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Privatization

Not In Our Nursing Homes

Merrill, WI — When the phone rang, it was 11 p.m. Still, Gene Bebel, farmer and retired school principal, picked up. It was Al Curtis, a one-time special education teacher and now resident at Pine Crest Nursing Home, a county-owned facility in Merrill, Wis., population 9,000. Curtis was angry: He’d gotten word that Pine Crest was on the chopping block, with the county board looking to privatize it. Bebel, age 84, leapt into action. He first contacted Judy Woller, who for years had run a support organization for victims of domestic violence in this rural county, and who had a reputation as someone who stood up for others. The two began to organize to save Pine Crest, a Lincoln County institution for nearly 70 years.

Are Railroads Slowly Committing Suicide?

North America’s remaining six major freight railroads appear to be committing slow motion suicide, according to testimony offered by rail customers, industry analysts and labor to regulators on the Surface Transportation Board (STB) at two days of public hearings held last month. STB Chairman Robert E. Primus contended that the industry’s growth has not measured up to all of the opportunities that were presented to it over the past seven years, after Wall Street activist investors ignited the fad of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), an operations model sold to investors as a Holy Grail by prioritizing squeezing out costs over growing the business, and which has persisted since gaining widespread acceptance among investors in 2017.

34 Million Seniors In Medicare Advantage Plans Face Rude Awakening

October 15 marks the first day of open enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans – a time that will deliver chaos and confusion for many of the 34 million seniors who depend on these plans to pay their healthcare bills. It’s yet another reminder that Medicare wastes billions of dollars funneling public money to private companies that are primarily driven by profit-seeking. Last year, more MA members than expected used their benefits to get necessary medical care. One might assume that companies would expect beneficiaries to use health care services. But after years of making outsized profits, the insurance companies that own these plans are reacting to this by downsizing plans, cutting benefits, increasing copays, and raising prescription drug deductibles. In other words, Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are being penalized for using the health care that they pay for.

Chris Hedges Report: The Secret History Of Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is a stealth ideology, one that at once dominates our lives, but exists in relative anonymity. Its effects have radically reconfigured western societies through deindustrialization, austerity, the privatization of utilities, postal services, schools, hospitals, prisons, intelligence gathering, police, parts of the military and railroads, along with spawning wage stagnation and debt peonage. It has deformed a tax system and gutted regulations to funnel wealth upwards, creating an income inequality that rivals pharaonic Egypt. Yet neoliberalism remains largely unmentioned and unexamined, especially by academia and a media that has been captured by a ruling class that profits from neoliberal doctrine.

Corporations Plunder US West’s Water Amid Worst Drought In 1,200 Years

Rural La Paz County, Arizona, positioned on the Colorado River across from California, is at the center of a growing fight over water in the American Southwest. At the heart of the battle is a question: Should water be treated as a human right, to be allocated by governments with the priority of sustaining life? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold and invested in for the greatest profits? As the West suffers its worst megadrought in 1,200 years, investors have increasingly eyed water as a valuable asset and a resource to be exploited. For years, investment firms have bought up farmland throughout the Southwest, drilling to new depths for their water-hungry crops and causing nearby wells to run dry.

Fighting Privatization Is Good For Mental Health

This spring, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a dramatic change in the city’s mental health policy, promising to reopen public clinics shuttered for more than a decade. Today, my administration is taking extraordinary steps to reverse the course and expand our city’s systems of mental health,” Johnson said May 30, outside the Roseland Mental Health Center. ​“We are standing here on the Far South Side to make it clear that we are prioritizing those who have been left behind and discarded by previous administrations.” In addition to Roseland, the city plans to reopen two more public clinics, in the Pilsen and West Garfield Park neighborhoods.

Football As A Commons

In his book Football in Sun and in Shadow, Eduardo Galeano pointed at the commercialization of the world’s most famous sport and its detachment from the grassroots. In it he says that “when the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play, got torn out by its very roots. Professional football condemns all that is useless and useless means not profitable.”2 Once again we saw this in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil where modern football appeared for what it really is: a mechanism serving the logic of constant capital accumulation, aggressive towards those at the bottom who cannot afford to participate in this celebration of modern consumerist culture.

Why More Doctors Are Joining Unions

With huge shifts over the past decade in the way doctors are employed — half of all doctors now work for a health system or large medical group — the idea of unionizing is not only being explored but gaining traction within the profession. In fact, 8% of the physician workforce (or 70,000 physicians) belong to a union, according to statistics gathered in 2022. Exact numbers are hard to come by, and, interestingly, although the American Medical Association (AMA) " supports the right of physicians to engage in collective bargaining," the organization doesn't track union membership among physicians, according to an AMA spokesperson.

Out LUMA!: Puerto Ricans Demand End To Privatization Of Energy

Hundreds of Puerto Ricans took to the streets of the capital, San Juan, on Wednesday July 3, to demand an end to the controversial contract signed by the government of Puerto Rico with the US-Canadian company LUMA Energy. During the march, organized by the Union of Electrical and Irrigation Industry Workers (UTIER), workers and activists shouted slogans like: “Privatized energy is rejected by the people”, “We demand electric energy because it is a human right”, and “They privatize energy and steal from us every day”, among others. According to the protesters, there has not been a significant improvement in the electricity service as promised with the privatization. Major blackouts and electricity connection problems continue.

Medicare Dis-Advantage: Overpayments And Inequity

Medicare Advantage—the privatized Medicare plans run by insurance firms but funded by the federal government—rips off taxpayers. On this there is little controversy. In March, MedPAC, Congress’s nonpartisan advisory board on Medicare policy, estimated that this year alone taxpayers will overpay Medicare Advantage plans by $83 billion—the savings to Medicare if all of those plans’ enrollees were instead covered by the traditional, fully public Medicare program. A 2022 New York Times exposé, “’The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions,” lays out the gory mechanisms—like fraudulent schemes (known as “upcoding”) to make patients look sicker on paper, which ups payouts from the government.

How To Privatize A Mountain

We had followed the trail for a half mile when it ran headlong into a fence. Signs nailed to the trees blared messages of unwelcome: ​“Private Property” and ​“No Forest Service Access.” They were emphatic: The trail ends here. Our map — the official map of the Custer Gallatin National Forest — said different: The trail continued for another seven or eight miles, a substantial orange line winding through the foothills of Montana’s Crazy Mountains. The signs, though, had the desired effect. On the other side of the fence, the trail grew faint. This trail, known as the Porcupine Lowline, had been marked on U.S. Forest Service maps for nearly a century — the earliest I’ve seen is dated 1925.

Greek Students Hit The Streets For Protests Against Private Universities

For the third consecutive week, Greek student and youth groups and other progressive sections hit the streets, denouncing the conservative New Democracy (ND) government’s bid to open private universities. On Thursday, January 25, massive protest rallies were held in more than 40 cities, including Athens. Tens of thousands of students from coordination committees, and members of the Students’ Struggle Front (MAS), Panspoudastiki KS, Communist Youth of Greece (KNE), parents’ associations, teachers’ unions, and university workers demanded that the government scrap the proposed bill.

Argentina is Not For Sale: Unions Respond to Privatization

Argentines weary of annual inflation soaring above 140% and a poverty rate that reached 40% have elected right-wing libertarian economist Javier Milei. On Sunday, November 19, 2023, Milei defeated Economy Minister Sergio Massa by a wide margin, 55.7% to 44.3%, winning all but three of the nation’s 24 provinces. He had campaigned on the promise to privatise state-owned enterprises, slash government spending, dollarise the economy, eliminate the Central Bank, and close key ministries, among them health and education. Milei is making the privatisation of the Argentine state-run oil company, YPF, a top priority.  “The first thing to do is to restructure it so that YPF can be “sold in a very favourable way for the Argentinians.”

The Fight To Stop The Sale Of The Only Municipally-Owned Railroad

When Norfolk Southern first proposed to buy Cincinnati’s publicly-owned 336-mile stretch of railroad for nearly one billion dollars in July 2021, it probably seemed like an easy and lucrative deal for both the corporation and city officials — a deal that got even sweeter as the price was eventually upped to $1.6 billion. Under the offer, the company would gain total control of a crucial link in the rail network stretching between Chicago and Atlanta. And the city would get a big chunk of cash for infrastructure and other spending. But as Cincinnati residents prepare to vote on a Nov. 7 referendum necessary to complete the deal, as required by the state constitution, it’s becoming clear that the railroad behemoth and city leaders may not get their way.

People Of Panama Are In The Streets: ‘Our Homeland Is Not For Sale’

Panama has woken up once again. For several days now, thousands of its citizens have taken to the streets against a nefarious mining contract that would not only put vast areas of the country in the hands of private companies, with headquarters in the North, but would also cause irreparable environmental damage. The unpopular signing of the mining contract with Minera Panama, a subsidiary of First Quantum Minerals, has lit a popular uprising in the country and forcing government of the Democratic Revolutionary to face a new social crisis. Just over a year ago, the Panamanian people were the protagonists of massive protests against President Laurentino Cortizo over the high cost of fuel and food.

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