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#makeGEpay Budget Amendment Filed in MA Senate; Advocates Encourage Public Support [an Apparent Horizon breaking news report]

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May 25, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The #makeGEpay advocacy network — including Jewish Voice for Peace-Boston and dozens of other local community organizations — just announced that Senator Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton) has filed a “Community Benefits for Corporate Tax Breaks” amendment to the Massachusetts Senate’s budget proposal. If included in the final state budget, it would mandate that any part of state government that gives $25 million or more to a corporation “for the explicit purpose of economic development or job creation, shall provide at least 5 per cent of that total expenditure for the purpose of providing affordable housing in communities in the regional planning area where that corporation is located.”

The amendment was filed in response to what critics call giveaways to major corporations like General Electric — which was recently promised over $145 million in state grants and incentives with no public oversight (and over $125 million more from the City of Boston). It’s co-sponsored by Senators Barbara L’Italien (D-Andover) and Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford). Full text is available here.

Advocates are encouraging Mass residents to call your state senator and ask them to “support amendment 836 cosponsored by Senator Eldridge.”

To find out who your rep is and what their number is use this website:http://wheredoivotema.com/bal/MyElectionInfo.aspx/.

They also recommend that people tweet support of amendment 836 using the #makeGEpay and #SenBudget hashtags.

  

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

IMMIGRANT ADVOCACY GROUP OF CAMBRIDGE PROVIDES MODEL FOR MUNICIPAL HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM

Joint Committee Meeting of the Cambridge City Council to Discuss Immigrant Representation and Resources, May 12, 2016. Photo by Jason Pramas. Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas.

Joint Committee Meeting of the Cambridge City Council to Discuss Immigrant Representation and Resources, May 12, 2016. Photo by Jason Pramas. Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas.

May 23, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

We live in strange times. On the one hand, the United States is a more diverse society than at any other point in its history. On the other, we’re witnessing a presidential campaign where Donald Trump has captured the Republican nomination in part by whipping up hysteria against immigrants. It’s an old game in American politics—with roots stretching back to the Know Nothing movement (originally, and ironically, called the Native American Party) in the mid-1850s and even further to the founding of the Republic. Blame the victim and ignore the actual oppressors. But it’s working quite well with white voters who have every reason to be angry in the ongoing economic downturn. And are casting about for someone to blame.

That’s why it’s refreshing to see an initiative taking shape in Cambridge to expand immigrant rights at the local level. Last week, City Manager Richard Rossi announced that a city Commission on Immigrant Rights and Citizenship that was created at the high water mark of immigrant rights activism nationwide in 2006 is at last searching for candidates to fill its 11 seats. That is an interesting development on its own merits. Especially given the apparent commonplace of dormant municipal committees. But the story of how the commission’s reanimation came to pass is even more interesting.

There are a significant number of immigrants in Cambridge. No surprise, given its world-famous universities, the large population of foreign born scholars they attract, the enterprises that set up shop nearby to avail themselves of those scholars, and the many immigrant service workers attracted to jobs connected to the university-driven economy (although most of them cannot afford to live where they work given a housing market that has become wildly expensive since rent control was defeated by the real estate industry in 1994). Not that a sizeable immigrant community is a new development, as previous generations of immigrants found work in the city’s once-strong industrial sector and put down deep roots that persist today in neighborhoods like East Cambridge and North Cambridge. Still, the percentage of immigrants has been on the rise again in Cambridge for some time.

Looking at the 2010-2014 estimate data from the US Census Bureau American Community Survey for Cambridge, out of a population of 106,844, an impressive 30,075 residents or 28.15 percent are foreign born. Placing the city in the top dozen Massachusetts municipalities for immigrant population, according to a report by The Immigrant Learning Center.  Of that total, the number of voting age non-citizen residents is 17,333 or 18.41 percent. Meaning that close to 20 percent of Cambridge residents have no representation in city politics. A statistic that includes an unknown number of undocumented immigrants—who have all been officially welcomed to Cambridge since it renewed its status as a sanctuary city for refugees and migrants without papers in 2006.

Since the early 1990s, there have been a number of attempts by immigrant advocates and the Cambridge City Council to give documented immigrants a voice in local elections by instituting non-citizen voting in local elections.  Each time, the effort ran into the same problem: it was not possible to enact such a city ordinance without the state legislature passing a home rule petition first. And the legislature has long been conservative on such matters—partially due to the anti-immigrant constituencies of many suburban and rural politicians. As such, no plan for including undocumented immigrants in a Cambridge municipal voting ordinance has ever been floated. Having precisely zero chance of passing muster in the legislature under current conditions.

Despite the difficult political hurdles to surmount at the state level, Councillor Nadeem Mazen has expressed interest in taking a fresh shot at making it possible for documented immigrants that have not yet become naturalized citizens to vote in city council and school committee races. His approach, however, has been somewhat different than that of his predecessors.

Mazen and his aide Daniel Schwartz have organized advocacy groups on several issues—including non-citizen voting. Emmanuel “Manny” Lusardi, a retired retail executive who strongly identifies with his family’s immigrant roots, got involved in the non-citizen voting advocacy group early on, and soon recruited Sylvie de Marrais—a recent Boston University graduate and restaurant server with a passion for expanding immigrant rights—to work with him. Noting what he calls her “exceptional organizational and leadership abilities,” Lusardi encouraged de Marrais to become the group’s leader.

Understanding that it remains difficult to get a home rule petition passed on even documented non-citizen voting, the advocacy group began looking for some stopgap measure that would get more immigrant representation in Cambridge city government sooner rather than later. A few weeks back, they hit upon the idea of organizing a push for a non-voting immigrant representative on the council. While looking into its feasibility, however, they started studying the positive experience of Boston and other cities that had established immigrant affairs offices. Mazen and other city officials liked that approach, and the non-citizen voting advocacy group then started organizing to create a Cambridge immigrant affairs office.

Not long after, they discovered the never-activated Commission on Immigrant Rights and Citizenship, alerted City Manager Rossi, and were gratified last week when he announced a search for the 11 members needed to get it in motion. Later that week, Mazen convened a joint meeting of three city council committees to discuss immigrant representation and resources in Cambridge. It was attended by councillors Dennis Carlone, Jan Devereux, and Timothy Toomey, Vice Mayor Marc McGovern, Mayor Denise Simmons, a number of city officials, and special guest An Le of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Advancement in Boston.The arc of the resulting discussion bent towards empowering the new commission to work on a variety of tasks—including better coordination of city services for immigrants, and organizing an annual Immigrants Day at Cambridge City Hall—and ordering a study of an aspect of the non-citizen voting plan that could slow immigrants’ naturalization processes if an agreement isn’t worked out with US Citizenship and Immigration Services. But the various motions agreed upon at the meeting towards those goals will need to be passed by the full council in the coming weeks before they can be operationalized.

The non-citizen voting advocacy group—now called the Immigrant Advocacy Group of Cambridge—will certainly have a tough time getting all of its expanding agenda of reforms enacted in a period of anti-immigrant rhetoric and tight budgets at all levels of government. Even in the so-called “People’s Republic.” But its activists have done a fine job out of the gate. And its working relationship with a sitting politician seems to be an innovation worthy of notice. With the Commission on Immigrant Rights and Citizenship slated to start meeting in the fall, and forward motion on a non-citizen voting ordinance and an immigrant affairs office, the advocacy group offers a political model that both democratizes and humanizes the debate over how our cities and towns should treat immigrants—whether documented or undocumented. A model that other municipalities should think seriously about emulating.

Cambridge residents who would like to get active with the group should check out its Facebook page.

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Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director. Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

 
 

GE BOSTON DEAL: THE MISSING MANUAL, PART 7

GE Housatonic graphic

May 11, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

General Electric tries to cheap out on cleaning up its PCB apocalypse on the Housatonic River

In 1929, Swann Chemical Company began commercially producing polychlorinated biphenyls for industrial use as an electrical insulator and as a coolant. PCBs were immediately a huge success, and Monsanto bought Swann six years later. From 1932 to 1977, the big General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Mass used large quantities of the chemical in manufacturing electrical transformers and other products. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, as much as 600,000 pounds of PCBs was dumped into the adjacent Housatonic River and the surrounding soil over that time. In 1979, the EPA banned PCBs as a definite animal carcinogen and a probable human carcinogen. One which can take hundreds of years to naturally degrade to nontoxic levels.

As GE finished winding down its Pittsfield operation over the next couple of decades—ultimately eliminating 13,000 mostly unionized jobs, and driving a spike through the economic heart of the Berkshires—state agencies and the EPA initiated a number of regulatory actions culminating in a 1997 proposal by the EPA to add the Housatonic site to the Superfund National Priorities List. After long negotiations, the company managed to stop the site from being tarred with the Superfund designation and in 1999 agreed to what the EPA called a “Consent Decree” to cleanup PCBs in the Housatonic from the former site of GE’s Pittsfield plant to a couple of miles downriver in a first phase that has since been completed. And then to cleanup what was termed “Rest of River” in a second phase.

Having spent $100 million on the first phase (as part of the initial Consent Decree settlement), GE is now fighting to be able to cheap out on cleaning up the rest of the river. Mainly by trying to save the estimated $250 million cost of shipping PCB-contaminated river sediment and surrounding soil by rail to a huge toxic waste storage facility in Texas, as demanded by the EPA’s current “Rest of River” plan, via an alternative proposal for three new dumps in Western Mass. Two of which are right near the Housatonic. Yet are somehow expected to store a chemical infamous for its ability to leech out of dumps, spread miles underground—possibly right back to the river it was dredged from—and also evaporate and travel long distances in the air. GE appealed the EPA’s plan last October. A move that could land the whole affair in the US Court of Appeals in Boston, and drag a process that will take at least 13 years to complete out even longer.

Local communities are understandably furious, and river advocates have started holding protests at the proposed GE dump sites. It should be understood that the effects of PCBs on the environment are dire. And that so-called Rest of River cleanup is meant to fix some (but nowhere near all) of the damage done up to 140 miles downstream through Western Mass and Connecticut into Long Island Sound. PCBs—found in the Housatonic at levels far above the EPA safety threshold—not only raise cancer risks in humans and animals alike, but also cause direct immune, reproductive, endocrine, and neurological effects. With children being the most vulnerable human population.

But even the planned EPA approach to Rest of River cleanup on the Housatonic—which activists think is woefully insufficient—is still too expensive for GE’s taste at an estimated $613 million. The corporation won’t rest until it knocks at least $250 million off the top. And damn the environmental consequences.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether—given the buzz coming from Western Mass—there might be a connection between the Housatonic situation and the $270 million in public funds, services, and tax breaks that Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh have agreed to lavish on GE to induce them to move their headquarters to the Hub. But one has to wonder—in light of the recent investigation by the International Business Times showing that GE employees and the employees of GE’s lobbying firms donated nearly $1 million to the NY Congressional delegation over last three election cycles—why so many Empire State pols just happened to stand down from the fight to stop EPA approval of GE’s halting its dredging of PCBs in the Hudson River Valley last year? And if a scheme like that could happen one state over, why couldn’t it happen here?

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Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

ECONOMIC VIOLENCE: VERIZON CUTS OFF HEALTH CARE BENEFITS TO STRIKERS AND THEIR FAMILIES

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May 6, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

As the Verizon strike enters its fourth week, the 39,000 union members on picket lines up and down the East Coast—and now taking their campaign nationwide—are continuing to hold fast for a better contract than the giant corporation has thus far been willing to offer. But a strike is no walk in the park. Not in the America of 2016. On May 1, International Workers’ Day,  Verizon cut off health care benefits to the strikers and their familiesan estimated 110,000 people overall. And while the two unions organizing the strike—Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)—have socked away millions to pay strike benefits, helped members file for expensive stopgap COBRA health insurance, and even offered to pay medical expenses for members outright in the case of CWA, many people with chronic conditions are being put at serious risk of having their medical care disrupted. With potentially dire consequences.

Yet it’s difficult to find mentions of this vicious move by Verizon in the major American press. Coverage of the issue has been spotty at best. Despite it being a great example of why working families need proper national healthcare. Almost like it was not news at all. Even in centers of strike activity like Boston.

That’s a problem. When there are big layoffs by large companies owned by extraordinarily wealthy people, when wages are slashed, when huge numbers of jobs are outsourced to countries with even worse labor standards than our diminishing protections here in the US, much of the news media treats these tremendous crises for working people as mere footnotes to the much more important coverage of corporate bottom lines.

If any criticisms are raised—usually in passing and rhetorically—they are generally dismissed with easy answers. As with the 12,000 workers currently being laid off by microchip titan Intel. A recent and very typical article in The Oregonian, the Pacific Northwest’s newspaper of record, discusses the 2150 expected layoffs in their state matter-of-factly—explaining that Intel is “Oregon’s largest private employer and pays some of the state’s best wages.” So the loss of so many good paying jobs is really going to hurt the regional economy. But the piece then goes on to say that “Intel is a hugely profitable company—and a growing one.” It has other exciting divisions doing lots of whiz-bang things. Sure, those divisions are not necessarily in Oregon or even in the US—Intel being yet another multinational with robust manufacturing operations in low-wage countries like India—and it’s not at all clear that workers in those other divisions will make money as good as the laid-off American chip workers made. Nonetheless, the basic message of such articles is that “the market will take care of it.” Jobs will be lost here, but gained back elsewhere. Then all will be well and right with the world again.

But “the market” doesn’t take care of working families. It takes care of owners and top executives and big investors. Who use their massive and growing profits in this New Gilded Age to rig the political and economic systems to focus on their interests. Not everyone else’s.

 

That’s why Verizon’s union workers are on strike. It’s gotten to the point where they have no choice. In large part because the company has been doing its level best to wipe out its unions since its formation in 2000. To remove the last obstacle to allowing its management the freedom to do what so many non-unionized American companies are able to do to their workforces with impunity: ship many once-decent jobs abroad, and turn the rest into part-time, contract and temp jobs. Hiring people when they need them, and getting rid of them with impunity when they don’t. With no promise or expectation of good wages, benefits or job security.

All of these corporate moves are best described as economic violence. Because they destroy lives. And for all the criticism that labor gets for being unreasonable on the still-too-rare occasions that it mounts more than symbolic protests, unions like CWA and IBEW are remarkably restrained in the face of that ongoing violence. Hands tied by decades of anti-labor legislation, they limit their responses to those allowed by law: withholding their labor for as long as possible, picketing Verizon properties, “mobile picketing” (following scabs to worksites and talking to consumers about the strike), encouraging the public to boycott Verizon Wireless, and gamely waging PR battles in an often dismissive pro-corporate press. Trying to win enough hearts and minds to convince Verizon management that settling with the union is cheaper than letting the strike drag on.

Which might work this time as it has in several past strikes. But it’s getting harder for unions like CWA and IBEW as the years go by and their membership continues to shrink at the hands of mercenary profit-hungry companies like Verizon. They’re in a very difficult situation. But there’s one thing that readers can easily do to help expedite Verizon union workers’ herculean task of defending what they have while fighting to expand the labor movement back to some semblance of its former strength: When you hear about economic violence by bosses against workers, spread the word. Tell your friends, family and workmates. Don’t let atrocities like cutting health care benefits on striking workers remain a footnote in the national discourse. Make some noise. Then do the same at your own workplace when things get tough. Learn from Verizon’s unions. Fight back however you can. And in a few years, labor conditions might start finally improving for American workers again.

Readers who would like to support the Verizon strikers should visit standuptoverizon.com

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

STRIKE MATTERS: VERIZON’S UNION EMPLOYEES FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS

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Photo by Jason Pramas

April 22, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

BOSTON –  From the St. James Avenue side of Copley Square on Thursday afternoon, passers-by could be forgiven for wondering what the group of 300 people in red T-shirts opposite them was cheering about. If they were told that they were seeing the front lines of a desperate battle for the future of the American working class, they wouldn’t believe it. But the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers members and their families did not turn out for a nice day in the sun. They were there to fight.

The general public may be aware that 39,000 unionized Verizon workers (out of a total of 178,000) have been out on strike for a few days—including many here in Boston. But the vast majority of onlookers don’t understand the stakes.

Verizon (officially Verizon Communications, Inc.) is no ordinary company. Rather it’s a vast telecommunications conglomerate that has benefited hugely from government tax breaks, subsidies, and a favorable regulatory climate since it was created in 2000 out of the merger of Bell Atlantic (which had only recently merged with fellow “Baby Bell” NYNEX) and GTE.

It has two major businesses: its traditional wireline service, based on the old copper wire phone system and the newer fiber optic FiOS service (weirdly coming soon to Boston six years after Verizon said it would stopping building it out in any new cities). That’s where virtually all of the company’s 39,000 unionized workers are employed. Then it has Verizon Wireless—which was originally a joint venture of Bell Atlantic and the British telecom Vodafone, bought outright by Verizon in 2014. Only a handful of its wireless employees are currently unionized.

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Photo by Jason Pramas

Basically, Verizon leadership wants to focus on its extremely profitable wireless division and cut back its wireline service. The numbers show why. According to Fortunemagazine, “Wireless now brings in the vast majority of the company’s sales and profits. Last year, for example, the wireless unit brought in revenue of $91.7 billion, up 5% from a year earlier, and an operating profit of nearly $30 billion. The older wireline unit, which also includes wired video and Internet service, brought in revenue of only $37.7 billion, a 2% decline from the year before, and an operating profit of just $2.2 billion.”

Unfortunately, Verizon—like so many companies these days (our “new Boston neighbors” at General Electric spring to mind)—is a world class tax dodger and loves soaking the government for free handouts. According to the nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2008 and 2013, the corporation made over $42 billion in profits, received a $732 million tax break (an effective federal tax rate of -2 percent), and paid almost $1.3 billion in state taxes (an effective state tax rate of 3 percent).  In the same period, it made almost $4 billion in foreign profits and paid $274 million in taxes (an effective foreign tax rate of 7 percent). And this year? In the first quarter of 2016, Verizon has made $4.31 billion in profits.

According to the nonprofit Good Jobs First, Verizon has also received about $149 million in state and federal subsidies. Free money. And about $1.5 billion in federal loans, loan guarantees, and bailout assistance. Almost free money.

The nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness adds: “Verizon also reported $1.9 billion in accumulated offshore profits in 2012, on which it paid no U.S. income taxes … Verizon raked in $956 million in federal contracts in 2011, according to the federal government. It also recently landed a new nine-year government-wide contract worth up to $5 billion to provide communications services and equipment to federal agencies.”

So Verizon is filthy rich with help from its friends in the government. Just like its predecessor, AT&T, in the days of “natural monopoly” before its 1984 breakup into regional Baby Bells. Unlike the old AT&T, though, Verizon is not interested in putting up with a unionized workforce in exchange for what are approaching monopoly profits in markets it and the handful of other remaining telecoms dominate. It has eliminated thousands of unionized jobs since 2000. How many? There were 85,000 unionized Verizon workers on strike in that year. There are 39,000 now. Do the math.

Photo by Jason Pramas

Photo by Jason Pramas

This brings us to the central issue of the strike. Verizon wants to convert lots of decent jobs—unionized and ununionized—to contract jobs. Many of them abroad. Union leaders recently told CNN Money: “Verizon has outsourced 5,000 jobs to workers in Mexico, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic.” The company is also “hiring more low-wage, non-union contractors.” Increasing wages, minimizing out-of-pocket health costs, preserving job security, keeping traditional pensions, and stopping forced out-of-state work transfers are all very important issues, too. And certainly worthy of more discussion in these pages. But, as ever, contingent work is a dagger pointed at the throat of organized labor. According to Computerworld, the Trade Adjustment Assistance forms that workers losing their jobs due to outsourcing file with the US Department of Labor show that offshoring jobs is indeed proceeding apace at Verizon—despite management denials.

Once jobs have left the US, it’s highly unlikely they’re coming back. And if it’s hard for unions to organize units like Verizon Wireless now, it’s nearly impossible to organize workers transnationally. Similarly, once “regular” full-time jobs with benefits have been replaced with lousy part-time, contract and other contingent jobs, it’s very difficult to convert them back. And it’s extremely difficult to organize contingent workers into unions or other types of labor organizations.

That is why this strike matters to all American workers. If well organized and militant union members at Verizon—who have gone on strike against the company and its predecessors in 1983, 1986, 1989, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2011 and now—can’t stop the outsourcing and destruction of decent jobs, unorganized workers spread across the planet in industries like telecommunications will find the task insurmountable.

Yet that’s where we’re heading. The end of traditional labor unions. The end of decent jobs. The war of all against all. This is where latter day capitalism is taking us. Unless we help good unions like CWA and IBEW win this strike, and start expanding the labor movement again. This isn’t about “the dignity of labor,”as the Boston Globe would have it. It’s about class war. Working people didn’t start it. But we sure as hell had better finish it. Before it finishes us.

Readers who would like to support the Verizon strikers should visit standuptoverizon.com

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Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

 
 

SQUAWK OR WALK: MORE PROTESTERS NEEDED TO SAVE MBTA, PUBLIC TRANSIT STATEWIDE

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Photos by Chris Faraone

March 18, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Last week, the MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board—appointed by Gov. Charlie Baker in 2015 to run the transit authority—voted to hike fares by 9.3 percent. Claiming the move is absolutely necessary to stop the T’s perpetual budget crisis from worsening. Which is just pathetic. Because if ever there was a manufactured crisis, our state government’s refusal to properly fund its multiple mass transit systems is a prime example.

In 2000, the Commonwealth reversed its previous “backward funding” policy of simply paying any MBTA costs that fares didn’t cover at the end of each fiscal year. The move to so-called “forward funding” has been a disaster for mass transit in the Bay State ever since. The goal was to make the MBTA function like a for-profit company—which would somehow do more with a restricted budget allotted at the start of each fiscal year—and less like the indispensable public service that it is. The funding policy was later adapted for the other 15 regional transit agencies statewide. But in practice, as is often the case with such privatization moves, it has forced them all to struggle for survival. Leading to endless deficits anddoubling MBTA fares since its introduction.

There is a straightforward solution to this non-crisis. The state must go back to fully supporting the MBTA budget, must increase the mass transit budget statewide, and must raise taxes on the rich and corporations to cover any conceivable budget shortfalls for such an important public good.

But that simple, just and obvious solution isn’t “realistic” to neoliberal legislators, pundits and advocates that prefer to squirrel around the edges of the problem in ways that let the rich and corporations that they serve off the hook. While allowing critical mass transit systems to continue to deteriorate. And I count all five members of the Control Board among the “realists”—including union leader Brian Lang,whose yes vote on the fare hike was especially disappointing. Although he did successfully push some amendments that softened the blow for low-income riders.

The problem is not the lack of solid policy solutions. The problem facing MBTA riders in the Boston area and riders across the other regional transit agencies statewide is a lack of a big enough popular movement to push through such solutions. And therefore a lack of political power.

This is not to say there aren’t transit advocacy groups. There are over a dozen area organizations with solid track records in transit policy. Most are members of the Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) coalition—which has made good progress toward the broad goal of properly funding public transit statewide through the passage of initiatives like the 2013 Transportation Finance Act. But even such gains are constantly under threat, and difficult to defend—let alone build upon—without lots of active public support. As we’ve seen with the state reneging on the portion of the act that “guaranteed” that MBTA fare hikes would never be more than 5 percent every two years going forward. So much for that, right?

What’s missing is basically a larger statewide version of the T Riders Union (TRU)—a project of T4MA member Alternatives for Community and Environment. Many of you will already be familiar with TRU because if there’s a media-savvy protest on transit issues in Boston, they’re probably at the center of it.

The problem is similar to the one I outlined last week when discussing the difficulty labor unions have turning their members out for public protest actions in light of the success of the BPS student walkout. Groups like TRU, and their allies in coalitions like T4MA, can turn out dozens to protest key government meetings as they did for the most recent MBTA Control Board meeting and the series of  public hearings on the fare hikes before that. They can occasionally turn out more people, hundreds, for rallies and marches. But they can’t turn out thousands, and tens of thousands, on transit issues.

Yet that’s what’s needed. If a political movement doesn’t have money like big business, then it needs lots of people protesting to have significant effect on the progress of key public debates.

Numbers like the 2,000-plus BPS students that turned out last week—in the right places at the right times—can change what’s politically “realistic” overnight. Smaller, largely symbolic protests generally cannot do that.

Also, smaller organizations and coalitions have a hard time mustering enough troops to deal with the everexpanding number of issues in a broad policy area like mass transit. For example, MBTA advocates don’t just have the fare hike to deal with. There’s also the late night bus debacle. And the unrelentingattacks on unionized transit workers. And the idea of privatizing more services by handing them off to companies like Uber and Lyft (because handing Commuter Rail service off to corporations has beenworking so very well). And the increasingly savage Green Line Extension fight. And that’s just Greater Boston. Start looking at the crises facing the regional transit agencies, and there are dozens of other issues that need more public attention.

That’s why it would be great to see TRU—and all the transit organizations already on the ground—get stronger. And it would be awesome to see groups like TRU sprouting up all over the state wherever they don’t currently exist. The more grassroots, the better. All linked together more tightly than they are today. In every neighborhood, town, and city served by the MBTA and the regional transit agencies. Because that’s what’s ultimately going to make it possible to win the simple, just solutions that will get mass transit out of hock in Massachusetts, and back on the global cutting edge.

The more people in the streets for transit justice, the better the outcome for Massachusetts. A pretty simple political equation.

Think that over. Then act. Before public transit is just a memory.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

BPS STUDENTS TAKE TO THE STREETS, MAYOR WALSH FEELING THE HEAT

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Photos by Chris Faraone

March 10, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

With their schools facing up to a $50 million deficit next year, over 2,000 Boston Public School students from all over the city marched on the Massachusetts State House and Boston City Hall this week to demand that BPS be properly funded going forward.

Clearly the messaging and targeting of the action owed a lot to BPS parents groups and teachers unions who have become more militant of late as the funding situation has grown worse. Thanks to budget-stealing charter schools being pushed by Mayor Marty Walsh and Governor Charlie Baker—and the pair’s shameful recently inked deal to throw upwards of $270 million in public funds and tax breaks at General Electric to move their headquarters to Boston. Resulting in lots of “Million$ for GE, Budget Cuts for Schools” stickers and at least one “Fuck GE” sign being sported by the young activists. Plus at least one other student yelling “One Term Walsh” from a megaphone opposite Boston City Hall during the demo, according to Universal Hub. But no one forced these kids to take to the streets. They know when they’re being screwed. And who’s doing it.

All of which foreshadows the political payback to come. In part from the many BPS student protestors who will be able to vote in the next mayoral election. Leaving Walsh on the defensive at a speech to the Boston Municipal Research Bureau—a business-oriented think tank— the day after the student protest. Trying to explain how the massive giveaway to one of the worst corporate criminals on the planet is a fine idea that will somehow make Boston the first polity that it doesn’t completely screw over.

Which probably explains the Boston Globe subsequently reporting that the mayor was “fuming” about the protest in a piece that went fishing for evidence that the teachers unions were manipulating the students for their own ends. Walsh is running scared. Unfortunately for him, although coming off as rather eager to point the finger at union-led pro-public education coalitions like the Boston Education Justice Alliance (BEJA) and the national Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, the Globe discovered that the students really did organize the big protest themselves—with coalitions like BEJA playing only supporting roles. The Boston Herald, meanwhile, contented itself with straight union bashing.

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What’s unspoken is that the best proof that the unions didn’t have much of a role in the protest is that historically they’ve shown little ability to mobilize significant numbers of students in the Bay State. Typically, union-backed coalitions like BEJA will pull a few dozen to a few hundred people to such protests. Students or non-students, the story is always the same. The people who turn out will be a mix of union and nonprofit staffers—paid advocates, although often not specifically paid to work on a particular campaign and doing so in their spare time—and dedicated activists from the involved communities. That is, the generally small number of people who are motivated enough to take a stand on any given issue. Even one so important as the future of public education.

For really important actions, unions (and allied nonprofits) will do their best to bus in members from around the region. But even then, numbers will often be disappointing because—right-wing conspiracy theories to the contrary—unions don’t control their members. They can pay for transportation to make it easier for members to turn out to political actions from a broad enough geographic area to bulk up their usual numbers, but they have no way of forcing members to participate. Especially when important local and state hearings are often held at inconvenient times for working people and students alike.

If their control over their members is minimal, union control over K-12 students is nonexistent. This is one reason why last month’s BEJA-led protest drew only a couple hundred activists. A portion of whom were students who had been activated by BEJA member-organizations like the Boston-area Youth Organizing Project (BYOP). Yet it is precisely the ability of groups like BYOP to educate young people on important issues like public education funding over years that was really behind Monday’s action. Students, as human actors, are perfectly capable of looking at the available information on a topic like education reform and making their own decisions. But even the best grassroots political organizers can’t predict when or even if their educational work will ever pay off with mass mobilization on their core issues. Plus with every issue having at least two sides, it’s always possible that students will back the charters—and some definitely do.

In this case, and to their credit, lots of Boston students have decided to back the underdogs in the charter school debate—teachers unions, parents groups, and other advocates for a strong public education system. Rather than the extremely well-funded pro-charter groups. Many students heard about the looming cuts to the BPS budget, on the heels of years of similar cuts, from both the news media, their unionized teachers, advocacy coalitions like BEJA, and youth organizations like BYOP. Then they got angry. Then they got active.

So the big props for this student action go to the young people who turned out their classmates for what was—for many of them—their first protest. From Snowden International School students who sent out an initial call on social media last week to other incipient student leaders from Boston Arts Academy, both Boston Latin campuses, Jeremiah Burke High School, Brighton High School and many more, Boston’s best and brightest young people organized a cross-class, multiracial walkout. On a school day. At significant risk of getting disciplined by their pro-charter administration. To demand redress. To demand that their city and state governments fund their right to a decent K-12 education.

Some of the student protestors, including key youth organizers, were connected to the existing pro-public education coalitions that were inside the State House on Monday morning testifying to the Joint Committee on Education to #KeepTheCap on the number of charter schools allowed in Massachusetts. But it was the existential crisis facing BPS students that impelled so many of them to take action on their own behalf. On their own terms. Making it, without a doubt, one of the best grassroots political demonstrations Boston has seen in quite some time. Much like the Market Basket workers movementtwo years ago. And that’s why the students made such a powerful impression, and immediately won over large swaths of the general public over to their cause. Locally and nationally.

Mayor Walsh may be angry that the students were bold enough to call him out on the charter issue—and related issues like the GE Boston Deal. But he has only himself to blame. He can’t have it both ways: sucking up to the rich and powerful, and being a man of the people. He has to choose. Is he for the students of Boston? Or against them? Right now, it’s looking like the latter.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

GE BOSTON DEAL: THE MISSING MANUAL, PART 4

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February 29, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

In May 2012, three former GE executives were imprisoned after being convicted on multiple charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and defraud the United States. Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm had all worked for GE Capital—the financial division that operated as a semi-legal “shadow bank,” and that accounted for about half of its parent corporation’s profits until the global financial collapse it helped precipitate began in 2007. Between 1999 and 2006, the trio conspired to skim millions from municipal bond investment contracts. With the full approval of their bosses.

According to Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, the scam worked as follows for the company that Marty Walsh, Charlie Baker and cheerleaders like the Boston Globe have welcomed to Boston with open arms: Municipal governments commonly partner with big banks to sell bonds to pay for significant capital costs—like building schools. The banks invite investors to buy the municipal bonds and deposit the resulting funds in tax-exempt accounts from which all necessary project expenses can be paid. However, since all the bond money does not get spent at once, municipal governments typically hire brokers to find major financial institutions to invest it for them through a public auction process. In general, it is legally required that brokers get bids from at least three financial institutions—and the one that offers the highest annual rate of return wins the contract to invest the spare cash from a given bond fund.

But for GE Capital—and a host of other major financial institutions—the process was rigged from top to bottom. In the case of GE’s Carollo et al, the defendants conspired with executives at the brokerage CDR and financial institutions like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley to divvy up investment contracts for municipal bond funds. CDR would drum up business with local politicians around the country—often bribing them with various kinds of campaign donations and gifts. The pols would then reward CDR with contracts to invest unspent funds from municipal bond issues, while CDR would work with the GE Capital—in concert with the other major financial institutions—to illegally decide which corporation would win which auction for such investment contracts in advance. The “winner” of each auction would collude with the other bidding financial services companies on the bid rate to ensure that the “winning” bid was as low as possible. The agreed upon rate was usually lower than a fair market rate by just a few tenths of a percent. But that was enough to make a killing.

For example, if a fair bid in an auction might have been that GE Capital would invest a municipal government’s unused bond funds at a 5.04 percent annual rate of return, CDR would coach the company to only offer 5 percent. The other bidders would purposely offer lower rates, losing in exchange for winning future rigged auctions. GE would then pocket the .04 percent windfall. A municipal bond fund that might have $200,000,000 to invest in its first year would return around $80,000 extra to GE in that fashion. Which doesn’t sound like much. But such bond funds would be invested by GE Capital for years until they were spent down fulfilling their original purpose to build schools and the like. And GE Capital and CDR colluded on huge numbers of such illegal arrangements, pouring vast sums into GE’s coffers. While depriving municipal governments of that same money. GE Capital then kicked back some of its take to CDR as “fees.”

Given the complexity and ubiquity of this practice, no one knows exactly how much was stolen. But since fines paid by large corporations to governments at various levels for such crimes tend to be vanishingly small, it’s possible to get an idea of the scale of the crime. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), GE paid a $70 million coordinated settlement in 2011 to the SEC, Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, and a coalition of 25 state attorneys general. The SEC alleged that “from August 1999 to October 2004, [GE Capital] illegally generated millions of dollars by fraudulently manipulating at least 328 municipal bond reinvestment transactions in 44 states and Puerto Rico.”

GE committed yet another massive crime against the public interest. And got away with it. In November 2013, Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm were freed on appeal. The reason? The government had taken too long—ten years—to build its case against the former GE executives.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

GE BOSTON DEAL: THE MISSING MANUAL, PART 3

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Image by Kent Buckley

February 15, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Returning to our ongoing look at General Electric’s recent and inconvenient history of violating the public trust, in part 2 of this “missing manual” the corporation got out of the subprime housing loan market just in time to avoid destruction in late 2007. But it could not escape from the consequences of an economy based on selling toxic home loans to poor people who were defaulting in vast numbers by 2008.

That year, everything began to unravel for GE—as it did for all other large interlocked financial services companies that derived a substantial percentage of their profits from predatory loans in the same period.

According to Fortune magazine, after reporting an unprecedented first quarter loss of $700 million, GE’s stock price began spiraling downwards in April 2008. Failing to sell off its light bulb, appliance, and private-label credit card businesses over the summer due to the worsening economic climate stopped the corporation from making typical course corrections to get back on its feet.

In September 2008, GE’s stock price crashed after Lehman Brothers—a financial services titan—collapsed on the heels of Bear Stearns’ disintegration that March. The company became starved for operating funds. But the private credit markets were frozen in terror.

On September 30, GE made two desperate moves. At 7:30 am it sold $3 billion in preferred stock to billionaire investor Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on very bad terms. At 1:44 pm, GE announced its deal with Buffet and said it would sell $12 billion of common stock the next day at prices far lower than it had paid to buy back $15 billion of its own stock over the preceding year. Meaning it was selling the stock at a huge loss in exchange for ready cash.

The next day, the coup de grace: Word spread throughout the markets that GE would be unable to cover billions in regular payouts to holders of its commercial paper. Basically a kind of I.O.U., commercial paper is a kind of short-term promissory note that big corporations like GE are able to issue on an ongoing basis to raise money to cover things like daily expenses. There is no collateral behind commercial paper. Only the good name—and, ideally, top-flight credit rating—of the company issuing it. In normal times, it’s a far cheaper way to borrow money than a line of credit with a commercial bank. But 2008 was not a normal time. At one point that year, GE had over $100 billion dollars out in commercial paper as it tried to stay afloat.

Executives clearly knew their company was doomed unless the government bailed it out. Already on September 30, a GE spokesperson “e-mailed the media with a message that Congress must act ‘urgently’ on the pending financial bailout package.” But the company didn’t wait for congressional action. Since it was not a traditional bank, GE did not qualify for a significant direct cash infusion under the infamousTroubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). So it spent the next few weeks brokering a backroom deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

According to the New York Times, on November 12, 2008 the FDIC announced that it would back GE’s commercial paper for up to $139 billion under the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program (TLGP). A program that the federal government changed overnight to allow GE to qualify—just as TARP was changed to benefit Goldman Sachs et al—according to Pro Publica and the Washington Post. GE had “joined major banks collectively saving billions of dollars by raising money for their operations at lower interest rates.” The company was able to sell $74 billion in government-backed commercial paper and longer-term notes by Spring 2009.

And how did GE survive the period between its early October 2008 financial collapse—when it was still short on funds despite the precipitous sale of $15 billion of its stock—and its November 2008 bailout by the TLGP program? In 2010, Pro Publica reported that Federal Reserve Board documents released that year showed that GE had effectively borrowed $16 billion more dollars at that time by selling commercial paper through the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF).

So General Electric was saved by two government programs that provided it with upwards of $90 billion dollars of cheap credit. According to the corporation’s own September 30, 2009 10-Q filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, GE paid only $2.3 billion in fees for its participation in the TLGP and CPFF programs. Meaning that GE got unbelievably good loan terms—the equivalent of a flat 2.56 percent interest rate. Less than the rates that Americans pay on most any other loans. Including the housing loans that wrecked the economy in 2007-2008. And the student loans that could very well lead to another financial catastrophe before this decade is out.

That is how GE got to survive the recession it helped create. By gaining access to a massive pool of public funds totally unavailable to its tens of thousands of subprime housing loan victims. The same company under the same leadership that Massachusetts officials are paying $270 million to bring to Boston. Excelsior!

Coming soon in part 4: GE’s municipal bond scandal and other amusements.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

MANCHESTER DIVIDED: SEIU ‘FIGHTS FOR $15’ IN NH WHILE ITS CANDIDATE FIGHTS FOR $12

Republican Debate Night_020616_DSC_3124_Images©2016 Derek Kouyoumjian

Photo by Derek Kouyoumjian

February 8, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The “protest pit” outside the Republican Presidential Debate at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire on Saturday evening was a fenced-in area in a field about a quarter mile down the road from the main entrance to the campus.

Bumper to bumper traffic ran in front of the pit. Odd given that NH State Police were letting few cars onto the campus. Most were told to turn around. No one that Republican leadership didn’t want in was getting anywhere near the Carr Center where the debate was taking place.

Powerful lights shone down on the scene from one side—lending it an eerie cast. Behind the fence facing the road were a couple hundred supporters for a few of the Republican candidates. But that was just the first layer. Behind them were about 500 activists with the Fight for 15 campaign—organized andbankrolled for $30 million as of last August by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Whose leaders had bused in SEIU staff and members; student activists; and allies from other unions and immigrant organizations from around the region. At least 13 busloads from southern New England overall, according to the campaign’s registration form for the event.

A respectable showing, if not the “massive crowd of underpaid workers” that SEIU’s press release had promised.

So there they were. Supporters of a $15 an hour federal minimum wage. A fairly diverse group. Standing in a snowy field on a back road, enthusiastically waving banners—some quite creative, cylindrical and glowing from within like Japanese lanterns—and periodically trading chants with the mostly white right-wing activists in front of them.

Republican Debate Night_020616_DSC_3138_Images©2016 Derek Kouyoumjian

Photo by Derek Kouyoumjian

Their presence was part of SEIU’s current tactic to raise the profile of the Fight for $15 campaign byprotesting presidential debates and other high profile events like the Super Bowl in recent months. Which makes sense as far as it goes.

What doesn’t make sense is why SEIU pulled out 500 people onto a chilly windswept hill in suburban New Hampshire to protest for a laudable reform that their chosen presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, absolutely does not support.

Clinton, like Barack Obama, has come out in favor of a $12 an hour minimum wage. Bernie Sanders, the only candidate whose politics are in line with labor unions like SEIU, is also the only candidate who publicly supports the Fight for $15 campaign’s main goal—a $15 an hour minimum wage. Barely a living wage at all in many parts of the country. Hardly the huge ask that opponents make it out to be. Especially given the wage freeze imposed on most Americans by corporations and our political duopoly since the 1970s.

Photo by Jason Pramas

Photo by Jason Pramas

Yet the leaders of the 1.9  million member SEIU backed Clinton last November. Joining the heads of a number of other large American unions in supporting the candidate with a proven record of pushing policies completely antithetical to union demands. Like the insurance industry scam known asObamacare instead of “Medicare for all.” And they have alreadypumped millions to Clinton Super PACs over the heads of their largely voiceless members.

In response, a coalition of progressive unions and activist union members has formed Labor for Bernie to win as many union endorsements for Sanders as possible. Even as Sanders hasamassed a $75 million warchestfrom mostly small donations—without the truckloads of cash that labor unions have traditionally lavished on Democratic candidates over the past few decades.

With Sanders doing very well in the NH polls as of this writing, and clearly capable of staying in the race all the way to this summer’s Democratic National Convention, it appears that SEIU leadership made a serious miscalculation this election. And the fallout from that miscalculation is already playing out in the very state where they organized the standout for their Fight for $15 campaign over the weekend.

Two New Hampshire SEIU locals—560 (Dartmouth College workers) and 1984 (NH State Employees’ Association)—broke ranks with SEIU leadership last fall and backed Sanders for President. Both locals were present in Goffstown on Saturday.

Whether Bernie Sanders wins the nomination and election or not, current SEIU leadership—and the leadership of every union marching in lockstep with the worst elements of the Democratic Party—is going to face increasing pressure from its rank-and-file members to stop supporting pro-corporate anti-labor candidates like Clinton. Likely culminating in major grassroots insurgent campaigns aimed at removing union leaders perceived as sellouts—as has happened on many occasions in labor history. It remains to be seen whether such internal reforms will happen before the major unions collapse under the death of a thousand cuts being inflicted on them by their traditional political enemies and their erstwhile allies alike.

SEIU and less democratic unions like it could forestall the looming civil war in their own ranks—and increase the American labor movement’s chance of survival—by learning from the more democratic practices of the 700,000 member Communication Workers of America (CWA)—whose leadership stepped aside last year and let their members directly decide: a) If they should endorse any candidates for POTUS, and b) Which candidate they should endorse.

CWA members, some 30 percent of whom are Republicans, voted to back Sanders in December.

This article is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism — and stands in for this week’s Apparent Horizon column. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director. He has been a member of three SEIU locals (925, 285 and 888) over the past 17 years, and helped lead a successful union drive with SEIU Local 509 last year at the cost of his job.

Copyright 2016 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.