Calls Renewed for Charter School Regulations
The Philadelphia Tribune - December 12, 2014, by Wilford Shamlin -A new report calls for tighter regulations of...
The Philadelphia Tribune - December 12, 2014, by Wilford Shamlin -A new report calls for tighter regulations of Philadelphia charter schools, concluding wasteful spending at the privately managed schools costs a yearly average of more than $1.5 million of taxpayers’ money, and more than $30 million since 1997.
“Pennsylvania lawmakers have not given oversight bodies the tools they need to detect that fraud and stop it early,” according to a report prepared by three nonprofit agencies, ACTION United, The Center For Popular Democracy, and Integrity In Education.
The three groups are part of the umbrella group, Philly Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS), which continued to seek greater oversight of privately managed charter schools that are publicly funded like their district-run counterparts. The group’s members delivered copies of its findings and recommendations this week to the state Attorney General’s Office and the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC), which oversees the city’s public school system.
ACTION United, which has criticized the school district for policies and practices it deems unfair, reported no significant action on the 20-page report released in September. The renewed push for increased regulations on charter schools comes as the state-controlled commission ended its seven-year ban on considering new charter school applications in an effort to control operating costs.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union wants the moratorium reinstated until measures are taken to increase charter school regulation and improve transparency. The state Legislature required the school district to start considering new charter school applications as a condition to receive a sales tax on cigarette packs sold in Philadelphia.
Local activists and educators called for the state Attorney General’s Office to investigate whether all charter schools have appropriate levels of internal controls and policies to prevent fraud. Oversight agencies have inadequate resources to maintain staff needed to assess fraud and conduct targeted audits.
The nonprofit organization asked 62 charter schools to provide details about fraud prevention practices, but about half of the respondents replied and only four school districts had adequate fraud prevention practices on the books.
Earlier this week, the group called for providing additional funding to the SRC for improving oversight of fraud risk management practices in all publicly funded schools. They made calls for more leadership from the governor’s office, and for granting authority to city or county controllers to assess fraud risk and conduct audits of school district’s finances.
There are only two auditors for the school district, with more than 200 public schools. And implementation of charter school fraud risk management programs has been lacking in publicly funded schools and fraudulent activities aren’t typically exposed by the type of audits that are conducted, according to PCAPS.
“General auditing techniques alone don’t uncover fraud,” according to the report.
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New Report: Racial Disparities Continue at an Alarming Rate for Black Communities
KPFT Houston Radio - March 6, 2015, by Tucker Wilson - CPD's Policy Advocate Shawn Sebastian joins KPFT Radio to...
KPFT Houston Radio - March 6, 2015, by Tucker Wilson - CPD's Policy Advocate Shawn Sebastian joins KPFT Radio to discuss racial disparities in unemployment and how the Federal Reserve can build a strong economy for all communities.
Listen to the clip here.
New York City allocates $500K to fight feds on deportation
US News - July 17, 2013, by Steven Nelson - Immigration advocates are thrilled that New York City is footing the bill...
US News - July 17, 2013, by Steven Nelson - Immigration advocates are thrilled that New York City is footing the bill for a pilot program to provide free legal representation to people fighting deportation.
The City Council allocated $500,000 in June for the pilot program, with Speaker Christine Quinn – a candidate for mayor – taking the lead in shepherding the funds into the fiscal year 2014 budget, advocates say.
"There really was no controversy because the statistics bore out the injustice," Angela Fernandez of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights told U.S. News.
Non-citizens living in the U.S. without legal permission aren't guaranteed a free lawyer in non-criminal deportation cases.
Immigration law is "as complex as tax law," Fernandez said. She pointed to a research conducted by federal judge Robert Katzmann that found defendants without attorneys prevail less than 10 percent of the time in immigration cases.
"If they have access to a high-quality deportation defense attorney, their chances of prevailing is 67 percent," she said.
The Vera Institute of Justice, a legal advocacy group, will administer the program and approve grants to experienced non-profits whose attorneys specialize in immigration defense.
Fernandez said is costs up to $4,000 to defend a person during the course of immigration proceedings.
"The stakes are pretty high," said Brittny Saunders of the Center for Popular Democracy. "Folks who are detained, in many cases on minor infractions of immigration law, have no right to counsel ... so they're going up against federally trained attorneys."
Fernandez and Saunders agreed that the pilot program - officially called the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project – is the first publicly funded endeavor to defend immigrants against deportation, and they hope it will become permanent.
Quinn's office confirmed to U.S. News that the program was funded in the city's recently approved budget.
The immigration advocates, attorneys and Quinn are scheduled to discuss the program during a Friday event at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law.
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How Hillary Clinton can win in November
How Hillary Clinton can win in November
Hillary Clinton may be tempted to relax into her inevitable nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate given a...
Hillary Clinton may be tempted to relax into her inevitable nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate given a sizable delegate lead that looks likely to hold going into the Democratic convention — particularly if she wins the big prize of New York in April.
However, even after the convention, she will need to woo her opponent's supporters — many of whom claim they won't vote for her — to prevail in an unpredictable general election against an unconventional candidate like Donald Trump.
Bernie Sanders has been buoyed consistently by supporters disgusted with a political system awash in big money — and dismayed by Clinton's uncomfortably close relationship to Wall Street. There is a simple move Clinton can make to prove she is willing to take bold action against Wall Street: She can bring back the Glass-Steagall Act that put up a firewall between commercial and investment banking.
Over the course of recent Democratic debates, Clinton has remained opposed to reinstating Glass-Steagall even as Sanders used the rallying cry of breaking up the banks to help lock up several Midwest and Northeastern primaries.
The division between commercial and investment banking imposed by Glass-Steagall, enacted in 1933 amid the Great Depression, prevented banks from using customer deposits to take high-octane gambles in the market that could bring on another financial cataclysm.
Then, in 1999, under heavy pressure from the financial industry, Glass-Steagall was repealed by President Bill Clinton, unleashing the rise of a number of behemoth banks with combined commercial and investment arms. Less than a decade later, most of them nearly combusted in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, requiring billions in taxpayer bailout funds to stay afloat.
Today, Wall Street continues to be riddled with systemic risks. The Dodd-Frank financial reforms enacted in 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis helped reduce some of the risk, but as the new president of the Minneapolis Fed recently acknowledged, they didn't go far enough. "I believe the biggest banks are still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy," Neel Kashkari — a Republican – told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. last month.
An even more unlikely proponent of reining in big banks is Asher Edelman, the inspiration for Gordon Gekko in the movie "Wall Street." In a recent interview with CNBC, Edelman called for banks to return to lending, which stimulates middle class spending and the overall economy, rather than speculation, which pads the balance sheets of the big banks, not to mention the pockets of the top 1 percent.
While the Volcker Rule — the set piece of the Dodd-Frank reforms — bans commercial banks from using customer deposits for speculative trading on the bank's own accounts, numerous exceptions permit commercial banks to engage in risky investment banking activities they would be unable to carry out under Glass-Steagall. It's not difficult to conjure a scenario in which using customer deposits to bolster market bets causes a global financial contagion on the order of — or greater than — what we witnessed in 2008.
Some argue that Glass-Steagall is unnecessary because many of the financial institutions that triggered the financial crisis, such as Bear Stearns, were purely focused on trading and didn't have commercial banking arms. But those failed investment banks were able to take their risky gambles because they could easily borrow from hybrid entities such as Citigroup. And we should not forget that commercial-investment bank hybrids like Citigroup and Bank of America were ultimately some of the biggest recipients of bailout money.
The solution must be a stronger wall between commercial and investment banking. Senators Elizabeth Warren andJohn McCain have already proposed bipartisan legislation to bring back an updated, stronger version of the Glass-Steagall legislation specifically focused on banning publicly supported banks from engaging in the type of practices that created the financial crisis.
Afraid of Congressional gridlock? A President Clinton could even avoid a dysfunctional Congress altogether by working with bank regulators to create many of the same activity limitations through executive action — but only if she appoints strong regulators dedicated to reining in Wall Street.
With an increasingly likely path to the general election ahead of her, Hillary Clinton in the next few months must strive to shed her image of being beholden to wealthy, Wall Street interests. Reinstating Glass-Steagall is a good way to start.
By Anita Jain
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Meet One of the Sexual Assault Survivors Who Confronted Jeff Flake & Triggered FBI Kavanaugh Probe
Meet One of the Sexual Assault Survivors Who Confronted Jeff Flake & Triggered FBI Kavanaugh Probe
Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona was on his way to cast his vote, shortly after announcing his intentions to...
Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona was on his way to cast his vote, shortly after announcing his intentions to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when he was confronted in an elevator by two women who are sexual assault survivors. The women held open the elevator door, telling Flake, through their tears, that he was dismissing their pain. Soon after, Flake surprised his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee by advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination but asking for an FBIinvestigation before the full Senate vote. President Trump has now ordered an FBIinvestigation into Kavanaugh. We speak with Ana María Archila, one of the women credited with helping to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Watch the video here.
Activists swarm Senate offices to protest Republican health care bill; 155 arrested
Activists swarm Senate offices to protest Republican health care bill; 155 arrested
Crowds of activists swarmed Senate offices Wednesday to protest the Republican Party's proposed plan to repeal...
Crowds of activists swarmed Senate offices Wednesday to protest the Republican Party's proposed plan to repeal Obamacare.
Lining hallways across Washington, participants staged multiple demonstrations looking to voice their dissatisfaction with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's intent to dismantle Obamacare without a replacement following the implosion of the Republican Party's latest Senate health care bill.
Read the full article here.
These Wall Street Companies Are Ready To Call In On Trump’s Border Wall
These Wall Street Companies Are Ready To Call In On Trump’s Border Wall
Much of the discussion on President Donald Trump’s border wall has focused on its cost and impracticality, as well as...
Much of the discussion on President Donald Trump’s border wall has focused on its cost and impracticality, as well as the anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric it embodies. Little attention, however, has been paid to who specifically might profit from building the structure.
Read the full article here.
Commentary: Emeryville action could change working world
Commentary: Emeryville action could change working world
Like many people, when the alarm goes off, I hit snooze a few times and wish for more sleep. But what gets me out of...
Like many people, when the alarm goes off, I hit snooze a few times and wish for more sleep. But what gets me out of bed is that precious hour I have with my young son. We eat breakfast together, we race to see who can get dressed first, and then I walk him to school.
I’m lucky– as a salaried employee at an organization that values flexibility and family, I can arrange my schedule around my son if need be. But for people working low-wage hourly jobs, that kind of control over their scheduling is virtually unheard of.
Today, corporations that pay low wages rarely provide their employees with full-time work or reliable hours. Take Manuel, who works at one of Emeryville’s many retail chains. He had his hours cut from 20 a week down to four, and then nothing for two weeks — throwing his family into massive debt.
Emeryville may be the first city in the East Bay to change that, where the City Council is voting on a Fair Workweek policy on Oct. 18. This is part of a simple set of standards needed to ensure that working people can afford to stay in the East Bay region.
What is a Fair Workweek? It means employers must provide reliable, predictable hours so their employees can budget. Workers get schedules two weeks in advance so they can plan childcare, second jobs, family time, and even rest. And when more hours are available, current employees get priority so they can get closer to full-time work.
In Emeryville, the policy would only apply to large companies with more than 12 locations worldwide. These simple improvements would cost employers almost nothing if they follow the law and have a huge impact on the lives of thousands of Emeryville workers. Hundreds of thousands more working people would benefit if other East Bay cities follow suit.
Emeryville’s own Economic Development Advisory Committee – the city’s business advisory group – said even they agree that increasing stability of schedules, reducing employee turnover, and decreasing underemployment in Emeryville is important. And that’s what a Fair Workweek policy would do.
Many companies are already doing the right thing. This policy would reinforce that good behavior and target companies that are bad actors. However, global, multi-billion dollar corporations and their lobbyists are coming out against this low-cost policy, claiming it will kill the economic climate. But I wonder: how exactly would reliable schedules hurt companies like IKEA, The Gap or Home Depot?
Before the recession, big business painted doomsday scenarios saying that raising wages would force them to close shop. During the Great Recession, working people bore the brunt of tough times in the form of reduced pay, slashed benefits, and a cutback to part-time hours. And now that big business has not only recovered but is booming, companies are back to the mantra that improving standards for their workers will hurt them.
Common sense tells us that business — especially big business — is doing fine. Look at quarterly earning reports of Emeryville’s global retail chains. Sales tax revenue in Emeryville was up 2.4 percent in 2015 compared to the previous year according to the city’s Finance Department. Retail vacancies in the region are at a post-recession low of 6 percent. And of course, there are growing lines of cars and customers coming in and out of Emeryville’s shopping centers.
While business is thriving, working people have waited long enough for something so very basic: a single job that pays enough with enough hours to allow folks to meet their basic needs.
Raising the minimum wage helped struggling workers. Now we must finish the job by providing reliable, predictable hours. This economic boom shouldn’t just be a boon for shareholders. It should also lift the working people who are the backbone of our economy.
By Jennifer Lin
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The Queer Activists Working to Reverse America's Opioid Crisis
The Queer Activists Working to Reverse America's Opioid Crisis
“As queer people, we come out of this AIDS activist ACT UP tradition, where we’ve been very vulnerable around...
“As queer people, we come out of this AIDS activist ACT UP tradition, where we’ve been very vulnerable around healthcare and health coverage and have had to fight for our lives,” says Jennifer Flynn Walker, 46, a Brooklyn-based organizer with the progressive nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy. She is working on establishing an ACT UP-like national network of drug-user-led activism to demand comprehensive federal funding for the opioid epidemic. That idea, recently endorsed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, is modeled after the 1990 Ryan White CARE Act, which was sparked by activism and has since funded treatment and services for people with HIV/AIDS.
Read the full article here.
De Blasio, Chicago, L.A. Mayors Form Initiative to Help Immigrants
AM New York - September 17, 2014, by Ivan Pereira - Mayor Bill de Blasio and two of his national counterparts are...
AM New York - September 17, 2014, by Ivan Pereira - Mayor Bill de Blasio and two of his national counterparts are banding together to help immigrants become U.S. citizens.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will join New York City in the Cities for Citizenship (C4C) initiative that helps streamline the citizenship process for foreigners. De Blasio said all three cities recognize that if they work on immigration reform the right way, it will be beneficial for all residents.
"From increased economic activity to larger voting and tax bases, the advantages of citizenship will not only expand opportunity to our immigrant families, but to all New Yorkers and residents nationwide," he said in a statement Wednesday.
Citi Community Development, the banking giant's wing that provides financial help for needy people, contributed $1.15 million to the initiative. Two national immigration groups, the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Partnership for New Americans, will coordinate the efforts among the three cities.
"Citi believes that citizenship is an asset that enables immigrants to gain financial capability, and building a national identity must go hand-in-hand with building a financial identity," Bob Annibale, the global director of Citi Community Development and Citi Microfinance, said in a statement.
New York City for NYCitizenship, the city's immigration aid group, will use the money to provide legal assistance for naturalization applications and help foreigners with any financial assistance during the citizenship process.
Naturalizing 684,000 immigrants will add up to $4.1 billion over 10 years to the city's economy, according to de Blasio.
"This win-win effort will help us create more inclusive cities that lift up everyone," he said.
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