Did two women in an elevator just change everything?
Jeff Flake loves decorum, but it doesn't look like it was decorous behavior that moved him to reconsider a vote that could change the country's future. Was it two women in an elevator, yelling at...
Jeff Flake loves decorum, but it doesn't look like it was decorous behavior that moved him to reconsider a vote that could change the country's future. Was it two women in an elevator, yelling at him?
Read the full article here.
Appointment of Another Former Goldman Sachs Insider Shows Why Fed Presidential Appointment Process Needs Reform
Appointment of Another Former Goldman Sachs Insider Shows Why Fed Presidential Appointment Process Needs Reform
Jordan Haedtler, Campaign Manager for the Fed Up coalition, released the following statement following the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s announcement that it would appoint Neel Kashkari...
Jordan Haedtler, Campaign Manager for the Fed Up coalition, released the following statement following the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s announcement that it would appoint Neel Kashkari as its president:
“For the past year, the Fed Up coalition has worked to develop relationships with the presidents of all 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, and we look forward to developing a relationship with Neel Kashkari. When he ran for California Governor last year, Mr. Kashkari spent a week posing as a jobseeker in some of the hardest hit parts of the state. We hope Mr. Kashkari recognizes that job prospects remain far too weak for too many people, particularly Black and Latino people, and that his brief experiences searching for jobs in California are the real, lived experience for millions of people every day. Our partners in Minneapolis look forward to welcoming Mr. Kashkari to the Minneapolis region, and showing him the many communities in the region that are still struggling with economic recovery.
"Mr. Kashkari joins a Federal Reserve System that too often excludes the perspectives of working families and communities of color. We are very disappointed that his appointment marks the third presidential appointment this year of a regional Bank president with strong ties to Goldman Sachs. Come January, 1/3rd of the 12 regional Bank presidents will have served in senior roles at the investment bank that most epitomizes the problems that led to the financial crisis.
"Kashkari’s appointment illustrates the problem with the regional Bank president selection process. Federal Reserve Bank presidents are some of the most influential economic policymakers in the country, and they have an obligation to represent the public. Unfortunately, the public is completely shut out of the process for their selection, which is dominated by corporate and financial elites.
"We were very pleased when the Minneapolis Fed took a small and unprecedented step toward transparency by outlining the criteria for their next president. We wish the Minneapolis Fed had gone a step further, publishing the list of candidates being considered, and giving the public an opportunity for input. A history of working with labor and community groups, and an understanding of how working families and communities of color have been impacted by a sluggish economic recovery should qualify candidates for consideration. But the presidential appointments we have seen this year suggest that regional Banks are looking for a history of working at Goldman Sachs instead.”
###
www.populardemocracy.org
The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.
Our Fight for Health Care During Recess and Beyond
It’s time to ramp up our resistance to the Trump-Ryan agenda on health care. We scored our biggest legislative victory so far on March 24, when Speaker Paul Ryan called off his bid to repeal the...
It’s time to ramp up our resistance to the Trump-Ryan agenda on health care. We scored our biggest legislative victory so far on March 24, when Speaker Paul Ryan called off his bid to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), because he didn’t have the votes. This was an inspiring, hard-fought win for everyone who believes health care is for all...
Read full article here.
Report on Paladino's Ties to Charter Schools
The Buffalo News - October 22, 2014, by Sandra Tan - As noted in today's story,...
The Buffalo News - October 22, 2014, by Sandra Tan - As noted in today's story, Carl Paladino has financial investments in six Buffalo charter schools, leading some to question whether he has a conflict of interest as a board member on votes he makes regarding charter schools. He has arranged the financing and leased the buildings that charter schools need to get off the ground and expand. Some charter school founders say they might not exist without his help. Today, Alliance for Quality Education -- a statewide coalition that supports resources and support for traditional public schools and opposes charter schools -- has released a report that refers to Paladino's charter school holdings.
The anti-Paladino report "Good for Kids or Good for Carl?" was released by Alliance for Quality Education and Citizen Action, with research assistance from The Center for Popular Democracy. The report, below, focuses on the lease payments and tax breaks Paladino's company, Ellicott Development, receives for its investments in charter schools. It culls much of its information from news stories and public information from the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, the Erie County Clerk's Office and other public records. The report, however, does not include any information regarding the debt service and front-end investments made by Paladino into these schools, which would relate directly to the company's profit margin.
More detailed information about Paladino's investments into each of his charter school holdings will be posted to the School Zone Blog separately, based on additional information Paladino provided Tuesday. (Some of that information is available as part of the graphic that ran with the main story. A print version of the graphic erroneously states that Paladino anticipates a 1 percent return on investment for the Charter School of Inquiry. That should read 11 percent.) We will also live blog tonight's Buffalo School Board meeting at 5:30 p.m. Prior to the meeting will be an anti-Paladino rally by AQE and Citizen Action.
Source
Charter Financing: Study Finds Too Little Accountability in California
San Jose Mercury News - April 9, 2014, by Raymond Blanchard - Every parent wishes their children will reach their highest potential to live the life they choose. We do everything in our power to...
San Jose Mercury News - April 9, 2014, by Raymond Blanchard - Every parent wishes their children will reach their highest potential to live the life they choose. We do everything in our power to make this wish a reality, and we know an extraordinary education is essential.
Fulfilling this wish is difficult, particularly in the Bay Area. When California, the eighth largest economy in the world, ranks 49th among the states in school spending, we know it's difficult for our schools to provide the best education possible.
That's why I enrolled my children in Gilroy Prep Charter School, a Navigator school that achieved the highest API score -- 978 -- in California for a first-year charter school in 2011-12. I also served on the Navigator Board for three years but recently resigned due to transparency and accountability concerns with the Charter Management Organization (CMO), a service some charters use to manage their finances.
Now I find that my concerns were not an aberration. A recent study by the Center for Popular Democracy (linked with this article at mercurynews.com/opinion) found mismanagement of funds, fraud and abuse to the tune of $80 billion, or $160,000 per child, across all California charter schools, and our state could lose another $100 million in 2015 to charter school fraud. That's enough money to pay full tuition and board for every student in California at a University of California school for four years.
The report found that charter schools in California undergo little monitoring of finances, and the districts that oversee charter schools do not have the resources to provide sufficient oversight. Over my three years on the Navigator board, the local districts only attended seven board meetings.
Charter schools were created to bridge the achievement gap by granting increased freedom to administrators, teachers and parents to innovate without being subject to most California education laws. I support charter schools and think many of them provide an excellent education: 60 percent of Santa Clara County charter schools outperform the districts in which they reside. As a former entrepreneur and venture investor, I am all for freedom, innovation, competition and choice.
But the charter school financial model is at risk of failing.
Charter Management Organizations use public money with little public accountability and transparency, and that's starting to cause material financial problems. Not all charter schools have a CMO and run very well on their own, and some CMO-run charter schools are clearly better than others.
In 2014, charter schools authorized by the Santa Clara County Board of Education received $42 million in public revenue, excluding the millions of dollars in philanthropic investments. Some CMOs charge the schools they manage up to 25 percent of school revenue, while our local district charges about 6 percent per school.
In Santa Clara County, 73 percent of charter schools spent $1,287 less per student than their district school peers in 2012-2013. That's worth a musical instrument, computer, books, iPad and field trip per child. Where does the money go? It's not clear, and that's a problem.
To avoid financial risks, charter schools should be held to the same types of regulations as other public schools and the boards that oversee them. All public schools should be given the same freedoms charter schools have to innovate.
My wish is that all public schools be excellent educational institutions and stewards of our tax money. However, we must improve transparency and accountability. I think this is a wish we can all agree on.
Source
Fed, Eager to Show It’s Listening, Welcomes Protesters
WASHINGTON — When a dozen protesters in green T-shirts showed up two years ago at the Federal Reserve’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., they were regarded by many participants as an...
WASHINGTON — When a dozen protesters in green T-shirts showed up two years ago at the Federal Reserve’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., they were regarded by many participants as an amusing addition.
Two years later, they have won a place on the schedule.
The protesters, who want the Fed to extend its economic stimulus campaign, are scheduled to meet on Thursday with eight members of the central bank’s policy-making committee. At the start of a conference devoted to esoteric debates about monetary policy, officials will hear from people struggling to make ends meet.
The Fed’s effort to show that it is listening to its critics reflects the central bank’s broader struggle to find its footing in an era whose great challenge is not the strength of inflation, but the weakness of economic growth.
Officials are wrestling with the limits of monetary policy, the focus of the conference, even as they try to address simmering discontent among liberals who want stronger action and among conservatives who say the Fed has done too much.
The meeting also represents an unlikely victory for Ady Barkan, the 32-year-old lawyer who decided in 2012 that liberals should pay more attention to monetary policy. He now heads the “Fed Up” campaign, a national coalition of community and labor groups that plans to bring more than 100 protesters to Jackson Hole.
“We want to make sure that regular voices are being heard,” Mr. Barkan said in beginning the campaign two years ago. The American economy, he said, was not working for all Americans — particularly not for blacks and other minority groups.
Fed officials so far have chosen to accommodate the group by applauding its efforts at public education, not by seriously engaging its arguments that interest rates should be raised more slowly. Esther George, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which hosts the Jackson Hole conference, arranged Thursday’s meeting with the activists. She said in an interview earlier this year that the Fed must balance job growth with other issues, like financial stability.
“I am completely sympathetic,” she said of the group’s concerns.
But she cautioned that the Fed’s powers were limited. Pushing too hard to lower unemployment could lead to higher inflation, or speculative bubbles, that would force the Fed to raise interest rates more quickly. The resulting economic volatility could end up doing more harm than good.
“The Federal Reserve has become somehow the answer to many problems far beyond what we can actually address,” she said. “I wish I could fix all of it with a tool like monetary policy. But we can’t.”
Even Mr. Barkan’s supporters acknowledge the long odds. Fed Up’s budget has grown to $2 million this year, from $145,000 in 2014, mostly from Good Ventures, a nonprofit foundation created by the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, which describes the campaign as “relatively unlikely to have an impact.”
Fed Up’s more visible success has come in pursuit of a longer-term goal: advocating for changes in the Fed’s governance that could eventually shift its decision-making.
In a report published earlier this year, Fed Up highlighted the Fed’s lack of diversity. There are no blacks or Hispanics among the 17 officials on the Fed’s policy-making committee of 12 regional bank presidents and five governors. No black or Hispanic has ever served as president of a regional reserve bank.
Moreover, the report said that whites composed 83 percent of the directors of the Fed’s 12 regional reserve banks, who select the regional presidents.
Narayana Kocherlakota, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said that the absence of minorities was “quite troubling.”
“Those kinds of persistent absences of key demographic groups really suggest that the appointment process, there is something that can be fixed there,” he said.
Fed Up also argued that bank executives should not sit on regional Fed boards. Under current law, bankers hold three of the nine seats on each board. The regional reserve banks are owned by the commercial banks in each district, although they operate under the authority of the Fed’s board, a government agency whose members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
In May, 127 congressional Democrats signed a letter to Janet L. Yellen, the Fed chairwoman, calling attention to the Fed’s lack of diversity and the influence of the banking industry.
On the same day, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign said in a statement that “Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that common sense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve Banks — are long overdue.”
Two months later, the Democratic Party adopted a campaign platform that included similar language, the first time in recent decades it mentioned the Fed.
Andrew Levin, an economist at Dartmouth College, said Fed Up’s greatest chance for significant influence was not in framing the current debate about interest rates, but in changing the Fed itself. He co-wrote a report that the campaign published Monday detailing a proposal to make the Fed a fully public institution.
“Having a diverse set of policy makers — including African-Americans and Hispanics — will influence the Fed’s decision-making,” he said. “And it should. The public should have confidence that the public is well represented at the F.O.M.C. table.”
Mr. Barkan started the “Fed Up” campaign after joining the Center for Popular Democracy in 2012, a few years after graduating from Yale Law School. He had read a 2011 article by the journalist Matthew Yglesias, titled “Fed Up.” Unions and other advocacy groups were focused on minimum-wage laws. Mr. Barkan was compelled by the argument that they also should be focused on interest rates.
“Even if they move once less over the course of several years, that’s still massive,” he said earlier this year. “The number of people who have jobs because of that, or higher wages, that dwarves a $15-an-hour wage increase in a smaller city.”
The campaign has gained traction in part because the Fed is eager to show that it is listening. During the first protest two years ago, Mr. Barkan approached Ms. Yellen, who listened politely and invited him to bring a group of workers to Washington, where she met with them in November 2014.
Lael Brainard, a Fed governor who plans to attend the Thursday meeting, made a point last year of visiting the parallel conference Mr. Barkan staged on the sidelines of the Fed event. And Mr. Barkan’s group has now succeeded in persuading each of the regional reserve presidents to meet with groups of local workers.
Neel Kashkari, the new president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, met with Fed Up’s local affiliate, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, this month, telling the group that he shared their concern about the persistence of higher rates of unemployment among blacks and other minority groups.
Mr. Kashkari also accepted an invitation to spend a day with one of the group’s members, Rosheeda Credit, a Minneapolis resident who described the struggles she and her boyfriend faced to cover the cost of rent and child care for their five children.
“Walking a day in somebody else’s shoes is actually — it makes the anecdotes that much more real,” Mr. Kashkari, who arrived at the bank in January, told reporters after the meeting. “It influences how I think about the problems we face.”
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Source
At Urban Outfitters, On Call Needs An Off Switch
URBAN Outfitters, you're breaking my heart.
I'd loved you since I discovered your lone West Philly shop when I was in college. You'd just changed your name from the...
URBAN Outfitters, you're breaking my heart.
I'd loved you since I discovered your lone West Philly shop when I was in college. You'd just changed your name from the Free People Store, and your countercultural merchandise spoke to my giddy dreams of a boho life. I was smitten the day I bought an Indian-print cotton bedspread from you to sew into curtains for my first-ever single-girl apartment.
"Where'd you get them?" friends would ask, eyeing my handiwork.
"Urban," I'd say, knowing the word had become code for "I may be broke, but at least I'm hip."
MORE COVERAGE
Urban Outfitters company asks employees to work for free
God, I was young.
Since then, you've become more successful than I have, morphing into a $1 billion global behemoth that also encompasses the brands Free People, Anthropologie, Bhldn and Terrain. Your clothes still skew to the young demographic I used to belong to, so I'd taken to scanning your racks for Christmas gifts for my clothes-horse teenager.
She got to wear your cute stuff and I got to maintain a touchstone relationship with a company that had put down roots in Philly, as I had, and never left. It made me happy.
Sure, your price tags indicated you'd gotten a tad full of yourself ($89 for a cotton/poly romper? Really?). And you'd stumbled embarrassingly in attempts to be edgy (a shirt evocative of the one the Nazis made gay concentration-camp prisoners wear? What were you thinking?).
Still, Urban, I'd cut you slack the way family cuts slack to kin. You've remained a player in a city that has lost too many homegrown businesses to either bankruptcy or foreign soil. That counts for a lot in my book.
You may not be perfect, I'd always told myself, but you're ours.
But Urban - oh, Urban. I've been learning about the way you treat your part-time employees, the young, mostly female staff who work in your retail stores. And I'm ashamed of you.
For years, you've subjected them to an enslaving scheduling system that betrays your "free people" roots. Basically, you give them their schedule only a few days in advance, with some shifts designated as "on call." But they don't know, until three hours before the shift is to begin, whether you need them to work that shift or not. If not, they don't get paid.
Yet they're required to hold that time for you, in case you do.
"On calls are considered scheduled shifts, and the same attendance policy applies," your employee handbook says.
All I can ask, Urban, is: What the hell? But your PR flacks didn't respond to my questions.
The use of "on-call" staffing is obviously necessary in medical and first-responder fields, where lives depend on workers being available when needed. Reasonable people know it's part of the gig. But using the same scheduling to ensure that a billion-dollar retailer doesn't "waste" money on excess workers during a slow day at the shop?
C'mon, Urban. It's horrible.
The unpredictability means employees can't schedule classes, if they're in school. Or go to a second job, so they can cobble together a full-time salary. Or reliably arrange child care or pay their bills, since their cost to do both remains fixed even though their working hours don't.
Their only compensation, if I read the handbook correctly, is that they get to keep their jobs so you can continue to exploit their need to make a living.
"It's pretty messed up," one of your employees told me when I asked her about the policy. I won't say which of your 179 U.S. stores employs her, since she needs her crappy job. She's toiling through college and doesn't know, week to week, what her paycheck will be. "It's hard to plan," she said.
She could get a job at a different store, but it seems you're not the only retail chain doing this.
Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and L Brand Inc.'s Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works are some of the other billion-dollar corporations whose on-call scheduling have wreaked havoc on their workers. The practice began about 10 years ago, says Carrie Gleason, as globalization increased retail competition and companies needed new ways to shave expenses.
"They started incorporating new technology into scheduling that used software algorithms" to track store traffic, the time of year, even weather patterns, says Gleason, director of the fair-work-week initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy.
But the predictions aren't perfect, so on-call staffing provides wiggle room to keep labor costs down. Retailers also tie store managers' bonuses to how low they keep labor costs.
How can you stand being part of this, Urban?
In April, New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called companies like you on the carpet, following his investigation into the legality of on-call staffing at 13 retailers whose New York stores employ thousands of low-wage Americans.
As a result, big changes have happened.
Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works stopped the practice nationwide. Abercrombie and Gap say that nationally they, too, are phasing out on-call shifts.
But you, Urban, are dragging your feet. You'll stop the practice in New York, you announced this month, but everywhere else it'll be exploitation as usual.
Which means you're doing the right thing in New York only because New York law requires you to. As for everywhere else, it's human decency be damned.
"If Urban found a business model to let them stop on-call shifts in New York, they ought to be able to find a business model that will let them stop the shifts everywhere else," says Lance Haver, formerly the city's consumer advocate and now director of civic engagement for City Council.
"If they don't, then consumers can say we're not going to shop at their stores until they change their practice. We can refuse to support a store that abuses the people who wait on us."
Haver also thinks the only way to assure that businesses like you, Urban, treat employees better is for your workers to organize.
"People say there's no longer a reason for people to join unions," he says, "but that's because they don't know about these disgusting practices."
Lest you think, Urban, that all your employees are miffed with you, that's not the case. I spoke with one employee, a fan, who asked not to be named because she's hoping to work her way into your corporate headquarters at the Navy Yard. She sees her on-call schedule as a necessary evil, given the vagaries of the retail market.
"The company has to do right by its shareholders," she told me. "I think they're stuck between a rock and a hard place."
Except that your company founder and CEO, former hippie and current billionaire Richard Hayne, owns most of your stock.
He has the clout to end on-call staffing. That's not being between a rock and a hard place. It's holding the power position.
Please, Urban, return to your roots and free your people. And please start in Philly.
Because family comes first.
Source: Philly.com
Fed Presidents and Governors Still Talking Up Rate Hike for 2016
Fed Presidents and Governors Still Talking Up Rate Hike for 2016
The week of October 14 was a busy one for economic reports. It was also a busy week for the talking heads inside the Federal Reserve. Note that the most recent speeches this past week, even after...
The week of October 14 was a busy one for economic reports. It was also a busy week for the talking heads inside the Federal Reserve. Note that the most recent speeches this past week, even after having only three of 10 votes in September for a hike, still show a bias for the Fed to raise rates.
With the November Federal Open Market Committee meeting scheduled just days ahead of the election, the odds makers (the federal funds futures) are now focusing on a December rate hikes — but not quite 100% of a chance, at least ahead of Friday’s Janet Yellen speech.
Fed Chair Yellen gave the luncheon keynote address at the Boston Fed’s 60th Economic Conference. This was titled “The Elusive Recovery,” which may not sound hawkish at all. Still, she did not directly address interest rate hikes in her speech. But Yellen did say that the Federal Reserve may need to run a “high-pressure economy” to reverse damage from the 2008 to 2009 crisis that depressed output. In short, Yellen fears that our economic potential is slipping, and it may require aggressive steps to rebuild economic growth.
Eric Rosengren, president of the Boston Federal Reserve, said on Friday that the odds of a rate hike were very high in December. His view is that unemployment has fallen faster than expected and he is not worried about inflationary dangers.
Also on Friday, Loretta Mester, president of the Cleveland Fed, participated in a round table discussion with the Common Good Ohio (in Cleveland), which is affiliated with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up Campaign. Mester has been on the record in recent weeks as saying that the jobs market and inflation are enough to justify a rate hike.
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Patrick Harker said on Thursday that the uncertainty stemming from the U.S. presidential election might be an argument for delaying a rate increase, at least until after the November ballot. Hint: December.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed, has tried to remain on the sidelines for vocalizing rate hike talk outside of what Yellen says. Still, on Thursday he talked about more sluggish growth and maintained that the Fed and other agencies need a remedy for the “too big to fail” banks.
William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve of New York, sounded a tad more dovish. His take is that the Fed can be gentle with gradual rate hikes. He also pointed out that the Fed is not political when making interest rate decisions.
Esther George, head of the Kansas City Fed, did not address the economy nor rate hike views when speaking on Wednesday. Still, she did talk about the need for better bank cybersecurity and security of payments. George is considered one of the more hawkish Fed presidents.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans was deemed as being noncommittal on Monday when he spoke. Still, he was signaling a December hike: “December could be an appropriate time to do it, but I don’t see any urgency either.” That was in a CNBC interview.
Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer spoke on October 9 and spoke about gross domestic product somehow recovering to 2.75% for the second half of 2016, a higher view than average. Fischer has been more hawkish of late and said that September’s decision was a close call. He said that he expects inflation to rise and that gradual rate hikes would be sufficient to get to Fed back to a neutral stance.
By Jon C. Ogg
Source
Wall Street Group Aggressively Lobbied a Federal Agency to Thwart Eminent Domain Plans
The Nation - January 17, 2014, by Alexis Goldstein - Despite Wall Street’s ...
The Nation - January 17, 2014, by Alexis Goldstein - Despite Wall Street’s recent gains, the foreclosure crisis that displaced 10 million Americanscontinues to wreak havoc on communities. One ongoing problem is that 10.7 million homeowners are stuck in underwater homes, in which the mortgage is more than the house is currently worth. Although the federal government doled out $700 billion to Wall Street via TARP during the 2008 financial crisis, it has not taken bold action to solve this problem. Money set aside during the bailout to help homeowners remains largely unspent, and a key federal housing regulator refused to pursue mortgage write-downs for struggling borrowers, even though their own analysis showed these loan modifications would save the agency money.
In this vacuum, several cities have begun to take matters into their own hands, as Peter Dreier reported on for The Nation. One plan by private equity company Mortgage Resolution Partners proposes that cities use eminent domain—a power traditionally reserved for seizing property for public use—to seize mortgage loans. The amount owed on the loans would then be reduced so that the borrower was no longer underwater, avoiding foreclosure. In January 2013, Brockton, Massachusetts commissioned a study and formed a working group to investigate using eminent domain to help struggling homeowners. In September 2013, the city council of Richmond, California, voted to move forward with such a plan.
One might think these small, local efforts shouldn’t be of much concern to Wall Street—after all, Richmond’s plan affects a mere 624 loans. But one of Wall Street’s most powerful trade groups, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), has responded with ferocious urgency. SIFMA is the attack dog the largest Wall Street banks send when they don’t want their names attached to politically controversial lobbying efforts or lawsuits. The group does everything from denying that “too big to fail” still exists to drafting lengthy comment letters arguing for weaker financial regulation.
New e-mails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and a coalition of other community groups and shared with The Nation reveal the extent to which SIFMA has been spearheading Wall Street’s fight against using eminent domain to mitigate the foreclosure crisis. (The complete set of e-mails are available at the website of the ACLU, which sued the FHFA when the original FOIA request was ignored). When Brockton began considering using eminent domain, SIFMA employees traveled there and kept an entire section of its website, complete with an array of resources, to decrying the plans.
Grace Ross, Coordinator of the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending and one of the members of Brockton’s eminent domain working group, said she was “shocked by the huge amount of resources SIFMA threw at this small study process in Brockton. While pursuing a plan like this would be deeply meaningful to Brockton, with up to 2,300 households that could have been directly affected, it’s small potatoes” for an industry as large as Wall Street. In April 2013, by a vote of 7-5, Brockton’s eminent domain working group concluded that the City did not have the legal authority to pursue an eminent domain plan.
SIFMA also made sure to send its careful notes and observations to a key staffer at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), General Counsel Alfred Pollard. The FHFA is the regulator who oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been under federal government control since the 2008 financial crisis. In 2008, Congress also charged the FHFA with implementing “a plan to maximize assistance for homeowners.” But not only has FHFA failed to meaningfully help homeowners, in an August 2013 statement, the agency threatened to take legal action against localities that used eminent domain to restructure mortgages, and it raised the possibility that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be ordered to stop doing business altogether in areas that pursued eminent domain plans.
Through e-mails obtained by the ACCE’s FOIA request, we now know that SIFMA urged the FHFA to take precisely this course of action. In a March 25, 2013, e-mail to FHFA’s General Counsel Pollard, Richard Dorfman, then-head of SIFMA’s Securitization group, writes that “a federal solution would be the only way to quell this menacing concept.” Dorfman goes on to insist that the FHFA disallow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “to acquire, guarantee, securitize or otherwise transact in any loan” that could even hypothetically be subject to an eminent domain plan. And that is exactly what the FHFA did four months later.
In response to a request for comment on whether SIFMA’s e-mails influenced the FHFA’s actions, an FHFA spokesperson said, “FHFA first expressed concerns about the use of eminent domain when it requested public input on August 8, 2012.” The spokesperson noted that the August 2013 statement “reflected FHFA’s analysis of input provided, legal matters, and safety and soundness concerns for its regulated entities (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks).” The spokesperson also said that the statement was “influenced by legal research and robust public input, including 75 letters from a variety of stakeholders.”
But SIFMA did not stop at demanding the FHFA’s help in threatening cities that pursued eminent domain mortgage seizures; it also asked FHFA staff to drum up local opposition. In the March 25 e-mail to Pollard, Dorfman writes, “Councilor Tom Brophy…is a key participant in the eminent domain working group in Brockton. [He] wants to speak with you by telephone pertinent to the matters I have raised…. I am accordingly asking you to agree. Please agree to do so, and we will make the arrangements.”
Brophy ultimately voted with the majority to scuttle the eminent domain plan on the grounds that Brockton did not have the legal authority to seize mortgages. Reached for comment, Brophy said that he does not recall any specific conversation with anyone from the FHFA, and the FHFA declined to comment on whether or not Pollard and Brophy ever talked on the phone. Whether or not that particular conversation took place, however, the e-mails reveal the active role SIFMA took in lobbying federal agencies to intervene in the Brockton vote, and they raise a question about how much influence SIFMA had on the outcome.
In addition to the comfort level displayed in their requests, the sheer volume of e-mails from SIFMA employees to General Counsel Pollard is significant. There is a formal comment process, yet SIFMA appears to have the capacity to supplement this process with these informal, previously private, e-mails to Pollard. When asked if e-mailing General Counsel Pollard directly is something that is available to all stakeholders, an FHFA spokesperson noted, “The Office of General Counsel email address is available to all stakeholders on the FHFA website.” But the e-mail provided on that website is OGCPublic@FHFA.gov. In the FOIA response, the e-mail used by SIFMA to contact Pollard is different: Alfred.Pollard@fhfa.gov.
The FHFA spokesperson also stated, “FHFA’s General Counsel routinely communicates with a variety of interested parties on numerous issues affecting Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.” Of the personal e-mails revealed by the FOIA, twenty-four are from SIFMA, and the rest are primarily from other Wall Street stakeholders (The additional listeddocuments are court filings or public comment letters—some of which were sent via e-mail and are thus listed as “comment e-mails”). And while the October 2013 FOIA did ask specifically for e-mails between Wall Street stakeholders and FHFA, it also included a much broader request for “all documents,” correspondence and meetings “regarding the City of Richmond’s offer to buy underwater mortgages from residents.” One would expect to see e-mail exchanges to Alfred Pollard from non–Wall Street stakeholders about Richmond, if FHFA truly had as close a relationship with others as they appear to have with SIFMA.
Perhaps one of the most damning e-mails is one forwarded to Pollard by SIFMA’s Dorfman on February 15. In it, Kimberly Chamberlain—managing director and associate general counsel of state government Affairs at SIFMA—laments the lack of bankers on Brockton’s Eminent Domain Working Group. Chamberlain concedes that there is an Oppenheimer representative, Stephen Bernard, on the working group. But it appears that to Chamberlain, Bernard’s industry credibility is in question, due to his association with the NAACP. Chamberlain writes, “The list does not appear to include local bankers or local mortgage bankers. The Oppenheimer representative he previously alluded to is Stephen Barnard [sic], who is also a Past President of the Brockton NAACP. At first blush, it would appear we have our work cut out for us with this group” [emphasis added].
It remains unclear why an affiliation with the NAACP is relevant for SIFMA to note, especially before stating that “this group” will require more work on their part. In response to a request for comment on the e-mail, a SIFMA spokesperson stated: “The e-mail from Ms. Chamberlain simply restates the information in Mr. Stewart’s original e-mail, which notes the affiliations of the working group members. SIFMA had been told, prior to the working group being formed, that the group would include several financial services representatives who could speak firsthand about the negative impact of eminent domain on mortgage credit. Without this firsthand experience, SIFMA felt it would be important to spend time educating working force members.”
In some e-mails, SIFMA also appears dismissive of the scale of the foreclosure crisis. In the March 25 e-mail, Dorfman calls the eminent domain plans “tedious.” In a March 8 e-mail to Pollard, Chris Killian, managing director and head of securitization at SIFMA, insults Brockton’s eminent domain committee, writing “the current ‘committee’ carries many markings of a charade.”
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
SIFMA’s concern is not the plight of these cities—but rather the time and money SIFMA has lost fighting eminent domain plans. In the February 15 e-mail, Dorfman writes to Pollard about eminent domain plans in Brockton and in Phoenix, Arizona: “One of the City Council members has found a messianic calling in the eminent domain scheme, so we are once again investing time and resources in this matter,” time that he laments should instead be focused on the “flurry of regulatory activity derived from Dodd Frank.”
The re-focusing of SIFMA’s attention from federal regulations to the actions of a few small cities trying to creatively solve their foreclosure crisis tells us that these eminent domain plans are a significant threat to Wall Street. SIFMA is terrified that this idea will spread. As SIFMA’s Killian wrote on March 8, “one of these places where there is smoke will soon catch fire.” If there is one thing SIFMA does not want, it is for banks to have to go to court, in multiple cities, to try and fight seizures of mortgages via eminent domain.
As of January 6, 2014, the FHFA has a new head—Mel Watt, who until recently served as a Democratic Representative from North Carolina. SIFMA has hardly made it a secret that it is expecting Watt to continue FHFA’s war on eminent domain plans. When Watt’s nomination was first announced, SIFMA released a statement insisting Watt “explicitly address the continued threat” of plans using eminent domain to seize mortgages. One of the first questions the public should ask is: Will the FHFA under Watt continue this tradition of using its power to act as a proxy for SIFMA? Or will Watt support cities’ searching for new and novel approaches to foreclosures?
Given that it’s been five years since the crisis and the federal government has done appallingly little to help homeowners, the least the FHFA could do is stay out of the way.
Source
New York City Council Expected to Approve 2 Plans Aiding Immigrants
New York Times - June 26, 2014, by Kirk Semple - A long-sought initiative that would provide municipal identification cards to...
New York Times - June 26, 2014, by Kirk Semple - A long-sought initiative that would provide municipal identification cards to all New Yorkers, including those without legal immigration status, has been finalized, and will come before the City Council for a vote this week, officials said.
Undocumented immigrants could use the cards as proof of residence, and to check out library books, sign leases and open bank accounts, among other benefits.
The Council is expected to consider the item on Thursday, the same day it is slated to earmark $4.9 million to provide a lawyer for every poor, foreign-born New Yorker who has been detained by immigration authorities and is facing deportation, officials said. The initiative would make New York the first jurisdiction in the nation with a fully covered public defender system to assist detained, indigent immigrants in deportation proceedings.
Taken together, the measures, which officials said were expected to pass, would further cement New York’s reputation as one of the most accommodating places in the world for immigrants.
“The city is sending a strong message to its residents that we have your back,” City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, who has championed both initiatives, said in an interview on Tuesday. “These are clear messages, indicators, commitments that we mean we’re serious about how we take care of our immigrants and, really, all New Yorkers.”
With the passage of the municipal identification bill, a pledge made by Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York would join several other cities that have already introduced similar measures, including Los Angeles, New Haven and San Francisco.
The terms of the bill were hammered out in meetings involving City Council members, the mayor’s office and city agencies, including, perhaps most important, the New York Police Department. Proponents of the initiative wanted to ensure that the police would recognize the cards as acceptable forms of identification during police stops and for other law-enforcement matters.
At the crux of those negotiations was the effort to balance the demand for privacy against the need to protect against fraud, Mr. Menchaca said. Under the arrangement, the city will keep application documents on file for two years, but the police will be required to secure a judicial warrant to look at the files, the councilman said.
City officials still need to work out the bureaucratic mechanics of the program but plan to start issuing the cards by the start of 2015.
The public defender initiative, which is included in the city’s proposed budget, would be an expansion of a publicly funded pilot program started last year that inspired the admiration and envy of immigrants’ advocates across the country.
The plan, called the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, seeks to help correct a woeful lack of qualified representation in immigration court. In contrast to the nation’s criminal courts, defendants in immigration court have no constitutional right to a court-appointed lawyer.
The initiative would provide legal representation to 1,380 detained, indigent New Yorkers facing deportation at the immigration courts on Varick Street in Manhattan as well as in Newark and Elizabeth, N.J.
The program “marks a sea change in the quality and quantity of justice that will be afforded to New York City’s immigrants,” said Peter L. Markowitz, a Cardozo School of Law professor who has helped lead the initiative.
Mr. Menchaca said he expected the program to inspire other municipalities and states to start similar initiatives.
“We are the first doing this kind of work at this kind of level, and it’s really going to send a ripple effect across the country,” he said.
Source
2 days ago
8 days ago