty and represent their constituents’ interests.
The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world.
The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.
During my 23 years in Congress, I helped lead the fight against NAFTA and PNTR with China. During the coming session of Congress, I will be working with organized labor, environmentalists, religious organizations, Democrats, and Republicans against the secretive TPP trade deal.
Let’s be clear: the TPP is much more than a “free trade” agreement. It is part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs; undercutting worker rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws; and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system.
If TPP was such a good deal for America, the administration should have the courage to show the American people exactly what is in this deal, instead of keeping the content of the TPP a secret.
10 Ways that TPP would hurt Working Families
These challenges would be heard before UN and World Bank tribunals which could require taxpayer compensation to corporations.
This process undermines our sovereignty and subverts democratically passed laws including those dealing with labor, health, and the environment.
The TPP will make the race to the bottom worse because it forces American workers to compete with desperate workers in Vietnam where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour.
Doctors without Borders stated that “the TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for ?ccess to medicines in developing countries.”
In other words, the TPP would expand the rights and power of the same Wall Street firms that nearly destroyed the world economy just five years ago and would create the conditions for more financial instability in the future.
Last year, I co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Harkin to create a Wall Street speculation tax of just 0.03 percent on trades of derivatives, credit default swaps, and large amounts of stock. If TPP were enacted, such a financial speculation tax may be in violation of this trade agreement.
PLEASE WAKE UP AND ENGAGE IN POLITICS.....WE CAN REVERSE THIS EASY PEASY IF GOOD PEOPLE RUN FOR OFFICE AND VOTERS VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN ALL PRIMARIES!
Before the New Deal addressed poverty with social safety nets with money collected by the Federal government from corporations made wealthy from a massive and systemic fraud that caused the economy to crash and gave us the Great Depression----70-90% corporate and wealth tax recovered the massive fraud that created wealth inequity-----THERE WERE POOR FARMS AND DEBTOR'S PRISONS. If you were poor and made desperate to survive you were assigned a track that included prison labor and growing food on public farms.
Clinton neo-liberals and Republicans are working as hard as they can to end New Deal and War on Poverty. What happens when the tens of millions of Americans made unemployed by Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism and global markets as they teamed with Republicans to move wealth and power to corporations? With the coming bond market crash and the implosion of our SS Disability and SS Trust with these bond market policies and FED manipulations of inflation and interest rate-----we see the movement away from these FDR New Deal programs and that will bring us back to poor farms and debtor's prisons. 70% of Americans are at or near poverty before this coming economic crash----unemployment will jump again pushing that number closer to 80%. Those are the families who will live right on the line and escaping that level of poverty happens only if you get a REAL PROGRESSIVE FDR THAT WANTS TO SEE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WITH A BETTER LIFE.
Welcome to Texas justice: You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
'Poor Farms': On the historical conflation of poverty and criminality At County magazine, Liz Carmack recently had a fascinating piece (Nov. 8) on "poor farms" in Texas, which for decades doubled as support systems for the indigent and punishment systems for low-level offenders. In Kaufman County, remarkably, the last residents didn't leave the poor farm until the 1970s.
Since then, the county has repurposed much of the land for other uses — the county’s library, emergency children’s shelter, appraisal district offices and courthouse annex. But Kaufman County kept the core 27 acres of the farm intact with what remain of its 19th and 20th century buildings, including residents’ living quarters, the farm superintendent’s house, barns, a silo, a well and pump house, a chapel, a jail, a hen house and several pieces of farming equipment.
The poor farm received a Texas Historical Commission Subject Marker in 1997, which the Kaufman County Historical Commission dedicated a year later. Today, the site is one of the few county-owned poor farms in Texas. The story offered up some history of which I was personally unaware:
Poor Farm Cemetery, Hallettsville, TX (source) The hardships of the Civil War and concurrent demise of charitable organizations that served the indigent left many more needy Texans at war’s end. To help them, an 1869 addendum to the Texas Constitution charged the state’s counties with providing a Manual Labor Poor House “for taking care of, managing, employing and supplying the wants of its indigent and poor inhabitants.” It also specified that “all persons committing petty offences in the county may be committed to such Manual Labor Poor House, for correction and employment.”
Several Texas counties established poor farms as an efficient way to aid their indigent residents, who would live and work on the farms to support themselves. County inmates often worked off their sentences on the farms and were jailed there as well.
A 1987 Texas Historical Commission Survey of county clerks revealed that at least 65 of the state’s 254 counties at one time had poor farms. According to the survey, most were in the state’s central, northern and eastern counties. Fascinating the way "poor" and "criminal" were conflated back in the day, a notion that dated from 17th century "poor laws" in Elizabethan England. Outside of convicts, most poor farm residents were elderly and white. (With few exceptions, "Mexicans and blacks were simply told that they were not eligible for relief and would have to find assistance elsewhere," according to one historical account.) Poor farms were also used to house the infected during contagious epidemics. The flood of poor folk during the Great Depression and the enactment of national and state-level supports for the indigent elderly rendered poor farms either obsolete or mainly work farms for county jail inmates after the 1930s. A dark, grim history indeed. Amazing that the one in Kaufman County continued to operate into the 1970s.
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California is number 1 in the world for incarceration and that would be because of zero tolerance. Baltimore City had zero tolerance under Martin O'Malley that I am told gave 100,000 city residents criminal records for minor crimes. California is a Clinton neo-liberal state and Maryland is as well. While O'Malley was Mayor of Baltimore, he worked for Johns Hopkins and their very neo-conservative policies. So, War on Drugs and zero tolerance were clearly installed to create a free labor industry at the same time US corporations moved overseas to escape US labor and justice protections. Remember, this is when great levels of unemployment hit with NAFTA and global market economic policy and it was at the same time Welfare to Work was installed----knowing there were no jobs to go to work. So, Clinton neo-liberals set up the Democratic base of labor and justice to fall into poverty and resurface fighting this War on Drugs and zero tolerance as people were forced into a black market to survive. This was Clinton neo-liberals creating a third world society forcing levels of crime to grow, jailing these people unable to find work, and then profiting from them while serving these long sentences. THIS WAS A PLAN FOR MAXIMIZING CORPORATE PROFITS AND BREAKING DOWN THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS AND FIRST WORLD QUALITY OF LIFE. It's unimaginable that people live that think of these kinds of goals but that is why they are called sociopaths.
Flash forward to today and we have Maryland passing prison labor laws at the same time Baltimore is dismantling all of social programs and deliberately leaving government coffers with no revenue and the huge level of credit bond leveraging that will take the city into a deep financial collapse----probably bankruptcy.
THIS IS THE GOAL OF BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION AND JOHNS HOPKINS PUBLIC POLICY THAT LEVERAGES DEBT TO THE GILLS AND STARVES GOVERNMENT COFFERS OF ANY CORPORATE REVENUE.....MAKING CORPORATE SUBSIDY RULE!
Baltimore always avoided New Deal and War on Poverty by allowing systemic fraud and corruption move social services/public funding around----but now they say is the time to rebuild these structures that used to handle the poor before FDR and New Deal.
Friday, Mar 14, 2014 08:00 AM EDT Salon
Are prison labor companies lobbying to keep prisoners in jail for nonviolent offenses? A group called Correctional Vendors Association is attempting to influence a new bill reforming minimum sentencing
Lee Fang, Republic Report
This piece originally appeared on Republic Report. In recent months, a broad, cross-ideological coalition has pressed forward to reform mandatory minimum prison sentencing. In some cases mandatory minimum sentencing can lead to a lifetime in jail for nonviolent offenders. But a strange group has appeared on lobby disclosure forms reviewed by Republic Report. Prison labor companies are attempting to influence the bill, and they refuse to reveal what they’re doing and why.
The group is called the Correctional Vendors Association, an organization that represents companies that use prison labor to produce everything from furniture to clothing goods. CVA has spent $240,000 on lobbying over the past year, and forms show the organization is interested in shaping the outcome of the Justice Safety Valve Act, or S.619, a bill proposed Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) to allow judges to impose a sentence below the mandatory minimum in certain drug-related cases.
The prison labor group, which is managed and represented by a lobbying firm called the Leonard Group, has refused to answer multiple e-mails and phone calls from Republic Report. We have attempted to reach the Leonard Group for comment since early January.
We e-mailed every major group working to pass the Justice Safety Valve Act, and no one could tell us what the Correctional Vendors Association is up to.
“I don’t know its position, and I don’t know who they’ve been lobbying,” says Molly Gill, a lobbyist for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, when asked about the efforts of the Correctional Vendors Association.
“Our government affairs counsel doesn’t recall running across these folks,” says Larry Akey of the Constitution Project.
Other groups working on mandatory minimum reform were similarly puzzled. “I do not know,” says Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Interesting that they would be lobbying on this though.”
“I don’t, Lee, but I bet we can both guess,” replied Thomas Sussman of the American Bar Association.
In theory, prison labor companies could stand to benefit from harsh sentencing. The more prisoners in the system, the more cheap labor to produce goods for pennies on the dollar.
Federal Prison Industries Inc, a government-owned corporation that is part of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, employs thousands of federal inmates to work at an assortment of prison factories and workshops that produces over $900 million in goods for various contractors, including military clothing. Critics have accused the system for exploiting prison labor — many earning between 12 cents and 40 cents per hour — to the detriment of American businesses and free labor.
The prison labor program has survived many challenges over the years thanks in large part to a lobbying of the Correction Vendors Association, a coalition of contractors that work with Federal Prison Industries, also known as Unicor.
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Everyone knows this school to prison pipeline has existed since this Clinton neo-liberalism placed money and profits over people and jobs with justice. Why do I out Clinton as the bad guy? BECAUSE REPUBLICANS LIKE REAGAN HAVE A PLATFORM OF PROFITS OVER PEOPLE AND MAXIMIZING WEALTH. The Democratic Platform protect people not profits. When Clinton took the Democratic Party by posing as a progressive liberal------and serving as a Neo-liberal----
HE DELIBERATELY SET IN MOTION THE DISMANTLING OF NEW DEAL AND WAR ON POVERTY.
Maryland is a conservative state as most southern states are so some say----GOOD RIDDANCE TO THESE POVERTY PROGRAMS TAKING ALL OF OUR TAXES! Not surprisingly it is those same states with the highest usage of these Federal programs. I am asking my readers and friends to think what life without safety nets looks like with global corporations running the government. This is not the plantation family with servants and enslavement-----this is the global corporation taking anything it wants and giving only enough to keep people able to work. That is what US corporations have been up to since Clinton sent them overseas-----working developing nation citizens just as these articles on prison labor show.
THIS IS WHAT TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT SEEKS TO BRING TO THE US AND YOUR CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL AND BUSH NEO-CON ARE BUILDING THE STRUCTURES THAT END OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND ALLOW GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO DO JUST THAT.
So, is Congress really working to lower prison sentencing and emptying prisons as states are made poor by one economic crash after another and tons of credit bond leverage? If you look at Maryland and Baltimore which cannot even provide justice for people victim of zero tolerance and trumped up criminal records-----and just passing the ability to have prison labor outsourced to private contractors-----THE ANSWER IS NO.
I want the current middle and upper-middle class to keep the wealth inequity and suspended Rule of Law situation that keeps people from keeping their wealth-----DON'T THINK THIS IS A CLASS OR RACE ISSUE----THIS WILL BECOME 90% OF THE US POPULATION IF TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IS ADOPTED.
By the Numbers: The U.S.’s Growing For-Profit Detention Industry
Photo by Michal Czerwonka/Getty Images file photo
by Suevon Lee
ProPublica, June 20, 2012, 1:41 p.m.
The growth of the private detention industry has long been a subject of scrutiny. A recent eight-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune chronicled how more than half of Louisiana’s 40,000 inmates are housed in prisons run by sheriffs or private companies as part of a broader financial incentive scheme. The detention business goes beyond just criminal prisoners.
As a Huffington Post investigation pointed out last month, nearly half of all immigrant detainees are now held in privately run detention facilities. Just this week, the New York Times delved into lax oversight at industrial-sized but privately run halfway houses in New Jersey.
We’ve taken a look at some of the numbers associated with the billion-dollar and wide-ranging for-profit detention industry—and the two companies that dominate the market:
General Statistics:
1.6 million: Total number of state and federal prisoners in the United States as of December 2010, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics
128,195: Number of state and federal prisoners housed in private facilities as of December 2010
37: percent by which number of prisoners in private facilities increased between 2002 and 2009
217,690: Total federal inmate population as of May 2012, according to the Bureau of Prisons
27,970: Number of federal inmates in privately managed facilities within the Bureau of Prisons
33,330: Estimated size of detained immigrant population as of 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Corrections Corporation of America
66: number of facilities owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest private prison company based on number of facilities
91,000: number of beds available in CCA facilities across 20 states and the District of Columbia
$1.7 billion: total revenue recorded by CCA in 2011
$17.4 million: lobbying expenditures in the last 10 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
$1.9 million: total political contributions from years 2003 to 2012, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics
$3.7 million: executive compensation for CEO Damon T. Hininger in 2011
132: recorded number of inmate-on-inmate assaults at CCA-run Idaho Correctional Center between Sept. 2007 and Sept. 2008
42: recorded number of inmate-on-inmate assaults at the state-run Idaho State Correctional Institution in the same time frame (both prisons at the time held about 1,500 inmates)
The Geo Group, Inc., the U.S.’s second largest private detention company
$1.6 billion: total revenue in year 2011, according to its annual report
65: number of domestic correctional facilities owned and operated by Geo Group, Inc.
65,716: number of beds available in Geo Group, Inc.’s domestic correctional facilities
$2.5 million: lobbying expenditures in the last 8 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
$2.9 million: total political contributions from years 2003 to 2012, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics
$5.7 million: executive compensation for CEO George C. Zoley in 2011
$6.5 million: damages awarded in a wrongful death lawsuit against the company last June for the beating death of an inmate by his cellmate at a GEO Group-run Oklahoma prison. An appeal has been filed and is pending.
$1.1 million: fine levied against the company in November 2011 by the New Mexico Department of Corrections for inadequate staffing at one of its prisons
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Put together the attack on pensions by fraud and unemployed forced to access their pensions and 401 Ks to survive------think about how people's homes were lost from the subprime mortgage fraud often people simply extending credit thinking they had twenty years to repay these loans as was told them. They did not know a massive mortgage fraud was underway with the intent of imploding the economy to add tens of millions of more in unemployed. Remember, the participation in the US workforce is at a modern record low at 63%-----meaning at least 25% and more are already unable to earn a living.
As I said with people heading to another retirement resource----Social Security Disability------they have locked into far lower payments and have a Trust running dry----Social Security under attack by the FED and Congress.
PLEASE REMEMBER, THIS WAS ALL PLANNED BYCLINTON NEO-LIBERALS AS THEY TEAMED WITH REPUBLICANS TO MOVE ALL WEALTH TO THE TOP AND LITERALLY DO A VISIGOTH RAIDING OF OUR PUBLIC ASSETS AND WEALTH. MOST OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED WAS FRAUDULENT AND ILLEGAL AND WILL COME BACK WHEN RULE OF LAW IS RESTORED.
I want people who are silent to think what life may be like in just a decade. Those already in the system of school to prison pipeline are heading for prison labor if not already there. People depending on Disability and/or Social Security and social services will not have these resources and there will be poor farms. As important is that Trans Pacific Trade Pact tied to national infrastructure building will see Americans working on the railroad so to speak-----roads, bridges, railroads, city sidewalks----just as in the Robber Baron days with Chinese and Irish immigrant labor becoming today's workers.
Remember, pension fraud is the single largest reason for these losses and none of that pension fraud was ever recovered........in most cases.
Retirement Dreams Disappear With 401(k)s 60 Minutes: Older Americans' 401(k)s Have Plummeted; Many Fear They Will Never Get To Retire
The effects of the current economic crisis have touched everyone. Even if you still have a good job and a paid up mortgage, chances are your monthly 401(k) statement will remind you that you've lost a good chunk of your savings.
Trillions of dollars have evaporated from those accounts that have become the prime source of retirement funds for a majority of American workers, affecting their psyche and their future. If you are still young enough, there's time to rebuild and recover, but if you are in your 50s, 60s or beyond the consequences can be dire, and its drawing attention to the shortcomings of a retirement system that has jeopardized the financial security of tens of millions of people.
It was a gray, chilly morning in midtown Manhattan and a line of unemployed, mostly white-collar workers, stretched for blocks around the Radisson Hotel. More than 1,000 middle managers, stockbrokers, consultants, secretaries and receptionists had come hoping to find a job.
It was called a career fair, but there was no merriment - only a whiff of desperation.
Many of the people at the career fair have been out of work for months and burned through their liquid assets; their future, even bleaker than the present.
Alan Weir, who turns 60 this month, showed 60 Minutes his latest 401(k) statement, which he hadn't had the courage to open up.
"I'm afraid," he told correspondent Steve Kroft.
There's good reason for his trepidation: nearly half of his life savings have vanished in a matter of months.
"It went down again," Weir told Kroft, after opening the statement.
Overall, he said he was down about $140,000.
Asked if he thought he'd ever get that money back, Weir said. "I probably never see it come back. I was looking to retire, probably, when I hit 62. Can't do it now. I'll probably be working until I'm at least 70."
Until she lost her job, Kathleen Coleman had spent nearly 30 years working as an executive assistant on Wall Street. She doesn't have much to show for it.
She told Kroft her 401(k) was worth less now than it was in 2005. "And another one went down almost $40,000. One was 80 - 88,000. And then, and then it went down to 50(k)," she told Kroft, crying.
Coleman is 54 years old and lives alone. "I don't have any children. I've been a career girl all my life. And it's been a great career, and I don't deserve this," she said.
Asked if there had been some "nibbles" - potential job opportunities - she told Kroft, "All the nibbles I've had I get beat out by top models who can type. I have experience and dedication and loyalty, and I can make any boss shine. I can, if you're out there, I'll relocate anywhere for you."
"Psychologically, what does this piece of paper do to you?" Kroft asked.
"Oh, it crushes any rest I may get when I'm 65. I'll have to work for the rest of my life," she replied.
The saddest part of this story is that it is being repeated all over the country. In eastern Pennsylvania, 59-year-old Iris Hontz lost her accounting job and half of her 401(k) investments. She's now back in the workforce as a part-time cashier in a grocery store.
In Dearborn, Mich., Terry and Donna McNally are barely holding on; he lost his sales job in August. The condo they bought 15 years ago is worth less than their mortgage, and 40 percent of his 401(k) retirement savings is gone. Donna is the main provider now, running a daycare center out of their home.
Terry considers himself fortunate to have found part-time work greeting the bereaved at a funeral home and making lattes at Starbucks, where colleagues young enough to be his grandchildren have taken him under their wing.
Asked what the hardest part is, Terry McNally told Kroft, "I'm no longer sitting at a computer or driving in a car to a call. You know, suddenly I'm standing for four to six hours and greeting people or makin' drinks or tryin' to learn the process and the food business thing, which is very difficult."
"It's tough," his wife added. "But I'm proud of him at his age to be doing what he's doing."
"The 401(k) drop was tremendous, is tremendous at this point in time. And that's where the savings was, you know. That's our hurt right now," Terry McNally explained.
"We can't live our vision of our dream of retirement. That's the worst part. Many people can't," Donna McNally said.
That dream, Donna McNally told Kroft, was to have a log cabin in northern Michigan and live a nice quiet life. "And we can't do that," she said.
Neither one of them thought that they might be able to retire. "Can no longer see that day," Terry McNally said.
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Let's take a look today-----we again have an influx of Chinese labor and lots of other immigrants and they too are here because they work for less. Neo-liberal California has super-sized this Asian immigration and immigrant population in California is a majority. Please consider what this economic picture will look like if Trans Pacific Trade Pact is installed at the same time a Great Infrastructure Works Project hits. Remember, these two items are at Congress waiting to be passed into law and Obama and Republicans are ready to roll! California says we are already rolling!
What these Asian immigrants that come to take lower wages in the US that are probably higher than wages in China do not know----is that TPP will allow global corporations to operate in the US as they do in developing nations so once this structure is installed, these immigrants will work as if they were in there own nation----and US workers will have all labor and wage laws ignored and do the same. Think as well what happens to prison labor and poor farm citizens?----they head to this infrastructure project working as Robber Baron workers did ----
THAT IS TOWARDS WHAT YOUR CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS AND BUSH NEO-CONS HAVE BEEN WORKING THESE FEW DECADES.......THE NEO-LIBERALS PRETENDING ALL THE TIME TO BE PROGRESSIVE LIBERALS!
Workers of the Central Pacific Railroad
Colorado Historical Society
Chinese workers
Chinese peasants from the Canton Province began arriving on California's shores in 1850, pushed by poverty and overpopulation from their homeland -- and pulled forward by rumors of the Gum Sham, the Mountain of Gold, that awaited them across the ocean. Initially, they took five-year stints in the mines, after which they prospected or accepted jobs as laborers, domestic workers, and fishermen. As their presence increased, the Chinese immigrants faced growing prejudice and an increasingly restrictive laws limiting opportunity. When Leland Stanford was elected governor of California in 1862, he promised in his inaugural address to protect the state from "the dregs of Asia." Stanford, at least, would change his tune. Labor Shortage
In early 1865 the Central Pacific had work enough for 4,000 men. Yet contractor Charles Crocker barely managed to hold onto 800 laborers at any given time. Most of the early workers were Irish immigrants. Railroad work was hard, and management was chaotic, leading to a high attrition rate. The Central Pacific management puzzled over how it could attract and retain a work force up to the enormous task. In keeping with prejudices of the day, some Central Pacific officials believed that Irishmen were inclined to spend their wages on liquor, and that the Chinese were also unreliable. Yet, due to the critical shortage, Crocker suggested that reconsideration be given to hiring Chinese. He encountered strong prejudice from foreman James Harvey Strobridge.
Impressive Workers
California State Library A group of chinese laborers at workStrobridge's attitude changed when a group of Irish laborers agitated over wages. Crocker told Strobridge to recruit some Chinese in their place. Instantly, the Irishmen abandoned their dispute. Sensing at least that fear of competition might motivate his men, Strobridge grudgingly agreed to hire 50 Chinese men as wagon-fillers. Their work ethic impressed him, and he hired more Chinese workers for more difficult tasks. Soon, labor recruiters were scouring California, and Crocker hired companies to advertise the work in China. The number of Chinese workers on CP payrolls began increasing by the shipload. Several thousand Chinese men had signed on by the end of that year; the number rose to a high of 12,000 in 1868, comprising at least 80% of the Central Pacific workforce. "Wherever we put them, we found them good," Crocker recalled, "and they worked themselves into our favor to such an extent that if we found we were in a hurry for a job of work, it was better to put Chinese on at once." "Celestials"
The Chinese workers were punctual, willing, and well-behaved -- sometimes referred to as "Celestials" in reflection of their spiritual beliefs. They were quite unlike their Caucasian counterparts, who quickly resented the growing competition and harassed the foreigners. Crocker and Strobridge made clear to the Irishmen that they could work alongside the Chinese crews or be replaced by them. The ultimatum may not have cured the anger of the white crews, but it sufficed to quell rebellion.
Less Pay
The Chinese teams were organized into groups of 20 under one white foreman; as the difficulty of construction increased, so often did the size of the gangs. Initially, Chinese employees received wages of $27 and then $30 a month, minus the cost of food and board. In contrast, Irishmen were paid $35 per month, with board provided.
Healthier Habits
The Bancroft Library, University of California Work crews constructing the railroadWorkers lived in canvas camps alongside the grade. In the mountains, wooden bunkhouses protected them from the drifting snow, although these were often compromised by the elements. Each gang had a cook who purchased dried food from the Chinese districts of Sacramento and San Francisco to prepare on site. While Irish crews stuck to an unvarying menu of boiled food -- beef & potatoes -- the Chinese ate vegetables and seafood, and kept live pigs and chickens for weekend meals. To the dull palates of the Irishmen, the Chinese menu was a full-blown sensory assault. The newcomers seemed alien in other ways: they bathed themselves, washed their clothes, stayed away from whiskey. Instead of water they drank lukewarm tea, boiled in the mornings and dispensed to them throughout the day. In such a manner they avoided the dysentery that ravaged white crews. A Famous Retort
As work crews approached the summit, Strobridge continued to doubt the suitability of Chinese to certain tasks. When a group of Irish masons struck for higher wages, Crocker suggested using Chinese men in their place. The foreman objected. Famously, Crocker replied, "Did they not build the Chinese Wall, the biggest piece of masonry in the world?" Strobridge acquiesced, and Chinese crews were soon laying stone.
The Ten-Mile Day
Toward the end of the line, Crocker was so convinced of the skill of his Irish and Chinese workers that he decided to try for a record by laying 10 miles of track in one day. April 28, 1868 was the appointed day, and Crocker had prepared well. "One by one, platform cars dumped their iron, two miles of material in each trainload, and teams of Irishmen fairly ran the five-hundred-pound rails and hardware forward," writes author David Bain. "Straighteners led the Chinese gangs shoving the rails in place and keeping them to gauge while spikers walked down the ties, each man driving one particular spike and not stopping for another, moving on to the next rail; levelers and fillers followed, raising ties where needed, shoveling dirt beneath, tamping and moving on...." Watching the scene was a team of soldiers. Its commander praised Crocker and his workers for their effort to lay so much rail in so little time. "Mr. Crocker, I never saw such organization as that; it was like an army marching over the ground and leaving a track built behind them."
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'Let’s be clear: the TPP is much more than a “free trade” agreement. It is part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs; undercutting worker rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws; and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system'.
The American people are not being told what the goals of TPP are by Congress and State House elected officials that KNOW what the goals are. When you read that TPP gives global corporations the right to challenge a nation's laws in a global tribunal court, what they are saying is that any law a nation has that cuts into the profit of that corporation doing business in another country tied to these treaties can be challenged and the court can allow these laws be ignored. Think what laws cut into a global corporation's profits? Labor and justice laws. So, minimum wage, paid vacations, paid sick leave----all of labor union wins last century. Then, all of Equal Protection laws, Americans with Disability laws, rights of women in the workplace----new mothers----affirmative action and minority preference employment laws......
ALL OF WHAT LABOR AND JUSTICE HAS ACCUMULATED THROUGH NEW DEAL, WAR ON POVERTY, CIVIL RIGHTS AND WOMEN RIGHTS, CHILD LABOR LAWS......AND THE BIGGEST COST TO PROFIT FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS----ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS.
A global corporation headquartered in Africa or Malaysia----countries having no labor or citizen protections would expect to operate the same doing work in the US. As TPP states-----all nations tied to TPP will be given equal access to Federal, state, and local government contract work so a small business in Baltimore competing for a contract against a global corporation headquartered in Africa---will not win that contract. Neither will regional American businesses because they have to abide by the US Constitution and labor and justice laws while global corporations do not. So, what happens when US corporations want work? They find ways around US labor and justice laws to work just as these global corporations OR GO OUT OF BUSINESS. See why wage theft in the US operates openly?
Again, think what all this means to a US population that has 70% and soon to be rising to 80% of families at or near poverty-----you will be fighting for work at third world standards.
Your national labor and justice know this. This information has been available since 2010 to me and anyone looking for it so your leaders know this is what is coming. When they keep supporting Clinton neo-liberals every election at all levels of government-----as they do in Maryland----this is what they are supporting. The dismantling of all New Deal----War on Poverty -----and embracing TPP. In fairness----US labor unions are captured and under duress because Clinton neo-liberals threaten their union rights and contracts just as Republicans do----but, there is no longer any doubt that unions will not be around and US workers will be third world if they continue to support these Clinton global corporate neo-liberals and/or Bush neo-cons.
DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN BECAUSE THESE ARE REPUBLICAN POLICIES!
‘The Trans-Pacific Trade (TPP) Agreement Must Be Defeated’ –
US Senator Bernie Sanders Tuesday, January 6, 2015
By US Senator Bernie Sanders, 5 January 2015 – Reader Supported News*
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world.
**Photo: Bernie Sanders
The TPP is a treaty that has been written behind closed doors by the corporate world. Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process.
Further, all Americans, regardless of political ideology, should be opposed to the “fast track” process which would deny Congress the right to amend the treaty and represent their constituents’ interests.
The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world.
The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.
During my 23 years in Congress, I helped lead the fight against NAFTA and PNTR with China. During the coming session of Congress, I will be working with organized labor, environmentalists, religious organizations, Democrats, and Republicans against the secretive TPP trade deal.
Let’s be clear: the TPP is much more than a “free trade” agreement. It is part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs; undercutting worker rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws; and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system.
If TPP was such a good deal for America, the administration should have the courage to show the American people exactly what is in this deal, instead of keeping the content of the TPP a secret.
10 Ways that TPP would hurt Working Families
- TPP will allow corporations to outsource even more jobs overseas.
- Service Sector Jobs will be lost. At a time when corporations have already outsourced over 3 million service sector jobs in the U.S., TPP includes rules that will make it even easier for corporate America to outsource call centers; computer programming; engineering; accounting; and medical diagnostic jobs.
- Manufacturing jobs will be lost. As a result of NAFTA, the U.S. lost nearly 700,000 jobs. As a result of Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, the U.S. lost over 2.7 million jobs. As a result of the Korea Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. has lost 70,000 jobs. The TPP would make matters worse by providing special benefits to firms that offshore jobs and by reducing the risks associated with operating in low-wage countries.
- S. sovereignty will be undermined by giving corporations the right to challenge our laws before international tribunals.
These challenges would be heard before UN and World Bank tribunals which could require taxpayer compensation to corporations.
This process undermines our sovereignty and subverts democratically passed laws including those dealing with labor, health, and the environment.
- Wages, benefits, and collective bargaining will be threatened.
The TPP will make the race to the bottom worse because it forces American workers to compete with desperate workers in Vietnam where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour.
- Our ability to protect the environment will be undermined.
- Food Safety Standards will be threatened.
- Buy America laws could come to an end.
- Prescription drug prices will increase, access to life saving drugs will decrease, and the profits of drug companies will go up.
Doctors without Borders stated that “the TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for ?ccess to medicines in developing countries.”
- Wall Street would benefit at the expense of everyone else.
In other words, the TPP would expand the rights and power of the same Wall Street firms that nearly destroyed the world economy just five years ago and would create the conditions for more financial instability in the future.
Last year, I co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Harkin to create a Wall Street speculation tax of just 0.03 percent on trades of derivatives, credit default swaps, and large amounts of stock. If TPP were enacted, such a financial speculation tax may be in violation of this trade agreement.
- The TPP would reward authoritarian regimes like Vietnam that systematically violate human rights.
- The TPP has no expiration date, making it virtually impossible to repeal.
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