Neoliberals Are Taking All the Wrong Lessons From Conor Lamb’s Victory
Neoliberals Are Taking All the Wrong Lessons From Conor Lamb’s Victory
“The recent CPC Strategy Summit in Baltimore was brimming with such ideas, which are enjoying new traction thanks to shifting political winds. Though there’s no consensus as of yet as to what a...
“The recent CPC Strategy Summit in Baltimore was brimming with such ideas, which are enjoying new traction thanks to shifting political winds. Though there’s no consensus as of yet as to what a full-fledged progressive platform might look like, the most recent People’s Budget offers hints in that direction. The Center for Popular Democracy’s Ady Barkan, who received an award from the CPC for his work organizing against the Obamacare repeal and Trump’s tax plan, suggested the party could pioneer a different way of thinking about spending and budgets.”
Read the full article here.
Can these Cities Block Texas’s Vile Anti-Immigrant Agenda?
Raul Reyes is the 34-year-old mayor of El Cenizo, Texas, a sweltering border town of 3,200 that sits beside the Rio Grande, where nearly all the residents are Latino, many are immigrants, and...
Raul Reyes is the 34-year-old mayor of El Cenizo, Texas, a sweltering border town of 3,200 that sits beside the Rio Grande, where nearly all the residents are Latino, many are immigrants, and quite a few are undocumented too. It’s a sanctuary of sorts, a town that, since 1999, has had a policy prohibiting local police officers from asking about someone’s immigration status. It’s the town where Reyes was born and raised and a town whose residents he cares for fiercely.
Read the full article here.
Pro-Yellen Ad Hits the Air
The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Derby reports. “The Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign broadcast a 30-second TV spot urging Mr. Trump to offer Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen a second...
The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Derby reports. “The Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign broadcast a 30-second TV spot urging Mr. Trump to offer Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen a second term. The ad ran during 'Fox & Friends,' a morning show the president watches and often reacts to on Twitter.” The group is behind Twitter ads bashing Kevin Warsh, another candidate for the chairmanship, that have popped up in my feed over the past couple of weeks, too.
Read the full article here.
Central Bankers’ Jackson Hole Gathering: a Cheat Sheet
Central Bankers’ Jackson Hole Gathering: a Cheat Sheet
For the fifth year in a row, the liberal Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign is on hand for the Jackson Hole gathering. It organized a Thursday panel on slow wage growth and market...
For the fifth year in a row, the liberal Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign is on hand for the Jackson Hole gathering. It organized a Thursday panel on slow wage growth and market concentration.
Read the full article here.
How Cities and States are Taking the Lead on Immigration Reform
As attacks on immigrants grow more vocal and more galling this election season, it can be easy to feel sickened and lose hope. Across the country, millions of hard-working immigrants are trapped...
As attacks on immigrants grow more vocal and more galling this election season, it can be easy to feel sickened and lose hope. Across the country, millions of hard-working immigrants are trapped in a painful limbo, confined to the shadows, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, and unable to fully participate in society.
Federal efforts to support immigrants are stalled, with repeated failures to pass an immigration bill. The most promising pro-immigrant policy in years — President Obama’s executive order shielding immigrant parents and children from deportation — was turned back with a deadlock at the Supreme Court.
But if you zoom in to states and cities, the picture couldn’t be more different. When it comes to promoting immigrant inclusion and equality, they are buzzing hives of innovation, generating a variety of policies that benefit everyone by promoting dignity, inclusion and access to justice for the immigrants who drive their economies and enrich their communities.
As of this year, more than a dozen cities provide a form of municipal identification to all residents regardless of their immigration status. Without such a proof of identity, immigrants are unable to access vital services needed for daily life, such as opening a bank account, seeing a doctor at a hospital, or even collecting a package from the post office. New Haven became the first city to introduce municipal IDs in 2007, and many of the country’s largest cities, including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have followed. New York City has issued close to a million municipal ID cards, clearly demonstrating their value to a broad swath of New Yorkers.
Sixteen states also have laws — known as DREAM Acts — that offer undocumented residents access to the same tuition rates as U.S. citizens at state colleges and universities. In Texas, nearly 25,000 students annually take advantage of the state’s DREAM Act, a law passed with the backing of Republican Governor Rick Perry.
States and cities have also helped curb the worst excesses of harsh and ineffective federal deportation policies. Since 2011, more than a dozen jurisdictions have passed laws limiting collaboration between local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Knowing that detained immigrants often lack access to legal help, a number of cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago are exploring programs to provide meaningful representation to immigrants. In New York City, the country’s first access to counsel initiative has helped its clients be an astounding 1,000 percent more likely to win their immigration cases than those who lack representation.
With fears that the divisive rhetoric unleashed during this campaign cycle could persist well into the future, even more localities need to take action to welcome immigrants and to value their tremendous contributions. Sadly, there is no guarantee that a long-overdue immigration reform package will be passed by the next president, whoever wins November 8. Cities and states must lead the way.
In recent years, cities and states have led the way in defending and expanding the rights of workers, with the passage of paid sick days, higher minimum wages and fair scheduling laws in municipalities like Seattle, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and New York City, as well as states like California, Connecticut and Oregon.
They have a similar role — and responsibility — to play in protecting immigrants. Immigrants to this country have made the United States more vibrant and prosperous. Rather than turning a blind eye to the millions in this country denied fundamental benefits and services, we must work hard to realize the highest ideals of our country and to promote a better future for our immigrants and for all.
By Andrew Friedman
Source
Jackson Hole Journal: Rate Rise Friends, Foes Encircle Fed Event
Also getting under way at the lodge is a protest conference organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal group that has been cajoling the Fed to hold off on raising interest rates....
Also getting under way at the lodge is a protest conference organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal group that has been cajoling the Fed to hold off on raising interest rates. Their headline speaker will be Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and once a mentor to Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who is not attending the Fed event.
Policy makers such as Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer won’t be able to avoid seeing their activists, roaming around the lodge in green t-shirts, reading “Whose recovery?” and “Let our wages grow.”
The group, which this year includes representatives from the Black Lives Matter movement, have reserved conference space directly below the room where the Kansas City Fed’s sessions take place.
Left out is the American Principles Project, a conservative organization that has heavily criticized the Fed’s monetary policy as excessively accommodative. They believe interest rates should have been lifted long ago.
The group tried to reserve space at the Jackson Lake Lodge but were refused, according to Steve Lonegan, their director of monetary affairs. So they’ll get their alternative conference started this evening in Teton Village, a more than 30-mile (48-kilometer) drive away. Scheduled speakers include Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who has sponsored legislation to make the Fed more accountable to Congress.
Better Access
Standing at an information table covered with gold-coin chocolates on Wednesday in Jackson Hole Airport, Lonegan complained that his group was refused space at the lodge while the other protesters enjoyed much closer access to the Fed attendees, including the media.
Kansas City Fed Spokesman Bill Medley said the bank had “no say over who else books space here.”
Elizabeth Biebl, a spokeswoman for lodge operator Vail Resorts Hospitality and Real Estate, said in an e-mail there are space limitations and the Center for Popular Democracy was accommodated at the Jackson Lake Lodge because it requested smaller numbers than American Principles Project.
“Groups interested in booking with us are not subject to the approval of other groups who already have bookings,” she wrote.
Source: Bloomberg
Blacks Nearly Four Times More Likely Than Whites to Be Unemployed in Minnesota
Minneapolis City Pages - March 6, 2015, by Ben Johnson - A new study reaffirms a refrain equality advocates have become quite fond of in this state: Minnesota is a great place to live -- for white...
Minneapolis City Pages - March 6, 2015, by Ben Johnson - A new study reaffirms a refrain equality advocates have become quite fond of in this state: Minnesota is a great place to live -- for white people.
The Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute released a study yesterday showing the statewide unemployment rate for black people is 11.7 percent, compared to 3.2 percent for white people.
Black Minnesotans' unemployment rate is 3.7 times higher than white Minnesotans'. The study analyzed all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and the only places with a larger gap were Wisconsin (4.6 times higher) and D.C. (5.6 times higher).
Minneapolis unemployment rates are lower than statewide, but the racial gap (3.9x) is even higher.
When these figures came out yesterday protesters from across the country lobbied the Federal Reserve to keep its interest rates low.
When interest rates are low it's easier for businesses to borrow money, and in theory, easier access to money means businesses can hire -- and pay -- more people. On the flip side, if interest rates are kept too low for too long inflation becomes a concern.
"Unemployment is slowly, slowly heading in the right direction, but raising interest rates at this point would really set minorities back," said Becky Dernbach with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, which held a rally yesterday at its headquarters. "We think the Fed needs to pay special consideration to how the recovery has not hit certain communities at all."
NOC and its allies are supportive of Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, who favors keeping interest rates low, but he's stepping down in a year. Protesters made it clear yesterday they want a say in who takes his place.
"On a fundamental level, we need to have a voice in the process," said Dernbach.
Source
Cities Spend More and More on Police. Is It Working?
Cities Spend More and More on Police. Is It Working?
Oakland spent 41 percent of the city's general fund on policing in Fiscal Year 2017. Chicago spent nearly 39 percent, Minneapolis almost 36 percent, Houston 35 percent.
The figures reflect...
Oakland spent 41 percent of the city's general fund on policing in Fiscal Year 2017. Chicago spent nearly 39 percent, Minneapolis almost 36 percent, Houston 35 percent.
The figures reflect an accelerating trend in the past 30 years, as city governments have forked over larger and larger shares of their budgets toward law enforcement at the expense of social services, health care, infrastructure and other types of spending, according to a new report from a network of civil rights groups.
Read the full article here.
Bad deals with Wall Street are costing the city as much as $1 billion a year
NY Daily News - December 2, 2013, by Phyllis Furman - Coalition urges city to change its relationship with banks as a way to address income inequality.
...NY Daily News - December 2, 2013, by Phyllis Furman - Coalition urges city to change its relationship with banks as a way to address income inequality.
Wall Street has put the squeeze on the city to the tune of $1 billion, a report due out Tuesday claims.
As much as $723 million worth of unnecessary fees and bad deals, coupled with $300 million in bank subsidies should be rejiggered, says a study from a new left-leaning coalition called New Day, New York Coalition.
"New York City could be saving $1 billion annually just by changing the way it does business with Wall Street," one of the report's authors, Connie Razza, director of strategic research initiatives at the Center for Popular Democracy, told the Daily News.
The study, dubbed "Leveraging New York's Financial Power to Combat Inequality," kicks off a week of events organized by the group, culminating in a rally set for Thursday at Foley Square.
The coalition, whose members include veterans of Occupy Wall Street, labor unions such as 1199SEIU, and faith organizations, says its goal is to "draw attention to the ways Wall Street and big corporations continue to siphon resources away from average New Yorkers and point toward solutions that would help reduce inequality and build economic fairness."
Mirroring a key campaign theme of Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, the report notes the huge disparity between the city's haves and have-nots, with the 1% controlling a whopping 40% of the city's income.
The city and its pension funds have tremendous leverage that can be used to bridge the gap, the study says: $350 billion that travels through the financial system.
"We should be using that leverage to demand a different relationship" with Wall Street, Razza said.
Among the key findings: the city, its pension funds and the MTA pay $563 million in Wall Street fees each year.
Rather than pay out megabucks to Wall Street big shots, the city should set up an in-house group to manage its pension assets and bond offerings, the report recommends.
That suggestion comes on the heels of a recent city report that showed fees paid by New York City pension funds surged by 28% to $472.5 million in the year ended June 30.
The idea of bringing the management of the city's money in-house isn't new.
New York's former chief investment officer, Larry Schloss, recommended just that before he recently stepped down. A number of public pension funds in Canada, including Ontario's $126 billion teachers' pension fund, have already moved in that direction.
But achieving that goal here is a long shot, said Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse Blog.
"Attracting and retaining qualified managers to manage money in-house is a huge challenge," Kolivakis told the News.
Patrick Muncie, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, noted the financial services industry's crucial contributions to the local economy.
"The financial services sector is a critical driver of New York City's economy, providing more than 400,000 jobs and generating $3 billion in tax revenue last year alone," he said.
A spokesman for outgoing New York City Comptroller John Liu said the report encapsulates many of the comptroller's efforts, including "better and more cost-effective in-house management of pension assets."
The report "effectively and succinctly aggregates the real underlying issues of deepening inequality," Liu said in a statement.
Reps for de Blasio and incoming New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, declined to comment.
Other recommendations of the report include holding banks to firm commitments to improve the community in exchange for the $300 million a year they receive in subsidies.
pfurman@nydailynews.com
What they want:
*Renegotiate financial deals to save up to $725 million each year
*Hold banks to commitments in exchange for $300 million in subsidies
*Banks should write down underwater mortgages to keep 86,000 families in their homes
SourceWhy Diversity Matters at the Federal Reserve
There’s no question that race and gender matter in determining people’s economic fortunes. African Americans’ unemployment rate is typically twice as high as that of whites. The racial wealth gap...
There’s no question that race and gender matter in determining people’s economic fortunes. African Americans’ unemployment rate is typically twice as high as that of whites. The racial wealth gap has widened since the financial crisis, when African Americans and Hispanics—who had a disproportionate share of their wealth tied up in their homes—disproportionately suffered from subprime loans and foreclosures. The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances finds that the median wealth of a white family in 2013, the last year studied, was $134,008. For Hispanics, it was just $13,900. For African-Americans, $11,184. And as everyone knows, or should, women still make 79 cents for every dollar men make.
These deficiencies are more likely to be ignored when our most important economic policymakers don’t reflect the faces of all Americans. Yesterday, 127 Democratic members of Congress wrote to Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen about the lack of diversity at the central bank. “The leadership across the Federal Reserve System remains overwhelmingly and disproportionately white and male,” the letter notes. Led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, this high-level challenge also castigates the Fed for being dominated by former and current executives of financial institutions and large corporations, rather than people with backgrounds in academia, labor, or consumer organizations.
The voices of those left behind most egregiously in the economic recovery are simply not present in Fed deliberations.
Momentum to fix the Fed’s diversity problem grew on Thursday when Hillary Clinton endorsed the viewpoints expressed in the letter. Her spokesperson Jesse Ferguson told The Washington Post, “Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms—like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks—are long overdue.”
The Fed’s lack of diversity might actually violate the law. Under the Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977, regional Federal Reserve bank directors are required to “represent the public, without discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, or national origin, and with due but not exclusive consideration to the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers.” The original Federal Reserve Act only mandated representation from agriculture, commerce, and industry.
It’s unclear what enforcement of that 1977 requirement would look like. But clearly the Fed isn’t living up to it. The members of Congress rely on a February report from the Center for Popular Democracy, organizers of the “Fed Up” coalition, which has pressured the central bank to adopt pro-worker policies. According to their figures, 83 percent of Federal Reserve board members are white, and 72 percent are male. Among the twelve regional Fed bank presidents, only Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed is non-white, and only Esther George (Kansas City) and Loretta Mester (Cleveland) are female. And among voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which makes monetary policy decisions, it’s even worse: All ten currently serving members are white.
The lack of occupational diversity is also pretty stark. The Center for Popular Democracy studied the regional feds’ boards of directors, finding that 39 percent represent financial institutions. The Fed’s role as a key supervisor of major banks makes this highly suspect—especially considering there is no mandate for financial interests to be represented on the Fed board.
Another 29 percent of the Fed regional directors represent commerce and industry. Only 11 percent come from community, labor, consumer, or academic organizations. Even representation from the service sector, which has an overly non-white workforce and has expanded in recent years, has shrunk as a percentage of Fed bank-board members relative to 2010, the last time the boards’ makeup was studied.
It’s unusual for members of Congress to take such a public stand on the Federal Reserve, given their mindfulness of central bank independence. But they are recognizing that the lack of diversity has an important effect on economic policy. A more diverse Fed might pay more attention to how far communities of color are from full employment when deciding whether or not to raise interest rates, which they are now deliberating. A more diverse Fed might not be as consumed with the concerns of finance and industry, and their desire to keep inflation and wages low. It might consider how banks have traditionally preyed on communities of color, and target its supervision activities to reflect that.
The voices of those left behind most egregiously in the recovery are simply not present in Fed deliberations. The members of Congress cited a recent blog post by former Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota, who said that “there is one key source of economic difference in American life that is likely underemphasized in FOMC deliberations: race.” Kocherlakota searched transcripts of FOMC meetings from 2010 (the most recent ones released). That entire year, African American unemployment stood at 15.5 percent or above. But, writes Kocherlakota, “Based on that search, my conclusion is that there was no reference in the meetings to labor market conditions among African Americans.”
Traditionally, public pressure on the central bank has come from the right, from the likes of Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” movement. Progressives were largely absent from the conversation, despite the Fed’s central economic role. No more: Thursday’s letter to Yellen is the biggest success yet for the Fed Up campaign, launched two years ago to amplify the voices of communities that didn’t benefit from the recovery. The campaign has brought together labor and community groups to demand that the Fed take its mandate to maximize employment seriously—taking into account all communities, not just affluent ones. And now Fed Up’s views have become dominant in the Democratic Party.
In addition to the hefty names of Sanders and Warren, co-signers include 116 House Democrats, more than half of the caucus, as well as the ranking members of the Financial Services Committee (Maxine Waters) and the Monetary Policy Subcommittee (Gwen Moore), the committees with oversight of the Fed. And Clinton’s endorsement of Fed Up’s sentiment puts most of the ideological spectrum of the party on the side of reform.
But what does reform look like? The Center for Popular Democracy’s February report recommends that each regional board contain at least one member from a labor group, a community organization, academia, and a community bank or credit union. A separate reform proposal from former Yellen advisor Andrew Levin includes a number of ideas, including banning anyone affiliated with a financial institution from serving as a Fed director.
These ideas can be congressionally mandated. That will take time, of course, but the movement has begun to get Democrats off the sidelines to pressure the Fed. When Yellen testified before the House and Senate in February, giving her semi-annual Monetary Policy Report, she received questions about the lack of diversity from 15 different members of Congress. Yellen expressed concern that, among other things, no African American has ever led a regional Federal Reserve bank in U.S. history.
The fact that political pressure can make a difference was again signified by the quick response of a Fed spokesman to Thursday’s letter. The Fed statement said the central bank has “focused considerable attention in recent years on recruiting directors with diverse backgrounds and experience.” Those aspirations have not yet translated into results, however, even after the Fed established an internal diversity office in 2011.
It’s hard for the traditionally cloistered Fed to ignore concerns when they come from high-level Democrats. And just having ordinary workers in the public debate already diversifies the Fed, in a sense. No longer can they simply be responsive to Wall Street without further discussion.
BY DAVID DAYEN
Source
7 days ago
7 days ago