Tag Archives: privatization

Trump’s Advisers Want to Privatize Native Lands for Big Energy: Reuters

Co-chairs of Native American Affairs Coalition say they want to ‘take tribal land away from public treatment’

By Nadia Prupis, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 12-5-2016

Coming just as Native American water protectors cautiously celebrate a hard-fought victory against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the proposal is another example of Trump’s incendiary and divisive policies. (Photo: Revolution Messaging/flickr/cc)

President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers are aiming to privatize Native American reservations that contain about a fifth of the nation’s oil and gas, Reuters reports.

Two chairmen of Trump’s Native American Affairs Coalition told the outlet that they want to put those lands into private ownership, a proposal that would upend historic policies put into place to preserve Indigenous sovereignty. The plan would deregulate drilling, which the coalition says would benefit the tribes who currently have the rights to use the land, but do not own it. In addition to holding about 20 percent of the nation’s oil and gas, the lands also include vast coal reserves—all worth an estimated $1.5 trillion. Continue reading →

Spying’s New Frontier: Private Firm Collects Data on ‘Every American Adult’

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“We have data on that 21-year-old who’s living at home with mom and dad”

By Nadia Prupis, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-5-2016

One company has pioneered the powerful new industry known as data-fusion. (Photo: Janne Hellsten/flickr/cc)

The fight for internet privacy has focused much of its attention on government surveillance, but mass data collection is done by private companies as well—and one such firm has “centralized and weaponized” all that information for its customers, Bloomberg reports on Friday.

In fact, it has already built a profile on “every American adult,” Bloomberg writes. Continue reading →

After Brexit, European Left Calls for ‘Massive Political Opposition’

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‘What Europe needs more than ever to avoid a slide into a xenophobic, deflationary, 1930s-like abyss’

By Nadia Prupis, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-24-2016

Photo: Amnesty international via Twitter

In the tumultuous aftermath of the UK’s vote to leave the EU, the European left is responding with a mix of reason, measured reassurances, and righteous defiance.

Left Unity, a populist UK political party, released a statement early Friday morning that criticized the right-wing organizers of the Leave campaign and vowed to “step up the fight against neo-liberalism here—opposing all cuts, defending the NHS [National Health Service], fighting for decent housing—and across Europe.”

“In Brexit Britain, we still face austerity, poverty and extreme inequality: the rotten policies of our government are still here,” Left Unity’s executive committee said. “We deeply regret that the working people of Britain have been deceived and manipulated into believing that Brexit will bring about relief from the grinding austerity that is destroying lives and communities.” Continue reading →

People Power Just Trumped Corporate Power: Oregon County Rejects Nestle Water-Grab

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‘This is really a resounding victory for everyone who cares about protecting not only our water supply, but water supplies around the world’

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 5-18-2016

Oxbow Springs water would have be bottled under Nestle’s Arrowhead brand. (Photo: Nathan Rupert/flickr/cc)

Voters in one Oregon county on Tuesday approved a ban on commercial bottled water production, stopping a years-long effort by Swiss transnational Nestle to sell over 100 million gallons of water a year from the Columbia River Gorge.

“This is really a resounding victory for everyone who cares about protecting not only our water supply, but water supplies around the world,” said Aurora del Val with Local Water Alliance, which filed the ballot measure petition. Continue reading →

Landmark Look at US Charter System Reveals Waste, Fraud, ‘Ghost Schools’

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‘The bottom-line is taxpayers know far too little about how much their federal tax dollars are being used to fund charters,’ says Center for Media and Democracy

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-21-2015

No one even knew how much the federal government had spent on its program designed to boost the charter sector until CMD started poking around. (Photo: GotCredit/flickr/cc)

A year-long investigation by the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy has revealed a severe dearth of public information about how federal and state taxes are being spent to fuel the charter school industry in the U.S.

According to the report released Wednesday—Charter School Black Hole (pdf)—no one even knew how much the federal government had spent on its program designed to boost the charter sector until CMD started poking around. Now, after filing close to 50 open records requests and reviewing more than two decades of federal authorizations and appropriations, the national watchdog group has calculated that sum to be a whopping $3.7 billion.

Furthermore, how those billions were spent was equally difficult to discern. Continue reading →

Confidential Charter School Memo Blasted as ‘Outline for a Hostile Takeover’

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Critic says billionaire’s plan to “charterize” Los Angeles public schools is “a ham-handed effort to circumvent democracy in a major American city.”

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-23-2015

A sign at Sunday’s protest outside the new Broad Museum in Los Angeles. (Photo: Joel Rubin/Twitter)

A California billionaire is enlisting other wealthy backers in a $490 million scheme to place half of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District into charter schools over the next eight years—a plan at least one critic says would “do away with democratically controlled, publicly accountable education in LA.”

The Los Angeles Times obtained a confidential 44-page proposal, “The Great Public Schools Now Initiative,” drafted by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and other charter advocates. Continue reading →

Democratic Trade War: Obama Says Warren ‘Wrong’ on TPP as Reid Says ‘Hell No’ to Fast Track

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Split among Democratic lawmakers front and center as push for corporate-friendly trade pact heads for key votes in Congress

At a labor rally last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said workers “have to fight back” against corporate-friendly deals like TPP. “I’m proud to be with you and I’m going to be with you all the way,” she said. (Image: Screengrab/AFL-CIO)

Written by Jon Queally, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published April 22, 2015.

President Obama on Tuesday evening said that progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who have called out the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement for being a corporate-power grab and have vowed to defeat legislation designed to ram it through Congress are simply “wrong” when it comes to the pending deal between the U.S. and 11 Asian and Pacific nations.

Specifically singling out Sen. Warren for her steadfast opposition, Obama defended the TPP in an interview with MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews that aired Tuesday evening.

“I love Elizabeth. We’re allies on a whole host of issues, but she’s wrong on this,” Obama said about the deal.

In op-ed earlier this year, Warren condemned the TPP for its inclusion of a provision known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS, which would allow private corporations to sue governments if they believe laws or regulations are impeding their ability to make profits or adequately compete in a market. “The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled,” argued Warren. “Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.” Continue reading →

We Should De-Kline

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Yesterday morning, I was doing my usual wake up routine; coffee and catching up on the news. One of the first stories that caught my eye was about the University of Phoenix having lost half its students over the last five years.

On Wednesday, Apollo Education Group (University of Phoenix’s parent company) announced that both revenues and enrollment were down 14% last quarter compared to a year ago. The market predictably responded; the stock was down 30% by the end of the trading day. But, what does this have to do with Occupy World Writes? And, what does de-Kline mean?

John Kline

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It’s more than just the NHS that’s at risk in Scotland from TTIP

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This article was originally published on December 11, 2014 on openDemocracy.
By Liz Murray

The EU/US Trade Deal poses a threat to Scottish Water’s plans to deprivatise failing PFI facilities.

A protest outside the Scottish Parliament against the smell at SeaField

Last week, a Europe-wide petition against TTIP, the controversial and aggressively neo-liberal free trade deal between the US and EU, reached 1 million signatures. More than 180,000 of those were from the UK. Another petition here in Scotland, calling on the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to oppose TTIP, gained almost 25,000 signatures.Opposition to TTIP is growing at an astonishing speed as the public discover how it threatens democracy, social justice, public services and national sovereignty.

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Call It Deep Pocket Corizon

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If someone were to say Deepwater Horizon to you, you’d more than likely think of the massive oil spill that started on April 20, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. You remember the eleven people who died when the Deepwater Horizon exploded. You remember the camera capturing the oil gushing out of the wellhead for 86 days until it was finally capped. You remember BP and Halliburton trying their best (and succeeding to a large degree) to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, and damaging both the ecosystem and the lives of people around the Gulf for years to come. Such is the power of those two words.

Lately, there’s been a horrific story that’s been covered in bits and pieces by the (mostly local) media, but isn’t getting the coverage or outrage it deserves. It’s a story that concerns a company that exists on government contracts; a company that consistently underperforms in a way that is truly fatal to the people it’s supposed to be serving. Yet, we hear nothing about it. Why is that? Continue reading →