Campaign News

 The marker between two territories is not just a line on a map. Norma Casimiro knows this all too well. Seventeen years ago, she left her home state of Morelos, Mexico, with a young son. Since then, she has lived in Westbury, New York, a suburban town in Nassau County with a population of just over 15,000. She lives in a studio in a sublet single-family home with her husband, who is also undocumented, and their eight-year-old daughter who was born in the United States.

Now, in the aftermath of the presidential election, Casimiro is anxious. Westbury is 11 miles from Queens, which means 11 miles from the protections that a so-called "sanctuary city" offers undocumented immigrants.

"We’ve never really considered moving to the city because we have jobs here and we feel as if we’re a part of the community," Casimiro said. "But it does sometimes cross our minds because of what could happen after January 20."

She knows that New York City would provide better public services for her and her family. "You can feel safer over there," she said, "especially after I heard Mayor (Bill) De Blasio say he would defend all New Yorkers, regardless of their immigration situation."

Living in the middle-class suburbs comes with a number of everyday difficulties, like limited transportation, scant social programs and high cost of living. Now, Casimiro feels even more vulnerable, anxious over the president-elect’s campaign threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. She also lives in fear that Trump’s anti-immigration policies may leave her son without the benefits of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a type of administrative relief from deportation created during the Obama administration.

Since the election, she's perceived a change in the way people in the community look at her. "I have noticed some disapproving looks that left me with a bad taste," she said. "In Westbury, there are more Latinos than in other parts of the island and you feel safer. But I still feel afraid of going to some stores alone."

She and her family know that Westbury law enforcement has collaborated with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the past. That's why the family generally avoids any type of conflict and rarely goes out at night.

Once, Casimiro had an incident while cleaning a house in the area, which left her shaken.

“I was taking the trash out ... and the alarm went off in the neighbor’s home," she said. "The police cornered me and asked me lots of questions. They asked for my ID. I wish I had one of those IDs they give out in New York. I told them I didn’t have it on me because the owner had brought me in her car. Luckily, the babysitter, who speaks good English, came and intervened on my behalf."

In 2014, the Nassau Sheriff’s Department ceased cooperation with ICE and stopped holding immigrants in jail for longer than allowed by law. The Sheriff’s Department also adopted a set of recommendations, such as that agents not ask anyone about their immigration status.

The organization Make The Road New York explains the difference between living in a city or the suburbs. "The very structure of a city offers more protection because of the existence of public transportation, a more dense population and lots of diversity," organizer Natalia Aristizabal said. "The mere fact of being surrounded by neighbors in an apartment building makes people feel safer than living in an isolated house."

New York City offers access to social programs and diverse community centers. A policy, passed last year, states that municipal IDs can be used as official identification and to open bank accounts. There are also a number of reliable lawyers for low-income people at risk of being deported.

Legislation also exists in New York that prohibits the Department of Corrections from sharing information about any prisoner with ICE before sentencing. Nor can other law enforcement agencies provide the federal government with any information about the immigration status of New Yorkers.

These protections disappear outside the boundaries of the five boroughs. And Long Island’s geography does not help. Immigrants usually own a car because of the lack of public transport, but driving without a license creates risk. "The racial profiling techniques used in the past to intercept a Latino in a vehicle and automatically report their immigration status are well known," said Walter Barrientos, the lead organizer for Make the Road New York in Long Island. "In some places, measures have been taken to control these actions, but not so much in Nassau."

Scattered infrastructure and lack of diversity facilitate more discrimination. "This isn’t Manhattan," Barrientos said. "It’s really easy to see who does and who doesn’t have papers here. It’s those who drive old cars or are walking towards the train station."

Nassau’s Police Department reported 32 hate crimes in 2015. The department also reports an uptick in these types of attacks since the election. "Over the last few months, our people have clearly seen how there are people who are incorrigible when it comes to expressing who they do not want in their neighborhoods," Barrientos said.

In Nassau, legal advice for immigrants is almost non-existent. So it's difficult to explain, for instance, that pleading guilty to a traffic violation could affect an immigration process. "Any problem with the justice system opens a door to deportation. This is the biggest fear of our community: that Trump’s promise to deport all immigrants with a criminal history may come true."

Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, said it is important now to find creative ways to defend people against a Trump administration that "seeks to fulfill their promise of harassing immigrants." This includes establishing a network of allies within the community who are "willing to turn their homes into 'sanctuaries' where people can stay and feel safe," she said.

In the meantime, Norma Casimiro waits. In nearly 20 years of living in the United States, she has never felt so insecure about her future and the future of her children. "All we can do is fight so that our voices are heard," she said. "And hope that someday we will enjoy the same protections as those in New York City."

By María F. Blanco  

Source

St. Louis Post-Dispatch - March 5, 2015, by Jim Gallagher - About a dozen chilly protesters gathered outside the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on Thursday to complain that the Fed may soon make it harder to find work.

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates later this year, a move intended to prevent inflation in years hence. The protesters complained that higher interest rates can also cut off the jobs recovery.

The Fed represents “the 1 percenters,” said Derek Laney, an organizer with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment. “They are the big banks, the big corporations, and their mandate is to keep inflation low at all costs.”

People at the bottom of the economic ladder would trade some inflation for jobs, he said.

The protesters complained that the Fed has set a target for inflation at 2 percent — slightly above the current inflation rate — but has no target for reducing unemployment.

Rising rates tend to slow an economic rebound eventually, although there is usually a long lag.

The protest was timed for release of a report by three national advocacy groups, including the Economic Policy Institute, the Center for Popular Democracy and Fed Up: The National Campaign for a Stronger Economy.

The report complained that the boards of the Fed's 12 regional banks, which influence national decisions, are heavy on banking and business executives, but light on representatives of other citizens, such as labor and clergy.

The boards also don't fully reflect their community's racial mix, the report said. For instance, the St. Louis Fed's board is 10 percent black while its multi-state region is 17 percent black, according to the report.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis did not immediately provide a comment.

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To judge from the disparaging reaction to its plan to use eminent domain to cope with underwater homes, you'd think the city leaders of Richmond, California, had proposed an outrageous and unprecedented distortion of state power.

Filing suit against Richmond, BlackRock Inc., Pacific Investment Management Co. and other plaintiffs alleged that the city's proposal amounts to an “unconstitutional application of eminent domain” and a “brazen scheme.” The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that it was considering ceasingto do business in municipalities that pursue this course. Media coverage generally echoed the plaintiffs’ take. USA Today’s headline summed up the conventional wisdom, declaring that Richmond “runs amok with eminent domain.”

In fact, the city's plan relies not on a novel use of eminent domain but on one endorsed by the conservative Supreme Court of 1935. And although there is a long history of excessive use of eminent domain, Richmond's plan has no place in it. Richmond's plan is to seize 624 mortgages valued at more than the homes for which they were written. Relying on a private intermediary, the city would compensate the investor holding a mortgage at a price reflecting the home's current value rather than an inflated bubble value. The city would then sell a more modest loan to the homeowner. Richmond hopes this will induce residents to remain in their homes and pay their mortgages and property taxes. Proponents of the plan also point out that this probably will lower the risk of default, protecting investors holding the mortgages.

Nonetheless, the big players in the bond markets are angry that they’re being forced to accede to the demands of a small city in California. Before they fight city hall, the plaintiffs should appreciate that use of eminent domain to seize intangible assets like mortgages has a solid history. Federal courts have long sanctioned the taking of everything from shares of stock to contract rights, insurance policies and even hunting rights.

But mortgages? Yes. Consider a famous Supreme Court case from the Great Depression. During that crisis, banks foreclosed on farmers who fell behind on their mortgage payments. In response, Congress passed the Farm Bankruptcy Act granting farmers five years to negotiate a reduction in the principal of their loans. Farmers were entitled to buy the property at the current appraised value, even if it fell short of the value attached to the original mortgage.

Then, as now, banks didn’t like the policy and went to court, arguing that it violated their property rights, as guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment. In May 1935, the Supreme Court overturned the law in a unanimous decision, the first of several such rulings that made the court into a conservative counterweight to the New Deal. Nevertheless, in the final paragraph of its decision, the court laid out an alternative course for just the kind of remedy the Farm Bankruptcy Act had sought.

Justice Louis Brandeis observed, "If the public interest requires, and permits, the taking of property of individual mortgagees in order to relieve the necessities of individual mortgagors, resort must be had to proceedings by eminent domain.”

In effect, the court stated that if the government wished to modify loans, it could only do so via an eminent domain proceeding of precisely the sort now being contemplated in Richmond. Brandeis didn’t think this a particularly controversial point; he made no effort to defend it or explain his reasoning because it was an established doctrine.

And so it remains today: Intangible assets have again and again been deemed fair game for eminent domain proceedings, so long as “just compensation” is given. In California, the state Supreme Court has taken a similar stance: A decision in 2008, for example, affirmed longstanding precedent that the state’s eminent domain law “authorizes the taking of intangible property.”

None of this is to suggest that eminent domain hasn’t been abused. In the postwar era, however, its victims have not been investors but poor, black, inner city residents.

The case that opened the door to mass evictions and confiscations was Berman v. Parker, decided by the Supreme Court in 1954. In it, a black department store owner in the District of Columbia sued to stop an eminent domain proceeding against his profitable business, which had the misfortune of being situated in an area designated as blighted.

The court rejected Berman’s protest, defining eminent domain in remarkably broad terms. If the public interest demanded that his property be torn down with less desirable properties to rescue an entire neighborhood from blight, it ruled, there was nothing Berman could do. His store was soon reduced to rubble. While many urban planners celebrated the decision, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Haar was more prescient, noting that the ruling “may cause a lot of trouble some day.”

This was an understatement: in the ensuing years, municipalities across the country used and abused their powers to confiscate the property of poor, often black residents, rarely giving “just compensation.” Entire, thriving neighborhoods vanished before the wrecking ball, destroying communities and leaving behind gaping holes in the urban fabric that remain eyesores in many cities today.

This didn’t end with the 1960s. In 2005, the Supreme Court handed down its controversial decision in Kelo v. City of New London. The case grew out of efforts by New London, Connecticut, to use eminent domain to evict working-class residents from a neighborhood in the hopes of handing the land to a private developer who promised to attract more affluent residents with a mixed-use project. The court ruled in favor of the city, vastly expanding the powers of eminent domain. The project foundered during the financial crisis and today remains a series of vacant lots, monuments to an extreme vision of eminent domain.

These are examples of eminent domain “run amok.” Yet to listen to the hysterical denunciations of the Richmond plan, a proposal to bring 624 mortgages in line with market prices is the epitome of eminent domain abuse. History suggests otherwise.

Source:

On February 3, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, the first woman to lead the central bank and likely the most qualified nominee ever for the post, will exit the Fed, leaving a legacy described as “near perfection” and with an “A” grade from a majority of economists.

And yet in 2014, the US Senate confirmed Yellen by a vote of 56-26, the lowest number of “yes” votes a confirmed Fed chair has ever received.

Read the full article here.