Black Lives Matter coalition issues first political agenda demanding slavery reparations
Black Lives Matter coalition issues first political agenda demanding slavery reparations
A coalition built on the Black Lives Matter movement has issued its first political agenda demanding reforms in the American justice system and reparations for slavery. Some 60 organisations in...
A coalition built on the Black Lives Matter movement has issued its first political agenda demanding reforms in the American justice system and reparations for slavery. Some 60 organisations in the Movement for Black Lives endorsed the platform calling for "black liberation" that had been forged over a year of discussions.
The agenda included six demands and 40 policy recommendations, including a reduction in military spending and a focus on protecting safe drinking water.
It also called for an end to the death penalty, decriminalisation of drug-related offences and prostitution, and the "demilitarisation" of police departments. It seeks reparations for lasting harms caused to African-Americans by slavery and investment in education, jobs and mental health programmes.
The agenda by the Movement for Black Lives came hard on the heel of the Republican and Democratic national conventions, which failed to satisfy members.
"On both sides of the aisle, the candidates have really failed to address the demands and the concerns of our people," said Marbre Stahly-Butts of the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table, which crafted the agenda.
He told the New York Times. "So this was less about this specific political moment and this election, and more about how do we actually start to plant and cultivate the seeds of transformation of this country that go beyond individual candidates."
The overarching mission of the group is to halt the "increasingly visible violence against black communities". Its agenda was issued just days before the second anniversary of the killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
Brown's death and the killing of other unarmed black men by white officers was the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"We seek radical transformation, not reactionary reform," said Michaela Brown, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Bloc, one of the organisations that worked on the platform.
"As the 2016 election continues, this platform provides us with a way to intervene with an agenda that resists state and corporate power, an opportunity to implement policies that truly value the safety and humanity of black lives, and an overall means to hold elected leaders accountable."
By MARY PAPENFUSS
Source
Health industry giants get tax windfall. But it's unclear how it will be used.*
Health industry giants get tax windfall. But it's unclear how it will be used.*
The man with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, who caught national attention for confronting Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) last year about the Republican tax bill, has launched a new “Be a Hero” campaign...
The man with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, who caught national attention for confronting Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) last year about the Republican tax bill, has launched a new “Be a Hero” campaign targeting Republicans. In a new minute-long TV and online ad running ahead of an April 24 election in Arizona’s 8th congressional district, Ady Barkan slams Republicans for pushing tax legislation that could affect his health care if lower tax revenue leads to eventual federal benefit cuts.
Read the full article here.
Activists to SEC’s White: Step aside on audit regulator appointment
A national coalition of 14 organizations told Mary Jo White, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to take herself out of the selection process for the next chair of the Public...
A national coalition of 14 organizations told Mary Jo White, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to take herself out of the selection process for the next chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the audit regulator.
In a letter sent on Thursday the signers said they believe there’s a conflict of interest created by her decision on an issue that will impact her family’s income. That’s because John White, her husband, is a member of the PCAOB’s Standing Advisory Group, selected by the board of the PCAOB, who are in turn chosen by the SEC and White.
The conflict has existed ever since White was approved as SEC chairwoman. Her spokeswoman told MarketWatch in September that her husband’s role in the PCAOB group was reviewed when she first took the job, and then again when the first PCAOB board appointment during her tenure was required. The conflict rose to the surface in early September, when Bloomberg reported that White was considering potential candidates to replace PCAOB Chair James Doty.
Doty has signaled he would like to return for another term but his industry reform-minded tenure has caused some, including at the SEC, to criticize his tenure. Critics say progress on the “nuts and bolts” of the agency is slow because of Doty’s preoccupation with larger industry-level initiatives focused on greater accountability and transparency for auditors and audits.
Bloomberg’s coverage of the conflict, and White’s admission that she was shopping for alternatives to Doty, led John White’s law firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, to remove marketing-type references to White’s position on the SAG from its website the following day, as reported by MarketWatch.
The organizations are the Alliance for a Just Society, American Family Voices, Campaign for America’s Future, Center for Effective Government, Center for Popular Democracy, Community Organizations in Action, Communications Workers of America, Democracy for America, Main Street Alliance, The Other 98%, Public Citizen, RootsAction, Rootstrikers and MoveOn.org Civil Action.
Source: MarketWatch
One ex-banker's built-in advantage in the Fed chair race: Family ties to Trump
One ex-banker's built-in advantage in the Fed chair race: Family ties to Trump
With Gary Cohn’s chances of becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve diminished, another former banker is waiting in the wings for the coveted post: Kevin Warsh.
A veteran of both the...
With Gary Cohn’s chances of becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve diminished, another former banker is waiting in the wings for the coveted post: Kevin Warsh.
A veteran of both the central bank and Wall Street, Warsh is already high on the White House’s list of possible successors to Fed Chair Janet Yellen. But he has an enviable reference: his billionaire father-in-law, who met Donald Trump in college and is a confidant to this day.
Read the full article here.
Anti-Trump Activists Find an Unlikely Weapon: Jamie Dimon's Salary
Anti-Trump Activists Find an Unlikely Weapon: Jamie Dimon's Salary
In the end, nearly 93% of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) shareholders approved of boosting CEO Jamie Dimon's pay to $28 million last year, an increase of 3.7%.
Among those who demurred, a common...
In the end, nearly 93% of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) shareholders approved of boosting CEO Jamie Dimon's pay to $28 million last year, an increase of 3.7%.
Among those who demurred, a common reason cited at the Wall Street bank's annual meeting in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday was President Donald Trump, who won the electoral college decisively but lost the popular vote and has ignited criticism with an attempted Muslim travel ban and a pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border.
Read the full article here.
Bank Workers Tell Their Bosses: Stop Making Us Sell Shady Products To Poor People
ThinkProgress - April 9, 2015, by Alan Pyke - The newest line of criticism for the banking industry is coming from within, as a group of rank-and-file banking employees prepare to demand that...
ThinkProgress - April 9, 2015, by Alan Pyke - The newest line of criticism for the banking industry is coming from within, as a group of rank-and-file banking employees prepare to demand that their employer stop ordering them to use predatory sales tactics and start treating them as a valued piece of the workforce.
A group of tellers, loan officers, and customer service representatives from the country’s largest commercial banks will rally Monday outside office towers in Minneapolis to call attention to their own low pay and to consumer-harming sales policies they say are imposed on them by management. As part of the demonstrations, workers will ask to meet with executives at Wells Fargo to deliver a petition calling for the bank to do away with high-pressure sales quotas for its customer service staff.
In a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), one teller “says she has to ‘practically chase customers out of the door hawking unwanted credit and debit card accounts'” or face reproach from her manager, despite corporate policy that ostensibly prohibits disingenuous or high-pressure tales tactics.
“What they want, what they need, isn’t important to us. Selling them a product is,” a call-center worker at another bank said, summarizing the approach her managers take toward customers.
The CPD report details how the largest banks exacerbate inequality on the macro level and prey upon trusting customers on the micro-level. It argues that the largest American consumer banks are contributing to economic inequality and mining huge profits while freezing tens of millions of un-banked Americans out of basic financial services.
The kinds of basic banking products that are essential to working people trying to save for their retirement or their children “are what industry insiders consider ‘low-value’ or ‘low-margin’ services,” CPD notes, and “are not currently a priority for the big banks.” Instead, banks have put tellers and call center employees under ever more pressure to sell people credit cards and additional bank accounts regardless of whether those products suit the customer’s real needs. At one bank, customer service staff must “make 40 percent of the sales of the top seller to avoid being written up.”
For providing this warped version of “customer service” and surviving the high-pressure work environment the banks create for them, frontline workers are rewarded with falling pay. Pay for tellers fell by more than 5 percent from 2007 to 2013 after adjusting for inflation. Bank workers who conduct interviews for people requesting loans have seen their wages drop by 3.2 percent, and customer service reps have gotten a 2.5 percent cut in that same window.
Out of every 10 bank tellers in the country, three are enrolled in food stamps or another public assistance program. Considering that most such programs have far fewer people enrolled than are eligible for them, it’s likely that the ratio of tellers who qualify for public aid is even higher. Taxpayers spend nearly $900 million a year providing benefits to bring bank tellers and their families up to a subsistence-level income, which means everyone in the country is helping to subsidize bank profits.
Those profits are massive, as the CPD report notes. For every dollar in revenue that the 10 largest consumer banks in America bring in, they manage to keep 20 cents as pure profit after paying workers, overhead, and taxes. That large profit margin leaves plenty of room to pay workers enough to avoid poverty.
Source
Seattle’s Lessons for Bernie Sanders Activists After the Elections
Seattle’s Lessons for Bernie Sanders Activists After the Elections
According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things,” linking voter concerns about global threats like climate change to concrete and...
According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things,” linking voter concerns about global threats like climate change to concrete and achievable steps that city government can take to address local manifestations of the larger problem.
As the 2016 primary season draws to an end and Bernie Sanders backers look beyond next month’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, many who have “felt the Bern” have their eye on local politics.
Hundreds, if not thousands, will be heeding the call of Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a Sanders’ endorser and convention delegate. “We need people running for school boards,” Ellison told the New York Times in May. “We need people running for City Council. We need people running for state legislatures. We need people running for zoning boards, for park boards, to really take this sort of message that Bernie carried and carry it in their own local communities.”
Fortunately for those seeking relevant political advice, former Seattle City Councilor Nick Licata has just published a handbook called Becoming A Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies, & Advice For Changing Our World (Sasquatch Books, 2016). His book draws on 17 years of experience as a progressive elected official and varied campus and community organizing work before that.
Like Sanders, Licata was a sixties radical. He belonged to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Bowling Green State University and first learned retail politics at the dormitory level when he ran successfully for student government president.
Like some Sanders supporters who may become candidates in the near future, Licata had an unconventional resume when he first sought public office. He had lived in a well-known Seattle commune for 20 years and founded two alternative publishing ventures, the People’s Yellow Pages and the Seattle Sun. A Democrat with Green Party sympathies, he defeated a candidate who was backed by the mainstream media and out-spent him two to one.
“In the previous 128 city council elections, only two candidates had won when both daily newspapers endorsed their opponent,” Licata reports, so “the odds didn’t look good.” Fortunately, his message that the city should invest more resources “in all neighborhoods and not concentrate them in just a few” resonated with an electoral coalition of “young renters” and “older home-owners.” Licata’s own track record of neighborhood activism gave him the necessary name recognition and grassroots street cred to win.
Becoming A Citizen Activist is full of useful tips about how activists and allied politicians can collaborate on issue-oriented campaigns. His book makes clear that “going local” is different from backing a presidential campaign focused on national and international questions. According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things,” linking voter concerns about global threats like climate change to concrete and achievable steps that city government can take to address local manifestations of the larger problem.
He describes how Seattle’s four years of skirmishing over plastic bag regulation originated in one neighborhood’s opposition to a new waste transfer station. What might have been just another exercise in NIMBYism evolved into a city-wide push for waste reduction at its source, plus much greater recycling. A plastic bag fee, imposed by the city council, was overturned after a plastic bag industry-funded referendum campaign, but the city’s ban on Styrofoam containers survived. In 2011, the city council passed a broad ban on single-use plastic bags, which the industry opted not to challenge either in court or at the polls.
Licata’s other examples of progressive policy initiatives include raising local labor standards, strengthening civilian oversight of the police, providing greater protection for undocumented immigrants, decriminalizing marijuana possession and using cultural programs to foster a sense of community.
Several of his most interesting case studies reveal the tendency of legislators—even liberal-minded ones—to be overly timid and skeptical about policy initiatives that push the envelope. In 2011, for example, Licata tried to lower the expectations of constituents who met with him about a paid sick leave mandate opposed by local employers.
“I cautioned that it was not likely that we’d see it anytime soon,” he admits in the book. Yet, less than nine months later, he was “shown to be wrong.” Not only was there sufficient public support, but “well-organized advocacy groups” marshaled “a wealth of data to prove that the sky wouldn’t fall if paid sick leave passed.”
Several years later, when some Seattle fast food workers staged union-backed job actions to highlight their minimum wage demand, it was the same story:
Politicians like me were sympathetic but also felt that fifteen dollars was way too big a lift. In my own case, I thought there were more readily achievable goals—like fighting wage theft. I found myself initially offering cautious verbal support and not much more.
What made Seattle’s “Fight for 15” winnable was grassroots organizing by local labor organizations and left-wing activists, who were able to inject the issue into the 2013 mayoral race between incumbent Mike McGinn and his challenger, state senator Ed Murray. Shortly before the election, Murray endorsed a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour while McGinn insisted that Washington state should take action instead of the city.
Key socialist presence
That year, it also made a big difference to have an energetic and charismatic socialist candidate running for city council under the “Fight for 15” banner. Kshama Sawant took on Richard Conlin, “a well-liked liberal politician” who cast the city council’s lone vote against paid sick leave and opposed raising the minimum wage without further study. According to Licata, Conlin, like McGinn, was defeated due to the votes of “many disaffected Democrats who wanted more aggressive council members willing to speak out on issues.”
Once elected, Sawant was quick to utilize what Licata calls “the unique means that public officials have to help mobilize the public”: holding public hearings, forming issue-oriented or constituency-based task forces and commissions and backing ballot measures like the threatened popular referendum on “15 Now” that kept Mayor Murray and his allies from weakening minimum wage legislation more than they did in 2014.
Yet when Sawant—a generation younger than Licata—first ran against his longtime colleague, Richard Conlin, the council’s most left-leaning member didn’t support her. In Becoming a Citizen Activist, Licata now acknowledges Sawant’s unusual strengths as a radical politician, including her social media savvy, “dedicated following” and ability to project “a message that resonated with the public.” Her tweets, blogging and website use “helped her obtain 80 percent citywide name recognition after a year on the council, far surpassing all the other council members,” Licata reports.
According to the author, local pollsters surveying the relative popularity of city councilors prior to Seattle’s 2015 election found that Sawant’s “numbers were higher than all the others but mine, and I beat her by only one point.” These results might explain why Mayor Murray and the Seattle business community failed to unseat their Socialist Alternative critic when she ran for re-election last year, with Licata’s backing this time. (Licata himself chose to retire from the city council.)
New Forms of Organization
Readers interested in further detail about their over-lapping council careers will have to wait for American Socialist, a political memoir by Sawant (to be published by Verso next year) or Jonathan Rosenblum’s forthcoming book for Beacon Press about labor and politics in Seattle. Rosenblum worked on Sawant’s re-election campaign which, in his view, demonstrated “the indispensability of organization” and an “independent political base.”
Unlike Licata’s own more typical electoral efforts in the past, Sawant’s “campaign strategies and tactics were not directed by a single candidate or campaign manager.” Instead, Rosenblum points out, they were “developed through collective, thoughtful discussions” among Socialist Alternative members who live in Seattle and “are connected to a broader base of union and community activists.”
One limitation of Licata’s book is the absence of any discussion about fielding slates of progressive candidates who are committed to a common platform that includes rejection of corporate contributions. To his credit, Licata did play a major role in creating the multi-city network of progressive elected officials known as Local Progress. In the Bay Area, this group includes Richmond, Calif., city councilor (and former mayor) Gayle McLaughlin, whose Richmond Progressive Alliance only runs candidates who spurn business donations.
Nationally, about 400 mayors, city councilors, county supervisors and school board members use Local Progress as a “think tank” and clearing house for alternative public policies. Assisted by the Center for Popular Democracy in New York, the group distributes a 60-page handbook for improving labor and environmental standards, housing and education programs, public safety, and municipal election practices. At annual conferences—like its national meeting in Pittsburgh on July 8-9—local victories of the sort Licata describes in his book are dissected and their lessons disseminated.
Local Progress leaders believe that neither street politics nor electoral victories alone will make a sufficient dent in the status quo. As Licata told his fellow “electeds” when they met in New York two years ago, municipal government changes for the better only when progressives have “an outside and inside game…people on the inside and people protesting on the outside to provide insiders with backbone.” Licata’s new book provides many useful examples of that necessary synergy.
By STEVE EARLY
Source
COMPTROLLER STRINGER DEBARS CONTRACTOR THAT CHEATED IMMIGRANT WORKERS OUT OF $1.7 MILLION IN PREVAILING WAGES AND BENEFITS
COMPTROLLER STRINGER DEBARS CONTRACTOR THAT CHEATED IMMIGRANT WORKERS OUT OF $1.7 MILLION IN PREVAILING WAGES AND BENEFITS
(New York, NY) – New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer today assessed $3.2 million in fines against K.S. Contracting Corporation and its owner, Paresh Shah, for cheating dozens of workers...
(New York, NY) – New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer today assessed $3.2 million in fines against K.S. Contracting Corporation and its owner, Paresh Shah, for cheating dozens of workers out of the prevailing wages and benefits they were owed under the New York State Labor Law. In addition to being assessed $3.2 million in unpaid wages, interest, and civil penalties, K.S Contracting and Mr. Shah will be barred from working on New York City and State contracts for five years.
K.S. Contracting was named as one of the worst wage theft violators in New York in a report by the Center for Popular Democracy in 2015.
“With President Trump taking clear aim at immigrants across the country, we need to stand up and protect the foreign-born New Yorkers who keep our City running. Every New Yorker has rights, and my office won’t back down in defending them,” New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said. “Contractors might think they can take advantage of immigrants, but today we’re sending a strong message: my office will fight for every worker in New York City. This is about basic fairness and accountability.”
K.S. Contracting was awarded more than $21 million in contracts by the City Departments of Design and Construction, Parks and Recreation, and Sanitation between 2007 and 2010. Projects included the Morrisania Health Center in the Bronx, the 122 Community Center in Manhattan, the Barbara S. Kleinman Men’s Residence in Brooklyn, the North Infirmary Command Building on Rikers Island, Bronx River Park, the District 15 Sanitation Garage in Brooklyn, and various City sidewalks in Queens.
The Comptroller’s Office began investigating the company after an employee filed a complaint with the office in May 2010. The multi-year investigation used subpoenas, video evidence, union records, and City agency data to uncover a kickback scheme that preyed on immigrant workers.
After a four-day administrative trial in May 2016, the Comptroller found that K.S. Contracting routinely issued paychecks to just half of its workforce and then required those employees to cash the checks and surrender the money to company supervisors. Those supervisors would then redistribute the cash to all of the employees on a jobsite, paying them at rates significantly below prevailing wages. K.S. Contracting, however, falsely reported to City agencies that all employees on the jobsite who received checks were paid the prevailing wage.
Between August 2008 and November 2011, the company cheated at least 36 workers out of $1.7 million in wages and benefits on seven New York City public works projects. K.S. Contracting reported that it paid its workers combined wage and benefit rates starting at $50 per hour but actually paid daily cash salaries starting at $90 per day. The majority of the workers impacted were immigrants of Latino, South Asian, or West Indian descent.
The New York City Comptroller’s office enforces state and local laws which require private contractors working on New York City public works projects or those with service contracts with City agencies to pay no less than the prevailing wage or living wage rate to their employees.
When workers are underpaid, the New York City Comptroller’s office works to recoup the amount of the underpayment plus interest.
Since taking office in 2014, Comptroller Scott M. Stringer’s Bureau of Labor Law has assessed over $20 million and barred 40 contractors from state and City contracts due to prevailing wage violations, both record amounts. The assessed violation number includes underpayment of wages and benefits with interest payable to workers, and civil penalties payable to the City treasury.
“We applaud the Comptroller for standing up for the rights of immigrant workers and debarring bad actors like K.S. Contracting – a company identified by the Center for Popular Democracy as one of the worst violators of wage theft laws in New York. The Comptroller’s aggressive enforcement of prevailing wage law is a perfect example of what is needed to effectively combat wage theft throughout the city and state,” said Kate Hamaji, Center for Popular Democracy.
“We commend Comptroller Stringer for defending the rights of immigrant workers and ensure that they receive the wages and benefits that they deserve,” said Steven Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. “In a time when immigrant communities are worried for their future in this country, it is essential that we have strong city advocates who will ensure that their rights are protected.”
“At a time when exploitative employers are feeling increasingly emboldened by Trump’s hateful rhetoric, it is imperative that our City’s leaders are taking a strong stance in defense of immigrant workers. Wage theft is a persistent and pervasive problem in New York, with employers like Paresh Shah cheating their immigrant workers out of millions of dollars in lawful wages and benefits each year. We commend the Comptroller for fighting to recuperate wages for the workers at KS Contracting and for showing employers like Paresh Shah that their behavior will not be tolerated by the City of New York,” said Deborah Axt, Executive Director, Make the Road New York.
“I want to thank New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer for taking the lead in fighting wage theft. Unfortunately wage theft is a crime that is running rampart throughout the construction industry. Hard working men and women, who expect nothing more than a fair day’s pay for a fair’s day’s work are constantly seeing their hard earned wages stolen by dishonest, criminal employers. By debarring KS Contracting for five years, Comptroller Stringer and his office have sent a message loud and clear – stealing workers’ wages will not be tolerated in New York.” said Robert Bonanza, Business Manager, Mason Tenders District Council of Greater New York, LiUNA!.
“I would like to thank Comptroller Stringer and his team in the Bureau of Labor Law for bringing justice to the workers at K.S. Contracting. Unfortunately the Comptroller’s task is made more difficult by the fact that many City agencies do not put top priority on monitoring projects for labor violations. Too many employers in New York City exploit minority and immigrant workers. And it’s no secret that many immigrant workers are fearful of retaliation for standing up for their rights, especially in an environment where they are afraid of being deported. This undercuts labor standards for all workers, and safe, educated workers are our City’s most valuable resource. We need more responsible and proactive leaders like Comptroller Stringer to protect that resource,” said Lowell Barton, Vice President/Organizing Director, Laborers Local 1010, LiUNA!.
“In a city where diversity is our greatest strength, we will not let anyone target our immigrant workers for abuse. Undermining labor standards for immigrants it’s an attack on all workers. I commend Comptroller Stringer for standing up for immigrant workers and against wage theft at a time when our immigrant communities are under attack,” said Renata Pumarol, Communications Director, New York Communities for Change.
“We at the Alliance of South Asian American Labor (ASAAL) are extremely conscious of the rights of every human being who lives in this great nation no matter what their immigration status. Many hard working individuals are taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers. We greatly applaud Comptroller Scott Stringer’s aggressive approach to combat wage theft violations and in this way protect the rights of all workers. I applaud his historic record of debarring 40 contractors since taking office and assessing over $20 million in prevailing wage violations, including today’s order against K.S. Contracting,” said Maf Misbah Uddin, ASAAL National President.
By TIP NEWS
Source
Experts Urge Fed To Pursue 'Genuine Full Employment' Before Rate Hike
The Federal Reserve should pursue "genuine full employment" with "robust wage growth" before raising interest rates, experts from the Center for Popular...
The Federal Reserve should pursue "genuine full employment" with "robust wage growth" before raising interest rates, experts from the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute argue in anew report.
The report authors say the Fed, the central bank of the United States, can help reverse wage stagnation and narrow gender and racial wage gaps through its monetary policy.
Most Americans have faced wage stagnation over the last 35 years, despite there being a 64.9 percent growth in productivity during this time, according to the report. Wage growth also remained sluggish last month, with average hourly earnings increasing only 2 percent in June from one year ago.
A move by the Fed to slow the economy with an interest rate hike before "genuine full employment" is achieved will "hamper the ability of workers' wages to rise," the authors wrote.
"Because the vast majority of American workers have seen near-stagnant wages even as economy-wide productivity growth has constantly risen, there's ample space for wage gaps to close without anyone losing wages," said report co-author Josh Bivens, EPI's research and policy director. "The Fed has a powerful role in shaping labor market trends and raising wages. By pursuing full employment, it could help to close these wage gaps among workers."
In the report, the experts highlighted wage trends over recent decades among men and women as well as racial groups. Over the past 35 years, racial wage gaps between whites and Latinos or blacks have widened, the report says. During the same time period, disparities in median earnings between men and women did narrow by about 30 percent, but over a quarter of that progress was due to a decline of men's wages, according to the report.
For its part, the Fed has a "dual mandate" to keep prices stable and maximize employment. The Fed's current inflation target is 2 percent, and full employment is defined by the financial institution as a jobless rate between 5.0 percent to 5.2 percent. The nation's unemployment rate in June was 5.3 percent.
At some point this year, the Fed could begin to raise short-term interest rates, which were cut to near zero percent during the Great Recession to support the economy.
The report authors argue that the Fed's full employment estimate is "too meek," adding that the financial institution "should experiment aggressively with letting the unemployment rate fall as low as possible before raising interest rates."
"[T]he Fed should allow much lower unemployment levels, so long as no accelerating inflation results," the report adds. "Substantial evidence supports pursuing this more tolerant approach to falling unemployment. The late 1990s saw much lower rates (4.0 percent for two full years in 1999 and 2000) without sparking accelerating price inflation."
According to the experts, annual wage growth should also be in the 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent range before the Fed considers an interest rate hike.
Here are the three key recommendations listed in the report:
The Federal Reserve should set a clear and ambitious target for wage growth, which will provide an important and straightforward guidepost on the path to maximum employment. Wage targeting can be fairly easily tailored to the Fed's price-inflation target and pegged to increases in productivity.
The Fed should maintain a patient, but watchful posture. The history of the past 35 years shows a generally steady downward trend in price inflation and that prematurely slowing the economy results in higher than desirable unemployment.
The Federal Reserve should not consider an interest-rate hike until indicators of full employment--particularly wage growth--have strengthened.
"Failure to aggressively target and achieve genuine full employment by keeping interest rates low and setting a clear and ambitious target for wage growth explains a large part of why wages continue to stagnate," said report co-author Connie Razza, CPD's director of strategic research. "There is increasing talk about raising interest rates, but it would be a terrible mistake for the Fed to do so. Raising interest rates too soon will slow an already sluggish economy and will disproportionately harm women and people of color."
Source: Progress Illinois
New Report Alleges Charter School Fraud Could Be Costing IL Taxpayers $27 Million
Education Votes - February 2, 2015, by Brian Washington - Proven or suspected fraud in Illinois’ charter school industry is suspected of carrying a price tag for taxpayers as high as $27.7 million...
Education Votes - February 2, 2015, by Brian Washington - Proven or suspected fraud in Illinois’ charter school industry is suspected of carrying a price tag for taxpayers as high as $27.7 million—that’s according to a new report that some say adds more credence to the argument that these schools need more oversight and accountability.
The report, Illinois’ Charter School Fraud Risk Problem, alleges three fundamental problems with charter school oversight in the state:
Oversight depends heavily on whistleblowers and reporting by the charters themselves; General auditing techniques commissioned by the charters are not specifically designed to uncover fraud, only inaccuracies and inefficiencies; and Government agencies in Illinois tasked with investigating fraud are severely understaffed.The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), which authored the report, also claims to have uncovered massive deficiencies which, at a minimum, reportedly total at least $13.1 million.
“Here is yet another state where lawmakers continue to dump massive amounts of public school funds into the charter industry, yet no one is held accountable at any stage of the funding pipeline,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García, who represents about 3-million educators nationwide.
Despite the alleged problems outlined by CPD, as well as what critics charge is the inability of charter schools to show real improvement in relation to student achievement, charter school enrollment in the state has grown by 680-percent.
In the Chicago Public Schools district, the state’s largest public school system, the budget for charter schools, which are considered public schools because they are taxpayer funded, is $616 million for fiscal year 2015—an increase of 15 percent compared to fiscal year 2014.
“Operators (of charter schools) continue to line their pockets unchecked while public schools are forced to slash programs due to lack of funding,” said Eskelsen Garcia. “Lawmakers need to stop treating education budgets like a slush fund for corporate charter school operators and hold them accountable to the students and communities they are supposed to be serving.”
For Illinois, CPD is recommending that the state make major changes to its current oversight structure, including the following:
Mandated audits designed to detect and prevent fraud; Increased transparency and accountability; and A state-imposed moratorium on new charter schools until the state oversight system has been reformed.“Illinois students, their families, and taxpayers cannot afford to keep losing millions of dollars in public funds at the hands of charter school operators, who essentially enforce their own rules,” said Eskelsen Garcia. “It’s time for the Illinois legislature, State Board of Education, and authorizers, like Chicago Public Schools, to step in and make sure these operators use the funds they are given to fulfill their own promises of a great education for their students. There should be a sound structure for oversight and accountability whenever taxpayer dollars are applied.”
CPD’s Illinois report follows two other state-specific reports–including one which focused on the state of Pennsylvania. That report, issued last month, charged that fraud and abuse of the state’s charter school industry amounted to a $30 million loss for state taxpayers.
Meanwhile, another recent report by CPD alleges that nationwide taxpayers have lost $100 million due to charter school fraud.
“It’s time Illinois and all states are able to assure taxpayers that their charter oversight systems are airtight and dedicated to quality and community,” said Eskelsen García.
Source
1 day ago
8 days ago