News
IN: Indiana’s high court to hear IBM welfare case. The Indiana Supreme Court is weighing legal arguments in a dispute between state officials and IBM over the company’s failed attempt to privatize Indiana’s welfare services. Four of the five justices peppered state and IBM attorneys with questions during Thursday’s oral arguments over Indiana’s cancellation of IBM’s $1.3 billion contract to automate much of the state’s welfare system. . . . IBM and Indiana sued each other after Daniels canceled the contract in 2009 following complaints about long wait times, lost documents and improper rejections. WHAS 11.com
CA: Design project to combat water privatization. This Friday, a nonprofit activist group known as The Beehive Collective will be stopping in Davis to present their “Sucked Dry: Examining Drought and Privatization from Mesoamérica to California” tour. “Sucked Dry” is an educational storytelling tour that uses design displays to promote water restoration efforts and demote monopoly on water resources by big businesses across the country. Beehive Collective has partnered with the organizations Restore the Delta and No on Prop. 1 in order to localize and authenticate their cause in northern California. The Age
MD: ‘One Baltimore’ Rally Unites Groups Against Privatization. On Monday, October 27, the One Baltimore coalition, which is comprised of a number of grassroots, faith-based, and union organizations, rallied in protest of Veolia North America, a water privatizing corporation’s attempts to secure a consultant contract with the city. They believe that this is the beginning of what will result in the privatization of the city’s water services. Earlier this month, a similar rally was held in front of City Hall, where protesters talked about the potentially detrimental impact that privatization could have on workers, whose jobs could be outsourced, and families, whose water bills could go up. The Real News Network
NC: Editorial: Paying more than twice as much, thanks to legislature. . . Legislators, in what they saw as an attempt to save money and help the paving industry flourish, included in their state budget bill a provision requiring the Department of Transportation to start outsourcing certain road work to the private sector, the Journal’s Arika Herron reported. “The mandate resulted in the Department of Transportation district that includes Forsyth County disbanding the crew that has been paving school parking lots, meaning that the school district will have to return to bidding the work out to private contractors,” Herron reported. . . . The average price from the DOT has been about $5.25 per square yard, he said, and he estimates that the private-sector move will cost the district about $12 per square yard. “This may force us to really push some projects back that we had planned on doing earlier,” he said. Winston-Salem Journal