Privatization

Trump Using Amazon to Destroy the Post Office

April 22, 2018 By David Dayen, The American Prospect Educate! Donald Trump, Post Office, Privatization

The Amazon spat is a cover for the formal unveiling of a long-wished right-wing project to destroy the post office and have private industry take over its infrastructure, which taxpayers funded long ago. All the executive order really does is create a report; it would take a willing Congress to deliver the final hammer blow. But that report, with a government imprimatur, will become part of that right-wing wish list, living on for decades in think tanks and private shipping company boardrooms as a fervent dream. Let’s look at the executive order, which is a bit deceptive in its intentions. The policy section manages to mention that the Postal Service routinely earns the highest public approval rating of any agency in the federal government. But then it layers on the bad news: the decline in first-class mail volume—$65 billion in losses since 2009, an “unsustainable fiscal path.”

How Privatization Sparked The Massive Oklahoma Teacher Uprising

April 12, 2018 Valerie Vande Panne, Inthesetimes.com Resist! Privatization, Teachers, Uprising

OKLAHOMA—On April 2, an estimated 30,000 Oklahoma teachers walked out of schools across the state, some traveling hundreds of miles to the capital to protest. This momentum has not stopped: At the time of this writing, teachers are marching—by foot—from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. Across the state, they are planning to continue to mobilize, despite legislative opposition that has gone so far as to accuse the teachers of bussing in protestors from Chicago. To explain the reasons for the strike and ongoing mobilizations, most mainstream media have been marketing poverty porn: This teacher sells plasma. Another works six jobs to make ends meet. Some teachers in Oklahoma tell In These Times that major outlets are specifically only asking to speak with the poorest teachers.

Amid School Closures, Puerto Rico’s Teachers Fight Privatization

April 9, 2018 By Emily Wells, Truthdig.com Educate! Class Struggle, Privatization, Puerto Rico, Schools, Teachers

Puerto Rico’s Department of Education announced Thursday it will close 283 schools this summer after a sharp drop in enrollment, thought to be partly a result of displacement of families after Hurricane Maria. However, many teachers in the island’s school system say the issue might be more complicated and believe the system’s recent acceptance of charter schools and voucher programs could be contributing to the deprioritizing of public schools. The Associated Press reports that Puerto Rico is currently operating 1,100 public schools with 319,000 enrolled students. Puerto Rico’s Education Secretary Julia Keleher said of the closings, “We know it’s a difficult and painful process. For this reason, we’ve done it in the most sensible way, taking in consideration all the elements that could impact the daily lives of some families and the school communities in general. …

Low Energy, High Profits: How Privatizing Public Utilities Left Us All In The Dark

March 21, 2018 By Jon Jeter, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Privatization, Public Utilities

More than a generation after President Ronald Reagan barked at his subordinates, “Don’t just stand there; undo something!” government officials from South Africa to southern California have embarked upon an unprecedented dismantling of the public sector, hiring for-profit enterprises to manage everything from homeless shelters, to toll roads, parking meters, and utilities. While there are no known comprehensive studies, the best available evidence strongly suggests that consumers worldwide have never spent so much of their paycheck to park downtown, or for a liter of water, or a kilowatt of electricity. No demographic has been squeezed more than communities of color, which have borne the brunt of Wall Street’s restructuring of the economy, and its 40-year effort to hollow out the manufacturing industries that Blacks and Latinos have heavily relied on for jobs that pay a decent wage.

Trump Infrastructure Plan: Pay Tolls And Privatized Highways

January 31, 2018 By Steven Rosenfeld, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Infrastructure, Privatization, Transportation, Trump Administration

As President Donald Trump delivers his first State of the Union address Tuesday, pay close attention to his next big priority—an infrastructure plan—which, over time, could eclipse the trillion-dollar giveaway to the rich in the GOP’s just-passed tax plan. And track the response from Democrats, who will have to decide if they will back a plan drafted by privatization proponents, or if Democrats will represent the public and say no to years of paying off infrastructure bonds sold by Wall Street—tax free to investors—but eating up future tax revenues while imposing new user fees like highway tolls. “[The GOP-passed] tax cuts have slowly opened the door to Wall Street, construction giants, and global water companies, who see enormous potential for profits,” wrote Donald Cohen, president of In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization advocacy group.

Carillion Catastrophe & Limits Of Privatized Government

January 26, 2018 By Derek Royden, Nationofchange.org Educate! Corruption, Development, Government, Privatization

To say that British Prime Minister Theresa May has been having a rough time since rolling the dice on an early election and losing her party’s parliamentary majority in June, is probably a bit of an understatement. Headaches abound and multiply, from a widely covered speech being interrupted by a prankster, a falling back drop and a coughing fit, to Brexit ‘negotiations’ that seem to go nowhere, to buffoons in her own party, most comically the British version of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, who recently suggested building a bridge over the English Channel to connect France and the U.K., a feat of engineering that could only be matched by the U.S. President’s proposed border wall.

Inside The Deadly World Of Private Garbage Collection

January 7, 2018 Kiera Feldman, MLK50.com Educate! New Economy, Privatization, Worker Rights and Jobs

In New York City overall, private sanitation trucks killed seven people in 2017. By contrast, city municipal sanitation trucks haven’t caused a fatality since 2014. Pedestrians aren’t the only casualties, and Action isn’t the only company involved in fatalities. Waste and recycling work is the fifth most fatal job in America — far more deadly than serving as a police officer or a firefighter. Loggers have the highest fatality rate, followed by fishing workers, aircraft pilots and roofers. From the collection out on garbage trucks, to the processing at transfer stations and recycling centers, to the dumping at landfills, the waste industry averages about one worker fatality a week. Nationally, in 2016, 82 percent of waste-worker deaths occurred in the private sector. There are two vastly different worlds of garbage in New York City: day and night.

Puerto Fears School Privatization After Hurricane

November 11, 2017 Aída Chávez and Rachel M. Cohen, www.theintercept.com Educate! Education, Hurrican, Privatization, Puerto Rico

By Aída Chávez and Rachel M. Cohen for the Intercept. As Hurricane Maria departed Puerto Rico, leaving utter ruin in its wake, one community in Vieques picked itself out of the wreckage by focusing on getting school back open. “The community took out of their own time and said, ‘Let’s do this, we need to repair and reopen this,’ and we started working,” Josuan Aloyo told The Intercept in Spanish. “Cleaning out the trash and debris, and trying to find people that had the proper tools.” Right after the hurricane, Escuela Adrienne Serrano had 40 students, a number that steadily increased each week until they managed to bring 80 students back. But then, on October 18, Humacao School District’s regional director told Escuela Adrienne Serrano to suspend classes. The guerrilla campaign to open schools is running headlong into a separate effort from the top, to use the storm to accomplish the long-standing goal of privatizing Puerto Rico’s public schools, using New Orleans post-Katrina as a model.

Puerto Rican Teachers Occupy Education Secretary’s Office

November 11, 2017 Staff, www.fightbacknews.org Resist! Education, Privatization, Puerto Rico

By Fight Back News. San Juan, Puerto Rico - In an escalation in their fight to stop the government from closing or privatizing public schools in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation occupied Education Secretary Julia Keleher’s office Nov. 7 in an act of civil disobedience. 21 teachers were arrested standing up in defense of public education in Puerto Rico. All 21 teachers were released late the night of Nov. 7. In a press conference the morning of Nov. 8, the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation called on school communities to intensify the struggle to demand that their schools be reopened.

Co-opted Language: Decoding Ed Reform’s Sales Pitch

November 11, 2017 Wrench in the Gears, www.wrenchinthegears.com Educate! Corporatization, Education, Privatization

By Wrench In The Gears. The words used to promote “future ready” public education do not mean to reformers what they mean to you. This post is intended to pull back the curtain and expose the truth behind venture capital’s shiny promises of “personalized” tech-centered, data-driven learning. The list below features vocabulary that should be on everyone’s radar. Short definitions link to more detailed descriptions written from the point of view of the reformers-if they had to tell the truth about their plans to swap neighborhood schools for learning ecosystems.

Privatization Is Spooky, Say DC Streetcar Workers

November 3, 2017 Faiz Siddiqui, washingtonpost.com Resist! Privatization, Washington DC, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Faiz Siddiqui for The Washington Post - The Save Our System campaign of the nonprofit Americans for Transit announced Tuesday it has formed a 35-member roundtable of business leaders who say urgent changes are needed, arguing the service cuts — and Metro’s lack of dedicated funding –are “harming the local economy.” “In an era of unprecedented economic growth in the D.C. region, it is unacceptable for our local businesses to be forced into a position where we must choose between laying off employees, reducing our offerings, or closing our doors simply because our transit infrastructure is not properly maintained or funded,” reads the letter. “Unfortunately, the budgeting decisions made by [Metro] this past June are doing just that.” Rail fares increased a dime and bus fares increased a quarter this summer. In addition, dozens of bus routes were slashed or modified, and train frequencies were reduced on five of six Metro lines. The system also closes earlier. “Parking is a challenge in the U Street neighborhood, therefore we encourage Metro ridership to our patrons,” Will Eastman, founder of U Street Music Hall said in a statement. “But that’s a difficult thing to do when the nearest Metrorail station is closing hours before we do.”

Trump Advisers Propose Privatizing Native American Reservations

October 11, 2017 Staff, www.theindigenousamericans.com Educate! Indigenous Peoples, Privatization, Reservations, Trump Administration

By Staff of The Indigenous American - Native American reservations cover just 2 percent of the United States, but they may contain about a fifth of the nation’s oil and gas, along with vast coal reserves. Now, a group of advisors to President-elect Donald Trump on Native American issues wants to free those resources from what they call a suffocating federal bureaucracy that holds title to 56 million acres of tribal lands, two chairmen of the coalition told Reuters in exclusive interviews. The group proposes to put those lands into private ownership – a politically explosive idea that could upend more than century of policy designed to preserve Indian tribes on U.S.-owned reservations, which are governed by tribal leaders as sovereign nations. The tribes have rights to use the land, but they do not own it. They can drill it and reap the profits, but only under regulations that are far more burdensome than those applied to private property. “We should take tribal land away from public treatment,” said Markwayne Mullin, a Republican U.S. Representative from Oklahoma and a Cherokee tribe member who is co-chairing Trump’s Native American Affairs Coalition. “As long as we can do it without unintended consequences, I think we will have broad support around Indian country.” Trump’s transition team did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A US Charity Is Helping Big Business Take Indigenous Peoples’ Water In Mexico

October 9, 2017 Tamara Pearson, www.opendemocracy.net Resist! Mexico, Privatization, Water

By Tamara Pearson for OpenDemocracy - The town of Puebla is a miniature version of the world's inhumane water inequalities. Here, people living in the wealthy part of town get all the water they need, and Coca Cola gets first dibs on the best water in the state. Meanwhile, the rest us get running water for half an hour a week, or none at all. US religious charity Living Water claims it is trying to help the poor, but in reality it is only increasing such inequality by supporting further privatization of the water system. Right-wing senator Ted Cruz, VP of Goldman Sachs Heidi Cruz, and the owner of Halex Oil Corporation Mike Hale all make up the leadership of Living Water, which has also collaborated with Coca Cola on projects around Latin America. Living Water has some 132 projects here in Puebla state, and with the support of a state law that allows for private investment in water, has been encouraging big businesses to “solve” the water supply problems in poor rural areas. “Living Water went into indigenous towns like Ocotepec saying things like “Jesus says water is for everyone”. At first, people trusted them, but then they realized the charity has connections to Femsa (Coca Cola) and they protested. There were arrests, and the police stopped the protests,” Fernando told me.

#WeChoose Equity In Education Campaign

September 29, 2017 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Organize! Democracy, Education, Equity, Privatization

By Popular Resistance. Launched just after Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss was appointed in February, 2017, the #WeChoose campaign is fighting for equity in education. They write: "We are not fooled by the 'illusion of school choice.' The policies of the last twenty years, driven more by private interests than by concern for our children’s education, are devastating our neighborhoods and our democratic rights. Only by organizing locally and coming together nationally will we build the power we need to change local, state, and federal policy and win back our public schools. School closings are a key issue now because if our communities don’t have schools, we will have little to fight for. But if we only fight against closings, we won’t succeed at building the kind of sustainable school transformation that will carry us forward.

Stephen Hawking Blames Tory Politicians For Damaging NHS

September 12, 2017 Denis Campbell, www.theguardian.com Educate! Health Care, Medicine, Privatization

By Denis Campbell for The Guardian - Stephen Hawking has accused ministers of damaging the NHS, blaming the Conservatives in a passionate and sustained attack for slashing funding, weakening the health service though privatisation, demoralising staff by curbing pay and cutting social care support. The renowned 75-year-old physicist was speaking to promote an address he will give on Saturday outlining how he owes his long life and achievements to the NHS care he received, and setting out his fears for a service he believes is being turned into “a US-style insurance system”. The author of A Brief History of Time did not name any minister or political party in his general complaint, but he blamed a raft of policies pursued since 2010 by the coalition and then the Conservatives for enfeebling the NHS and leaving it unable to cope with the demands being placed on it. “The crisis in the NHS has been caused by political decisions,” he said. “The political decisions include underfunding and cuts, privatising services, the public sector pay cap, the new contract imposed on the junior doctors and removal of the student nurses’ bursary. “Failures in the system of privatised social care for disabled and elderly people has also placed additional burden on the NHS.”

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