Open Source/ COMMONS
this began in the info realm, but is extended to the commons in terms of common good, water,air but also more abstract like democracy and trust; evil is its perversion (grabbing the public asset for private greed, or undermining the public's ability to defend/heal itself, cf crypto
seems underdeveloped 819
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aha: recall family foundations were formed in the 1st place as a tax shelter and their primary/initial purpose was to undermine the estate tax (eg mars); kochs weaponized/politicized $; at odds with self made man free mkt MERITOCRACY BS
kochs built a shadow GOP (then rented out trump admin, more progress in X years than y years;)
waltons #1 in charter schools, // devos:public schools the great equalizer, source of meritocrisy); betsy supports scam colleges and stops debt relief.
11/19 public schools are the commons; they are human infrastructure; JC CC allow MC or level up to 4 yr college MODERATION vs 1119 riots in multiple countries b/c young ppl do not see a future/shot
mercers gave us trump and brexit (the end of the brit empire?!)
scaife gave us crooked hillary
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aha: soc safety net is buffer, commons, ~ inequality, mod
https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-want-to-cut-social-security-behind-closed-doors/
no lnx
Republicans want to cut Social Security ‘behind closed doors’
Written by Nancy J. Altman / Independent Media Institute September 5, 2019
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) just said out loud what Republican politicians usually only talk about in secret meetings with their billionaire donors: The GOP wants to cut our earned Social Security benefits—and they want to do it behind closed doors so that they don’t have to pay the political price.
At a recent town hall, Ernst stated that Congress needs to “sit down behind closed doors” to “address Social Security.” She vaguely asserted, “A lot of changes need to be made in this system going forward.” But, she complained, if these changes were proposed in public, she would be accused of pushing “granny over a cliff.” It is not hard to figure out what “changes” she has in mind.
There are many “changes” that should be made to strengthen Social Security and make it even better than it already is. But none of those have to be done secretly.
Congress should address our nation’s looming retirement income crisis by increasing Social Security’s modest benefits. Congress should combat rising income and wealth inequality, by requiring the wealthiest Americans to contribute to Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us.
Congress should enact caregiver credits for those who perform essential but unpaid labor caring for their children, aged parents, and other family members. Those crucial caregivers should receive credit toward future Social Security benefits so they don’t retire into poverty.
In addition, Congress should update the way that Social Security’s benefits are adjusted so that they reflect the high health care and prescription drug costs that beneficiaries experience. The annual cost of living adjustment is intended to keep benefits from eroding, to allow beneficiaries to tread water. But without updating the measure of inflation, those benefits are losing value each year.
Those are just some of the improvements that Congress should make. But those are not the “changes” Ernst has in mind, because none of those changes need to be done behind closed doors. Numerous pieces of legislation proposing those changes have been introduced in Congress—though none by Senator Ernst or her Republican colleagues.
Indeed, 210 House Democrats have co-sponsored the Social Security 2100 Act, which expands Social Security’s modest benefits, while ensuring that all benefits can be paid in full and on time through the year 2100 and beyond.Every Democratic presidential candidate opposes cutting Social Security benefits, and nearly all support expanding them. Meanwhile, neither Donald Trump nor a single Republican member of Congress is sponsoring or cosponsoring any legislation that increases benefits or even ensures that they can be paid in full and on time beyond 2035.
No action is the same as supporting cuts.As Representative John Larson (D-CT), chairman of the House’s Social Security Subcommittee and the author of the Social Security 2100 Act, has explained, “The hard truth of the matter is that Republicans want to cut Social Security, and doing nothing achieves their goal.”
Larson and his Democratic colleagues are calling Republicans’ bluff. Under Democratic control, Congress has held numerous hearings on Social Security and the importance of protecting and expanding it. Larson and his Democratic colleagues are planning to have a recorded, public vote on the Social Security 2100 Act this fall.
The legislation has enough votes to pass the House of Representatives. But don’t expect Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to bring it to a vote in the Senate. And don’t expect Senator Ernst or her other Republican colleagues to urge him to do so.
With respect to Social Security, just as with the issue of legislating background checks and other overwhelmingly popular commonsense legislation to reduce the epidemic of gun violence, Republican politicians will not say what they are for. In the case of gun legislation, they block action. In the case of Social Security, they block action unless Democrats agree to go behind closed doors so the public doesn’t know who pushed the cuts.
We should not let Republican politicians get by with platitudes about “saving” and “fixing” Social Security. And we certainly shouldn’t let them hide behind closed doors and undermine our Social Security.
As polarized as the American people are over many issues, we are not polarized about Social Security. Republicans, Democrats and Independents, of all ages, races and genders, overwhelmingly agree. We understand that Social Security is more important than ever. We overwhelmingly reject any cuts to its modest benefits.
The only group that disagrees is Republican Party donors. As an ideological matter, they hate Social Security because it puts the lie to their assertions that government can’t work. They do not want to pay their fair share. Indeed, they would love to get their hands on the money now flowing to Social Security.
When President George W. Bush proposed destroying Social Security by privatizing it, the American people overwhelmingly rejected his plan. But Republican politicians learned the wrong lesson. As unpopular as Bush’s proposal was, he was at least willing to advocate for it publicly. Rather than recognize the proposal was the problem, Ernst and her fellow Republicans think the problem was being honest with the American people.
Like Bush, they want to enact a Social Security proposal that is deeply unpopular. But unlike Bush, they want to enact it in the dark of night. Fortunately, their Democratic colleagues won’t let them get away with that undemocratic act. Nor should the American people.
All of us who have a stake in Social Security—which is every one of us—should insist that those seeking our vote tell us if they support expanding or cutting Social Security. If they refuse to tell us, if they ramble on about their desire to “save” or “fix” or “strengthen” Social Security in secret, we should draw the obvious inference: They want to cut Social Security. We should use the election to ensure they do not have the power to do that—and certainly not behind closed doors.
Nancy J. Altman is a writing fellow for Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She has a 40-year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition. Her latest book is The Truth About Social Security. She is also the author of The Battle for Social Security and co-author of Social Security Works!
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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aha schools public are part of commons, target for pvt cf voucher, charter
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new 819
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-the-koch-brothers-co-opted-minority-groups-in-a-push-for-a-profit-based-approach-to-education/
no lnx
How the Koch brothers co-opted minority groups in a push for a profit-based approach to education
Written by The Conversation August 23, 2019
Under the mantra of civil rights, billionaires such as Eli Broad, Bill Gates and the Koch Brothers and the powerful corporate-funded lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are using venture philanthropy and the political process to press for school reforms in the United States.
The ongoing Vergara law case in California in which nine students are suing the state over teacher tenure laws, is backed by Student Matters, a non-profit that has received donations from the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation, run by the Walton family that founded supermarket chain Wal-Mart.
The driver behind the case is a campaign to loosen labour rules in order to make it easier to fire “bad” teachers, under the argument that their presence discriminates against disadvantaged children. Opponents of the case argue that it is a blatant attempt to change the conversation from the realities of California’s divestment in education — the state is 46th in the nation in spending per student in 2010-11, and 50th in the number of students per teacher.
What these organisations and other others such as the the Koch brothers, Bradley Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Students First and Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education – all supposedly supporters of school reform – have as a common denominator is a vision of a profit-based market approach to education.
School vouchers are one of the primary education reform policy approaches pressed by the billionaires and the business lobby. Voucher programs, which provide public funding for students to attend private schools, have become more popular in the US in the past several decades.
Most existing school voucher programs in the US have been small-scale and targeted at low-income students, such as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program, and the Washington DC program. But there has recently been a push to expand programs to include students from middle income families.
Notably, a small, but vocal cadre of civil rights advocates from US minority groups have allied with the billionaires and business lobby via groups such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), pushing for school vouchers and other neoliberal education reforms.
Have they been hoodwinked or led astray? It is understandable that minority groups are searching for alternatives to the status quo, as the US has a history of consistently and purposefully underserving students of colour. In fact, we still do. For example, one wealthy suburban district in Texas recently spent nearly $120m on a football stadium and performing arts centre, while poorer districts have struggled to afford adequately trained and certified teachers.
School reform advocates in the US are often a motley alliance between civil rights proponents whose primary focus is greater opportunity for historically underserved students of colour, and neo-liberals who desire to reduce the role of the state in public education and shift the education system towards a profit-making enterprise.
Vouchers aren’t the answer
In the case of vouchers, the long-term impact on civil rights is already known. A decade of peer-reviewed research in Chile has demonstrated that a voucher market has increased inequality for students living in poverty and closed public schools.
A voucher approach escalates inequality because capital rules the day. Test scores become negotiable capital in addition to hard currency. Students without this capital are denied access to attractive schools because there are other individuals in the market that are more desirable to schools.
School choice becomes exactly that in a voucher system — schools choose. So, if you are a proponent of school “choice” and interested in civil rights and equity —- vouchers will not help you realise your goals. But if you are a neoliberal, you are in business.
How can we conceive choice and education reform differently? If you don’t like the choices that have been forced upon you for decades, then you are going to want access to alternatives. Are vouchers the choice parents should have? Turns out that vouchers show very little promise in analyses of peer-reviewed research literature for improving student success or equity at large.
However, there are gold standard reforms in the peer-reviewed research literature that show at much more impact on student success than vouchers. These include full-day pre-kindergarten education. Underserved communities should have access to empirically-supported choices rather than ideological ones. Parents in Milwaukee and elsewhere should also be able to choose schools that are attractive and well-resourced like the private and public schools across the tracks or river or highway. Why don’t US high-poverty communities have these choices?
Pressure on public school funding
In Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Texas we have seen billions of dollars in fiscal cuts to schools while school vouchers, Teach For America, and charter schools are peddled by ALEC and the usual billionaire proponents as an alternative to the restoration of school funding for public schools.
In Texas and elsewhere, legislatures have used politics to force inadequate funding of US public schools while at the same time arguing that the schools are inadequate. The response from coalitions of citizens across the US has been a slew of lawsuits aimed at states over inadequate public funding to force politicians to respond.
Colin Powell once said, “If you break it you own it.” That’s the end game for these education “reformers” backed by billionaires and corporations. First, they seek to transfer the cost of education from the state budget to the family, household budget. Second, civil rights and equity are not their true priorities.
Instead these special interests are supporting vouchers and other neoliberal reforms contrary to the interests of students of colour. In doing so they will shift the US education system to maximise corporate profits, while limiting democratic control of public schools.
These same billionaire “reformers” have co-opted the equity discourse by offering a carrot to minority groups. This can sometimes be in the form of millions of dollars as in the case of the Black Alliance for Educational Options and Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. But all this hides the inequity that profit-based approaches to education foment.The Conversation
By Julian Vasquez Heilig, Associate Professor of Educational Policy and Planning, University of Texas at Austin.
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819 art'l yesterday ceo ~ profit max, vs ceo$ max, //?
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/financial-journalist-explains-why-shareholder-democracy-and-milton-friedman-economics-have-failed-miserably/
no lnx
Financial journalist explains why ‘shareholder democracy’ and Milton Friedman economics have failed miserably
Written by Alex Henderson August 20, 2019
“Shareholder democracy” is an economic theory that was aggressively promoted by the late Milton Friedman, the conservative University of Chicago economist who served as an adviser to President Ronald Reagan as well as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.According to “shareholder democracy,” a corporation’s #1 responsibility is to its shareholders — not the good of society at large — and “shareholder democracy” as preached by Friedman influenced everything from Reaganomics to neoliberalism to the Libertarian Party. But Andrew Ross Sorkin (author of the 2009 book “Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves”) explains in a New York Times article that in 2019, more and more Americans are rethinking “shareholder democracy” and coming to view it as detrimental to the greater good.
“For nearly a half-century,” Sorkin explains, “Corporate America has prioritized, almost maniacally, profits for its shareholders. That single-minded devotion overran nearly every other constituent, pushing aside the interests of customers, employees and communities
Friedman, Sorkin notes, scoffed at the concept of corporate responsibility, asserting in 1970, “What does it mean to say that ‘business’ has responsibilities? Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.”
But in 2019, according to Sorkin, one is seeing a resurgence of what used to be called “managerialism” — essentially, a belief that corporations need to be concerned about employees, communities and society’s greater good and not simply shareholders. There were hints of managerialism, Sorkin says, in aBusiness Roundtable statement released on Monday — when leaders of major companies ranging from Apple and Amazon to JPMorgan Chase issued a joint statement noting that employees and communities should matter to companies along with shareholders.
Sorkin attributes this statement in part to “public outrage” and a growing populism.
“Americans mistrust companies to such an extent that the very idea of capitalism is now being debated on the political stage,” Sorkin asserts. “Populism has been embraced on both ends of the political spectrum, whether in the trade protectionism of President Trump or the social-net supremacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders.”
Indeed, Sanders’ popularity shows a shift in the United States’ political landscape. The self-described “democratic socialist” has achieved much greater prominence in U.S. politics than he had in the 1990s or 2000s, and recent polls on the 2020 Democratic presidential primary have found him battling for the #2 position with the decidedly liberal/progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Reflecting on the effects of “shareholder democracy,” Sorkin explains that in the past, “Shareholders and, in turn, a new class of investors known as corporate raiders convinced executives to slash any and all fat from their budgets or risk being taken over or voted out. Layoffs increased, research and development budgets were cut, and pension programs were traded for 401(k)s. There was a rush of mergers driven by ‘cost savings’ that grabbed headlines while profits soared and dividends increased.”
The debate on “corporate democracy” versus “managerialism,” Sorkin stresses, will rage on — and not everyone in the business world agrees with the Business Roundtable statement issued on Monday.
“For whatever progress may have been made Monday, it is hardly clear the debate is over,” Sorkin explains. “In fact, the fight for corporate identity is just beginning.”
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by civil society i mean primarily 1) organization for good governance, fair elections, protection of the commons, eg public citizen pirgs
but also 2) opposite of putman bowling alone?
in terms of latter, scam pacs are "corrosive" because when (elderly) find they have been defrauded by cash extraction scheme, it makes them less likely to want to participate in democracy/ the work of civil society. that's a kind of commons?
in a related matter, Putin active measures are designed to degrade out faith in institutions (and rw gop libtards work on degrading trust in gov't in particular) and in each other; polarization --> polarysis.
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519 AHA: THE SOLUTION IS REPAIR THE COMMONS (including rhwt. lang expertise ~ agnotology
wicked smart henry g
https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/our-culture-of-ignorance-has-made-possible-the-rise-of-a-terrible-new-political-blend-neoliberal-fascism/
The ghosts of a fascist past are with us once again resurrecting the discourses of hatred, exclusion and ultra-nationalism in countries such as the United States, Hungary, Brazil, Poland, Turkey and the Philippines. In addition, right-wing extremist parties are on the move politically in Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Germany. The designers of a new breed of fascism increasingly dominate major political formations and other commanding political and economic institutions across the globe.They have infused a fascist ideology with new energy through a right-wing populism that constructs the nation through a series of racist and nativist exclusions, all the while feeding off the chaos produced by neoliberalism.
Their nightmarish reign of misery, violence and disposability is legitimated, in part, in their control of a diverse number of cultural apparatuses that produce a vast machinery of manufactured consent. This reactionary educational formation includes the mainstream broadcast media, digital platforms, the Internet and print culture, all of which participate in an ongoing spectacle of violence, the aestheticization of politics, the legitimation of opinions over facts, and an embrace of a culture of ignorance. Under the reign of this normalized architecture of neoliberal ideology, literacy is now regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data, and science is confused with pseudo-science. Chris Hedges is right to argue that both the rule of law and the institutions that make democracy possible are being undermined.He is worth quoting at length:
The mechanisms that once made democracy possible have withered and died. We no longer have elections free of corporate control; real legislative debate; an independent press rooted in verifiable fact that lifts up the voices and concerns of the citizens rather than peddling conspiracy theories such as “Russiagate” or cheerleading for disastrous military interventions and occupations; academic institutions that vigorously examine and critique the nature of power; or diplomacy, negotiation, détente and compromise.Puffed up by self-importance, intoxicated by the ability to wield police and military power, despots and their grotesque courtiers are freed with the collapse of the rule of law to carry out endless vendettas against enemies real and imagined until their own paranoia and fear define the lives of those they subjugate. This is where we have come, not because of Trump, who is the grotesque product of our failed democracy, but because the institutions that were designed to prevent tyranny no longer function.
Ignorance has lost its innocence and is no longer synonymous with the absence of knowledge. It has become malicious in its refusal to know, to disdain criticism, and render invisible important social issues that lie on the side of social and economic justice. James Baldwin was certainly right in issuing the stern warning in “No Name in the Street” that “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
...
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University of California’s break with the biggest academic publisher could shake up scholarly publishing for good
MacKenzie Smith, University of California, Davis
Digital publishing hasn't resulted in the free and open access to information many envisioned. Universities are increasingly fed up with a system they see as charging them for their own scholars' labor.
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https://www.c-span.org/video/?441169-1/the-common-good
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
The Common Good
Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich talks about the economic and social cycles societies experience and their effect on the common good.
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http://www.alternet.org/environment/activists-shut-down-nestle-water-bottling-plant-sacramento
Environmental and human rights activists, holding plastic “torches” and “pitchforks,” formed human barricades at both entrances to the Nestlé Waters bottling plant in Sacramento at 5:00 a.m. on Friday, March 20, effectively shutting down the company's operations for the day.
Members of the “Crunch Nestlé Alliance" shouted out a number of chants, including ”We got to fight for our right to water,” “Nestlé, Stop It, Water Not For Profit," and “¿Agua Para Quien? Para Nuestra Gente.”
The protesters stayed until about 1 pm, but there were no arrests.
Representatives of the alliance said the company is draining up to 80 million gallons of water a year from Sacramento aquifers during a record drought. They claim Sacramento City Hall has made it possible through a "corporate welfare giveaway."
“This corporate welfare giveaway is an outrage and warrants a major investigation,” Coalition spokesperson Andy Conn said. “For more than five months we have requested data on Nestlé water use. City Hall has not complied with our request, or given any indication that it will. Sacramentans deserve to know how their money is being spent and what they’re getting for it. In this case, they’re getting ripped off.”
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AlterNet [1] / By David Sirota [2]
Comcast’s Worst Nightmare: How Tennessee Could Save America’s Internet
July 18, 2014 |
The business lobby often demands that government get out of the way of private corporations, so that competition can flourish and high-quality services can be efficiently delivered to as many consumers as possible. Yet, in an epic fight over telecommunications policy, the paradigm is now being flipped on its head, with corporate forces demanding the government squelch competition and halt the expansion of those high-quality services. Whether and how federal officials act may ultimately shape the future of America's information economy.
The front line in this fight is Chattanooga, Tennessee, where officials at the city's public electric utility, EPB, realized that smart-grid energy infrastructure could also provide consumers super-fast Internet speeds at competitive prices. A few years ago, those officials decided to act on that revelation. Like a publicly traded corporation, the utility issued bonds to raise resources to invest in the new broadband project. Similarly, just as many private corporations ended up receiving federal stimulus dollars, so did EPB, which put those monies into its new network.
The result is a system that now provides the nation's fastest broadband speeds at prices often cheaper than the private competition. As the Chattanooga Times Free Press noted a few years back, "EPB offers faster Internet speeds for the money, and shows equal pep in both uploading and downloading content, with Comcast and AT&T trailing on quickness." Meanwhile, EPB officials tell the Washington Post that the utility's telecom services have become "a great profit center" -- an assertion confirmed by a Standard & Poor credit upgrade notice pointing out that the utility "is now covering all costs from telephone, video and Internet revenue, as well as providing significant financial benefit to the electric system."
This is great news for local businesses and taxpayers -- but it is terrible news for private telecom companies, who not only fear being outcompeted and outperformed in Chattanooga, but also fear the Chattanooga model being promoted in other cities. In response, those telecom firms have been abandoning the standard argument about the private sector. Indeed, as the Times Free Press reported last week, rather than insisting the private sector has inherent advantages over the public sector, the firms have gone to court insisting "that EPB, as a public entity, would have an edge when competing against private companies, which would be at a disadvantage when facing an entity owned by taxpayers."
To date, those court cases have been thwarted by EPB. However, it is a different story in state legislatures. Once again abandoning the business lobby's typical call for less government intervention, telecom firms have successfully pushed 20 states to pass laws limiting the reach of community-owned utilities like EPB.
That's where Washington comes in. With Census figures showing more than 1 in 5 Tennessee residents having no Internet connection, EPB is now proposing to offer its ultra-fast services to new communities. But it needs the Federal Communications Commission to preempt the Tennessee statute prohibiting the utility from competing with private telecom companies outside its current market.
For EPB, the good news is that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has repeatedly pledged that in the name of competition and broadband access, he will support preempting state laws like Tennessee's. However, in a capital run by money, EPB may still be politically overpowered. After all, as a community-owned utility in a midsized city, EPB does not have the lobbyists and campaign cash to match those of behemoths like Comcast and AT&T. What the utility does have is a solid track record and a pro-consumer, pro-competition argument.
The question is: Will that be enough to prevent Wheeler from backing down or being blocked by Congress? The future of the Internet may be at stake in the answer.
See more stories tagged with:
telecommunications [4],
competition [5],
corporations [6],
tennessee [7]
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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/comcasts-worst-nightmare-how-tennessee-could-save-americas**
Links:
[1] http://alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/david-sirota-2
[3] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Comcast’s Worst Nightmare: How Tennessee Could Save America’s Internet
[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/telecommunications
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/competition-0
[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/corporations
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/tennessee
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B**
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privatization
6. Gas and Electric
In Philadelphia, many people get their electricity from PECO Energy (a public utility) and their gas from the city-owned PGW (which was founded in 1836). One of the most outspoken opponents of Nutter’s desire tosell PGW to UIL [11] has been Sam Bernhardt, senior Pennsylvania organizer for Food & Water Watch. Bernhardt has been warning that under UIL, Philadelphians can expect major increases in their gas bills—often noting that major rate hikes have occurred “time and time again” when water utilities were privatized.
Nutter’s deal with UIL states that UIL cannot increase rates for three years, but after that, Bernhardt warns, all bets are off. To illustrate how harsh utility privatization can be for consumers, Food & Water Watch has offered the following data on water/sewer privatization in the Philadelphia suburbs. In Bensalem, PA, for example, a typical water and/or sewer bill went from $137.08 annually before privatization to $578.05 annually after privatization—while in Bristol Township, average rates went from $165.44 a year pre-privatization to $661.43 a year post-privatization. And in Media, average annual water charges increased from $335.69 before privatization to $792.22 after privatization.
In a Huffington Post commentary, Thom Nickels asserted: “PGW is good for Philadelphia because, as a nonprofit public utility, it benefits the entire city with gas rates that, though high, would be three times as high if a private corporation like UIL—which exists only to maximize shareholder value—gained control of it....Within 10 years or less, gas rates under UIL will be through the roof....With very cold winters becoming the norm, future gas rates under UIH may very well spell disaster for most city residents.”
Indeed, if UIL is allowed to significantly raise rates on PGW customers, a lot of Philadelphians are going to be much colder during the winter [12].
EPA tires to defend air from coal