I wanted to take one more day reminding everyone of the fraud and corruption that takes from all public assets and personal wealth. Each one of these frauds directly affects all Americans and the existence of massive fraud brings the US to a third world nation. We can easily turn this around if we shake the Clinton neo-liberals out of the people's Democratic Party!
I'll talk about Maryland Assembly bills this week.
Feinstein said goodbye because she knew voters would do it for her! All across the country incumbents are being tossed out because of Congressional fraud and corruption. Baltimore actually had an election primary blackout in order to protect Ben Cardin who was found involved as Feinstein was.
The wealth inequity in Baltimore is so startling because of all this graft and as Rule of Law disappears and these global pols do not recognize the US Constitution----EVERYONE WILL FEEL WHAT ITS LIKE TO LIVE IN A THIRD WORLD NATION.
by Gary P Jackson | November 18, 2011 · 2:13 pm ↓
Insider Trading: Senator Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov’t Grant
I am not a crook!
With a new congressional insider trading scandal unfolding in Washington, another name has been added to the hit parade: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
In the new blockbuster tell-all Throw Them All Out , investigative reporter and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer reveals that on November 18, 2009, Sen. Feinstein and her husband invested $1 million into Amyris Biotechnologies, a “green” company focused on plant-based renewable fuels and chemicals.
The Feinsteins’ million-dollar investment was their only stock transaction for the entire year. Feinstein, however, had good reason to feel that all her investment eggs were secure in the biotech basket, because just weeks after her seven-figure investment in Amyris, the company scored a $24 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to build a pilot plant where altered yeast would turn sugar into hydrocarbons.
The company went public the following year with an IPO that raked in $85 million. Currently, it’s unclear exactly how much money Senator Feinstein and her husband made off their investment, “but it’s safe to assume that they did well,” concludes Schweizer.
Do we know for certain that Feinstein’s willingness to bet $1 million on Amyris was the result of insider knowledge that the DOE’s $24 million infusion of federal funds was forthcoming? No, not without further investigation. That, argues Schweizer in Throw Them All Out , is why insider trading laws should apply to members of Congress and trigger the kinds of SEC investigations to which ordinary investors must submit.
Below you see national leaders doing just what politicians in Baltimore and Maryland are doing without thought. It is completely open pay-to-play, grab the public wealth and run. Think about what other pols are tied with these national politicians-----
CBS Report to Expose Insider Trading on Capitol HillIn "In The News" Throw Them ALL Out--Read It with a Pair of Sunglasses!In "crony capitalism"
Below you see Baltimore's own Insider Trading and outright racketeering as City Council members are each involved in so much wheeling and dealing of city property that they get to stick in their thumbs and pull out the plums! The problem with this systemic graft is that is never stops----it just gets more and more greedy. Mary Pat Clarke probably left Baltimore City Hall back in the 19990s because she took money from Johns Hopkins which is Baltimore Development Corporation. If she is doing it we know all are doing it. This is how we get Johns Hopkins as owner and operator of Baltimore ----the Company Town.
As I state over these years if we allow this to continue you will have Hopkins as the FOXCONN of China----owning all of city central and many of the businesses.
IF YOU WANT A JOB YOU WILL WORK FOR JOHNS HOPKINS. IF YOU DO NOT SUPPORT POLICY HOPKINS WANTS---YOU DO NOT WORK IN BALTIMORE.
That's what all of this fraud and corruption leads to and these corporations are now global corporations and that means totalitarianism----complete control of Baltimore and by extension Maryland.
Hopkins owns East Baltimore, Homewood/Charles Village, Peabody, MICA, major shareholder in HighStar which owns VEOLA Environment privatizing public water and waste, the Port of Baltimore, and VEOLA Transportation, a group of Home Health and Primary Care businesses, NSA spy/surveillance and mega-data gathering operations, and many of the public schools in city center.........
WHY WOULD ANYONE WHETHER CLASS OR RACE WANT TO LIVE IN AN AUTOCRATIC CORPORATE SOECIETY?
City housing troubles take on a political hue
February 23, 1995|By MICHAEL OLESKER
What's $25 million between friends? A point of pride, says the mayor of Baltimore, Kurt L. Schmoke, hoping to put the matter of city housing troubles to rest. A job well done, says the commissioner of housing, Daniel P. Henson, looking to stare down anyone who says otherwise.
Then there's the president of the Baltimore City Council, Mary Pat Clarke, who looks at her morning newspaper and sees it another way: corruption and incompetence, she says, reading of Housing Authority money and mishaps and reaching for all available expressions of outrage.
The ammunition is spread before her: a three-part series in this newspaper documenting $25.6 million worth of no-bid contracts awarded by City Hall, much of it going to friends of Schmoke or Henson, lots of the costs inflated, some of the work not done, plenty of it done poorly, some of the work not monitored, some of it handed to inexperienced minority-owned firms while other, experienced minority-owned firms were overlooked, and the federal government now demanding $725,759 repayment of bogus costs.
Mary Pat Clarke heads the Baltimore City Hall Education committee. Just think about the education privatization happening and think about the $1 billion school building project tied to state and city bonds. We know the economic crash is going to send this all into default and who is handling the banking on all these deals? I haven't been able to find out because it is all behind closed doors-----
OH, WE DON'T HAVE A LIST OF STAKEHOLDERS SAYS THE MAYOR'S OFFICE AND COMPTROLLER'S OFFICE.
Mary Pat is the good cop in this mess of a development plan. I was standing at the doorway of City Hall as yet another protest on Development injustice was happening and Mary Pat shouts ----GET OUT OF MY WAY AND SHUT UP-----GET HER (me)TO WRITE ABOUT IT! Clarke is not the progressive she pretends to be----she fits perfectly with neo--conservative Johns Hopkins.
Clarke: Contributions not development costs By: Adam Bednar
Daily Record Business Writer June 13, 2014
Developer J. Joseph Clarke is adamant he never would have used campaign contributions to justify the sales price of the Fells Point Recreation Pier.
“If I make a political contribution that’s not a development cost. It’s what we do. I’m a citizen, and I regret that it was characterized as anything but that,” Clarke said.
The Baltimore Sun reported on Wednesday that members of the Board of Estimates objected to campaign contributions being included on a list of expenses used to justify selling the property to Sagamore Development Co. for $3.4 million. The sale required board approval because Clarke’s agreement with the city stipulated he could not profit if he sold the pier to another developer.
But Clarke, who is the husband of Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, said he would never have submitted that list to the city. He said the list was used to show his equity in the property when H&S Properties bought a stake in the project in 2013.
“This was a list supplied to H&S so they would know we had already spent some money in this project. That was our equity… that’s what we brought to the table was paid expenses. That was not ever contemplated to be a list to be attached to the Board of Estimates agenda,” Clarke said. “I had no discussion with them about that. They took it upon
When people tell me this is how Baltimore has always been I shout-----well, we are now all being taken to third world status because all of this corruption has been allowed for so long----wake up or there will be in Rule of Law or Constitutional rights at all! CLEAN HOUSE!
_________________________________________
NO ONE WINS WHEN ALL PUBLIC SERVICES, PROGRAMS, AND ASSETS ARE IN THE HANDS OF GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.
JUST GET RID OF THESE SOCIOPATHS!
This is of course to where all of this profligation is meant to lead----bankruptcy. Fraud took the housing and banking industry-----it took our Federal student loan----and now they are blowing up our city and state governments with fraud. That means asset grab will go wild. Let's take a look at Detroit, Baltimore's sister city to see who loses:
Baltimore Bankruptcy? City Forecasts Financial Ruin www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/08/baltimore-bankruptcy_n...CachedFeb 07, 2013 · WASHINGTON -- The Baltimore city government is on a path to financial ruin and must enact major reforms to stave off bankruptcy, according to a 10-year ...
The first thing you notice about Detroit is all of its water and waste was privatized-----as Hopkins is waiting with VEOLA Environment to do here in Baltimore. Then Detroit's school system was completely taken by national charter chains-----as is happening in Baltimore. All of the public pensions and employees had to go----all of public health ----and in comes the global corporations-----
Now, if you think its fine for the poor to be completely disenfranchised----if you think its fine that the public sector employees lose their retirements---if you think Wall Street K-career college for 90% of Americans is OK----do you really want global corporations controlling your water, energy, and community development? REALLY?
THERE WILL BE INJUSTICE FOR ALL FOLKS----IT WILL NOT STOP AND WINNERS NOW WILL BE LOSERS SOON! WAKE UP TO TOTALITARIANISM-----
Local Detroit Emergency Manager Looking To Privatize The City’s Water Department
March 13, 2014 5:07 PM DETROIT (WWJ) – Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr says he’s looking into finding a private buyer for the bankrupt city’s water department.
The word comes after the leaders of Oakland and Macomb Counties have nixed a plan to create a regional water authority.
Orr said he would have preferred to get the suburbs on board at the Detroit Water And Sewerage Department, but he has a duty to look into all opportunities — also including possibly leasing the department.
Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel told WWJ Newsradio 950 he believes privatization could work.
“The private sector’s going to come in, take a look at that and say, you know what? We can make a go of this,” Hackel said. “Because we understand what the capital grouping costs are going to be. We understand the money flow in making sure that we’re generating some kind of income or revenue from that.
“That’s how they’re going to look at that — not how they’re going to pay the creditors; how they’re going to pay the pensioners,” Hackel said.
Hackel said any arrangement must put ratepayers first, with expenditures toward system upkeep, and not paying off Detroit’s debt.
He explained why he would prefer privatization over the creation of a regional authority.
“Just because it’s in the hands of other elected officials that are going to have appointees on it, it’s still susceptible to public corruption,” Hackel said. “There’s been corruption in and around that Detroit water/sewer system for years. And just to say that, well, we make it a bigger group of people that have appointees on it, does that change the potential for that to happen? No, I don’t think it does.”
Detroit City Councilman James Tate said other municipalities have said that they want more control of the department. But, he said, there are more members of suburban communities than Detroit on the board, and rates are still increasing.
“I think it’s clear that it’s not just about the representation,” Tate said. “When you’re in a position where you’re going to have to take over the dilapidated infrastructure and all those challenges that the DWSD has, that means that you have to also (bear the) burden and the pain of restructuring — and that’s not an easy thing to do.”
Tate says he is still hopeful that the city can come up with some kind of deal.
Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson has said he fears any deal could gouge his residents on water rates.
So what does Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan think about the options?
“Kevyn Orr and I have an agreement where he doesn’t comment on the areas of my responsibility, and I don’t comment on the issues in his area,” Duggan said.
MORE: More Questions Surrounding Future Of Detroit Water Department
Detroit Bankruptcy: Complete Coverage
Of course in Baltimore the public school privatization is being done by neo-conservatives running as Democrats-----rather than Tea Party Republicans in Michigan. Seems like 650,000 citizens in Baltimore could get rid of these global corporate pols and run REAL progressive labor and justice to rebuild Rule of Law, Equal Protection, and Constitutional rights with Democracy~
Rick Snyder is Johns Hopkins.
As you see below----what is happening in Detroit is about to happen in BAltimore thanks to Baltimore City Hall and Maryland Assembly neo-conservative polticians!
There goes Social Security and Medicare Trusts----there goes Food Stamps and public water---all of this hits everyone but people of color and women the most.
Privatization Comes to Detroit Schools
[Mackinac Center] www.mackinac.org/3009CachedIn January, the financially troubled Detroit Public Schools district announced a rigorous, focused plan to cut unnecessary costs from its support services in order to ...
After years of privatization, Detroit charter school enrollment tops public schools By Walter Gilberti and Nancy Hanover
31 December 2013 The State of Michigan has been at the forefront of attacks on public education, implementing policies which have repeatedly sought to test the waters nationally for growing privatization and direct corporate control of schools.
Long before Republican Governor Rick Snyder used the state’s emergency manager law to throw Detroit into bankruptcy—and loot public pensions and city assets, like the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts—this anti-democratic measure was first used to restructure Detroit schools.
The regressive overhauling of public education in the interests of a profit driven class-based system has both foreshadowed and now complements processes set into motion with the bankruptcy of Detroit.
Michigan's first emergency manager for a school district was named in 2009 by Governor Jennifer Granholm to take control of the Detroit Public Schools (DPS). Robert Bobb, who was simultaneously being paid by both DPS and the Kellogg and Broad Foundations (well-known corporate advocates of privatization), began closing 29 schools in just his first year alone. As of this date, more than 100 DPS schools have been closed.
The school closures were closely coordinated with plans by Mayor David Bing and major corporate interests to “downsize” the city by cutting off essential services to areas deemed too poor or under-populated for private investment. The shutdown of schools—which serve as the center of community life—was used to drive remaining residents out of these neighborhoods and divert students and public resources to for-profit charter schools.
The same corporate bedfellows, financial elites, and politicians are wreaking havoc on schools, where they are seeking to end the notion of the democratic right to free and equal educational access for all citizens.
In 2011, Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan called DPS “ground zero” for the administration’s pro-business school “reform” agenda of scape-goating teachers, shutting down public schools and boosting charter enrollment. Comparing Detroit to New Orleans—where the entire district was essentially privatized following Hurricane Katrina in 2005—Duncan said, “We don’t need to wait for a hurricane before we can reform schools.”
According to a recent report in the Detroit News enrollment of charter school students in Detroit now surpasses that of those attending traditional public schools. With 51,083 Detroit children enrolled in charters, 51 percent of the district’s students are no longer in traditional public schools. Only New Orleans, with 79 percent, has a higher percentage of students attending charters.
In 1996, there were only five charter schools in the state, but under the impact of the right-wing Mackinac Public Policy Center, Bush’s No Child Left Behind and the Obama administration’s Race To The Top, the number of charter schools has exploded. Since taking office in 2009, the number of students enrolled in charters throughout the US has doubled under Obama, who has overseen the destruction of 330,000 public education jobs and the closure of more than 4,000 public schools.
In 2011, the Michigan state legislature removed the legal cap of the number of charters. Today over 120,000 students in Michigan attend 276 charter schools in the state. Five Michigan cities are among the top 20 urban centers with the largest charter school populations in the nation. This includes Detroit #2, Flint #4 (33 percent attending charters), Grand Rapids #9 (23 percent), Lansing #19 (13 percent) and Traverse City #20 (12 percent).
Michigan charter schools, more so than in any other state of the nation, are run for profit, with for-profit Education Management Organizations (EMOs) in charge of 79 percent of the Michigan charter schools. Michigan now has 33 for-profit EMOs operating one or more public schools, ahead of the 27 companies running schools in Arizona and 16 in Florida. Teachers at charter schools are employed “at will”, and subject to arbitrary firing and disciplinary measures. Very few charter school teachers have pension plans and most cite pay and working conditions substantially below their public school counterparts.
The expansion of charter schools has coincided with a savage attack on public school employees, as the Detroit Federation of Teachers collaborated with subsequent emergency managers to impose more standardized tests, to discipline and fire teachers and slash their wages and benefits in the name of school “reform” and “accountability.”
Michigan and Massachusetts were among the first states to establish public school systems in the 19th century. School reformers of that period rejected the idea that working class children should be relegated to pauper schools and insisted that high quality education for all was central for a functioning democracy. As a result of the mass struggles of workers, Detroit schools remained among the best funded in the nation as late as the 1970s.
Today, school “reform” has been turned into its opposite, with politicians from both big business parties determined to create a class-based system, where the majority of working class students are once again condemned to pauper schools.
After decades of systematic state budget cuts to education, struggling public schools are finding themselves now in a desperate competition for students with often well-marketed charter operations. Further, not only do the public schools have to compete against corporate interests running charter schools, but Michigan has also pioneered the concept of a statewide “turn-around” district for so-called failing schools, another effort at undermining traditional public education.
In 2012, Governor Rick Snyder, working with the then Detroit schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts—a former General Motors executive who replaced Robert Bobb—established the Education Achievement Authority or EAA by hiving off 15 schools from the DPS to form this new district.
It was handed corporate backing and millions of dollars of funding from the cash-strapped Detroit Public Schools, courtesy of the emergency manager. Additionally the governor provided money through a slush fund, an ostensibly non-profit organization called the Michigan Educational Excellence Foundation. The EAA now is responsible for about 7 percent of the city’s students.
This signature policy initiative by the Republican governor was enthusiastically embraced by the Obama administration. In July, Education Secretary Arne Duncan traveled to Detroit and called the EAA “the future” of education. The district mirrors the labor policies of the charter schools, specifically stripping teachers and education workers of seniority rights and wage protections as well as other gains won over decades.
Now with more than a year under the EAA’s belt, there is evidence that this education fraud has been a resounding failure. Parents are “voting with their feet”. Over 25 percent of the EAA student population, more than 2,000, have transferred out. Additionally, the dean of College of Education at Eastern Michigan, a partner with the Snyder Administration’s EAA experiment, has resigned from the board overseeing the district, and there is mounting pressure for the school to disassociate itself from the EAA.
Despite its abysmal record, Michigan’s superintendent of education Mike Flanagan has proposed expanding the EAA starting as early as January 2014. His proposal, one that would continue the process of dismantling public school districts in other parts of the state, House Bill 4369, has narrowly passed in the state Senate. State representatives tabled a final vote until after the holiday recess.
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