#public commons

[odinsblog]

What are the commons? Thom Hartmann describes the commons as the idea that certain assets should be in public ownership. Services vital to our collective survival, like water, must remain in the public sector and not be privatized.

[absurdlakefront]

Opinion | The Coup We Are Not Talking About

We can have democracy, or we can have a surveillance society, but we cannot have both.

The United States and the world’s other liberal democracies have thus far failed to construct a coherent political vision of a digital century that advances democratic values, principles and government. While the Chinese have designed and deployed digital technologies to advance their system of authoritarian rule, the West has remained compromised and ambivalent.

This failure has left a void where democracy should be, and the dangerous result has been a two-decade drift toward private systems of surveillance and behavioral control outside the constraints of democratic governance.

[sinceyousawvienna]

[qualitymakerdeputycloud]

No licenses except Adrianna Huffington because

[karadin]

Trump plans to shrink or eliminate 21 national monuments

FYI - 95% of our national lands, parks, wood, forests, wetlands, are already open to logging, ranching and mining, but Chump and his greedy oligarchs want it all.

The Trump administration will soon reveal its plans to potentially shrink or eliminate 21 national monument designations.

Thursday is the deadline for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to issue recommendations to the White House for any changes he thinks President Trump should make to some of the vast protected areas of land and water that Trump’s predecessors created across the country.

The announcement will close a chapter on the administration’s highly contentious review that has fueled significant opposition among conservationists and support by Republicans and industries like oil and agriculture that use federal land.

Zinke invited comments from the public on the review, the first time such a formal process has been taken for national monuments. He also traveled to many of the monuments and met with opponents and supporters.

Previous presidents made the designations under the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that gives them power to unilaterally protect federal land or water from development.

No president has eliminated a monument created by his predecessor before, and no court has weighed in on whether a reversal or even a reduction to a monument’s size is legal.

Environmentalists say the Antiquities Act doesn’t allow monument reductions without congressional action, and they’ve promised to sue if Trump tries it.

““People across the country have spoken out and shared their stories of the value these special places bring their communities, from boosting local economies to preserving our cultural heritage for the next generation. But Zinke is treating our national monuments like contestants on a reality TV show, and his anti-public lands allies in Congress are enabling this dangerous agenda,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski, whose group put a final $100,000 boost to its pro-monument campaign last week.

[odinsblog]

Texas Sends Poor Teens To Adult Jail For Skipping School

(by Kendall Taggart and  Alex Campbell)

The 11th-grader in the courtroom wore braces, loved Harry Potter movies, and posted Katy Perry lyrics on Facebook. She also had a bad habit of cutting school, and now, a judge informed her, she owed $2,700 in truancy-related fines. But Serena Vela, who lived in a trailer with her unemployed mother, couldn’t afford to pay.

Serena was offered “jail credit” at a rate of $300 per day. She was patted down, touched “everywhere,” and dispatched to adult lockup, where she would stay for nine days, missing a week and a half of classes. The first school day after she was released, administrators kicked her out.

While in jail, students told BuzzFeed News, they witnessed adult inmates beating each other and soliciting sex. 

Odin: This is a perfect example of the school-to-prison pipeline and the prison-industrial-complex, but this is only one part of a much broader trend championed by “free-market” conservatives: outsourcing previously public functions to for-profit, private corporations. (Another example is giving public water utilities to private businesses or, in this case, dealing with truancy) As this story very clearly illustrates, such outsourcing tends to have more disparate impacts on those living in poverty who are unable to “pay up” new fees for what was once very affordable or free.  

More than a thousand Texas teenagers have been ordered to lockup on charges that stem from missing school, often because they have unpaid court fines. The costs to their education are high. Some, like Serena Vela, never go back.

Read the full BuzzFeed article here

[noeggnog-blog]

The twentieth century is over

[odinsblog]

Chris Christie (R-NJ) Signs Bill To Fast Track The Privatization of Public Water

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed into law on Thursday legislation that critics say sells out the state’s water supply and democratic process for private profits.

The Water Infrastructure Protection Act, which purportedly aims to address aging infrastructure , allows for fast-tracking of sales of municipal water systems to private entities.

Among the sponsors of the measure, which passed the state legislature in December, was Senator Joe Kyrillos (R-Monmouth), who stated Thursday: “We recognize that there are times when private entities might be most capable of operating, maintaining and upgrading drinking water and sanitary wastewater systems,” and keeps “the public’s ability to be part of the process.”

Quite the opposite, according to the law’s critics.

"Governor Christie has sided with private water companies over our water supply," stated Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "This law will raise rates, hurt consumers and businesses."