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Privatization

New York City Tenants Battle Eviction

September 24, 2023 Paul DeRienzo, WestViews News. , , ,
West Side Congressman Jerry Nadler faced boos and catcalls September 6th at the Fulton Senior Center in Chelsea. Dozens of tenants of the Elliott-Chelsea and Fulton Houses jammed the meeting chanting “My house is not for sale,” and “no demolition.”  Residents of the two housing projects located between Ninth and Tenth Avenues are enraged by Nadler’s support of a plan to demolish and rebuild the half dozen buildings and replacing the public housing with a luxury 3500-unit development.  Three-quarters of the new units would rent at New York City’s astronomical market rate. One quarter would be reserved for low- and middle-income tenants.

Is Intellectual Property Turning Into A Knowledge Monopoly?

September 21, 2023 Prabir Purkayastha, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
The twentieth century saw the emergence of public funded universities and technical institutions, while technology development was concentrated in the R&D laboratories of large corporations. The age of the lone inventor Edison, Siemens, Westinghouse, Graham Bell had ended with the nineteenth century. The twentieth century was more about industry-based R&D laboratories, where corporations gathered together leading scientists and technologists to create the technologies of the future. In this phase, capital was still expanding production. Even though finance capital was already dominant over productive capital, the major capitalist countries still had a strong manufacturing base.

Groups In Queen City Fight To Stop Privatization Of Railroad

September 18, 2023 Railroad Workers United, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Railroad Workers United is working with local organizations to keep the nation's only municipally owned interstate mainline freight railroad in public hands. The Cincinnati Southern was chartered and built by the City of Cincinnati in the 19th century and has been run successfully for well over a century, historically being leased to a designated operator. Now, today's operator Norfolk Southern wants to take over the infrastructure outright. Citizens across the Queen City are organizing to maintain ownership and control of their railroad. Railroad workers stand with them in their struggle! As the November 7th vote nears, more and more citizens are questioning the wisdom of turning over the city's mainline freight artery between Cincinnati and Chattanooga to corporate outlaw Norfolk Southern.

Biden Infrastructure Report Pushes ‘Disastrous Water Privatization’

September 3, 2023 Julia Conley, Common Dreams. , , ,
An under-the-radar report by U.S. President Joe Biden's National Infrastructure Advisory Council should not go unnoticed, said the national watchdog Food & Water Watch on Thursday, as buried in the document is a call for the privatization of U.S. water systems, which progressive lawmakers and civil society groups have long opposed. On page 15 of the 38-page report, the advisory council said the federal government should "remove barriers to privatization, concessions, and other nontraditional models of funding community water systems in conjunction with each state's development of best practice."

The Dystopian Future Of US Public Education Is On Display In Houston

July 13, 2023 Jackie Anderson, Ruth Kravitz and Jay Malone, In These Times. , , , ,
On June 1, the state of Texas removed Elizabeth Santos, an elected school board trustee, from office and replaced her with Janette Garza Lindner, the candidate she defeated in December 2021. The ousting was part of a larger takeover of the Houston public school system by the Republican-led Texas state government — a process that began in late 2019 and became formalized June 1 when Mike Miles, a charter school owner whose school administrator license lapsed five years ago, was installed as the new superintendent of the district by Gov. Greg Abbott along with an appointed Board of Managers.

Attacks On Rural Letter Carriers; Devastating Restructuring Of USPS

July 8, 2023 A. Woodson, Hector Cordon and Philip Guelpa, World Socialist Web Site. , , , ,
More than 90,000 rural letter carriers for the United States Postal Service (USPS) are battling changes to their compensation which have led to massive pay cuts and longer workweeks. The replacement of the pre-existing method of calculating rural carriers’ hours and wages has resulted in wage cuts as high as $20,000 a year in some cases. Rural carriers’ attempts to challenge and prove any discrepancies between their actual work and what is calculated by the new system have been derailed by the USPS’s refusal to disclose the year-long electronic collection of data used by the system which they alone control.

UFT Contract Would Expand Virtual Learning And School Privatization

June 25, 2023 Jai Geller and Jia Lee, Left Voice. , , , ,
As if responding to Betsy Devos’ admonition that “K-12 education for too long has been very static and very stuck,” Department of Education Chancellor David Banks declared last week that the City’s new Tentative Contract Agreement with the UFT fulfilled Mayor Adams’ challenge to “reimagine education” and that “the days of simply working … in the four walls of the classroom are over.” To this end, New York City will become “the first major public-school system to develop, implement and expand high-quality virtual learning programs for instruction and related services” by creating a centralized virtual learning program and expanding school-level virtual learning to all high schools by the 2026-27 school year.

Wisconsin Governor Signed Largest School Voucher Expansion In 30 Years

June 24, 2023 Samantha Winslow, In These Times. , , ,
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a budget package Tuesday that includes what could be the biggest voucher school expansion since the program started 30 years ago. You would be excused for having flashbacks to the work of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who championed school privatization and greatly expanded the state’s voucher program in 2014. The deal that Evers, a Democrat, supported is a package of bills that were signed along with the state budget and which could increase private school voucher enrollment by 40% statewide. It could effectively be such a strong push toward privatization that it would put the state’s public schools in crisis, pulling students and the funding the goes with them out of already cash strapped public school districts.

England To Trial A Basic Income For The First Time

June 11, 2023 Curtis Daly, The Canary. , , ,
England is about to pilot a basic income scheme for the first time. Thirty people will receive £1600 a month for two years. The trial, which will take place in central Jarrow and East Finchley, seeks to find out what effects this will have on the lives of the participants. Will Stronge, director of research from thinktank Autonomy, said: All the evidence shows that it would directly alleviate poverty and boost millions of people’s wellbeing: the potential benefits are just too large to ignore. Indeed, this seems like an interesting and positive scheme to tackle the hardship millions of people face in this country. However, unsurprisingly, debates within the corporate media have included baseless criticism and personal attacks.

Privatization Of Health Care By Unitedhealth Group

May 7, 2023 John P. Geyman, Counterpunch. , , , , ,
Privatization of public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid has been proceeding rapidly in recent years with little coverage by the media of its harms to patients, the public and taxpayers. This article has four goals: (1) to bring brief historical perspective to this trend in the U. S.; (2) to shed light on the experience over the last 12 years of profiteering by UnitedHealth Group, now the largest U. S. private health insurer; (3) to describe negative impacts on our health care system; and (4) to briefly consider lessons that can be learned from this concerted and stealthy exploitation of the public interest through the corporate greed of UnitedHealth.

World Health Day 2023: Continuing The Struggle For Health

April 8, 2023 Deepika Joshi and Leonardo Mattos, People's Dispatch. , , ,
The celebration of the 75th World Health Day this April 7, amidst the WHO’s call for “health equity in face of unprecedented threats”, is yet another reminder of how we find ourselves in a bleaker world than we hoped when the World Health Organization was first formed. As poverty rates grow, global health inequities and inequalities between countries have been exacerbated in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The failure to learn from the pandemic, or to respond to the climate crisis, doesn’t seem to fuel a sense of urgency among the international community, especially countries in the Global North. Sexual health and reproductive rights continue to be stripped away.

Illuminating Report On Veterans Administration’s Staffing Shortages

April 3, 2023 Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. , , ,
Today, the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, in association with the American Federation of Government Employees, released a comprehensive report on the urgent struggles of thousands of VA employees, and how they threaten to impede the future of America’s best healthcare and benefits systems. Entitled “Disadvantaging the VA: How VA Staff View Agency Privatization and Other Detrimental Policies,” the 74-page report leans on dozens of interviews, hundreds of written comments, and thousands of survey responses, as well as Congressional testimony, federal watchdog reports, and other previous investigations. It shows how a series of detrimental policies are inhibiting the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and the Veterans Benefit Administration (VBA) from maintaining its preeminence in providing unparalleled veterans’ services.

‘He Sold Our Schools Off To The Highest Bidder’

April 2, 2023 David I. Backer, In These Times. , , ,
Shakeda Gaines, former president of the Philadelphia Home and School Council, remembers when Paul Vallas began his term as superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia in 2002. Vallas ​“brought in his corporate vultures and his spreadsheets and tried to sell us a bill of goods,” Gaines says. Vallas, known for his contempt of teachers unions and his ability to capitalize on disasters to upend public school systems, has gone into Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Haiti, Chile, and Bridgeport, Conn., to hawk himself as a pragmatic problem solver, someone who will turn around distressed schools. Despite this brand, instead of fixing disasters, Vallas often has a hand in creating them.

Housing Crisis Pushes Once-Thriving Co-op Movement Back Into Spotlight

April 1, 2023 Paul Weinberg, The Breach. , , , ,
When Eric Tuck lost two jobs at separate times in the 1980s, the Greenhill housing co-operative where he lived provided emergency assistance to him and his family. First, Tuck was laid off from National Steel in Hamilton, Ont. Two years later, he was laid off again from Firestone Tire Factory, only six months after he’d taken the job. Tuck was the sole breadwinner back then, raising two young children with his partner. Thrown out of work, he was forced to go on unemployment insurance, which was not enough to supplement his lost wages. But his co-op came through—both times—with a subsidy to reduce his housing charge. The Greenhill co-op was more than just an economic lifesaver.

Report Details Private Equity’s Stranglehold On US Healthcare

March 26, 2023 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. , , ,
Private equity's ownership of U.S. healthcare providers is incompatible with the needs and best interests of patients and should be checked with federal legislation, according to a report published Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. Critics of for-profit care have long decried private equity's focus on maximizing returns through practices including slashing staff, surprising patients with astronomical bills, and eschewing low-margin care upon which vulnerable populations rely. The new report—authored primarily by Public Citizen healthcare policy advocate Eagan Kemp—examines investment firms' impact on more than a dozen healthcare sectors, from reproductive health through end-of-life care.
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