Portside

The man who wants to transform public education by bringing market discipline to schools has no problem gorging at the public trough to beef up his namesake museum.

Reader Comments - Vietnam - What Really Happened?; Chapel Hill Murders - Honor Their Memory; Chocolate, Mayan civilization; Ukraine; How Radical Change Occurs; Adjunct Profs; Teacher Unions; West Virginia Coal and Blood; Public Pensions; Water Privatization; Save the Postal Service; Timbuktu; UMass Backs Down on Iranian Student Ban; Artistic Expression; Support the Greek People; Announcements; Today in History - FDR Signs Order for Internment of Japanese Americans

In the face of aggressive attacks, a wide range of national organizations have come together to create A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service. These organizations are united in the demand that the public good must not be sacrificed for the sake of private investment and profit. A strong public Postal Service is our democratic right. The Alliance is fighting to protect and enhance vibrant public postal services now – and for many generations to come.

How will pay for high-quality transportation infrastructure, including roads, trains, bicycles, planes and other multimodal forms of transportation. Here are three under-reported infrastructure privatization issues we need to pay attention to. First, who actually benefits from and pays for infrastructure? Second, how are opinion makers talking about privatized infrastructure? Third, what is the quality of the process used to build large infrastructure projects?

Facing increasing opposition abroad, over the past several decades, global water privatizers like Veolia and Suez have begun to see U.S. cities as expansion markets. These corporations have aggressively interfered in the democratic governance of water and have sought to trap cities in unfavorable privatization contracts.

Despite the warning signs all around us, the Departments of the Treasury and Transportation appear to be running headlong into a crash - and not just the kind of crash that takes place on a highway. The Obama administration appears to have bought into Public Private Partnerships spinning straw into gold.

The outsourcing of public services to private go-getters has concentrated wealth the whole world over. The best answer to that concentration? That just may be new forms of public ownership.

Thousands of Spanish doctors, nurses and other health care workers demonstrated on Sunday in 16 cities against budget cuts and plans to partly privatise medical services.