'Kill the Bill' Sit-Ins Target Senators to Protest Health Bill
Outside the office of U.S. Senator Pat Toomey in Philadelphia Tuesday, a group of activists chanted, “Don't cut Medicaid, save our liberty," in a day of actions outside congressional offices in 39...
Outside the office of U.S. Senator Pat Toomey in Philadelphia Tuesday, a group of activists chanted, “Don't cut Medicaid, save our liberty," in a day of actions outside congressional offices in 39 states around the United States.
The national grassroots organization ADAPT of disability rights activists led the sit-in at the Republican's office.
Read the full article here.
Education ‘Day of Action’ set Monday in 60-plus cities
The Washington Post - December 6, 2013, by Valerie Strauss - A coalition of education, labor, civic and civil rights organizations, led by the American Federation of Teachers, is staging a “...
The Washington Post - December 6, 2013, by Valerie Strauss - A coalition of education, labor, civic and civil rights organizations, led by the American Federation of Teachers, is staging a “National Day of Action” on Monday with dozens of coordinated events in cities across the country that are aimed at building a national movement to fight corporate-influenced school reform and offer alternative ways to improve public education. The AFT is buying $1.2 million in radio, print and online ads to get out the message.
Protests have been building this year in different parts of the country against the education reform movement that is dominated by the use of standardized test scores as the chief “accountability” metric and school “choice” that has led to the growing privatization of public schools. The AFT says that Monday will be the first time so many events — protest marches, news conferences, and town halls scheduled in 60 cities including Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston and other Texas cities, Boise, Los Angeles and several locations in Florida — have been coordinated to send a message to policymakers that school reform should be focused not on closing schools, punishing teachers and deluging kids with tests but on providing teachers and students with the resources they need to teach and learn.
“Teachers, parents, students and community members are banding together to demand a new direction for public education,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “In some ways, this Day of Action is years in the making. Parents, students, teachers and community members have been coming together in places like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York to call out what’s not working and create solutions that do. Text-fixation, austerity, privatization, division, competition are not working for our students – as we saw in the PISA results this week. Our schools need evidence-based, community-based solutions like early childhood education, wraparound services, professional autonomy and development, parent voices and project-based learning. That’s what this Day of Action is about. That’s what reclaiming the promise is about. These are our schools and they need our solutions.”
Dozens of organizations representing parents, educators, clergy, civil rights activists, and community groups are participating in the event, which is being sponsored nationally by these groups: Alliance for Educational Justice, American Federation of Teachers, Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Dignity in Schools Coalition, Gamaliel Network, Journey for Justice Alliance, Leadership Center for the Common Good, League of United Latin American Citizens, National Education Association, National Opportunity to Learn Campaign and the Service Employees International Union.
In October, a number of organizations came together to come up with a strategy to build a national movement around shared principles, which you can read find here. Among the principles:
Public schools are public institutions.
Our school districts should be committed to providing all children with the opportunity to attend a quality public school in their community. The corporate model of school reform seeks to turn public schools over to private managers and encourages competition — as opposed to collaboration — between schools and teachers. These strategies take away the public’s right to have a voice in their schools, and inherently create winners and losers among both schools and students. Our most vulnerable children become collateral damage in these reforms. We will not accept that …
Our voices matter.
Those closest to the education process — teachers, administrators, school staff, students and their parents and communities — must have a voice in education policy and practice. Our schools and districts should be guided by them, not by corporate executives, entrepreneurs or philanthropists. Top-down interventions rarely address the real needs of schools or students …
Strong public schools create strong communities.
Schools are community institutions as well as centers of learning. While education alone cannot eradicate poverty, schools can help to coordinate the supports and services their students and families need to thrive. Corporate reform strategies ignore the challenges that students bring with them to school each day, and view schools as separate and autonomous from the communities in which they sit.
• “Community Schools” that provide supports and services for students and their families, such as basic healthcare and dental care, mentoring programs, English language classes and more, help strengthen whole communities as well as individual students …
Assessments should be used to improve instruction.
Assessments are critical tools to guide teachers in improving their lesson plans and framing their instruction to meet the needs of individual students. We support accountability. But standardized assessments are misused when teachers are fired, schools are closed and students are penalized based on a single set of scores. Excessive high-stakes testing takes away valuable instructional time and narrows the curriculum — with the greatest impact on our most vulnerable students.
Quality teaching must be delivered by committed, respected and supported educators.
Today’s corporate reformers have launched a war on teachers. We believe that teachers should be honored. Teaching is a career, not a temporary stop on the way to one. Our teachers should be well-trained and supported. They should be given the opportunity to assume leadership roles in their schools. Highly qualified teachers and school staff are our schools’ greatest assets. Let’s treat them that way …
Schools must be welcoming and respectful places for all.
Schools should be welcoming and inclusive. Students, parents, educators and community residents should feel that their cultures and contributions are respected and valued. Schools that push out the most vulnerable students and treat parents as intruders cannot succeed in creating a strong learning environment. Respectful schools are better places to both work and learn …
Our schools must be fully funded for success and equity.
More than 50 years ago, in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that African-American students were being denied their constitutional right to an integrated and equitable public education. We have not come far enough. Today our schools remain segregated and unequal. When we shortchange some students, we shortchange our nation as a whole. It is time to fund public schools for success and equity, for we are destined to hand off the future of our nation to all our young people.
• We must end the practice of funding our schools based on local property wealth. Only when we take responsibility for all our schools, and all our children, will schools succeed for all our society …
The events planned for Monday’s National Day of Action include a town hall in Washington, D.C., at which teachers and parents will develop a community-driven vision for public schools, starting at 6 p.m. at Eastern High School. In New York City, union, community and youth partners fighting to win universal full-day prekindergarten will host a rally marking the start of a joint labor-community campaign to support new education initiatives as part of a “new day for public education in New York City” under Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio.
In Houston, union and community partners will hold a news conference and rally outside the school board offices, where they will call for an end to an overreliance on tests and for fair teacher evaluations. In Chicago, organized parents, teachers and youths will hold a news conference at City Hall and a march to the headquarters of corporate agents such as Loop Capital to demand equitable funding and a public voice in education. In Boise, Idaho, parents, teachers and several community organizations will gather around the state Capitol to support school funding for Idaho public schools, which have some of the lowest state funding in the country.
Here’s how an action in Philadelphia is described on the event list:
A powerful contingent of community and youth groups, parents and labor unions will rally outside Gov. Tom Corbett’s Philadelphia office in coordination with partners in Pittsburgh, followed by a march to the corporate office of Loop Capital, an Illinois bank that has contributed to the privatizing of schools in Chicago and handed out bad interest loans that have crippled Philadelphia’s school system. The union-community alliance is fighting to restore statewide education funding, establish a new equitable education funding formula in 2014, and demand that Loop Capital pay back the bad loans.
The sponsors are the National Day of Action are planning more action in the spring.
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What Housing Recovery?
New York Times - May 8, 2014, by Peter Dreier - Recently there’s been a lot of happy talk about the nation’s housing recovery. Frequent reports about rising prices suggest that the tens of...
New York Times - May 8, 2014, by Peter Dreier - Recently there’s been a lot of happy talk about the nation’s housing recovery. Frequent reports about rising prices suggest that the tens of millions of people whose homes lost value just have to wait until the recovery reaches their neighborhood to lift them out of crisis. But this supposed housing recovery is bypassing many of our cities and towns.
The total value of America’s owner-occupied housing remains $3.2 trillion below 2006 levels. According to Zillow, a real estate database, 9.8 million households still owe more on their mortgages than the market value of their homes. That’s one-fifth of all mortgaged homes. Without government intervention, many of them are at risk of joining the almost five million households that have already suffered through foreclosure since the housing bubble burst in 2007.
With my colleagues Alex Schwartz of the New School and Gregory Squires of George Washington University, I have identified the 15 metropolitan areas, 100 cities and 395 ZIP codes with the highest proportion of underwater mortgages.
How bad is it? More than 10 million Americans, spread across 23 states, live in ZIP codes where between 43 percent and 76 percent of homeowners are under water. The biggest concentrations are in Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. The cities in the worst shape are Las Vegas, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Orlando and Chicago. Places with so many underwater homes are toxic; they depress the value of surrounding homes and undermine local governments’ fiscal health.
The blame for this tragedy lies mostly with banks’ risky, reckless and sometimes illegal lending practices. The story is a familiar one. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, millions of Americans bought or refinanced homes in an overheated market. Mortgage brokers lied or misled borrowers about the terms of these mortgages, often pushing borrowers into high-interest subprime loans, even when they were eligible for conventional mortgages.
They particularly targeted minority areas. In 2006, when subprime lending was at its peak, 54 percent of blacks, 47 percent of Latinos and 18 percent of whites received high-priced loans, according to the Federal Reserve Board.
Not surprisingly, the nation’s worst underwater areas are disproportionately in black and Latino neighborhoods. In almost two-thirds of the hardest-hit ZIP codes, African-Americans and Latinos account for at least half of the residents.
The banks’ risky loans eventually came crashing down, devastating communities and causing financial havoc. The federal government rescued the banks, but nobody came to the rescue of the communities the banks left behind.
The best solution to this quagmire is for banks and other financial institutions to modify underwater mortgages to their current market value, an approach called “principal reduction.” If lenders rewrote the loans to reflect fair-market values, owners would have lower monthly payments, which would free them to put millions of dollars into local economies. Cities would have more stable property tax revenues, and lenders would ultimately benefit by having fewer delinquent loans.
Of course, many banks no longer own the loans they made. They pooled large numbers of subprime loans into private securities and sold them. The companies that service these securities generally refuse to countenance the idea of “principal reduction.” Yes, some homeowners have been able to persuade lenders to reset their loans, but most get the cold shoulder or a bureaucratic runaround.
In some cities, though, nonprofit lenders, like New Jersey Community Capital and Hogar Hispano, have stepped into the void, raising capital and purchasing troubled loans in order to modify them on affordable terms. But too few loan holders have been willing to sell to these homeowner-friendly groups.
In 2012, some of the biggest banks signed a settlement agreement with 49 state attorneys general to modify mortgages, but many of them continue to heap abuse on their customers, and sufficient relief has not reached trapped homeowners.
The Obama administration created several initiatives to help troubled borrowers, but these programs do not require banks to reset loans as a condition of getting federal funds. The government’s Home Affordable Modification Program has helped only one-quarter of the four million homeowners it was supposed to reach.
Worse, the federal government has actually been an obstacle to reform. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has refused to allow these two mortgage giants to reduce the principal on underwater mortgages that they own or guarantee. All it would take is for President Obama’s new appointee as F.H.F.A. director, former Representative Melvin Watt, to change the policy, an action that does not require congressional approval. He should do so immediately.
Meanwhile, faced with this predicament, some municipalities have been trying to take matters into their own hands. Late last year, Richmond, Calif., was the first city to develop a plan to use its power of eminent domain to buy underwater mortgages at their current market value and to refinance them, but many other localities are likely to follow. A number of responsible for-profit and nonprofit lenders stand ready to do business with them so that local governments don’t have to use tax dollars to purchase these loans.
Dealing with this problem on a city-by-city basis may not be the most efficient way to confront a national crisis, but in the face of Wall Street intransigence and federal indifference, cities have had to find their own way to restore the lost wealth of their constituents.
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How progressives can fight against Trump's agenda
How progressives can fight against Trump's agenda
As the new year begins, any honest progressive knows the political outlook is bleak. But if we're going to limit the damage that President-elect Donald Trump inflicts on the country, then despair...
As the new year begins, any honest progressive knows the political outlook is bleak. But if we're going to limit the damage that President-elect Donald Trump inflicts on the country, then despair is not an option. The real question, as Democracy Alliance President Gara LaMarche recently said, "is how you fight intelligently and strategically when every house is burning down."
Indeed, with Trump and Republicans in Congress aggressively pushing a right-wing agenda, progressives will need to invest their resources and attention where they can do the most good — both now and over the next four years. With that in mind, here are three steps to take to resist and rebuild as the Trump administration gets underway.
First, while strong national leadership is certainly important, progressives must recognize that the most significant resistance to Trump won't take place in Washington. It's going to happen in the streets led by grass-roots activists, and in communities, city halls and statehouses nationwide.
There is real potential for cities and states to act as a bulwark against Trump's agenda. On immigration, for example, a coalition of mayors from across the country — including New York and Los Angeles but also cities throughout the Rust Belt and the South — are already coordinating to fight Trump's deportation plans. Local Progress, a national network of city and county officials, is working to protect civil rights and advance economic and social justice. And while the Trump administration may ravage the environment, cities and states can also continue the fight against global warming; in particular, California has the potential to become a global leader on the issue, and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has defiantly pledged to move forward with plans to slash carbon emissions in the state regardless of Trump's policies.
Cities and states also give progressives an opportunity to play offense by advancing policies that truly improve people's lives, while providing a concrete and actionable blueprint for the rest of the country. Take the Fight for $15. Last year, 25 states, cities and counties approved minimum-wage increases that will result in raises for millions of workers nationwide. And despite Trump's hostility to workers, there are campaigns to increase the minimum wage planned in at least 13 states and other localities over the next two years, representing a real chance to build on that progress.
Second, as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman writes, "We need a broad commitment from activists and donors to take back state governments." Even if Democrats do well in the midterm elections, they are unlikely to regain control of Congress until after the next round of redistricting, in 2020. Yet there will be 87 state legislative chambers and 36 gubernatorial seats up for grabs in 2018. Progressives would be wise to adopt a laserlike focus on winning these races.
A strong performance at the state level in 2018 would do more than improve progressives' ability to combat Trump's policies. It would also help create a stronger pipeline of leaders who could eventually run for higher office, following in the steps of incoming House members Jamie B. Raskin, D-Md., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. Crucially, it would also give progressive Democrats more influence over congressional redistricting in 2020, boosting the party's prospects at the national level. For that reason, it's noteworthy that President Obama is planning to get involved in state legislative elections and redistricting after he leaves office, though grass-roots efforts will remain paramount.
And third, it will be critical for progressive leaders in Washington to amplify local progress to drive a national message. In the absence of a single party leader — especially one whose success depends on compromising with congressional Republicans — there is more room for strong, populist progressive voices to emerge in opposition to Trump.
Already, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Vt., Elizabeth Warren, Mass., Sherrod Brown, Ohio, and Jeff Merkley, Ore., are stepping up, and they will be joined in the House by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose members will play a key role in recruiting and running progressive candidates, connecting with grass-roots movements and driving local issues into the national sphere. Working alongside activist groups, progressive Democrats can present a clear alternative vision for the nation.
To that end, the race for Democratic National Committee chair presents a significant opportunity to shift the party's direction. Regardless of who prevails, progressives would be wise to insist on a return to the 50-state strategy that former chairman Howard Dean championed and that all of the current candidates say they support. Ultimately, the party's fortunes will depend on recruiting a new generation of progressive leaders, especially women and people of color, who can harness the power of social movements and drive it into electoral politics — everywhere in the country, at every level of government.
By: Katrina Vanden Heuvel
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Voices: A middle ground in the immigration debate
MIAMI — Not that long ago, part of my morning routine involved catching up on what states around the country were doing that day to crack down on illegal immigration.
That habit started in...
MIAMI — Not that long ago, part of my morning routine involved catching up on what states around the country were doing that day to crack down on illegal immigration.
That habit started in 2010, when Arizona passed a law empowering state police to enforce immigration laws. One by one, other states started following suit. Utah. Indiana. South Carolina. Alabama wanted to check the immigration status of children enrolling in its public schools. Georgia was so successful driving undocumented immigrants out of the state that it turned to prison labor to harvest its abandoned crops, a plan that quickly failed once the prisoners started walking off the job.
Then, something changed. Those laws started getting struck down in courts. Others states halted their efforts to pass Arizona copycat bills. And before I knew it, I was drinking my morning glass of orange juice while reading through articles about local efforts to make life easier for undocumented immigrants.
The most interesting of those efforts has been a push to provide local identification cards to undocumented immigrants. The idea is simple: A city or county creates a "municipal ID" that those immigrants can use to interact with city officials, identify themselves to police officers and even open bank accounts so they're not easy, cash-carrying targets for would-be robbers. The IDs aren't substitutes for driver's licenses or federally-accepted forms of ID — for example, you can't get through security at an airport or board a flight with one.
The number of places approving those IDs has surged in recent months, with Hartford, Ct., Newark, N.J., Greensboro, N.C., and New York City approving them.
The wave of cities adopting municipal IDs doesn't mean the country has suddenly turned completely immigrant-friendly. Just tune in to the next Republican presidential debate to see how many candidates are proposing mass deportations, cutting down on legal immigration channels and missile-firing drone patrols along the southwest border. Or watch as states try to crack down on sanctuary city policies within their borders.
But what the cities adopting municipal IDs show is that there may be a middle ground in the immigration debate that has been so incredibly polarized in recent years. On the one side, we had states like Arizona passing laws to go after undocumented immigrants. On the other, we had cities and counties like San Francisco adopting "sanctuary city" policies that have allowed some undocumented immigrants with violent, criminal backgrounds to walk free.
The reason we've seen that pendulum swing so wildly in opposite directions is that Congress and the White House have been unable to come together and fix our nation's broken immigration system. That's why millions of undocumented immigrants continue pouring over our southwest border. That's why millions of legal immigrants can stay in the country long past the time their visas have expired. And that's why Americans can continue hiring those undocumented immigrants with little fear of punishment.
What's left is a system that has effectively allowed 11 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the country. And whoever you blame for that, they've been left in a legal limbo that makes life incredibly difficult for them.
Take Rosana Araújo, an Uruguayan who visited Miami on a three-month visa 13 years ago and never went back. Araújo has spent her years here cleaning houses, warehouses, day care centers, whatever she could do to get by. But the 47-year-old said the fact that her only form of identification is her Uruguayan passport has made her life difficult in so many ways.
She can't use a public library. She can't get past the security desk of local hospitals to visit sick relatives or friends. She said she couldn't even return a pair of pants atWalmart because they insisted on a Florida ID card.
Most important, Araújo said she didn't call police after she was sexually assaulted in 2009 because she had heard from other undocumented immigrants who had been victims of sexual violence that they were caught up in immigration proceedings after reporting the crime.
"The first thing they do is ask for your identification. And the passport for them isn't valid," she said. "That makes you far more vulnerable that the police are going to pick you up for not having identification."
Now Araújo is helping several groups push government agencies in Miami-Dade County to adopt the municipal IDs. The Center for Popular Democracy, a group that advocates for immigrant rights, estimates that two dozen other cities, including Phoenix, New Orleans and Milwaukee, are now considering adopting the program
Municipal IDs won't solve our nation's immigration problem. But they just might be the best short-term solution to ensure undocumented immigrants aren't completely helpless as we all wait for Washington to find a solution.
Needed — a regional employee scheduling law
"Do you know what it’s like working long, erratic hours without knowing day-to-day what your schedule would be? Some of us do. If we haven’t worked in low-wage retail or the service sector, we’re...
"Do you know what it’s like working long, erratic hours without knowing day-to-day what your schedule would be? Some of us do. If we haven’t worked in low-wage retail or the service sector, we’re lucky that usually our hard work paid off, and we could advance in our careers.
For low-wage retail and service workers at large corporations, there’s no moving forward. When someone has an “I’ll do anything it takes” attitude, they are not rewarded for their labor, their adaptability or their commitment. Instead, they are often met with the chaos of unpredictable hours.
When people don’t have stable full-time or even part-time hours, they can’t budget or schedule basic things like child care, doctor visits, classes, family time or self care.
Take Cinthia, who works for DB Shoes, one of Emeryville’s numerous corporate retail chains. She works hard to take care of her family, but struggles with not having reliable hours. She juggles appointments for her younger brother, classes and work. When we met her, we asked how much sleep she got the previous night. She said, “Four hours.”
A recent survey conducted by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy and the Center for Popular Democracy found that a staggering 80 percent of retail workers have fluctuating hours from week to week; 68 percent only receive part-time hours; and more than half experience “clopening” shifts — back-to-back closing then opening a few hours later.
Two out of 3 workers surveyed want more hours but can’t get them. Fluctuating hours are considered undesirable by many workers. There are thousands of working people like Cinthia who are run ragged with erratic work schedules that not only have harmful effects on them personally, but on their families and our communities.
Our cities are built on everyone coming together to create a thriving place where people can live, work and play. But when people are not earning enough and have erratic schedules, they don’t have time to invest in our community or local businesses.
San Francisco passed a fair workweek policy, putting the Bay Area at the fair workweek movement’s forefront. Emeryville and San Jose are also considering similar policies to begin to move the entire region toward a more sustainable work model and ensure that people have both higher wages and regular, predictable hours they can count on.
Some of us take our routines for granted. We get up, rush to get everyone out the door, work a single job, come home, eat, go to bed. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. But for too many working people, that kind of stability is a dream. It shouldn’t be — and we can do something about it.
Now that we’ve won a $15 minimum wage across California, we know we need to finish the job and ensure working people have hours they can count on. A regional fair workweek provides hardworking people with the opportunity to work with stable schedules so they can pay the bills, live healthier lives, and contribute more to our communities."
By Dianne Martinez and Ruth Atkin
Source
Dreamers demand protections as Senate Democrats cave on budget deal
Dreamers demand protections as Senate Democrats cave on budget deal
Immigrants and advocates were arrested in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday while urging lawmakers to support a “clean” Dream Act.
...
Immigrants and advocates were arrested in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday while urging lawmakers to support a “clean” Dream Act.
Read the full article here.
Hispanos afrontan barreras de idioma en NY, según informe
El Diario – August 5, 2013, by Ruth E. Hernández - Las agencias del Gobierno estatal de Nueva York tienen importantes carencias a la hora de facilitar el acceso a sus servicios a los más de $2...
El Diario – August 5, 2013, by Ruth E. Hernández - Las agencias del Gobierno estatal de Nueva York tienen importantes carencias a la hora de facilitar el acceso a sus servicios a los más de $2 millones de personas y familias que no dominan el inglés, según un estudio presentado hoy.
“Todavía queda mucho por hacer para romper las barreras del idioma y asegurar que reciban una competente y consistente asistencia”, señala el “Informe de Acceso a Lenguaje”, que destaca que esta situación dificulta a estas personas el poder obtener servicios básicos como el carné de conducir o denunciar un crimen.
El estudio, de la organización Se Hace Camino Nueva York, es el primer informe que se publica luego de que, en 2011, el gobernador de Nueva York, Andrew Cuomo, firmara una orden ejecutiva para garantizar que inmigrantes reciban, en los seis idiomas más hablados, los servicios de agencias estatales que brindan ayuda directa a la comunidad.
“Con esta orden la administración del gobernador Cuomo no sólo tomó un paso importante para garantizar el acceso a servicios del gobierno a los que aún no dominan el inglés, sino que demostró liderazgo a nivel nacional en este asunto”, indica el informe de la entidad sobre las agencias que más en contacto están con el público.
Sin embargo, reveló que, un año después de entrar en vigor esta medida, los inmigrantes afrontan dificultades para tener acceso a servicios importantes como puede ser un carné de conducir, recibir los cupones de alimentos porque los formularios no han sido traducidos en su idioma o solicitar el desempleo, entre otros trámites, dijo a Efe Theo Oshiro, codirector de la organización.
Entre los hallazgos destaca, que pese a los esfuerzos de las agencias gubernamentales, la mayoría de los inmigrantes no están recibiendo documentos importantes traducidos en su idioma, tal y como estipula la orden ejecutiva.
Cita como ejemplo que en Buffalo sólo el 11 % de los hispanos afirma recibir la documentación en su idioma, mientras que en los pueblos de la región central del estado la cifra fue del 45 %.
Igualmente el estudio mostró que a través del estado sólo el 45 % de las agencias están brindando servicios de interpretación.
En específico, señala que en el Departamento de Vehículos de Motor, una de las agencias que más público atiende, sólo se ofreció información en los idiomas establecidos en el 32 % de los casos, mientras que en el Departamento del Trabajo esta cifra aumenta al 61 %.
También indica que en aquellas agencias en las que se brindó esta posibilidad, el público estuvo complacido con la calidad del mismo.
En cuanto a la Policía estatal, Oshiro explicó que aquellas personas que acuden en busca de ayuda tienen que esperar mucho tiempo y que “no tiene ni siquiera puesto en su página que puede brindar servicios” en varios idiomas.
Durante la evaluación, los autores descubrieron que el estado contrata a agencias locales en varios de sus condados para suplir servicios, y que éstas están exentas de cumplir la orden ejecutiva.
“Eso no es aceptable. No entendemos por qué no les cubre la orden ejecutiva”, dijo Oshiro.
Indicó además que, aunque las agencias del estado con sedes en la Ciudad de Nueva York, mejoraron en un 15 % los servicios que brindan, desde que entró en vigor la orden ejecutiva, “el estudio muestra que les está tomando tiempo” cumplir con ella, lo que, según Oshiro, no es aceptable porque tuvieron tiempo para prepararse.
Entre las recomendaciones que aporta el reporte figura mejorar el acceso de interpretación y la traducción, desarrollar y distribuir una guía de cómo mejorar los servicios y establecer colaboraciones con organizaciones que estén en contacto con la comunidad que no domina el inglés.
El informe se realizó en cooperación con la oficina del gobernador y, de acuerdo con Oshiro, los autores se reunirán con sus representantes para saber qué pasos van a tomar para cumplir con la orden ejecutiva.
“El estudio es una herramienta para que la oficina del gobernador haga lo que deben hacer”, afirmó.
Source
Death Cab for Cutie, Jim James, more protest Donald Trump with new songs
Death Cab for Cutie, Jim James, more protest Donald Trump with new songs
Death Cab for Cutie
After writer Dave Eggers attended a Donald Trump rally this past June, he realized now would be a good time for the “resurrection of the...
Death Cab for Cutie
After writer Dave Eggers attended a Donald Trump rally this past June, he realized now would be a good time for the “resurrection of the political protest song.” So he called up some artists, including Jim James and Aimee Mann, who wrote tracks for a project that would later become a playlist titled 30 Days, 30 Songs. That playlist, touted as being “written and recorded by musicians for a Trump-free America” launched Monday with Death Cab for Cutie’s “Million Dollar Loan.”
“From Woody Guthrie to Public Enemy, we know that songs can change minds, and particularly now, we need to motivate voters to stand against bigotry, sexism, hatred and ignorance,” Eggers said in a statement.
Eggers launched the playlist — available on Spotify and Apple Music — Oct. 10, 30 days before election day. Thao Nguyen, clipping., and Bhi Bhiman, among others, also contributed tracks, along with R.E.M., who offered up a never-before-released live song for the compilation.
A new track will debut at noon ET each day up until Nov. 8, and all proceeds will go toward the Center for Popular Democracy. Hear Death Cab’s entry below.
BY ARIANA BACLE
Source
Regional Feds' head-hunting under scrutiny over insider bias, delays
Efforts to fill top positions at some U.S. Federal Reserve regional branches are casting a spotlight on a decades-old process that critics say is opaque, favors insiders, and is ripe for reform....
Efforts to fill top positions at some U.S. Federal Reserve regional branches are casting a spotlight on a decades-old process that critics say is opaque, favors insiders, and is ripe for reform.
Patrick Harker took the reins as president of the Philadelphia Fed this week, in an appointment that attracted scrutiny because he served on the committee of directors that interviewed other prospective candidates for the job he ultimately took.
The Dallas Fed has been without a permanent president for more than three months as that search process stretches well into its eighth month. And the Fed's Minneapolis branch abruptly announced the departure of its leader, Narayana Kocherlakota, more than a year before he was due to go, with no replacement named to date.
The delays and reliance on Fed employees in picking regional Fed presidents can only embolden Republican Senator Richard Shelby to push harder for a makeover of the central bank's structure, which has changed little in its 101 years.
A bill passed in May by the Senate Banking Committee that Shelby chairs would strip the New York Fed's board of its power to appoint its presidents. And it could go further, given the bill would form a committee to consider a wholesale overhaul of the Fed's structure of 12 districts, which has not changed through the decades of shifting U.S. populations and an evolving economy.
The bill is part of a broader conservative effort to expose the central bank to more oversight, and some analysts saw the Philadelphia Fed's choice as reinforcing the view that the Fed needs to open up more to outsiders.
Nine of 11 current regional presidents came from within the Fed, a proportion that has edged up over time. Twenty years ago, seven of 12 were insiders.
"The process seems to create a diverse set of candidates in which the insider is almost always accepted," said Aaron Klein, director of a financial regulatory reform effort at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Since it was created in 1913, the central bank's decentralized structure was meant to check the power of Washington, where seven Fed governors with permanent votes on policy are appointed by the White House and approved by the Senate.
The 12 Fed presidents who are picked by their regional boards usually vote on policy every two or three years, and they tend to hold more diverse views.
Former Richmond Fed President Alfred Broaddus told Reuters the regional Fed chiefs have more freedom "to do and say things that may not be politically popular" because they are not politically appointed. "On the other hand, there is the question of legitimacy since they are appointed by local boards who are not elected."
"TONE DEAF"
Two-thirds of regional Fed directors are selected by local bankers, while the rest are appointed by the Fed's Board of Governors in Washington.
Critics question how well those regional boards - mostly made of the heads of corporations and industry groups meant to represent the public - fulfill their mission.
Last year, a non-profit group representing labor unions and community leaders organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, urged the Fed's Philadelphia and Dallas branches to make the selection of their presidents more transparent and to include a member of the public in the effort.
Philadelphia's Fed in particular proved "tone deaf" in its head-hunting effort, said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Harker was a Philadelphia Fed director when the board started looking to replace president Charles Plosser, who left on March 1, and he was among the six directors who interviewed more than a dozen short-listed candidates for the job, according to the Philadelphia Fed.
But on Feb. 18, Harker floated his own name, recused himself from the process and a week later his colleagues on the board unanimously appointed him as the new president.
While the selection follows Fed guidelines and was approved by its Board of Governors, it raised questions of transparency and fairness.
"The Philadelphia Fed's search process might have made perfect sense in a corporate environment, but is obviously problematic for an official institution," said Crandall.
The board's chair and vice chair, Swathmore Group founder James Nevels and Michael Angelakis of Comcast Corp, respectively, declined to comment, as did Harker.
Peter Conti-Brown, an academic fellow at Stanford Law School's Rock Center for Corporate Governance, and an expert witness at a Senate Banking Committee hearing this year, proposed to let the Fed Board appoint and fire regional Fed presidents or at least have a say in the selection process.
In the past, reform proposals for the 12 regional Fed banks have focused on decreasing or increasing their number and their governance.
Changes to the way the regional Fed bosses are chosen could strengthen the influence of lawmakers at the expense of regional interests.
For now, delays in appointments of new chiefs force regional banks to send relatively unknown deputies to debate monetary policy at meetings in Washington, as Dallas and Philadelphia did last month when the Fed considered raising interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.
The Minneapolis Fed still has time to find a new president before Kocherlakota steps down at year end.
"For now the Fed criticism is just noise, mostly from Republicans," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group. "But once the Fed begins to raise interest rates ... then the left will weigh in as well."
(Additional reporting Ann Saphir in San Francisco; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
Source: Reuters
21 hours ago
21 hours ago