City Councils Call On President And Congress To Avoid Cutting Services
Young Philly Politics - December 18, 2012, by Councilmember Wilson Goode - As the federal government faces major decisions regarding our nation’s budget and fiscal policies,...
Young Philly Politics - December 18, 2012, by Councilmember Wilson Goode - As the federal government faces major decisions regarding our nation’s budget and fiscal policies, cities around the country are passing resolutions calling on the President and Congress to prioritize the revitalization of the economy, the creation of millions of new jobs, and a return to broadly-shared prosperity.
Led by members of Local Progress, the new national municipal policy network, over the past two weeks the cities of Baltimore, Cambridge, Chicago, Hallandale Beach, Philadelphia, New York, Seattle, and Yonkers have signaled their official support for a solution that avoids cuts to vital services for the most disadvantaged members of society or to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits and that raises crucial revenue from the wealthiest two percent of Americans.
“Unwise cuts to federal spending inevitably shift costs onto states and municipalities, which, unlike the federal government, cannot cope with them through deficit spending,” said Joe Moore, a Chicago City Council Alderman. “Cuts to funding for housing, community development, public health, and public safety will deprive millions of poor Americans of basic necessities like food, medicine, and a home in a safe community.” The resolution introduced by Moore was supported by all 50 Aldermen.
“The American economy continues its slow and inadequate recovery from the Great Recession; twenty million people want to work full time but cannot; and a weak economy undermines the nation’s social fabric and deprives future generations of the opportunity to live rich and fulfilling lives,” said Chuck Lesnick, the Yonkers City Council President. “We need growth, not austerity.”
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The Left's Fed Up Makes A Naked Power Grab For Control Of The Fed
The Left's Fed Up Makes A Naked Power Grab For Control Of The Fed
The left is undertaking an amazing back door plan to dramatically increase its influence over the Fed’s interest-rate-setting Open Market Committee.
The key activist group, a division of...
The left is undertaking an amazing back door plan to dramatically increase its influence over the Fed’s interest-rate-setting Open Market Committee.
The key activist group, a division of the Center for Popular Democracy, is working to kick the bankers off the boards of directors of the district Federal Reserve banks. Those boards choose the presidents who serve, in rotation, as voting members on the FOMC. Brilliant.
In scope, the left’s plan makes trivial by comparison Auric Goldfinger’s “Operation Grand Slam” to contaminate America’s gold holdings at the US Treasury Depository at Fort Knox. Goldfinger planned to turn them radioactive. Those holdings amounted, in 1964, to about $14 billion. They are now valued at close to $200 billion.
Either way, a tidy sum. Yet it’s just a nickel compared to the Fed’s more than $4 trillion holdings.
Most impressive. The left is undertaking its own Operation Super Grand Slam.
It is doing so proficiently and systematically. Unfortunately for the left, fortunately for America, it has run into a real life James Bond: House Monetary Policy Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga (R-MI). The irresistible force has met its immovable object.
Fed Up, the left’s instrumentality, was repelled during the most recent skirmish. This occurred last week at a hearing of a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, “Federal Reserve Districts: Governance, Monetary Policy, and Economic Performance.”
Fed Up is a project of the Center for Popular Democracy, which, according to Wikipedia (citing a paywalled article by John Judis from the National Journal) is the successor, at least in part, to the somewhat notorious ACORN. According to the Center’s website:
The Federal Reserve has tremendous influence over our economy. Although our communities continue to suffer through a weak recovery and economic inequality keeps growing, corporate and financial interests are demanding that the Fed put the brakes on growth so wages don’t rise. There is a real danger that in early 2015 (sic), the Fed will cut the legs out from the recovery before the economy reaches full acceleration, costing our communities millions of jobs and workers tens of billions in wages.
True, and fair, enough. Let it be said that I, along with much of the right, also am highly critical of the Fed. I, a dues paying member of the AFL-CIO, am of the wing of the right wing that is in full solidarity with Fed Up’s commitment to wage growth.
We share identification of the Fed as a main perp in the failure of workers to thrive. From the right check out, for example, Put Growth First. Its website is headlined “End the Fed’s War on Wage Growth: Restore Prosperity for the Striving Majority.”
I, while opposing tokenism, am in sympathy with Fed Up’s stand that the Federal Reserve is unacceptably deficient in social, gender, and ethnic diversity. I have great admiration for Fed Up’s tactical proficiency, clarity of message, and decency in presenting that message. I, too, am fed up with the Fed.
That said, I am on record as dubious about the Fed’s power to “set” interest rates outside the trivial, and mostly symbolic, impact of setting the discount rate. I also am not part of the “raise interest rates” cheerleader squad on the right. I’m for allowing the credit markets to organically set interest rates based on … wait for it … supply and demand.
I part company with the left on its proposed solution of taking over district Federal Reserve Bank governance. Hola, Venezuela! Upon encountering Fed Up’s representatives while we were waiting to enter the Congressional hearing I requested the opportunity to engage in further conversation. Waiting, eagerly, to hear back.
Fed Up is a class act. Making the voices of the have-nots heard is commendable. Bring it on.
By Ralph Benko
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The Price of Defunding the Police
The Price of Defunding the Police
A new report fleshes out the controversial demand to cut police department budgets and reallocate those funds into healthcare, housing, jobs, and schools. Will that make communities of color safer...
A new report fleshes out the controversial demand to cut police department budgets and reallocate those funds into healthcare, housing, jobs, and schools. Will that make communities of color safer?
Read the full article here.
The High Cost of Policing
The High Cost of Policing
To the Editor:
“Crime Is Falling, but Police Levels Remain Robust” (news article, Jan. 8) raises important questions about the need to keep expanding police forces as crime...
To the Editor:
“Crime Is Falling, but Police Levels Remain Robust” (news article, Jan. 8) raises important questions about the need to keep expanding police forces as crime falls. The United States spends a staggering $100 billion on policing a year. It also comes with serious trade-offs for municipalities short of cash.
Read the full letter here.
We Can Fight Back Against Trump’s Islamophobia
We Can Fight Back Against Trump’s Islamophobia
Taif Jany is a rising young policy expert who was born and raised in Iraq and now lives in Washington, DC. His family is Mandaean, not Muslim, but his birthplace and brown skin make him feel like...
Taif Jany is a rising young policy expert who was born and raised in Iraq and now lives in Washington, DC. His family is Mandaean, not Muslim, but his birthplace and brown skin make him feel like a target all the time. He sometimes looks over his shoulder when he walks through DC, where he works as policy coordinator for the Young Elected Officials (YEO) Network Action, a program of People for the American Way. Over the last year, his feelings of insecurity have only gotten worse.
This article was produced in partnership with Local Progress, a network of progressive local elected officials, to highlight some of the bold efforts unfolding in cities across the country.
“Personally I feel intimidated when I walk around the street,” said Jany. “I feel like I’m an easy target, even though I’m not Muslim. I hear from some of my Muslim friends about daily harassment in cities, suburbs, everywhere.”
And that was before Donald Trump won the presidential election.
Jany and his friends have good reason to be scared. Muslims, along with Arabs and South Asians more broadly, are under assault in the United States. While anti-Muslim bigotry has a long and grotesque history in this country, the shape and nature of the bias has intensified during the last few years, with Muslims suffering the fallout in deeds as well as words. In 2015, 78 mosques were targeted for arson or other forms of vandalism, more than triple the number of mosques targeted in the two years prior. Since 2010, ten states have passed “anti-Sharia” laws, with a majority of the rest pushing to add “anti-Sharia” measures to their books, never mind the fact that Sharia poses zero threat, legal or otherwise, to American constitutional law. And hate crimes are on the rise across the country, with official reports of anti-Muslim crimes jumping from 154 in 2014 to 174 in 2015.
Then there is the rhetoric—poison-tipped words and proposals deployed, not merely by fringe-racist characters like Pamela Geller but also by leading political figures who have turned Muslim bashing into campaign-season sport. Trump has rightly garnered the most attention with his pitch for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims” seeking to come to the country, followed by the allegedly toned-down version of that pitch—his call for “extreme vetting.” He has also said he would “implement” a database to track Muslims. But he has hardly been the only one to embrace bigotry. Almost all of his Republican primary competitors trafficked, at some point or another, in anti-Muslim slurs, with Ben Carson comparing Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs” and Mike Huckabee describing Muslims as “uncorked animals.” And such rhetoric hurts; it has real, often violent, consequences. One recent Georgetown University study found that anti-Muslim attacks corresponded with calls from prominent politicians to ban Muslim immigrants.
That’s why Jany, along with hundreds of politicians and local leaders across the country have begun pushing back. Under the aegis of the American Leaders Against Hate and Anti-Muslim Bigotry Campaign, progressive officials at every level of local government have begun introducing legislation and pressing for policies that combat Islamophobia. From school-district initiatives in California and elsewhere that require schools to monitor religious bullying, to advertising and education campaigns in cities like New York that aim to teach non-Muslims about Muslim communities, local officials are joining forces with Muslim constituents to show what true leadership looks like. In the last month alone, the city councils of Columbus (Ohio) and New York City passed resolutions condemning Islamophobia—and affirming support for Muslim communities.
“We were regressing into more and more Islamophobia,” said Daneek Miller, who represents southeast Queens as the New York City Council’s only Muslim member and who helped pass the New York resolution. “These last six months or so, with Trump, have made things worse. We had to do something to reverse the trend.”
These new efforts are taking root in cities and towns across the country, creating oases of tolerance in some of the most unlikely states. In Kansas City, Missouri, the school board recently passed a resolution that condemns hate speech against Muslims and those who might be mistaken for Muslims, and explicitly supports its Muslim students. The Metro Nashville Public School Board in Tennessee adopted a similar resolution on October 11.
The American Leaders Against Hate campaign is the joint creation of Local Progress, a network of hundreds of progressive local officials, and the YEO Network Action, which came together earlier this year in the hope of transforming isolated local initiatives into a national platform against Islamophobia. Even before the campaign began mobilizing officials, the occasional mayor or city council would attempt isolated interventions. (In Muncie, Indiana, home state of Trump running mate Mike Pence, for instance, the City Council passed a unanimous resolution promoting religious freedom this past March.) Since the campaign’s launch, these interventions have accelerated rapidly in number as well as kind.
The campaign has thus far come up with about a dozen policy solutions to reduce Islamophobia. Some of them are relatively easy lifts that can be done on a local level. For instance, school districts can write into their bylaws explicit support for Muslim students, and a commitment to hold those who discriminate based on race or religion accountable for their actions. Many school districts have begun to take bullying more seriously; the American Leaders Against Hate campaign suggests being extra-vigilant about bullying based on religion or skin color, including a formalized tracking system for incidents.
Schools can also work anti-bullying and pro-diversity information into their curricula. They can train teachers and guidance counselors to not only know more about Muslim cultures but also to know how to spot bias within themselves and their students, and how to deal with it. While these measures are relatively minor tweaks on their own, together they add up to providing more inclusive environments for Muslim kids and others whose place of birth or religion make them susceptible to Trump-style bigotry.
Other policy changes, such as establishing anti-profiling measures for police, will need to clear more hurdles. But the first step toward clearing those hurdles is to get local elected leaders together to create a national platform capable of tackling bigger issues. The American Leaders Against Hate campaign, for instance, has recommended that states curb surveillance, which disproportionately affects Muslim communities. In the age of NSA data mining, that might be a big ask, but local officials are already making some headway. In June, Santa Clara County, California, passed a landmark ordinance that will help inform citizens about new technology the government is using for policing and surveillance, and make the legal framework for using those technologies transparent and open for debate.
While many of the efforts have been warmly received, a few have run into the buzzsaw of anti-Muslim hysteria either during or after their passage. In Kansas City, for instance, the school-board resolution condemning anti-Muslim hate speech caused an uproar that spread well beyond the city. Despite the fact that the resolution doesn’t require any major changes to school curricula, conservative websites warned of “creeping Sharia law,” and the school district received thousands of angry, sometimes violent, e-mails, many originating from an extremist group called Act for America. The barrage was so intense that the school district had to set special e-mail filters so that its employees could conduct normal business.
That backlash, Kansas City Board of Education chair Melissa Robinson said, was further proof of the amount of work needed to combat Islamophobia. “It’s an illumination of the hate that’s going on around our country,” Robinson said. “As an African-American woman, thinking about the history of what it means to be black in this country, I can relate to what they’re going through in a very deep way.”
Robinson says Kansas City Public Schools joined the American Leaders Against Hate campaign because they understood that Islamophobia wasn’t limited to the city’s school district. The campaign allows local action, like the kind Robinson is doing in Kansas, to have national impact.
Progressives at every level of local government have begun introducing legislation that combats Islamophobia.
While policy is the end goal of the nationwide campaign, its organizers also see it as a chance for ramping up pro-diversity rhetoric. Just as Donald Trump’s verbal attacks on Muslims have led to an increase in anti-Muslim violence, members of the American Leaders Against Hate campaign are hoping that by highlighting Islamophobia and the need for diversity and tolerance, they’ll be able to spur action in the other direction. That’s why the first part of the campaign has involved getting hundreds of local leaders to sign a letter pledging their support for Muslim communities: to show there is a large and effective counterweight to hateful rhetoric.
As the letter demonstrates, countering hateful rhetoric doesn’t have to involve arduous policy change. Instead, it can involve leaders using their positions of power to call for greater tolerance. Under New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, the city has begun an ad campaign to not only promote tolerance, but also ensure that Muslim New Yorkers feel welcome in the city. And in Minnesota, which has the largest Somali population in the United States, Abdi Warsame, a City Council member and Local Progress stalwart, has been using his platform to call for greater understanding between the Muslim and non-Muslim community, and to push for city services to be accessible to people who speak different languages, a boon to the city’s large Somali population.
“It’s very important to highlight the issue of Islamophobia in the same way we’d highlight anti-Semitism or homophobia, and start having a dialogue and discourse,” Warsame said. “We want to bring people together to discuss this issue. It’s not just about Muslims. It’s about who we want to be as cities, as states, as a country.”
By Peter Moskowitz
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Chicago Activists, Lawmakers Deliver Petitions To SEC For Action On 'Toxic' Interest Rate Swaps (VIDEO)
Chicago Activists, Lawmakers Deliver Petitions To SEC For Action On 'Toxic' Interest Rate Swaps (VIDEO)
Chicago community activists and local elected officials delivered 88,000 petition signatures to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) regional office Thursday morning, urging the...
Chicago community activists and local elected officials delivered 88,000 petition signatures to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) regional office Thursday morning, urging the agency to investigate complex financial agreements called interest rate swaps.
Those who delivered the petition signatures, collected online by the Grassroots Collaborative and several other organizations, say cash-strapped local and state governments are being squeezed by the "toxic swaps" they entered into with banks before the Great Recession. The complicated deals, which come with hefty penalties and termination fees, were intended to save taxpayer-backed organizations money, but they backfired when the economy crashed.
"These are the same toxic swaps that have drained millions of dollars out of our city, state and (Chicago Public Schools) budgets and are hurting cities and states across the country," Saqib Bhatti, director of the ReFund America Project, said outside the SEC's Chicago regional office, 175 W. Jackson Boulevard.
Illinois State Reps. Robert Martwick (D-Chicago), Emanuel "Chris" Welch (D-Westchester) and Chicago Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th Ward) joined activists at the petition delivery.
Petitioners want the SEC to "investigate the 'toxic swaps' Wall Street is using to impoverish our cities and towns -- and make bankers return all ill-gotten profits from deceptive and fraudulent sales."
The state of Illinois has already paid $684 million for interest rate swaps and could be forced to pay an additional $870 million in November if "the state does not sue or renegotiate these deals," according to the Grassroots Collaborative.
Interest rate swaps, Ramirez-Rosa said, have cost the city of Chicago and CPS over $1 billion in combined payments, plus $600 million in costs associated with terminating the agreements.
"That $600 million in ransom to the banks went to go pad their bottom line," Ramirez-Rosa said. "The banks don't need more money. Our neighborhoods desperately need these funds. ... The SEC can act now to recuperate some of that money for the city of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools, and they can act now to defend the state of Illinois from further payments, from paying a larger ransom, to these banks."
Welch said he is "disgusted" that "big banks continue to profit at the expense of our most vulnerable." He urged Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool to join the push for an SEC investigation into swap agreements.
"We ask the governor and our leaders in this city to stop putting banks before books," Welch said.
Here's more from the lawmakers at the petition delivery:
Organizers and the elected officials dropped off the petition signatures at the SEC's Chicago office, where a receptionist said she would give the documents to the regional director.
In addition to the Grassroots Collaborative, the online petition was circulated nationwide by Americans for Financial Reform, the Center for Popular Democracy, CREDO Action and Rootstrikers.
Read Progress Illinois' past reporting on how interest rate swaps work and their financial impact on the state, city of Chicago and CPS.
by ELLYN FORTINO
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I'm a Puerto Rican refugee from Hurricane Maria. Here's why I care about the Pa. midterm
I'm a Puerto Rican refugee from Hurricane Maria. Here's why I care about the Pa. midterm
"I am a hurricane Maria survivor who now calls the state of Pennsylvania my home...Without support from the federal government, I am grateful for the assistance of grassroots organizations and...
"I am a hurricane Maria survivor who now calls the state of Pennsylvania my home...Without support from the federal government, I am grateful for the assistance of grassroots organizations and nonprofits like CASA and CASA in Action, affiliates of the Center for Popular Democracy...I am now proud to work with CASA in action, canvassing and energizing voters. It is empowering to knock on doors and connect with other Latinos and long time residents who came to Pennsylvania before me. They understand that it is our duty as a community to come together and send a strong message that we are here and that we vote too."
Read the full article here.
Meet the Activists Who Want to Make the Fed Listen to Workers for a Change
Vox - August 22, 2014, by Dylan Matthews - The Jackson Hole conference, an annual retreat in Wyoming...
Vox - August 22, 2014, by Dylan Matthews - The Jackson Hole conference, an annual retreat in Wyoming organized by the Kansas City Fed, is usually frequented by central bankers, private sector economists, and academics. It's not usually frequented by everyday workers.
This year was differrent. A group of community activists traveled to the conference to urge policymakers to not do what an increasing number of voices in the Fed system and in the financial sector have been urging them to do: raise interest rates.
"They need to stimulate the economy," says Kendra Brooks, a former bank manager from Philadelphia who's been unemployed for about a year. "Increasing the interest rate here isn't going to help the people without jobs. It's going to put us further into debt."
"I want to at least get our voices heard before they make their decisions,"Tyrone Raino, who recently took a job requiring a 40 mile commute from his home in Minneapolis, says.
Brooks and Raino are both members of local community organizing groups — Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change and Action United in Philadelphia, respectively — which have, with the Center for Popular Democracy, come together to try to do something that hasn't really been done before: grassroots lobbying of the Fed. And they're being heard.
According to the Center's senior attorney, Ady Barkan, the group met with Kansas Fed chief Esther George for two hours, and spoke to Fed chair Janet Yellen, Chicago Fed chief Charles Evans, and Minneapolis Fed chief Narayana Kocherlakota. The last three are sympathetic to Brooks and Raino's perspective — Raino called Kocherlakota "one of the voices in the Federal Reserve system who understands the economy is far from recovery for most of us" in an article for MinnPost — George has expressed support for raising interest rates. For people trying to lobby a generally unlobbied institution, that's an impressive start.
To some extent, the Fed is designed to be impervious to outside pressure like this. Many economists believe that central bank independence — that is, having a central bank that is not directly controlled by legislatures or other democratically elected officials — is crucial to effective monetary policy. In 1993, future Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and his Harvard colleague Alberto Alesina authored a hugely influential paper arguing that countries with more independent banks have less variable prices and lower inflation overall. While that finding was controversial, the view that month-to-month policy decisions by the Fed should not be influenced by politicians — what Fed vice chair Stanley Fischer has called"instrument independence" — is widely accepted.
But Barkan argues that the independence the Fed currently enjoys is one-sided. "There are 108 board members across the 12 regional banks," he notes. "Under the law, 72 of them are supposed to represent the public interest and 36 are supposed to represent banking and financial interests. But of the 108, 97 are from financial institutions or corporations. Only 9 are from nonprofits, and even those are from major, wealthy nonprofits. Only 2 of the 108 board members represent labor organizations and workers."
"This desire for Fed independence really only goes in one direction," he concludes. "It's a desire for insulation from the needs of regular people."
Barkan, Brooks, and Raino avoid endorsing specific proposals for the Fed to get tougher on unemployment, like setting a nominal GDP target or abolishing paper money or allowing "helicopter drops." The emphasis is more on convincing the Fed that there is still a problem — that the labor market still has slack.
While some in the Fed worry that people are getting too many raises, Barkan argues that wage growth is still too slow — and that the labor market won't be healthy until it's significantly higher. "Real rising wages will represent tightening of the labor markets, and that's what you want to pull the long-term unemployed back into the market, and vulnerable workers back into the market," he says. "It's only once the labor market tightens that you can help vulnerable communities get out of this long recession."
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Marvel stars raise at least $500K for Puerto Rico at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre
Marvel stars raise at least $500K for Puerto Rico at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre
Marvel stars who have been filming in Atlanta helped raise at least $500,000 for hurricane recovery efforts in Puerto Rico at a Monday night event at the Fox Theatre.
Scarlett Johansson ...
Marvel stars who have been filming in Atlanta helped raise at least $500,000 for hurricane recovery efforts in Puerto Rico at a Monday night event at the Fox Theatre.
Scarlett Johansson came up with the idea to pull together a benefit event. Her colleagues Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr., all of whom have been in town filming Marvel’s latest “Avengers” project, eagerly joined the effort. Atlanta’s Tony-winning director Kenny Leon served as director.
Read the full article here.
Nine Months After Hurricane Maria, Congress Isn't Doing Much to Help
Nine Months After Hurricane Maria, Congress Isn't Doing Much to Help
If a commission discovered “any wrongdoing, any corruption, any malice in that corruption,” added Julio Lopez Varona of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Puerto Rico programs, “then people should...
If a commission discovered “any wrongdoing, any corruption, any malice in that corruption,” added Julio Lopez Varona of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Puerto Rico programs, “then people should go to jail.” In his view that includes not just federal officials but local Puerto Rican officials, some of whom have come under fire for mismanaging the disaster and recovery. But Mark-Viverito notes that it is far too early to think about how to enact punishments on individuals.
5 days ago
5 days ago