HIGHLIGHTS

JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST

First, the Good News

1) National: What is the wider significance of the Department of Government Efficiency’s assault on libraries?

“What DOGE is doing, of course, has nothing to do with the E of its title: efficiency,” ITPI’s Donald Cohen and Jeff Hagan write. “After all, slashing a program doesn’t make it more efficient—it makes it disappear. It turns it out into the world of the private sector, available, if at all, only to those who can afford it. The latest assault on our public good and goods is aimed at public libraries, with the decimation of the staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the cessation of grantmaking which last year provide $267 million to libraries and museums across the U.S.

It’s one of seven agencies targeted in an executive order to “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.” And state lawmakers and governors in some states are following up with their own proposed funding cuts and freezes. As with many of the DOGE cuts, small towns and rural Americans will take a particular hit, as the institute’s focus has been on helping to organize book drives and museum field trips in places that don’t have libraries and museums.”

2) National: Rennie Glasgow made another vow, in keeping with the one that felt so good when he raised his right hand to work at Social Security 15 years ago. “‘We are going to continue to fight,’ he said. ‘We’re going to continue to stand up. We’re going to continue to ask our Congress to stand up and to implement whatever measures they can to ensure that this agency is not privatized.’”

Glasgow told The Daily Beast he cannot help but feel that Musk and DOGE are deliberately seeking to sabotage SSA and cause the public to lose confidence in it. ‘We’re being pushed to ensure that we cannot perform effectively and efficiently, so that they can privatize,’ Glasgow said. ‘I’m almost certain that the goal is privatization for this agency because there’s a lot of money they want to get their hands on.’ Glasgow was speaking of the cash the SSA has amassed from taxpayers’ contributions. He noted that Musk has called Social Security the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme. ‘Let them get their hands on the $3 trillion and you’ll see what’s a Ponzi scheme.’ he said.”

3) National: Jennifer Berkshire, a leading national voice supporting public education and opposing privatization, has a  two-part series on the “war on education” on Diane Ravitch’s website.

From Part 1: “In his fantastic new book, Dangerous Learning: the South’s Long War on Black Literacy, legal scholar Derek Black argues that a vision of racial equality is woven through education policy. Writes Black: “Education bureaucracy disaggregates every aspect of education by race–from basic attendance, test scores, and graduation rates to suspensions, expulsions, advanced placement opportunities, access to qualified teachers, and more.” But this is precisely why the data collectors have borne the brunt of the DOGE-ing of the Department of Education.”

From Part 2: “If the administration succeeds in privatizing the government-run Student Loan Program, college will become much more expensive, significantly shrinking the number of kids who’ll be able to attend. And that seems to be the point, as conservative activist Chris Rufo explained in an interview a few weeks ago. ‘By spinning off, privatizing and then reforming the student loan programs, I think that you could put the university sector as a whole into a significant recession. And I think that would be a very salutary thing.’ So when you hear the rising chorus coming from Trump world that there are too many of the wrong people on the nation’s campuses, recall that an awful lot of these self-styled ‘nationalists’ believe this: ‘If we want a great nation, we should be preparing young women to become mothers.’”

4) National: Education Week has produced a useful guide, with links, on how to teach about tariffs. [Sub required]

5) National: The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) has produced a fact sheet on How to Talk About Postal Privatization Threats. “We stand with the people to defend the Postal Service, as well as other important government services under assault, from VA medical care to Medicaid benefits. Our message is the “U.S. Mail is Not for Sale”—Hands off Our Public Postal Service! The Post Office will celebrate its 250th anniversary in July. Let’s work together to bring another 250 years of strong, public postal services!”

6) National/New Book: From Worth Rises: “Today’s the day! The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits is officially out in the world — and we couldn’t be more excited to hear your thoughts. This book has been years in the making. It’s a deep dive into the corporations cashing in on mass incarceration and a roadmap for how we dismantle the profit machine keeping it alive. Whether you’re a new or longtime Worth Rises supporter, you’re going to want this one on your shelf.” Attend or spread the work about their book events in many cities.

7) Florida: “Should I Ask for a Raise at My Prison Job?” asks Kimberly Cannon A terrific article by Kimberly Cannon in the Prison Journalism Project. “At my prison in South Florida, I run one of our three canteens. Canteens are the prison general stores that sell food and other choice items people may need or want. Our three canteens serve 730 women. At mine, I’m responsible for $10,000 worth of inventory at any given moment. In total, I make $50 per month. This is a big deal in Florida prisons, because we are not guaranteed any pay for our work. According to a report from 2024, Florida is one of seven states that pays no wages for the majority of its prison jobs. Because of this, you could say it is a privilege to have a paying job like I do. But there is one hitch: I’m paid less than I could be, and I’d like to make the most money possible. According to a statewide change last year, commissary managers like me can make up to $75 per month—$25 more than I make per month right now. It is challenging, however, to ask for and secure a raise in prison.”

8) New York: Have you ever seen or smelled the Gowanus Canal? Well, “the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced the early completion of excavation for an 8-million-gallon underground tank that will intercept and store combined sewage that would otherwise overflow into the Gowanus Canal during rainstorms. DEP safely delivered this critical milestone six months ahead of schedule by implementing an accelerated construction plan in December 2024.”

9) Pennsylvania: Michelle Miller of the Center for Law and a Just Economy and Cynthia Conti-Cook of Surveillance Resistance Lab inform us by email that SEIU Local 668 (Pennsylvania’s social service employees union representing 20,000 workers in all counties in the state) and Gov. Shapiro have made progress on the use of artificial intelligence in social services. “On March 28, 2025, SEIU Local 668 President Steve Catanese joined Governor Shapiro to announce a groundbreaking partnership with the state on the implementation of Generative AI. SEIU 668 represents state workers in social services and benefits provision for the Commonwealth. This partnership, as outlined in a letter from Governor Shapiro, includes the formation of a worker board who will oversee implementation of Generative AI tools.”

Education

10) National: The Hechinger Report says “NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card, was supposed to be safe. It’s not.” Jill Barshay reports that “mass layoffs, funding disruptions, and threats of future steep cuts are worrying those who are aware of the inner workings of the NAEP test. ‘It’s a very delicate instrument,’ said conservative education commentator Chester Finn, who formerly chaired the governing board that oversees the assessment. ‘Risky things are happening. It’s going from bad to worse.’ Influential state policymakers are also sounding the alarm. ‘I am worried that NAEP is not going to happen,’ said Maryland Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright, who ran Mississippi’s education department until 2022 and served on the governing board of the national assessment. ‘I’m concerned the congressional mandate will be ignored.’”  [Sub required]

11) Arizona/National: “Arizona’s ‘privatization scam’ is starving public schools. Trump wants to take it national, “says Salon’s Griffin Eckstein. “Kelly Berg, an educator at Dobson High School and local union leader who’s spent nearly 30 years teaching in the state, told Salon that cuts like these will have dire consequences for public schools. ‘Just slightly over half [of the 42 Mesa Public Schools employees] were counselors. So that’s a big impact. We no longer are going to have full-time counselors in our elementary schools,’ Berg told Salon. ‘Having that extra layer of support for when a student needs some extra support is going to be detrimental because now that’s gonna fall on the teachers.’ Berg, who is also concerned about losing federal funding as the Trump administration dismantles the Department of Education, says the impacts on students and faculty will be sweeping.”

12) Florida: Tallahassee Democrat guest columnist Sally Butzin says the assault on public education is continuing. “Districts continue to lose funds being diverted to the universal voucher program. Last year $4B was allocated for vouchers, diverting 18% from district budgets for running local public schools. This years’ voucher budget will continue to grow, with a majority of vouchers going to students already enrolled in private schools. And to add insult to injury, when a private voucher school closes, or a student decides to leave and return to their local district school, the voucher money does not return with the student. The private school gets to keep it. A recent local example is news that Renaissance Academy charter school (formerly Governor’s Charter Academy) on Mahan Drive will become a private school called Tallahassee Preparatory Academy next year. Coincidentally the private school tuition mirrors the voucher amount of $8,000.”

13) Tennessee: The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports that a state takeover of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools, long sought after  by pro-privatization interests, is nearing possible approval. What does the community think of it? “In the past, Memphians have strongly opposed the state intervening in local education, but this year there is some local support. The MSCS school board, and many education experts, are warning about the implications of state takeovers, mainly that they do not improve educational outcomes for students and often leave students in a worse place educationally than before. But, even with social media campaigns and groups forming to combat the state taking over, there are still supporters of the measure. The Commercial Appeal spoke with Memphis community members who are a part of a Facebook group called Next is Now. The group was formed in the aftermath of the firing of MSCS ex-Superintendent Marie Feagins and claims to be a ‘group of educators, parents, students and concerned citizens working to protect and support MSCS superintendent Dr. Feagins,’ according to the Facebook page.” [Sub required]

Infrastructure

14) National: Private, for-profit immigration detention is growing again, Stateline reports. And the federal government is picking up the billion dollar infrastructure tab for it. “The administration has largely turned to the for-profit, private prison industry to reopen or repurpose shuttered and aging facilities — many of which have been previously criticized for poor conditions and inadequate care. (…) The Trump administration is rapidly expanding immigration detention through billion-dollar contracts with private prison companies, including GEO Group and CoreCivic. Dozens of facilities may reopen across at least eight states, including places with long histories of abuse. But while some communities and states are concerned about oversight and are pushing back, others see economic opportunity. President Donald Trump isn’t the first president to rely on private contractors to detain immigrants. Tens of thousands were held in private facilities under both the Obama and Biden administrations.”

Conditions in some of these facilities are poor and the private companies want to benefit from federal immunity, New Jersey Monitor reports. “A major private prison company wants a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Newark over the company’s planned new immigration jail, framing the case as a politically charged attempt to sidestep federal authority. In a 37-page court filing made public Wednesday, prison firm Geo Group argues that Newark’s legal challenge can’t move forward without U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a party, since the federal agency has a contract with Geo Group to house immigrant detainees at the proposed jail. And because ICE is shielded by sovereign immunity, the entire case should be thrown out, the company says.”

15) National/Think Tanks/New Book: It seems the libertarians and centrist liberals are finding common ground on deregulation, with the overlap having to do with promises of greater productivity and making infrastructure-building great again. We’ve heard all this before, of course, for decades. Private provision/deregulation = efficiency = abundance. On the debate, see this and this.

Writing in the current issue of Public Works Financing, editor Michael Bennon somewhat lukewarmly praises a new book, Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress–and How to Bring it Back by Marc Dunkelman, for making the deregulation case without throwing out the baby with the bathwater (loosely, Robert Moses’ vision without Robert Moses + Harry Hopkins’ vision without Harry Hopkins). “Why Nothing Works is far more than its central argument, however. It is an extremely rich history of American infrastructure and urban development as well, from the railroads all the way to the battles over high‐speed rail and transmission lines during the Obama and Biden administrations. The book’s intended audience is obviously progressives, but even nonprogressive infrastructure and/or U.S. history enthusiasts will find plenty to enjoy in Why Nothing Works.” [Public Works Financing, March 2025; sub required].

Efficiency can be effective—or extractive. A new brief from In the Public Interest explores the differences.

16) National/International: The Bond Buyer’s Jessica Lerner says that Trump’s tariff scheme is hurting municipal bonds—which support public works, municipal operations, and school financing—even with the 90-day pause on tariffs above 10%. “Following Trump’s announcement that the largest tariffs against most countries had been delayed for 90 days, the muni market had a subdued reaction as the damage done earlier in the session held. U.S. Treasuries whipsawed and closed with large losses on the short end of the curve, highlighting the short-term policy uncertainty, while stocks rallied on the news. Very few deals priced in the primary as most issuers and deal teams pulled the transactions amid the volatility. With the midday market read of 28-42 basis point cuts, MMD’s final scale saw yields cut 30 to 42 basis points. (…) Rising yields sent muni-UST ratios soaring higher. The two-year ratio Wednesday was at 87%, the five-year at 88%, the 10-year at 89% and the 30-year at 101%, according to Municipal Market Data’s 3 p.m. EDT read. ICE Data Services had the two-year at 87%, the five-year at 86%, the 10-year at 86% and the 30-year at 100% at 4 p.m. ‘The equity market is looking at this more positively, but bonds are still thinking, “Well, these tariffs still have to be resolved,”’ said Kim Olsan, a senior fixed income portfolio manager at NewSquare Capital.” [Sub required]

17) National/International: For the wider picture on the tariffs-bond market situation, listen to veteran financial sector author and analyst William Cohan on Brian Lehrer’s program. [Audio, about 48 minutes].

18) National: Government Executive reports that “stakeholders and critics aired their concerns about the way the Trump administration has sought to sell federal buildings and cancel leases at a Tuesday hearing of the House panel that’s associated with the Department of Government Efficiency. Experts told the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee that while property management has been a lingering challenge for the federal government, the speed with which the Elon Musk-backed government cost-cutting initiative previously moved on the issue could escalate risk.” [Watch the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee hearing; about two hours]

19) National: The Transit Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee may cut back transit funding, The Bond Buyer reports. “Transit funding arrives via farebox revenue, formula funding and competitive discretionary grants that often require local municipalities to come up with matching funds that some transit operators believe is too high.  ‘The vast majority of federal transit programs require a 20% local match,’ said Barbara Cline, executive director, Prairie Hills Transit, on behalf of the Community Transportation Association of America. ‘Rural and Small city transit systems are required to match at 50%. The solution is standardizing the match rate for rural and small urban operating funds at 20%.’ Matching funds are often raised via municipal bond sales while the grants frequently generate frustration caused by complex federal requirements for tapping the money.” [Sub required; Watch the hearing, about four hours]

20) National: The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board will meet on April 22 to be briefed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on “fiscal year 2024 audit findings concerning reporting requirements for SFFAS 59, Accounting for Government Land.” [FASAB email, 4/1/25]

21) Texas: “South Texas Developers Make a Sales Pitch to Sell Groundwater. Will Laredo Buy It?”  asks Inside Climate News’s Martha Pskowski. “Talise means ‘beautiful water,’ its promotional brochures say. The 13,000-acre project that broke ground last May near Laredo, the nation’s busiest land port with thousands of northbound trucks passing through daily, may well need a lot of it. And that could be a problem as surveyors for the developer as well as environmental advocates have found the groundwater meant for the community to be slightly saline and in need of costly treatment. (…) The dilemma in Laredo mirrors how other growth regions are challenged by water demands. In the arid West, the idea of pumping Mississippi River water to the Colorado River Basin has been debated for decades. From San Antonio to Fort Stockton to El Paso, water importation projects are sprouting up across the Lone Star State. Water rights to rivers and reservoirs in Texas have already been claimed, sometimes decades ago, leaving groundwater as the most viable new water source. That leaves communities looking to aquifers. Large landowners who hold the rights to water under their land are poised to cash in.”

22) International/Bolivia The Real News Podcast reports on The Cochabamba Water War: Bolivia’s rebellion against neoliberalism. “April 10 marks the 25th anniversary of the people’s victory in the Cochabamba Water War against the privatization of their precious resource. Community members protested and shut down the streets for months in defense of their right to water after Cochabamba handed the municipal water supply over to a subsidiary of the US construction firm Bechtel. Rates spiked. People stood up. This is episode 18 of Stories of Resistance—a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. (…) If you are interested in more information on the Cochabamba Water War, we recommend you check out the 2010 movie Tambien La Lluvia, featuring Gael García Bernal. It is a tremendous look back at that time, amid a scathing critique of how the Spanish, foreign companies and white elites have always treated local Indigenous and campesino populations in Bolivia and across Latin America.” [Audio, about 4 minutes]

23) International/United Kingdom: The Canary asks “How much higher are our water bills because of privatisation? A lot.

A University of Greenwich study for We Own It has found a “privatization tax” of 35% on our water bills. In other words, we’re spending over one-third more than we need to every time we turn on the taps. The latest research found that the UK public would save £5 billion per year on water bills if the government brought water into public ownership. And that figure would be higher once it didn’t include paying off nationalization costs. Shareholder compensation may not be necessary. Financial ratings company Moody’s has stated: the level of compensation would fall within the wide discretion of parliament.

The government could take into account the mismanagement of the environment, debt, and politically the amount of profit already made. Water and sewage companies have paid out £73 billion in dividends since Margaret Thatcher initiated privatization. Additionally, the average pay for water and sewage company CEOs in England is around £1.7m. And they have received £25m in bonuses and incentives since 2019. Water companies have failed to invest to increasecapacity for sewage treatment and deal with sewage and rainwater separately. So, at a total of 3.614 million hours, last year saw a slight increase on the outrageous amount of time water companies spent spilling sewage into our rivers and the sea throughout 2023.”

Public Services

24) National: Michigan Advance’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports that the head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency “envisions [an] Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings.’” “‘We need to get better at treating this like a business,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, explaining he wants to see a deportation process ‘like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.’ (…) The event Tuesday was said by organizers to be the largest in its history, with the most attendees and vendors ever present. The expo floor was packed with members of both local and federal law enforcement. The Mirror observed members of the Apache Junction Police Department, Phoenix Police Department and U.S. Army, as well as border patrol agents.”

“ICE’s fantasy of becoming ‘Amazon Prime for deportations’ exposes the infrastructure behind Trump’s deportation agenda: mass removals powered by big tech and data,” Cinthya Rodriguez, national organizer for the Latinx advocacy group Mijente, said. “Over the years, Ice has contracted with tech companies to automate policing, relying on the dehumanization of immigrant communities. To seek to automate deportations at Amazon-like speed only furthers that harm,” she added “These policies are cruel, reckless and driven by white supremacy and greed—not safety.”

25) National: Common Dreams’ Jake Johnson says “Despite Proven Fraud, Trump [is] to Boost Payments to Privatized Medicare Advantage by $25 Billion.” Johnson writes, “the federal agency now headed by former television host Mehmet Oz announced Monday that it is substantially boosting payments to privately run Medicare Advantage plans, a boon for an industry notorious for overcharging taxpayers and denying patients necessary care. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it is jacking up payments to Medicare Advantage (MA) plans by more than 5% for 2026—an increase of over $25 billion. That’s more than double the increase proposed by the Biden administration. (…) In addition to Oz and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CMS, Trump appointed former Medicare Advantage lobbyist Don Dempsey as associate director for health at the Office of Management and Budget.”

26) National/Florida: Mark Dow takes us Inside U.S. Detention-Center Brutality. “One of the nonviolent protesters, Irrael Arzuaga-Milanes, said he was punished with four days of solitary confinement. (The ACLU has just obtained ICE documents, for which it had to sue, concerning ICE policies on solitary. ICE has used this punishment as a form of torture, according to the United Nations.) There will be more protests by detainees against wrongful detentions, illegal deportations, overcrowding, and mistreatment. ICE detention guards, private-prison contractors, and county jails holding ICE detainees will respond with the excessive force that the administration actively encourages. And not only encourages: Our government now glorifies and celebrates the humiliation and violence, as it has in the U.S.-El Salvador collaboration. (…) There are almost 200 of these ‘facilities’—that we know of—across the United States, as well in Guam and the North Mariana Islands, used by ICE to hold immigrant prisoners as of late 2024. The prisoners are in ICE’s ‘processing centers,’ in county jails, and (the overwhelming majority) in private prisons.” Dow is the author of American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. He worked at Miami’s Haitian Refugee Center in the early 1990s.

27) National: Writing in CounterPunch, John Ketwig, the best-selling author of two books about the war in Vietnam, including “And A Hard Rain Fell: A G.I’s True Story of the Vietnam War,https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/04/09/veterans-va-healthcare-is-threatened/warns that the Trump administration “is quietly working to privatize the healthcare facet (Veterans Health Administration, or VHA) of the VA. (…) Even when private-sector psychiatrists are available, many are unwilling to accept either private insurances or federal reimbursement. Under such ‘market conditions,’ not only do private-sector patients wait too long for appointments, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 40% of Americans with schizophrenia and 51% suffering from bipolar disorder go untreated in any given year. By contrast, data available on Capitol Hill in 2018 showed that the waiting time to see a VHA mental health professional averaged four days! And, the VHA personnel are trained to deal with the unique mental issues encountered by combat veterans such as PTSD. Proponents of VA privatization have doggedly refused to require any specialized training for the professionals to whom veterans will be outsourced.”

Robert Haslag notes that “Elon [Musk] fired veterans who run our military crisis line, providing hope for veteranssuffering from PTSD who committed 6,000 suicides in 2022, averaging more than 17 per day.”

28) National: Questions are being asked in Congress over whether Elon Musk has a conflict of interest between his role as a corporate executive and a government employee. “In addition, as of March 2025, Mr. Musk’s DOGE operation had terminated approximately 2,000 employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is housed in the Department of Commerce, leading former NOAA employees to sound the alarm on Mr. Musk’s efforts to gut NOAA to privatize space and satellite operations and steer new contracts to SpaceX and Starlink. President Trump illegally fired Commerce’s inspector general, the agency’s independent watchdog responsible for conducting oversight of any potential waste, fraud, abuse, or corruption associated with Mr. Musk.”

29) National: David McCall the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW), explains why sandbagging public servants invites waste, fraud, and abuse. “‘They’re dedicated to their jobs because they love public service work,’ he said of the federal workers targeted by Musk. ‘They’re skilled in their special areas. Many of them are military veterans. These are very organized folks,’ added [Lou Luckhardt, former president of USW Local 9487 and now] financial secretary-treasurer of the Dallas AFL-CIO Council, comprising about 40 unions representing workers in the public and private sectors. As if sandbagging unionized federal workers isn’t despicable enough, some states recently ramped up their own assaults on union members who serve as educators, firefighters, corrections officers, and road workers, as well as in many other positions.”

30) National: Efficiency? The Financial Times reports that Musk’s DOGE fired self-drive car safety experts at an agency that regulates Tesla. “Of roughly 30 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration workers dismissed in February as part of Musk’s campaign to shrink the federal workforce, many were in the “Office of Vehicle Automation Safety,” people familiar with the situation told the Financial Times. The cuts are part of mass firings by Doge that have affected at least 20,000 federal employees and raised widespread concern over potential conflicts of interest for Musk given many of the targeted agencies regulate or have contracts with his businesses. The NHTSA, which has been a thorn in Tesla’s side for years, has eight active investigations into the company after receiving — and publishing — more than 10,000 complaints from members of the public. Morale at the agency, which has ordered dozens of Tesla recalls and delayed the rollout of the group’s self-driving and driver-assistance software, has plunged following Doge’s opening salvo of job cuts, according to current and former NHTSA staff.” [Sub required]

All the Rest

31) National/Louisiana: “An Algorithm Deemed This Nearly Blind 70-Year-Old Prisoner a ‘Moderate Risk.’ Now He’s No Longer Eligible for Parole,” ProPublica reports. “Alexander, more than midway through a 20-year prison sentence on drug charges, was making preparations for what he hoped would be his new life. His daughter, with whom he had only recently become acquainted, had even made up a room for him in her New Orleans home. Then, two months before the hearing date, prison officials sent Alexander a letter informing him he was no longer eligible for parole. A computerized scoring system adopted by the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections had deemed the nearly blind 70-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, a moderate risk of reoffending, should he be released. And under a new law, that meant he and thousands of other prisoners with moderate or high risk ratings cannot plead their cases before the board. According to the department of corrections, about 13,000 people—nearly half the state’s prison population — have such risk ratings, although not all of them are eligible for parole. Alexander said he felt “betrayed” upon learning his hearing had been canceled. “People in jail have … lost hope in being able to do anything to reduce their time,” he said.”

32) Think Tanks: Amtrak’s future is murky as the privatization debate gains steam, reports James R. Hood of Consumer Affairs. “While critics like Musk say privatization would lead to efficiency and innovation, Amtrak pushed back in a recent memo, arguing that this view “ignores the facts.” The railroad noted that its purpose isn’t profitability but public service—especially in areas where air and bus travel are limited. It also pointed out that other countries with world-class rail systems, like France and Japan, heavily subsidize their rail networks. ‘More than half a century of inadequate federal funding has left Amtrak with aged assets,’ the company wrote, ‘which are more expensive to maintain and operate.’ Amtrak is a government-chartered corporation, with its board appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The Biden administration directed billions toward rail upgrades through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, fueling optimism for expansion. But with Donald Trump back in office and Musk’s comments gaining attention, the future of public rail investment is now up in the air.”

33) Think Tanks: This Thursday, April 17, The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, will host an webinar on Would Re-Privatization of Freddie & Fannie Help or Hurt Housing? “There is one high-stakes question dominating US housing finance today: will Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) which have long been the backbone of America’s mortgage markets, exit conservatorship? Conservatorship is an obscure legal status where the government controls the companies instead of their stockholders and, if Fannie and Freddie exit, what could that mean for the mortgage market, taxpayers, and homebuyers? Don Layton, former CEO of Freddie Mac and former Senior Industry Fellow at the Center, and JCHS Managing Director Chris Herbert will walk through how we got here, why the GSEs have long faced an identity crisis, and what’s at stake in the push to privatize that, if done poorly, could make mortgages much more expensive and much less readily available.” [Register to attend].

 

 

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