Cindy Walsh blogs on weekdays and on weekends may talk about protests, rallies, events----or for now, the primary election. Monday I will speak to education reform.
WE THE PEOPLE MUST ENGAGE IN POLITICS TO TAKE BACK OUR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS. WE NEED TO SHAKE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS OUT OF POLITICS AND WE NEED TO SHAKE UNION LEADERSHIP THAT KEEPS BACKING THESE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS.
As we work to rebuild the democratic party from control by corporate neo-liberals to 80% of the democratic party base of labor and justice we need to work as well on how neo-liberalism has distorted our labor and justice organizations as well. Today I want to look at Maryland labor union leaders who think Anthony Brown is someone for whom to campaign while ignoring a candidate running as a labor and justice candidate. Don't be fooled----I am more qualified/skilled than Brown for the administrative tasks of Governor-----I simply an not connected to the Wall Street/corporate crowd. I have solicited the Maryland AFL-CIO for a few months before they declared for Brown so they know my campaign website and where these corporate neo-liberals are taking America. They are choosing to support global corporations and markets over what is best for their union membership.
Below you see the politicians in Maryland the MD AFL-CIO is supporting-----ALL OF THEM CORPORATE AND WALL STREET.....ANTHONY BROWN BEING THE WORST OF GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS. Let's take a look at where O'Malley/Brown has taken Maryland and where he intends to take it.
MARYLAND AFL-CIO ENDORSES THE MOST CORPORATE OF CANDIDATES AND EVEN ONES THEY KNOW ARE BEHIND MOVING TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT (TPP)
Folks, this is not sour apples for not having unions support my campaign. This is a serious problem in having unions supporting the most corporate neo-liberal of candidates who they know will kill labor and justice even more.
Anthony Brown will bust public sector unions out of the water, will continue to move towards ending teacher's unions and the privatization of education. He ignores the fact that labor laws are not enforced for goodness sake making wage theft in Maryland one of the highest.
Sarbanes (SR), Hoyer, Cummings all voted for NAFTA and breaking the Glass Steagall wall that killed unions and the middle-class and they are still in office in Maryland with union support. Ruppersberger is king of all that is NSA and spying/surveillance and drone warfare for goodness sake. Why would a union push for that kind of candidate? Dulaney is a Clinton investment banker!!!!! HELLO!!!!
Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland ran to give people another choice rather than allowing all of this to continue. I hope union membership look for who their leaders are supporting AND STOP ALLOWING THE SAME NEO-LIBERALS KILLING DEMOCRACY AND LABOR BE RE-ELECTED.
This makes unions look bad and it will cause membership to leave as unions do not protect their membership.
Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO
2014 Primary Election Endorsements
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GOVERNOR Anthony Brown
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Ken Ulman
COMPTROLLER Peter Franchot
ATTORNEY GENERAL Brian Frosh
MARYLAND STATEWIDE
MD District 1 No Recommendation
MD District 2 Dutch Ruppersberger
MD District 3 John Sarbanes
MD District 4 Donna Edwards
MD District 5 Steny Hoyer
MD District 6 John Delaney
MD District 7 Elijah Cummings
MD District 8 Christopher Van Hollen
District of
Columbia At Large: Eleanor Holmes-Norton
Education:
Brown is single-handedly behind privatization of K-community colleges and corporatizing our public universities. He has worked to end public education in Maryland. Public sector union busting....developing tiered education with working and middle-class trapped in vocational K-college with education based on online lessons and no access to student loans, financial aid, or grants because all money for education is now being used to subsidize corporate R and D and community colleges as Human Resources. Taxpayer are now literally paying the operational costs of corporate research and job training in Maryland while being told there is no money for funding public schools and public aid to students wanting to attend college. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE ON EDUCATION-----IT IS REPUBLICAN.
Health Care reform:
Brown is the face of the most private and profit-driven state health system in the nation. It literally ends public health and privatizes even the Medicaid-level care to private non-profits having no oversight and accountability. THERE IS NO PUBLIC SECTOR PROTECTING THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND FROM FRAUD AND ABUSE. Medicare and Medicaid lose almost 1/2 of spending to health industry fraud in Maryland and this reform simply dismantles more agencies of oversight leaving the public completely unprotected. Maryland is the only state in the nation opting out of Medicare oversight and simply integrates Medicare into these tiered systems with the goal of ending Medicare as a Federal program. Brown knows that these private systems are being built with the goal of corporate health plans, public sector health plans, and Medicare and Medicaid all falling into these tiered structures with 80% of Marylanders falling into Medicaid or Bronze----all preventative care that will be handled in clinics. This is what third world medical care looks like and life expectancy in America will drop immediately if these reforms are left in place. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE ON HEALTH CARE----IT IS REPUBLICAN.
Public Private Partnerships:
Handing public assets and services to corporations with taxpayers paying the cost of operations and infrastructure development to maximize profits, handing the power to write all public policy to that corporation, and busting yet another middle-class sector to poverty to end public sector unions. Brown is killing public education, public health, public transportation, handing our roads to corporate oversight, and they are now moving to hand Maryland water and waste to private corporations. AS OBAMA STATED IN HIS MEETING WITH GERMANIES MERKEL-----AMERICA IS BECOMING A CORPORATE STATE.....MEANING THAT CORPORATIONS RUN ALL OF OUR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. That has indeed been Obama major achievement and O'Malley/Brown's as well. Now, Gansler and Mizeur will advance this global corporate agenda as well-----but Brown is a Harvard guy-----Wall Street through and through just like Obama---- What other nation is a corporate state? CHINA.
SEE WHY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS WANT BROWN TO WIN SO MUCH AND WHY BROWN IS MENTIONED OVER AND OVER IN THE CORPORATE MEDIA? YOU BETCHA!
Corporate taxation:
There is not a corporate tax break or corporate tax reduction Brown won't advance while pushing higher taxes in the form of taxes, fees, and fines on the middle and working class. You see, neo-liberals and republicans don't care how much we pay in taxes-----as revenue falls from the end of taxing corporations and the rich----someone has to support not only running the state but subsidizing all the costs of business for global corporations. BOTH REPUBLICANS AND NEO-LIBERALS WILL KEEP RAISING TAXES ON THE WORKING/MIDDLE CLASS TO SUBSIDIZE CORPORATE PROFIT.
Using Wall Street financial instruments to fund state projects:
Did the American people learn from the 2008 crash that fraud and corruption permeates Wall Street and government coffers and individuals lost tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud often tied to Wall Street's partnering with government. Whether a privatized Fannie and Freddie ------whether financial instruments and credit bond leveraging-----all was found to be full of fraud costing Maryland hundreds of billions of dollars over a few decades....tens of billions last decade. So, why would Brown double-down on development projects funded by Wall Street? Do you know the economy is ready to collapse soon in a crash greater than 2008 and O'Malley/Brown has leveraged the state with debt so great as to create default on these public projects and send these public assets to corporate hands? Think of the billion dollar school building scheme in Baltimore handing our school buildings to what will become education businesses. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE, IT IS A REPUBLICAN STANCE.
Private and Public Sector Pensions:
Pensions were taken in 2007 from the then safety of the bond market and thrown into the collapsing stock market just to buoy the big banks. This was fraud and public malfeasance as pension funds lost almost 1/2 the value. These pensions need not only that lost value back but the gains from the recent BULL market that would have had these pensions flush with money. THERE IS NO PENSION SHORTFALL-----WE HAVE NOT RECOVERED MASSIVE PENSION FRAUD. Now, some states are actively pursuing these lost funds-----public and private sector unions fighting in court. In Maryland-----SILENCE. In fact, union leaders are simply agreeing to pension cuts that are not needed. This is not about increased cost for the taxpayer-----it is about recovery of pension fraud by Wall Street.
NOT ONE WORD FROM ANY DEMOCRATIC POL OR UNION LEADER IN MARYLAND. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE, IT IS A REPUBLICAN STANCE.
Privatizing public transportation:
VEOLA is one of the most ruthless global corporations in the world with headquarters in Africa. It is known for enslavement, worker abuse, profiteering and VEOLA has been brought to America to take most of public transportation in corporate neo-liberal states like Maryland. The goal is to end public transportation and control the travel of most people to that of moving to and from work. Public transportation was the greatest democratizing public policy in US history. It gives freedoms and it is a cornerstone of first world quality of life. We do not want to lose public transportation. Secondly, privatizing the Port of Baltimore took state revenue of a few billion dollars a year and sent it to private corporations. Now, the state revenue is a few hundred million in leases. We have allowed a Port of Baltimore plan of global shipping to kill the Chesapeake Bay with invasive species-----crabs, oysters, and clams taken by Asian mussels for example. Longshoremen are now being busted as yet again, middle-class wages move to poverty. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE----IT IS REPUBLICAN.
I could go on and on. One thing I want to say is that even conservative republicans do not like global corporate control as it is not free market-----it is naked capitalism and subsidizing winners and losers. When a system is rife with fraud and corruption----there are no free markets. So, when I say the above is republican policy I dare say even republicans hate these policies. The point is -----MARYLAND HAS NO DEMOCRATIC PARTY------IT HAS BEEN TAKEN BY GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS DISMANTLING OUR DEMOCRACY.
STOP ALLOWING A GLOBAL CORPORATE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PARTY CHOOSE OUR CANDIDATES! THIS IS WHY ALL CANDIDATES CANNOT GET MEDIA COVERAGE DURING PRIMARIES!
My final point is this ---------WHY WOULD A UNION LEADER SUPPORT ALL OF THIS? TAKING THE US FROM FIRST WORLD TO THIRD WORLD IS NOT IN THE UNION MEMBER'S INTEREST.
_________________________________________
Below you see my concern about labor union leadership-----they know the article below shows where neo-liberals are taking Europe and the US and it is very, very, very bad for unions and workers. The 1% laughs and says---unions can organize the poor.....well, unions will have no trust if they are leading the American people right into this third world structure. We need to hear Maryland union leaders shouting as neo-liberals try to take Maryland to third world status.
THIS IS THE BIG PICTURE OF WHAT OBAMA AND NEO-LIBERALS HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THESE SEVERAL YEARS. THEY ARE SIMPLY CONTINUING ONE LONG GLOBAL CORPORATE CONSOLIDATION OF ALL BUSINESSES STARTED WITH REAGAN/CLINTON AND NOW BUSH/OBAMA.
Neo-liberals and neo-cons are global corporate pols working against labor and justice and the union leaders are pushing neo-liberals!
The French transportation global corporation is taking all of US public transportation private and that is why US global corporations are in France taking its public transportation. That is what these Trans Pacific and Atlantic Trade deals are about-----giving global corporations the right to work in a nation under their own nation's laws. French VEOLA is headquartered in Africa and comes to America working in some cases----and soon all cases---as they do in Africa... see the Super Shuttle/BWI protests in Maryland to see TPP in action. So, having US corporations taking French transportation will allow US corporations to bust unions and labor laws in France as they are doing in the US right now. Meanwhile, the same people are major shareholders in both global corporations. They are busting labor and justice in a global takeover of all public sector. Obama calls it state corporations.
As you see French unions are calling for nationalization of public sector services taken private in an attempt to counter global corporate takeover-----in the US the union leaders are pushing the pols that want to privatize all that is public-----THAT IS NOT WHAT UNIONS DO! Remember, if we had nationalized the big banks at the collapse----we would have recovered massive fraud and the economy would be moving towards a health rather than ready to collapse yet again.
Revolting Europe On Europe, the left, labour and social movements Search
// you're reading... France The battle for France’s national industry jewel
Posted by revoltingeurope ⋅ May 1, 2014 ⋅
France has been in a state of shock since it was revealed last week the company that built the high speed TGV train and steam turbines for EDF’s nuclear reactors was about to be taken over by the yankees. Things scarcely improved when a desperate Paris sought to bring in the Germans for an alternative bid over the weekend.
That the fate of Alstom – one of France’s largest private sector employers and seen as central to the country maintaining its position among the world’s major manufacturing powers – is in the hands of two foreign engineering giants, General Electric and Siemens, is seen as another blow to French pride. It comes amid a string of high profile company closures and record 10% unemployment, a picture that has allowed the Economist magazine to brand the country as the ‘sick man of Europe’.
For the unpopular French socialist administration, gloating from the right-wing opposition UMP party that on their watch President Nicolas Sarkozy warded off foreign predators with a multi-billion-euro bailout and temporary nationalisation, is particularly embarrassing.
Try as they might, President Francois Hollande and his Industry minister Arnaud Montebourg are struggling to show the administration’s patriotic colours. To be sure, Montebourg was behind Yahoo’s failed bid in April last year to buy French video site Dailymotion, arguing that he would not let the country sell off one of its top startups. But their overall record over the past two years is somewhat mixed. For example, that national cause-celebre of the Florange steelworks in north-eastern France. On the campaign trail in 2012 they pledged to keep the blast furnaces going after Indian multinational Tata pulled the plug, only to let them shut.
French giant run from Connecticut
Montebourg objected on Monday to the possibility that Alstom “in three days, can decide to sell 75 percent of a national jewel behind the backs of the employees, of the government, of most of the board and of the senior executives.” The bid from General Electric raised a simple problem that “the main part of Alstom, 75 percent of the businesses, 65,000 employees in the world, is going to be run from Connecticut.”
Their aim is reportedly to keep Alstom’s decision-making centre in France and protect jobs and strategic energy interests. But so far, their only solution was to bring in the Germans, and to try and flog the plan to the French as an Airbus-style “European” project, which might have worked in the past but is less likely to get a sympathetic hearing in the current Euroskeptic climate where Germany is rightly accused of imposing misery on fellow Europeans.
For General Electric, this is an opportunity to expand in Europe – and retreat from its none-too-successful transformation from a real economy engineering firm to a Fortune 100 “diversified financial” company, which invested in the sub-prime market and got its fingers burnt (a track record the French ought to be aware of). For Siemens, it is about wiping out the competition, and above all blocking the US giant’s ambitions.
But how bad is it for Alstom and does it really need rescuing? The newspapers variously report that the company is ‘coming is under pressure because its main markets for power generation and rail equipment are expected to be weak in the next few years’, that its debts are mounting, that Alstom, and that with a stock market capitalisation of a mere $11 billion, it is too small alongside giants such as GE and Siemens ($268 billion and $144 billion respectively).
Unions point out the say Alstom’s problems are much overplayed. Its order books amount to 56 billion euros, a record. In its transport division this amounts to 5 years worth of work. In any case the issue of depressed orders from power utilities affects Alstom’s rivals too.
Cost of capital
For his part, in a tweet this week, former Presidential candidate Jean Luc Melenchon identified some more fundamental problems: the ‘cost of capital, austerity and neo-liberalism’. So for the sake of balance in this debate, let’s explore the radical leader’s tweet.
1. Cost of capital: Over the past four years 1.5 billion euros has been handed out to shareholders in dividends, according to unions. Compare that to 2.3 billion euros of debts, which while below the average level in French companies, could be substantially lower if the fat cat owners had less cream. And the biggest shareholder of all – Martin Bouygues, the billionaire chairman of family conglomerate Bouygues, with a 29.4% stake – wants to sell its share to spend some money on what today are considered more lucrative ventures, perhaps telecoms. A capitalist captain of French industry who wants to bail out, heading for what he hopes are calmer waters, leaving behind him his ship and crew with a gaping hole in the hull.
2. Austerity: Alstom’s orders are heavily reliant on public procurement, and in particular the French state. But cuts in budgets due to the financial crisis and its austerity response, and the longer term EU budget straight jacket (the deficit must be no more than 3% of GDP) have had their impact. If you consider that Alstom’s clients globally are also subject to austerity plans of varying intensity and/or suffering the international repercussions, then the company’s problems are very much a result of public spending cuts. These same policies of course are the ones hurting the public finances and so are stopping the government pursuing the option unions support – nationalisation, albeit on a temporary basis.
3. Neo-liberalism: in some respects Alstom will have benefited from freer trade and greater global competition, for example orders for plant from key client EDF, now one of Europe’s largest energy companies. But greater competition has put the company under intense pressure by exactly the types of companies from the world’s more powerful capitalist nations that want to gobble it up. The Sarkozy rescue reportedly only got past EU competition chiefs on condition work was handed out to competitors, resulting in thousands of French job losses.
Pro-market policies since the early 1980s, as well as driving concentration of ownership into ever fewer hands, have moved decision-making away from centres of democratic oversight, if not control, meaning an a ‘dirigiste’ industrial policy becomes increasingly difficult. Hollande needs not to forget the lessons of France’s relatively successful fight against globalisation which has left the country not only with a world beating rail system but with a volume car industry led by Peugeot and (whatever you think of nuclear) a formidable energy sector, and today, a rapidly growing green energy industry, led by companies like Alstom. These are sectors which provide the kind of high-skilled, high paid jobs that underpin any prosperous nation.
How about a ‘Franco-French’ solution?
So will it be a US takeover, a Franco-German solution or, as one trade union leader suggested would be best, a “Franco-French” future for Alstom? The latest in what one French newspaper has called a “national psychodrama” is that Alstom has accepted General Electric’s $17 billion offer to buy its energy division, despite government protestations. An apparent concession to ministerial pressure is that it is said to still be prepared to consider a counter-bid from Siemens. In the meantime, an independent committee will scrutinise the preferred bid from the US conglomerate and will report back at the end of next month.
Unions remain fearful that either proposed solution means big job losses and a breakup of the group. Instead they see a much more muscular role for the state in protecting French interests.
Says Christian Garnier, a CGT union rep at the company:
“For us, there is no preferred option. Whether the predator is American or German, we do not want either because in both cases it leads to the collapse and disappearance of the [Alstom] group. Siemens wants to eliminate a competitor. General Electric wants to get patents, know-how, the order book, and industrial facilities… Whatever the buyer, there will be job losses and closures. The true explanation of the proposed sale is that the largest shareholder Bouygues wants to make a capital gain by selling shares. We are being sacrificed for finance. We want the nationalization of the company. We want the state to stop its rhetoric and take action.”
Melenchon and his communist allies, who remain influential in parts of the trade union movement, say a state-led energy and transport “pole”, or cluster, is “the only guarantee of industrial independence for France”. This could be achieved, they suggest, by state-controlled train company SNCF, metro operator RATP, energy giant EDF and nuclear group AREVA buying shares in Alstom as part of ‘new strategic cooperation agreements that are industrially, financially and employment-friendly, as well as being socially useful.”
This is a plan that will no doubt fall foul of EU state-aid rules, and other economic orthodoxies of the day, but if I were a Frenchman it would get my vote.
WE THE PEOPLE MUST ENGAGE IN POLITICS TO TAKE BACK OUR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS. WE NEED TO SHAKE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS OUT OF POLITICS AND WE NEED TO SHAKE UNION LEADERSHIP THAT KEEPS BACKING THESE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS.
As we work to rebuild the democratic party from control by corporate neo-liberals to 80% of the democratic party base of labor and justice we need to work as well on how neo-liberalism has distorted our labor and justice organizations as well. Today I want to look at Maryland labor union leaders who think Anthony Brown is someone for whom to campaign while ignoring a candidate running as a labor and justice candidate. Don't be fooled----I am more qualified/skilled than Brown for the administrative tasks of Governor-----I simply an not connected to the Wall Street/corporate crowd. I have solicited the Maryland AFL-CIO for a few months before they declared for Brown so they know my campaign website and where these corporate neo-liberals are taking America. They are choosing to support global corporations and markets over what is best for their union membership.
Below you see the politicians in Maryland the MD AFL-CIO is supporting-----ALL OF THEM CORPORATE AND WALL STREET.....ANTHONY BROWN BEING THE WORST OF GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS. Let's take a look at where O'Malley/Brown has taken Maryland and where he intends to take it.
MARYLAND AFL-CIO ENDORSES THE MOST CORPORATE OF CANDIDATES AND EVEN ONES THEY KNOW ARE BEHIND MOVING TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT (TPP)
Folks, this is not sour apples for not having unions support my campaign. This is a serious problem in having unions supporting the most corporate neo-liberal of candidates who they know will kill labor and justice even more.
Anthony Brown will bust public sector unions out of the water, will continue to move towards ending teacher's unions and the privatization of education. He ignores the fact that labor laws are not enforced for goodness sake making wage theft in Maryland one of the highest.
Sarbanes (SR), Hoyer, Cummings all voted for NAFTA and breaking the Glass Steagall wall that killed unions and the middle-class and they are still in office in Maryland with union support. Ruppersberger is king of all that is NSA and spying/surveillance and drone warfare for goodness sake. Why would a union push for that kind of candidate? Dulaney is a Clinton investment banker!!!!! HELLO!!!!
Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland ran to give people another choice rather than allowing all of this to continue. I hope union membership look for who their leaders are supporting AND STOP ALLOWING THE SAME NEO-LIBERALS KILLING DEMOCRACY AND LABOR BE RE-ELECTED.
This makes unions look bad and it will cause membership to leave as unions do not protect their membership.
Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO
2014 Primary Election Endorsements
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GOVERNOR Anthony Brown
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR Ken Ulman
COMPTROLLER Peter Franchot
ATTORNEY GENERAL Brian Frosh
MARYLAND STATEWIDE
MD District 1 No Recommendation
MD District 2 Dutch Ruppersberger
MD District 3 John Sarbanes
MD District 4 Donna Edwards
MD District 5 Steny Hoyer
MD District 6 John Delaney
MD District 7 Elijah Cummings
MD District 8 Christopher Van Hollen
District of
Columbia At Large: Eleanor Holmes-Norton
Education:
Brown is single-handedly behind privatization of K-community colleges and corporatizing our public universities. He has worked to end public education in Maryland. Public sector union busting....developing tiered education with working and middle-class trapped in vocational K-college with education based on online lessons and no access to student loans, financial aid, or grants because all money for education is now being used to subsidize corporate R and D and community colleges as Human Resources. Taxpayer are now literally paying the operational costs of corporate research and job training in Maryland while being told there is no money for funding public schools and public aid to students wanting to attend college. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE ON EDUCATION-----IT IS REPUBLICAN.
Health Care reform:
Brown is the face of the most private and profit-driven state health system in the nation. It literally ends public health and privatizes even the Medicaid-level care to private non-profits having no oversight and accountability. THERE IS NO PUBLIC SECTOR PROTECTING THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND FROM FRAUD AND ABUSE. Medicare and Medicaid lose almost 1/2 of spending to health industry fraud in Maryland and this reform simply dismantles more agencies of oversight leaving the public completely unprotected. Maryland is the only state in the nation opting out of Medicare oversight and simply integrates Medicare into these tiered systems with the goal of ending Medicare as a Federal program. Brown knows that these private systems are being built with the goal of corporate health plans, public sector health plans, and Medicare and Medicaid all falling into these tiered structures with 80% of Marylanders falling into Medicaid or Bronze----all preventative care that will be handled in clinics. This is what third world medical care looks like and life expectancy in America will drop immediately if these reforms are left in place. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE ON HEALTH CARE----IT IS REPUBLICAN.
Public Private Partnerships:
Handing public assets and services to corporations with taxpayers paying the cost of operations and infrastructure development to maximize profits, handing the power to write all public policy to that corporation, and busting yet another middle-class sector to poverty to end public sector unions. Brown is killing public education, public health, public transportation, handing our roads to corporate oversight, and they are now moving to hand Maryland water and waste to private corporations. AS OBAMA STATED IN HIS MEETING WITH GERMANIES MERKEL-----AMERICA IS BECOMING A CORPORATE STATE.....MEANING THAT CORPORATIONS RUN ALL OF OUR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. That has indeed been Obama major achievement and O'Malley/Brown's as well. Now, Gansler and Mizeur will advance this global corporate agenda as well-----but Brown is a Harvard guy-----Wall Street through and through just like Obama---- What other nation is a corporate state? CHINA.
SEE WHY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS WANT BROWN TO WIN SO MUCH AND WHY BROWN IS MENTIONED OVER AND OVER IN THE CORPORATE MEDIA? YOU BETCHA!
Corporate taxation:
There is not a corporate tax break or corporate tax reduction Brown won't advance while pushing higher taxes in the form of taxes, fees, and fines on the middle and working class. You see, neo-liberals and republicans don't care how much we pay in taxes-----as revenue falls from the end of taxing corporations and the rich----someone has to support not only running the state but subsidizing all the costs of business for global corporations. BOTH REPUBLICANS AND NEO-LIBERALS WILL KEEP RAISING TAXES ON THE WORKING/MIDDLE CLASS TO SUBSIDIZE CORPORATE PROFIT.
Using Wall Street financial instruments to fund state projects:
Did the American people learn from the 2008 crash that fraud and corruption permeates Wall Street and government coffers and individuals lost tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud often tied to Wall Street's partnering with government. Whether a privatized Fannie and Freddie ------whether financial instruments and credit bond leveraging-----all was found to be full of fraud costing Maryland hundreds of billions of dollars over a few decades....tens of billions last decade. So, why would Brown double-down on development projects funded by Wall Street? Do you know the economy is ready to collapse soon in a crash greater than 2008 and O'Malley/Brown has leveraged the state with debt so great as to create default on these public projects and send these public assets to corporate hands? Think of the billion dollar school building scheme in Baltimore handing our school buildings to what will become education businesses. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE, IT IS A REPUBLICAN STANCE.
Private and Public Sector Pensions:
Pensions were taken in 2007 from the then safety of the bond market and thrown into the collapsing stock market just to buoy the big banks. This was fraud and public malfeasance as pension funds lost almost 1/2 the value. These pensions need not only that lost value back but the gains from the recent BULL market that would have had these pensions flush with money. THERE IS NO PENSION SHORTFALL-----WE HAVE NOT RECOVERED MASSIVE PENSION FRAUD. Now, some states are actively pursuing these lost funds-----public and private sector unions fighting in court. In Maryland-----SILENCE. In fact, union leaders are simply agreeing to pension cuts that are not needed. This is not about increased cost for the taxpayer-----it is about recovery of pension fraud by Wall Street.
NOT ONE WORD FROM ANY DEMOCRATIC POL OR UNION LEADER IN MARYLAND. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE, IT IS A REPUBLICAN STANCE.
Privatizing public transportation:
VEOLA is one of the most ruthless global corporations in the world with headquarters in Africa. It is known for enslavement, worker abuse, profiteering and VEOLA has been brought to America to take most of public transportation in corporate neo-liberal states like Maryland. The goal is to end public transportation and control the travel of most people to that of moving to and from work. Public transportation was the greatest democratizing public policy in US history. It gives freedoms and it is a cornerstone of first world quality of life. We do not want to lose public transportation. Secondly, privatizing the Port of Baltimore took state revenue of a few billion dollars a year and sent it to private corporations. Now, the state revenue is a few hundred million in leases. We have allowed a Port of Baltimore plan of global shipping to kill the Chesapeake Bay with invasive species-----crabs, oysters, and clams taken by Asian mussels for example. Longshoremen are now being busted as yet again, middle-class wages move to poverty. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STANCE----IT IS REPUBLICAN.
I could go on and on. One thing I want to say is that even conservative republicans do not like global corporate control as it is not free market-----it is naked capitalism and subsidizing winners and losers. When a system is rife with fraud and corruption----there are no free markets. So, when I say the above is republican policy I dare say even republicans hate these policies. The point is -----MARYLAND HAS NO DEMOCRATIC PARTY------IT HAS BEEN TAKEN BY GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS DISMANTLING OUR DEMOCRACY.
STOP ALLOWING A GLOBAL CORPORATE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PARTY CHOOSE OUR CANDIDATES! THIS IS WHY ALL CANDIDATES CANNOT GET MEDIA COVERAGE DURING PRIMARIES!
My final point is this ---------WHY WOULD A UNION LEADER SUPPORT ALL OF THIS? TAKING THE US FROM FIRST WORLD TO THIRD WORLD IS NOT IN THE UNION MEMBER'S INTEREST.
_________________________________________
Below you see my concern about labor union leadership-----they know the article below shows where neo-liberals are taking Europe and the US and it is very, very, very bad for unions and workers. The 1% laughs and says---unions can organize the poor.....well, unions will have no trust if they are leading the American people right into this third world structure. We need to hear Maryland union leaders shouting as neo-liberals try to take Maryland to third world status.
THIS IS THE BIG PICTURE OF WHAT OBAMA AND NEO-LIBERALS HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THESE SEVERAL YEARS. THEY ARE SIMPLY CONTINUING ONE LONG GLOBAL CORPORATE CONSOLIDATION OF ALL BUSINESSES STARTED WITH REAGAN/CLINTON AND NOW BUSH/OBAMA.
Neo-liberals and neo-cons are global corporate pols working against labor and justice and the union leaders are pushing neo-liberals!
The French transportation global corporation is taking all of US public transportation private and that is why US global corporations are in France taking its public transportation. That is what these Trans Pacific and Atlantic Trade deals are about-----giving global corporations the right to work in a nation under their own nation's laws. French VEOLA is headquartered in Africa and comes to America working in some cases----and soon all cases---as they do in Africa... see the Super Shuttle/BWI protests in Maryland to see TPP in action. So, having US corporations taking French transportation will allow US corporations to bust unions and labor laws in France as they are doing in the US right now. Meanwhile, the same people are major shareholders in both global corporations. They are busting labor and justice in a global takeover of all public sector. Obama calls it state corporations.
As you see French unions are calling for nationalization of public sector services taken private in an attempt to counter global corporate takeover-----in the US the union leaders are pushing the pols that want to privatize all that is public-----THAT IS NOT WHAT UNIONS DO! Remember, if we had nationalized the big banks at the collapse----we would have recovered massive fraud and the economy would be moving towards a health rather than ready to collapse yet again.
Revolting Europe On Europe, the left, labour and social movements Search
// you're reading... France The battle for France’s national industry jewel
Posted by revoltingeurope ⋅ May 1, 2014 ⋅
France has been in a state of shock since it was revealed last week the company that built the high speed TGV train and steam turbines for EDF’s nuclear reactors was about to be taken over by the yankees. Things scarcely improved when a desperate Paris sought to bring in the Germans for an alternative bid over the weekend.
That the fate of Alstom – one of France’s largest private sector employers and seen as central to the country maintaining its position among the world’s major manufacturing powers – is in the hands of two foreign engineering giants, General Electric and Siemens, is seen as another blow to French pride. It comes amid a string of high profile company closures and record 10% unemployment, a picture that has allowed the Economist magazine to brand the country as the ‘sick man of Europe’.
For the unpopular French socialist administration, gloating from the right-wing opposition UMP party that on their watch President Nicolas Sarkozy warded off foreign predators with a multi-billion-euro bailout and temporary nationalisation, is particularly embarrassing.
Try as they might, President Francois Hollande and his Industry minister Arnaud Montebourg are struggling to show the administration’s patriotic colours. To be sure, Montebourg was behind Yahoo’s failed bid in April last year to buy French video site Dailymotion, arguing that he would not let the country sell off one of its top startups. But their overall record over the past two years is somewhat mixed. For example, that national cause-celebre of the Florange steelworks in north-eastern France. On the campaign trail in 2012 they pledged to keep the blast furnaces going after Indian multinational Tata pulled the plug, only to let them shut.
French giant run from Connecticut
Montebourg objected on Monday to the possibility that Alstom “in three days, can decide to sell 75 percent of a national jewel behind the backs of the employees, of the government, of most of the board and of the senior executives.” The bid from General Electric raised a simple problem that “the main part of Alstom, 75 percent of the businesses, 65,000 employees in the world, is going to be run from Connecticut.”
Their aim is reportedly to keep Alstom’s decision-making centre in France and protect jobs and strategic energy interests. But so far, their only solution was to bring in the Germans, and to try and flog the plan to the French as an Airbus-style “European” project, which might have worked in the past but is less likely to get a sympathetic hearing in the current Euroskeptic climate where Germany is rightly accused of imposing misery on fellow Europeans.
For General Electric, this is an opportunity to expand in Europe – and retreat from its none-too-successful transformation from a real economy engineering firm to a Fortune 100 “diversified financial” company, which invested in the sub-prime market and got its fingers burnt (a track record the French ought to be aware of). For Siemens, it is about wiping out the competition, and above all blocking the US giant’s ambitions.
But how bad is it for Alstom and does it really need rescuing? The newspapers variously report that the company is ‘coming is under pressure because its main markets for power generation and rail equipment are expected to be weak in the next few years’, that its debts are mounting, that Alstom, and that with a stock market capitalisation of a mere $11 billion, it is too small alongside giants such as GE and Siemens ($268 billion and $144 billion respectively).
Unions point out the say Alstom’s problems are much overplayed. Its order books amount to 56 billion euros, a record. In its transport division this amounts to 5 years worth of work. In any case the issue of depressed orders from power utilities affects Alstom’s rivals too.
Cost of capital
For his part, in a tweet this week, former Presidential candidate Jean Luc Melenchon identified some more fundamental problems: the ‘cost of capital, austerity and neo-liberalism’. So for the sake of balance in this debate, let’s explore the radical leader’s tweet.
1. Cost of capital: Over the past four years 1.5 billion euros has been handed out to shareholders in dividends, according to unions. Compare that to 2.3 billion euros of debts, which while below the average level in French companies, could be substantially lower if the fat cat owners had less cream. And the biggest shareholder of all – Martin Bouygues, the billionaire chairman of family conglomerate Bouygues, with a 29.4% stake – wants to sell its share to spend some money on what today are considered more lucrative ventures, perhaps telecoms. A capitalist captain of French industry who wants to bail out, heading for what he hopes are calmer waters, leaving behind him his ship and crew with a gaping hole in the hull.
2. Austerity: Alstom’s orders are heavily reliant on public procurement, and in particular the French state. But cuts in budgets due to the financial crisis and its austerity response, and the longer term EU budget straight jacket (the deficit must be no more than 3% of GDP) have had their impact. If you consider that Alstom’s clients globally are also subject to austerity plans of varying intensity and/or suffering the international repercussions, then the company’s problems are very much a result of public spending cuts. These same policies of course are the ones hurting the public finances and so are stopping the government pursuing the option unions support – nationalisation, albeit on a temporary basis.
3. Neo-liberalism: in some respects Alstom will have benefited from freer trade and greater global competition, for example orders for plant from key client EDF, now one of Europe’s largest energy companies. But greater competition has put the company under intense pressure by exactly the types of companies from the world’s more powerful capitalist nations that want to gobble it up. The Sarkozy rescue reportedly only got past EU competition chiefs on condition work was handed out to competitors, resulting in thousands of French job losses.
Pro-market policies since the early 1980s, as well as driving concentration of ownership into ever fewer hands, have moved decision-making away from centres of democratic oversight, if not control, meaning an a ‘dirigiste’ industrial policy becomes increasingly difficult. Hollande needs not to forget the lessons of France’s relatively successful fight against globalisation which has left the country not only with a world beating rail system but with a volume car industry led by Peugeot and (whatever you think of nuclear) a formidable energy sector, and today, a rapidly growing green energy industry, led by companies like Alstom. These are sectors which provide the kind of high-skilled, high paid jobs that underpin any prosperous nation.
How about a ‘Franco-French’ solution?
So will it be a US takeover, a Franco-German solution or, as one trade union leader suggested would be best, a “Franco-French” future for Alstom? The latest in what one French newspaper has called a “national psychodrama” is that Alstom has accepted General Electric’s $17 billion offer to buy its energy division, despite government protestations. An apparent concession to ministerial pressure is that it is said to still be prepared to consider a counter-bid from Siemens. In the meantime, an independent committee will scrutinise the preferred bid from the US conglomerate and will report back at the end of next month.
Unions remain fearful that either proposed solution means big job losses and a breakup of the group. Instead they see a much more muscular role for the state in protecting French interests.
Says Christian Garnier, a CGT union rep at the company:
“For us, there is no preferred option. Whether the predator is American or German, we do not want either because in both cases it leads to the collapse and disappearance of the [Alstom] group. Siemens wants to eliminate a competitor. General Electric wants to get patents, know-how, the order book, and industrial facilities… Whatever the buyer, there will be job losses and closures. The true explanation of the proposed sale is that the largest shareholder Bouygues wants to make a capital gain by selling shares. We are being sacrificed for finance. We want the nationalization of the company. We want the state to stop its rhetoric and take action.”
Melenchon and his communist allies, who remain influential in parts of the trade union movement, say a state-led energy and transport “pole”, or cluster, is “the only guarantee of industrial independence for France”. This could be achieved, they suggest, by state-controlled train company SNCF, metro operator RATP, energy giant EDF and nuclear group AREVA buying shares in Alstom as part of ‘new strategic cooperation agreements that are industrially, financially and employment-friendly, as well as being socially useful.”
This is a plan that will no doubt fall foul of EU state-aid rules, and other economic orthodoxies of the day, but if I were a Frenchman it would get my vote.
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