The Limits Of Privatized Climate Policy

For many in the climate movement, Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020 was a moment of euphoric optimism. With Joe Biden in charge, we could look forward to a possible return to climate action and diplomacy. No longer would policy be shaped by denialists, politicians proudly in Exxon’s back pocket, and a media fixated on the “costs” of public investment. A year on, it’s become easier to see the limits of the Biden administration’s approach, and how little has really changed.

There have been moments of genuine ambition from the Oval Office. The clean electricity pledges of the fall 2021 budget package and the climate-related investment promised in early versions of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act were among the most significant climate commitments we’ve seen from the U.S. government (hence the staunch resistance to their passage from Exxon’s man on Capitol Hill, Joe Manchin).

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On Contact: Corporate Assault On US Postal Service

The corporate seizure of public utilities and privatization of schools is part of a broad assault to turn government assets into assets that will swell corporate profit. The post office has been a coveted target for decades. Corporations such as FedEx and UPS have used their lobbyists and campaign contributions to cripple the government postal service in an effort to destroy it and take it over. These corporations engineered a congressional mandate in 2006 that requires the post office to pre-fund the next 75 years of retiree health benefits in one decade. No other federal government agency is required to carry out a similar pre-payment plan, nor is there any actuarial justification for this measure.

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Elizabeth Fowler Defending Trump Program To Privatize Medicare

Put aside Democrat versus Republican.

Let’s just look at corporations versus people.

Elizabeth (Liz) Fowler has a stellar corporate resume.

For seven years, she worked at Johnson & Johnson, as vice president for global health policy.

Before joining Johnson & Johnson, she was chief health counsel to Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, who banned single payer advocates from the deliberations that led to the insurance company dominated Affordable Care Act.

In her off time, Fowler is a runner.

She runs marathons and triathlons around the world.

During work hours, she carries the torch for the health insurance industry and big pharmaceutical companies.

And it doesn’t matter whether she is in the public or private sector. 

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100 Ohio School Districts File A Lawsuit Against EdChoice Vouchers

On Tuesday, 100 Ohio public school districts and the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship Program under the provisions of the Ohio Constitution. EdChoice is Ohio’s rapidly growing, publicly funded school voucher program.

The *Cleveland Plain Dealer*‘s [Laura Hancock reported](https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/01/100-school-districts-sue-ohio-over-private-school-vouchers-saying-they-unconstitutionally-take-money-from-public-ed.html): “A coalition of 100 school districts sued Ohio over private school vouchers Tuesday, saying that the hundreds of millions of public dollars funneled away from public schools have created an educational system that’s unconstitutional.”

The lead plaintiffs are Columbus City Schools, Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools, Richmond Heights Local School District, Lima City Schools, Barberton City Schools, Cleveland Heights parents on behalf of their minor sons—Malcolm McPherson and Fergus Donnelly, and the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding. The Cleveland law firm of Walter Haverfield is representing the plaintiffs.

In their lawsuit, [plaintiffs declare:](https://vouchershurtohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Final-Version-of-Complaint-03990616x9EF3B.pdf) “The EdChoice Scholarship Program poses an existential threat to Ohio’s public school system. Not only does this voucher program unconstitutionally usurp Ohio’s public tax dollars to subsidize private school tuitions, it does so by depleting Ohio’s foundation funding—the pool of money out of which the state funds Ohio’s public schools… The discrepancy in per pupil foundation funding is so great that some districts’ private school pupils receive, as a group, more in funding via EdChoice Vouchers than Ohio allocates in foundation funding for the entire public school districts where those students reside. This voucher program effectively cripples the public school districts’ resources, creates an ‘uncommon’, or private system of schools unconstitutionally funded by taxpayers, siphons hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds into private (and mostly religious) institutions, and discriminates against minority students by increasing segregation in Ohio’s public schools. Because private schools receiving EdChoice funding are not subject to Ohio’s Sunshine Laws or most other regulations applicable to public schools, these private facilities operate with impunity, exempt from public scrutiny despite the public funding that sustains them.”

The Ohio Legislature incorporated a new “Cupp-Patterson” Fair School Funding Plan into the current biennial budget last June, but plaintiffs charge that the simultaneous expansion of EdChoice vouchers in that same budget has blocked the phase-in and full funding of that school funding plan: “The Ohio Department of Education funds EdChoice Program Vouchers from the budget appropriation designated for public schools. Because public funds are finite, funding EdChoice Program Vouchers out of the foundation funding designated for public school districts inevitably depletes the resources designated by the legislature for educating Ohio’s public school students. H.B. 110 (the state budget bill) initially incorporated the salient features of the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan, a bipartisan effort to fund Ohio’s public schools adequately and equitably as required by the Ohio Supreme Court in *DeRolph v. State*…. However, due to the ballooning effects of the EdChoice program, the enacted version of H.B. 110 funded only up to one-third of the increases required by the proposed Fair School Funding Plan over the next two fiscal years.”  “(T)he Fair School Funding Plan was not fully funded due to the ballooning costs of the EdChoice Program. Only 16.67% of the Fair School Funding Plan is being funded through Fiscal Year 2022 and 33% of the Fair School Funding Plan will be funded through Fiscal Year 2023, as specifically delineated in H.B. 110.  This means the General Assembly will meet only a fraction of its constitutional obligation, *by the standards it has adopted,* to provide a thorough and efficient system of common schools for Fiscal Year 2022.”

The new lawsuit charges that the Fair School Funding Plan had been formulated to address inadequate state funding of public schools over recent years: “Over the last decade, the formulas implemented by the General Assembly for funding Ohio’s public schools reflected the amount the General Assembly was willing to spend on public education, rather than the realistic cost of providing a thorough and efficient education to all of Ohio’s students. Due to budget freezes or minimal increases over the last decade, state funding to Ohio’s public school districts has not even kept pace with inflation since Fiscal Year 2011. Additionally, because the funding formula was frozen in Fiscal Year 2020-21 at the 2019 level, but vouchers and “community schools” (which is what Ohio calls charter schools) were funded by way of deductions from total school funding,  affected public school districts lost approximately $193 million in state funding during these formula freezes. In contrast, the per pupil EdChoice Program Voucher payments rose by 15% for a grade 1-8 voucher and by 25% for a grade 9-12 voucher for Fiscal Year 2022 alone.”

The lawsuit delineates the losses in public school funding for one of the plaintiff districts: “The Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District, for example, is expected to receive from the state of Ohio a total of approximately $5.6 million in foundation funding for Fiscal Year 2022 to educate the 5,000 students who attend its schools. The state of Ohio, however, will pay out over $11 million for private school tuition to the approximately 1,800 EdChoice Voucher recipients residing within the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District in Fiscal Year 2022. In other words, approximately twice as much public funding will be paid in Fiscal Year 2022 for private school tuition for CH-UH residents as the foundation funding allotted to the entire student body of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights District.”

The Complaint names five counts:

1. “Creation of one or more systems of uncommon schools in violation of the Ohio Constitution, Article VI, Section 2.”
2. “Failure to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools in violation of the Ohio Constitution, Article VI, Section 2.”
3. “Segregation in violation of the thorough and efficient system of common schools as provided in Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution.”
4. “Diversion of funding in violation of the “No Religious or Other Sect Shall Ever Have Any Exclusive Right To or Control Of, Any Part of the School Funds of the State” clause of Article VI.”
5. “Declaratory Judgement—Violation of Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 2 (asserted by Malcolm McPherson and Fergus Donnelly only).” This section continues: “No compelling or legitimate state interest can account for this discriminatory treatment of Plaintiff Students in comparison with their private school counterparts. No valid government explanation can justify spending two to ten times more per pupil to subsidize private school tuition than the per-pupil amounts paid by the state to educate Ohio’s public school students… Based on the foregoing, Plaintiff Students are also entitled to permanent injunctive relief barring further EdChoice Program payments to subsidize private school tuition made from the state’s foundation school fund.”

At the [press conference where the lawsuit was announced](http://ohiocoalition.org/vouchers-hurt-ohio-and-ohio-ea-coalitionfile-lawsuit-against-private-school-voucher-program/), a member of the Richmond Heights Local School Board of Education, Nneka Jackson addressed the third count, that EdChoice Vouchers have illegally exacerbated racial segregation in Ohio’s public schools: “If someone tells you this is about helping poor minority children, hook them up to a lie detector test ASAP and stand back because the sparks are going to fly… About 40 percent of Richmond Heights residents are white. Before the EdChoice private school voucher program, about 26 percent of the students in the Richmond Heights School District were white and 74 percent were students of color. Today, after EDChoice, Richmond Heights is three percent white and 97 percent students of color. Private schools are allowed to discriminate, plain and simple, based on disability, disciplinary records, academic standing, religion and financial status. These are often proxies for race and other protected characteristics. Ohio is essentially engaged in state-sponsored discrimination in admissions and retention. You know who can’t do this? Public schools. Common schools.”

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Pressure Grows On Biden To Shut Down Medicare Privatization Scheme

Calls are mounting for President Joe Biden to terminate an under-the-radar Trump-era pilot program that—if allowed to run its course—could result in the complete privatization of traditional Medicare by the end of the decade.

A petition recently launched by Physicians for a National Program (PNHP) has garnered more than 10,000 signatures as doctors and other advocates work to raise public awareness of the Medicare Direct Contracting program, which the Trump administration rolled out during its final months in power.

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A For-Profit Company Is Trying To Privatize Public Libraries

“Even if we don’t see a written-out master plan, the banning of books, the attacks on teaching real US history, the efforts to push out professors with views that transgress official US policy: In their myriad forms, these actions tell us that it’s important to powerful people to restrict what ideas people can access. It’s the land of the free and the home of the brave—except if you want to know what’s happened, and happens, here, or to tell people about it.

It all shows us the power of ideas. As infuriating and sad and enervating as it all is, it reminds us that knowledge is power.”

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How Public Workers Can Stop The Privatization Of Everything

Several years ago, Don Cohen, a former central labor council staffer from San Diego, appeared on a panel discussing the privatization threats faced by union members across the country. He and other speakers were addressing a conference of state, county, and municipal workers represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a group which did not include any federal employees. When Cohen described propaganda campaigns that proponents of privatization conduct to pave the way for out-sourcing local government or state university jobs, audience members immediately recognized that kind of employer behavior and its adverse impact on them. However, when another speaker—a campaigner against privatization of services for veterans–did some quick polling on what CWA activists had heard or read about the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), their attitude toward that federal agency was largely negative.

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New Program Is Secretly Privatizing Medicare

A new program is placing Medicare recipients into private health insurance plans without their knowledge or consent in a final effort to fully privatize our national Medicare system. Known as “Direct Contract Entities (DCEs),” this program is putting more of our healthcare system into the hands of private equity to generate enormous profits at the expense of our health. Clearing the FOG speaks about this with Kay Tillow, a long time health care, civil rights and union activist. Tillow explains what these entities are, why they threaten the future of our entire healthcare system and how they block our ability to achieve a national, universal and publicly-financed healthcare system such as national improved Medicare for All. She describes the fight to stop DCEs and win single payer health care.

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The Creeping Privatization Of Medicare

In the early 1970s, Senator Ted Kennedy and Congresswoman Martha Griffiths introduced Medicare for All legislation in the Congress.

It could have passed but for the efforts of a doctor from Minnesota by the name of Paul Elwood.

Elwood believed that unless the Republicans did something to control health care costs, Medicare for All single payer would soon become the law of the land.

So in February 1970, Elwood traveled to Washington, D.C. and met with officials in Richard Nixon’s administration to present his proposal for what he called health maintenance organizations (HMOs).

The seeds for a managed care theology that would upend the American health care over the next fifty years were planted.

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How The Grinch Stole Medicare Protest At Humana

Louisville, KY – On Saturday, December 11 at 11:00 a.m. EST, Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care and others will gather outside the headquarters of Humana, 500 W. Main St., Louisville, KY 40202 where they will demand an end to Medicare Direct Contracting, a program that could fully privatize Traditional fee-for-service Medicare without a vote by Congress.

The protest with feature Steven Katz in full costume as the Grinch with the reading and performance of “How the Grinch Stole Medicare,” an original poem from National Single Payer.   Jill Harmer and the Single Payer Singers, Stephen Bartlett and his band, and singer, songwriter John Gage will perform holiday and health care music.

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US Empire Seizes UK’s National Health Service

One of the recent roles of the Parliamentary Healthcare Committee has been to reassure the British public that any claims regarding the ‘Americanization’ of the National Health Service (NHS) were wildly overstated, “creating a climate that risks blocking the joining up of services in the interests of patients.”

In fact, the penetration of the healthcare system by the giant U.S. insurer UnitedHealth reveals the opposite to be true, with the full extent of its influence capable of surprising even seasoned NHS watchers.

The Health and Care Bill making its way through official channels simply reinforces this, with the bill’s centerpiece, the 42 regional-scale Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), aimed at bringing together GPs, hospitals, mental healthcare and council services.

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An Obscure Agency Is Threatening To Hand Medicare Over To Wall Street

In the face of massive support for Medicare for All and the failure of the U.S.’s for-profit health care system, the inevitable fall of the medical-industrial complex can be predicted, if not with precision, with certainty. Everyone is aware of the impending demise, none more so than those in charge of the for-profit health care system and their supporters in Congress, as evidenced by the frenetic activity at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to transfer the traditional Medicare program to the insurance industry as fast as humanly possible. Given this urgency, physicians representing Physicians for a National Health Program delivered a petition signed by 13,000 individuals, including 1,500 physicians, to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra this week demanding the end to the privatization of Medicare.

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Public-Private Partnerships Are Hollowing Out Our Libraries

“This library is full of losers,” an HR person said to me as I signed my letter of resignation from my public library job. “A bunch of losers who just take, take, take. Good for you for moving up in the world.” I was truly shocked by her disdain for my coworkers.

The HR person approved of my resignation because I was leaving an assistant position to take a professional one at another library, joining the ranks of other degreed librarians after graduating from library school. But her comment dripped with scorn toward all the people who simply showed up to work each day, collecting their modest paychecks and serving the public. Indeed, her comment reflected a more widespread attitude that I’ve found among administrators (members of the professional managerial class) within the public sector: Many are capitalist groupies who see unionized employees working for the government as leeches.

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Correcting The Record About Veterans’ Health Care

Last week, USAToday ran a feature by reporter Jill Castellano that spotlighted issues around the VA MISSION Act, which is supposed to assure that veterans have easier access to care – outside the VA when clinically necessary. The project was blatantly biased and had Koch fingerprints all over it. We hate to give it any extra attention but must correct the record.

The piece falsely accuses the VA of systematically denying veterans access to private sector care when it’s warranted. In truth, veterans are being referred to the private sector at acceleratingly high levels, as the aforementioned Hill op-edmakes clear.

Much of the story centers on the MISSION Act’s criteria of providing eligibility for private sector care for veterans “if it is in their best medical interest.”

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‘Ten Year Plan’ Will Destroy The Postal Service; Why We Must Save It

The current US Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, and the head of the Board of Governors, Ron Bloom, launched a ten year plan that will slow mail service and raise prices. This is the final blow to defund and destroy the US Postal Service so it will be ripe for privatization. DeJoy and Bloom have financial stakes in this happening. Clearing the FOG speaks with Chuck Zlatkin, legislative and political director for the largest postal union local in the US about the plan and the devastating impact it will have on everyone who relies on the post office. Zlatkin also exposes the blatant corruption, explains how the Biden administration could save the postal service and critiques the new postal baking pilot. We have reached a point where we must act to save the postal service, or we are going to lose it.

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