Public Values Contributor

News about privatization and the fight to preserve public services, resources, spaces and enterprise

New freedom agenda challenges prison expansion

Jul 182013
 
 Public Values
California Prisons

True safety, security, may lie in spending money other ways.

from Truthout

As American schools close, healthcare is cut, and public services are eliminated, a number of grassroots campaigns are challenging the billions spent on an expanding prison system.  As the divide between rich and poor has grown in recent decades, so have the number of mainly poor prisoners, according to Isaac Lev Szmonko, Dan Berger and Layne Mullett of Truthout. Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) and Decarcerate PA are asking if decades of mass incarceration and austerity have led to more violence and insecurity, what would a safe community look like?

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The billionaires’ war against public education

Jul 182013
 
 Public Values
Classroom

Three films, two polar opposites.

from Truthout

Waiting for Superman and Won't Back Down are two recent films portraying the American public school system as an abject failure, and private for-profit charter schools as the superior answer.  Both films are produced and heavily promoted by corporate foundations and conservative billionaires championing educational "reform" based on privatizing schools, according to Peter Dreier of Truthout. In two films produced by right-wing businessman Phil Anschutz, public school teachers and especially teachers' unions are portrayed as the problem.  On the other hand, Go Public: A Day in the Life of an American School District  is a welcome antidote to the neoliberal education dogma.

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Cashing in on kids: ALEC promotes for-profit education

Jul 182013
 
 Public Values
Classroom_Teacher

Tax money diverted despite public opposition.

from PR Watch

ALEC, the corporate organization providing legislation models for the extreme right, is focusing on bills which bypass state constitutional provisions to funnel tax dollars to private schools, writes Brendan Fischer for PR Watch.  These draft bills have been  introduced in 43 states and the District of Columbia in the first six months of 2013.  The goals of the legislation include funneling more public money to unaccountable for-profit, virtual and religious schools, and a requirement to present topics such as climate change as "controversies" with more than one side.

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Fair Pharmacare isn’t fair

Jun 272013
 
 Public Values
Cheerful Pharmacist

One in five can't afford prescriptions.

from ipolitics.ca

Steven Morgan writing for ipolitics.ca reviews a paper published by the CD Howe Institute which finds that BC's Fair Pharmacare is misnamed.  The study finds that the majority of BC residents receive no benefit at all from the program.  Morgan, author of the Romanow Commission's recommendations, says the health care system would improve with the expansion of access to essential medicines.

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Identifying the institutions of control

Jun 272013
 
 Public Values
A globe.

The increasing role of global policy groups.

from truth-out

Writing for Occupy.com and truth-out.org, Andrew Gavin Marshall looks at the origins and increasing influence of transnational organizations with a free market ideology and stated goals of the 'scientific management of society' and 'social control'.  These corporate-policy networks are composed of politically active business leaders heading large industrial corporations and financial institutions 'based in capitalism's core regions'.

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More equality would cut health care costs

Jun 272013
 
 Public Values

Social factors key to sustainability.

from Diablogue

Lack of adequate housing, food security and declining real incomes all lead to poor health outcomes which tax our health care system, according to a recent posting on Diablogue, from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
 

Neoliberalism and the $640 toilet seat

Jun 202013
 
 Public Values
Contractors

Pentagon contractors writing their own tickets (and audits).

from Counterpunch

Franklin C Spinney of Counterpunch says a recent report by Elaine Grossman at the Global Security Newswire indicates there are 700,000 service contractors employed at the Pentagon doing work traditionally done by public and military employees.  Contractors privy to Pentagon secrets, hired to audit Pentagon books, are not only an obvious conflict of interest but a "most outrageous abuse of neo-liberal privatization."

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TPP talks in Vancouver — quietly

Jun 202013
 
 Public Values
TPP protest.

First meeting on Canadian soil.

from iPolitics

Unannounced by Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, an inter-sessional Trans-Pacific Partnership meeting was held in Vancouver June 14-16, on the topic of the TPP's investment chapter, the first such negotiation on Canadian soil.  According to iPolitics' BJ Siekierski, we have the Peruvian media to thank for the information.

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