#FedSoWhite? Lawmakers complain about Federal Reserve's lack of diversity
#FedSoWhite? Lawmakers complain about Federal Reserve's lack of diversity
More than 120 members of Congress say the Federal Reserve has a striking diversity problem similar to the one that hit Hollywood's Academy Awards the past two years, and it's harming the economic...
More than 120 members of Congress say the Federal Reserve has a striking diversity problem similar to the one that hit Hollywood's Academy Awards the past two years, and it's harming the economic prospects of millions of Americans.
The lawmakers -- including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), as well as Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and John Conyers (D-Mich.) -- wrote to Fed Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen on Thursday complaining about what they called "the disproportionately white and male" leadership at the nation's central bank.
"Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country, cannot be understated," said the letter, signed by 116 House members and 11 Senators.
"When the voices of women, African Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected," said the lawmakers, who were all Democrats except for Sanders, an independent running for the party's presidential nomination.
The diverse group of House and Senate members praised Yellen, the first woman to lead the Fed, for her "strong leadership" and efforts to help raise wages while combatting economic inequality.
But they said the Fed had failed to fulfill its statutory obligation to “represent the public, without discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, or national origin" and called on Yellen "to take steps to promptly begin to remedy this issue."
All five members of the Fed Board of Governors are white and three are men.
All 10 voting members this year of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the monetary policy-setting body that includes Fed governors and a rotating set of regional Fed bank presidents, also are white and six are men, the letter said.
In addition, 11 of the 12 regional Fed bank presidents are white and 10 are men, with no African Americans or Latinos.
When the voices of women, African Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected.
— Letter from lawmakers to Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen
Regional presidents are appointed by the directors of each Fed bank. The Fed's Board of Governors in Washington approves the appointments.
In addition, the lawmakers cited a recent study by the Center for Popular Democracy, a worker advocacy group, that said that 39% of all regional Fed bank directors came from financial institutions, while 11% were from community, labor or academic organizations.
Fed spokesman David Skidmore said the central bank was "committed to fostering diversity -- by race, ethnicity, gender, and professional background -- within its leadership ranks."
The Fed's board has "focused considerable attention in recent years" on recruiting regional bank directors "with diverse backgrounds and experiences," he said.
Minority representation on the boards of Fed banks and branches increased to 24% this year from 16% in 2010, he said. And the proportion of women directors increased to 30% of the total from 23% during that period.
In a blog post in January, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Narayana Kocherlakota, raised concerns about diversity on the committee that sets monetary policy.
“There is one key source of economic difference in American life that is likely under-emphasized in FOMC deliberations: race,” he said.
Kocherlakota reviewed committee transcripts from 2010, the most recent available, and said he found no references at meetings "to labor market conditions among African Americans,” even though their unemployment rate never dropped below 15.5% that year.
The lawmakers cited Kocherlakota's post, calling it "unacceptable that discussion of the job market for these populations would be an afterthought, or worse, ignored entirely, and we are concerned that the lack of balanced representation may be a significant cause of this oversight."
Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), who signed the letter, pressed Yellen at a House hearing in February to consider "getting an African American, for the first time in history, to be a regional president of a Federal Reserve bank."
Yellen said she "absolutely" would and regretted there hadn't been such an appointment.
"It's our job to make sure that every search for those jobs assembles a broad and diverse group of candidates," Yellen said.
The lawmakers said they appreciated her concern about diversity but urged her to do more.
Connie Razza, author of the Center for Popular Democracy report, said the large number of lawmakers who signed the letter showed that support is growing for changes at the Fed to make sure "the economy works for all."
The center coordinates Fed Up, a coalition of labor, community and liberal activist groups that has organized protests outside FOMC meetings urging central bank policymakers not to raise a key interest rate until the job market is stronger.
By Jim Puzzanghera
Source
Black Community Seeks the Power of the Ballot
Source: Vox
For black communities in the United States, presidential election participation rates are strong and momentum is building.
In 2012, black voters showed up at the polls in the largest numbers (66.2 percent) and voted at a higher rate than non-Hispanic whites (64.1 percent) for the first time since rates were published by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1996.
Black Americans tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections. This was true by historic margins in President Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 victories— 95 and 93 percent, respectively. And their turnout rate in 2016 could be an important factor in deciding the next president of the United States, especially in a tight race.
That's good news for black community leaders who want to ensure their voices are heard and hold future leaders accountable.
Civil rights leadership
The 2014 and 2015 cases of deadly police force against unarmed African-Americans have galvanized a tech-savvy generation of activists to inject new life in an age-old push for racial, economic and social equality.
More and more, movements such as Black Lives Matter are becoming international household names and are holding candidates accountable to specifically address and push for legislation on these issues.
One such organization, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), engages and advocates on behalf of African-American and black immigrant communities on issues of racial justice and immigrant rights.
BAJI's policy and legal manager, Carl Lipscombe, says part of the greater push nationwide to organize and bring to light instances of police brutality results from what he describes as a community-wide fear of "being killed when walking to the corner." He says these police cases are enhanced by the advent of social media and by the ability to capture events on camera that wasn't possible in the 1980s.
Lipscombe says candidates must do more than "throw a bone" if they expect communities of color to go to the polls in droves.
"It's not enough to just say we want free education for everyone," Lipscombe said. "We want to know how this is going to impact black people."
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among blacks in the United States, at 9.4 percent, remains significantly higher — nearly double — than the overall rate of 5 percent nationwide.
Black wealth also has declined. The non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, in coordination with the liberal research institution Center for Popular Democracy, reports that black workers' wages have fallen by 44 cents on the hour in the past 15 years, while wages of both Hispanic and white workers have increased by approximately the same amount.
African immigrant concerns
The Migration Policy Institute reports that black immigrants from Africa are better educated than the overall U.S. population, age 25 and older.
In 2007, 38 percent held a four-year degree or more, compared to 27 percent of the U.S. population. Yet, black immigrants earn lower wages and hold the highest unemployment rate in comparison to other immigrant groups, according to the Center for American Progress.
Bakary Tandia, case manager and policy advocate at African Services Committee, a Harlem-based agency dedicated to assisting African immigrants, refugees and asylees, says progress is necessary across all levels of government.
"Even if you take the case of [New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio,” Tandia said, “he is a progressive mayor, but in his administration, I have not seen any African immigrant appointed or in a meaningful position, and the same thing goes at the state level, at the federal level."
New leadership
Grass-roots coordinators say anti-immigration rhetoric among some presidential candidates has fueled electoral participation, as well as greater community leadership.
Steve McFarland, whose organizing efforts include get-out-the-vote campaigns among disenfranchised communities in New York, says the immigration reform movement, combined with the work of Black Lives Matter, has produced a new generation of civil rights leaders.
"It doesn't look the way that it used to look," McFarland said. "It's not big organizations, but they can mobilize people, they have a clear voice, and they are winning changes across the country."
Ahead of the 2016 presidential primaries, there is good news for Democratic frontrunner and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She currently enjoys an 80 percent favorability rating among adult blacks, the highest positive net rating of all candidates, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Clinton, who has met privately with Black Lives Matters activists, specifically addressed racial profiling in an October speech at Clark Atlanta University.
"Race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind," Clinton said. "Racial profiling is wrong, demanding, doesn't keep us safe or help solve crimes. It's time to put that practice behind us."
“The People’s Fed”: Manufacturing Popular Support for Global Theft
“The People’s Fed”: Manufacturing Popular Support for Global Theft
How does one get invited to attend one of the most exclusive palavers on the planet? Well, if it’s the annual Jackson Hole economic summit sponsored by the Federal Reserve System, it’s virtually a...
How does one get invited to attend one of the most exclusive palavers on the planet? Well, if it’s the annual Jackson Hole economic summit sponsored by the Federal Reserve System, it’s virtually a prerequisite that one belong to that elite fraternity of beings known as central bankers. Or a pointy-headed professor with a certified globalist bent. Or, it seems, a loudmouthed, obnoxious street radical with a Marxist-Leninist “social justice/economic democracy” bent.
So, if you’re a screaming activist with the Center for Popular Democracy, apparently, you have an open door, a welcoming hand, and a place at the table with the Jackson Hole uber-elite.“Federal Reserve officials sought to reassure a group of labor activists that the central bank isn’t going to cool down the economy just as a stronger labor market is reaching a broader swath of Americans,” reported the Wall Street Journal on August 26.
Here is an excerpt from the Journal’s report:
“We’re going to run [the economy] hot, get the unemployment rate down lower,” San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams said at an unprecedented meeting with activists from the Campaign [sic for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up Campaign.
The meeting of activists and high-ranking Fed officials took place shortly before the start of the Kansas City Fed’s high-profile policy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Central bankers in attendance included Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s two top lieutenants, New York Fed President William Dudley and Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer....
The left-leaning activist group Fed Up publicly met with eight Federal Reserve presidents Thursday to discuss inequality and interest rates during the central bank's annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Serious, responsible critics of the Fed of a conservative/libertarian bent would never receive similar cordial treatment, of course. That’s understandable, since they want to restrict the power of the Fed, or abolish it altogether. The left-wing activists, on the other hand, want to expand the power of the Fed, and to use those expanded powers to further socialize our economy and society. That is surprising to many people, but it shouldn’t be; it’s completely in line with Karl Marx’s handbook. The fourth plank in Marx’s 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto calls for “Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” Bingo: That’s the Federal Reserve.
So, what is the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and who is supporting it and its Fed Up Campaign? Not surprisingly, one of its major supporters is the Ford Foundation, which has been notorious for funding “progressive,” socialist, pro-communist, and outright communist organizations and individuals for more than seven decades. Also, among the CPD financial angels is the Open Philanthropy Project, which has generously funded CPD’s Fed Up Campaign, it boasts, to the tune of at least $2 million. And it has pledged millions more.
In our previous report on the Fed’s conference last weekend (Jackson Hole’s Gangsters and Banksters: What Are They Planning?) we utilized the Fed’s official list of conference attendees to underscore the fact that the Fed’s top echelon officials and advisers hail almost entirely from that elite cabal of globalist one-worlders, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Moreover, we pointed out, this confirmed a virtually non-stop control of the Fed by CFR members since the Fed’s inception, under the guidance of elite Wall Street banker Paul Warburg, who was also a founder of the CFR.
The same CFR hands are at work in the creation of the Astroturf Fed Up Campaign posing as a grassroots “opposition” force to the Fed. The Ford Foundation and many of the other tax-exempt foundations supporting this faux CPD effort are longtime funding arms for the globalist agenda. Ditto for many of the other controlled opposition groups that CPD/Fed Up list as their “Partners.” Here is a partial list of those CPD partners, most of which would scarcely exist, if not for the activist cash they regularly receive from their globalist paymasters they pretend to oppose:
Arkansas Community Organization
Living United for Change in Arizona
ACCE Institute (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment)
Working Partnerships USA
CASA de Delaware
New Florida Majority
Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Good Jobs Now
Neighborhoods Organizing for Change
TakeAction Minnesota
New York Communities for Change
Common Good Ohio
CASA de Pennsylvania
Ohio Organizing Collaborative
Texas Organizing Project
Wisconsin Jobs Now
Clearly, as with #BlackLivesMatter and the many other Astroturf “progressive” organizations funded by billionaire George Soros (a CFR member and CFR President's Circle corporate supporter), the Fed Up Campaign is another example of CFR Insiders providing simultaneous pressure from above and below to effect social/political/economic/moral revolution.
By William F. Jasper
Source
Activists launch #BackersOfHate to call out major companies with ties to Trump
Activists launch #BackersOfHate to call out major companies with ties to Trump
Activists are fearlessly taking on some of the biggest corporations in the U.S., calling them out for their ties to President Donald Trump.
A newly launched website called BackersOfHate.org...
Activists are fearlessly taking on some of the biggest corporations in the U.S., calling them out for their ties to President Donald Trump.
A newly launched website called BackersOfHate.org breaks down how nine major corporations are affiliated with the Trump administration and the ways they will gain from the Trump agenda. The website also outlines current company policies that already negatively impact people of color, immigrants, Indigenous communities, and low income populations — similar to critiques of the Trump agenda.
Read full article here.
Puerto Rican Families Displaced in Florida by Hurricane María Recruited as Potential Voters
Puerto Rican Families Displaced in Florida by Hurricane María Recruited as Potential Voters
The Summer for Puerto Rico campaign is spearheaded by Julio López Varona, the Director of Puerto Rico Diaspora Campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. He emphasized that the focus of the...
The Summer for Puerto Rico campaign is spearheaded by Julio López Varona, the Director of Puerto Rico Diaspora Campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. He emphasized that the focus of the campaign is on promoting political empowerment and literacy, by providing context on who are the lawmakers, and teaching communities about the effects of colonialism.
Read the full article here.
After A Wave Of Bad Press, This Controversial Software Company Is Making Changes
In April, the New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation...
In April, the New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation into the scheduling practices of 13 national retail chains, distributing a letter to the Gap, Target, J.C. Penney, and 10 other companies. The letter asked, among other things, whether these companies’ store managers use software manufactured by a company called Kronos to algorithmically generate schedules.
A few months later, Kronos was also featured prominently in an article published by the New York Times about the ill effects of erratic scheduling on Starbucks employees, especially one particular family. In a follow-up piece, the author, Jodi Kantor, points directly to Kronos’ scheduling software as the root of the problem. “I saw that her life was coming apart and that the Starbucks software had contributed to the crisis,” Kantor wrote of one of the story’s subjects.
The piece’s argument centered around the financial and scheduling unpredictability engendered by platforms like Kronos. When you don’t know if your shift might be canceled, if or when you’ll be called in, or what your hours will look like next week or the week after, it becomes very difficult to make even the most basic plans for your future. This can have devastating long-term financial and emotional impacts on workers. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., 17 percent of the American workforce is negatively affected by unstable schedules.
For their part, Kronos representatives argue that the algorithm is far from the root of the problem. “The populist view is that scheduling is evil, in that it’s causing erratic schedules for employees, and so forth,” Charlie DeWitt, vice president of business development for Kronos, told BuzzFeed News. “The fact of the matter is it’s an algorithm. It does whatever you want it to do.”
And you don’t necessarily need to work for Kronos to believe that in a competitive retail climate, the problem is more complicated than technology alone. Lonnie Golden, a Penn State economist who has extensively studied the impact of erratic scheduling, acknowledges that Kronos’ product itself is less to blame than the managers who make staffing decisions based on the data it provides. “It’s not necessarily the technology that’s responsible for minimum to no advance notice,” he said. “It’s the way in which it’s applied.”
But, he added, “where there’s a technology problem, there’s usually a technology solution.” And while Kronos maintains that managers, and not the software, are responsible for early dismissals and last-minute shift cancellations, the company is nonetheless pursuing some technological solutions.
Kronos wants to help managers better understand how scheduling adjustments affect workers and, ultimately, the bottom line. Though the company maintains that its software doesn’t produce the kind of erratic schedules that hurt wage workers, DeWitt said there was nonetheless an interest in figuring out why that perception existed — and, if possible, fixing it.
To that end, earlier this month at a retail conference in Philadelphia, the company announced that it’s working on a new plug-in that will give managers better insight into workers’ schedule stability, equity of hours worked among employees, and the consistency of schedules from week to week. In addition, Kronos is improving a feature meant to help give employees more control over their schedules: Though the software already incorporates employee availability and preferences into its scheduling calculations, improvements to a shift-swapping feature on its employee-facing web and mobile apps will theoretically allow employees to work around conflicts among themselves.
Golden said increased employee input and control would be a good thing. But some retailers, DeWitt pointed out, are uncomfortable making workers use an app outside of work hours; indeed, the practice could be seen as a shift of management responsibilities onto lower-paid individuals.
Part of the idea behind the new Kronos plug-in is to help companies tie fairer scheduling practices to reduction in absenteeism and turnover, which can be enormously costly. In other words, if Kronos can help executives see the connection between treating workers fairly and a store’s ability to increase revenue, DeWitt said, managers will have an impetus to create more predictable, stable schedules.
And just because companies are looking at this kind of data doesn’t mean they have to use it. “Companies like Kronos and Workplace Systems are starting to integrate some of these principles into their software,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, “but it’s all optional, so companies can decide not to do it.” While 12 states are currently considering legislation that would create new labor standards around the workweek, Gleason said the technology alone lacks a mechanism for enforcement.
Given market pressures and standard management practices, it’s unlikely that any change to Kronos’ technology would give workers more power — especially because, given the competitive retail climate at the moment, the bottom line tends to be the priority. “It’s not just bad managers. They have extreme pressure to increase productivity on an ever-shrinking labor budget,” Gleason said.
With these changes, Kronos has taken logical steps toward both repairing its reputation and making sure its software creates sustainable work environments. But while the company cannot control exactly how the algorithm that forecasts schedules and optimizes workforces is deployed inside different workplaces, the Kronos engineers who designed the product are nonetheless the partial architects of work environments that have been proven to be untenable for low-wage workers. The Kronos scheduling algorithm isn’t designed to serve those people; it’s designed to be sold to their bosses, and as such, will ultimately be shaped to serve the needs of management — until regulations exist that compel them to change how it’s used.
Source: Buzzfeed
Undocumented in Texas: Surviving Hurricane Harvey and the Repeal of DACA
Undocumented in Texas: Surviving Hurricane Harvey and the Repeal of DACA
Today we bring you a conversation about undocumented families seeking relief from Hurricane Harvey, the ongoing fight against an anti-immigrant bill in Texas, DACA and more with Greg Casar, a city...
Today we bring you a conversation about undocumented families seeking relief from Hurricane Harvey, the ongoing fight against an anti-immigrant bill in Texas, DACA and more with Greg Casar, a city councilman in Austin representing District 4.
Nina Tassler, Denise Di Novi Launch New Studio PatMa Productions
Nina Tassler, Denise Di Novi Launch New Studio PatMa Productions
The studio has already set up partnerships with a number of organizations promoting diversity, inclusion, and human rights, among them the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Center for...
The studio has already set up partnerships with a number of organizations promoting diversity, inclusion, and human rights, among them the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Center for Popular Democracy, and Planned Parenthood.
Read the full article here.
Puerto Rican Activists Reject Debt Restructuring Agreement
02.10.2020
San Juan,...
02.10.2020
San Juan, Puerto Rico -- In response to the new debt adjustment deal announced by the Financial Management and Oversight Board (FOMB) on February 9th, the co-director of community dignity campaigns at Center for Popular Democracy, Julio Lopez Varona, shared the following statement:
“The FOMB’s latest proposal should be seen as an insult to the people of Puerto Rico. This agreement ensures lofty payments to hedge funds and corporations who paid cents on the dollar on bonds that were in some cases emitted illegally. These payments will be funded by cutting pensions and imposing even more taxes, despite the struggle to recover from ongoing earthquakes and the impact of Hurricane Maria. No payments to Wall Street should be made while Puerto Rico struggles to recover. It is imperative that we reject this agreement and demand the cancellation of the debt as the only way to a fair recovery.”
Despite Puerto Rico’s unsustainable debt undergoing renegotiating deals for the last few years, the FOMB’s proposal has barely reached a consensus on a plan that does more than benefit Wall Street and bondholders. The proposal would give bondholders more than a 70% rate of recovery, retrieving that by raising local taxes and sustaining an 8.5% cut to pensions.
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Restaurant group preps for fight against Ariz. minimum wage boost
Restaurant group preps for fight against Ariz. minimum wage boost
PHOENIX -- The head of the state's restaurant industry is gearing up to convince voters to quash an initiative that would boost the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020.
Steve Chucri...
PHOENIX -- The head of the state's restaurant industry is gearing up to convince voters to quash an initiative that would boost the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020.
Steve Chucri, president of the Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association, said Wednesday the campaign against the measure will be based on showing them how much wages in Arizona have gone up since voters enacted the first minimum wage law in 2006.
Prior to that, Arizona employers had to pay only what was mandated in federal law, which was $5.15 an hour. The ballot measure pushed that to $6.75, with a requirement for annual adjustments based on inflation.
That has pushed the current state minimum to $8.05.
"The public will say, 'Enough's enough,'" Chucri said. And he said polls done for the industry in the spring show people believe that $12 is "too much."
The comments come as Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families is planning to submit its petitions for the $12 wage plus required paid leave today to the secretary of state's office.
Spokeswoman Suzanne Wilson said organizers have collected more than 250,000 signatures. That is 100,000 more than are needed to qualify for the ballot.
But Chucri said he's not convinced his organization will even have to fight the battle in November. He questioned whether petition circulators, both volunteer and paid, were careful to ensure that those who signed are qualified to vote in the state.
Arizona has become the latest battleground over what can be considered a living wage.
Several states have enacted their own laws, often through legislation. Most recently, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a measure that will take that state's minimum, now $10 an hour, up to $15 by 2022 for large employers; small companies will get another year to comply.
Chucri said part of the campaign against the ballot measure will be to remind voters here that Arizona already has a minimum wage that's higher than what federal law requires.
And that same law requires annual revision. Chucri pointed out that has meant a boost every year except for two when the rate of inflation was too small for even a nickel more, the bare minimum adjustment.
The difference, though, is not great: That $8.05 an hour is just 80 cents more than the federal minimum.
What Chucri also faces is that $8.05, assuming it's a family's sole source of income, translates out to $16,744 a year.
For a single person, the federal government considers anything below $11,880 a year to be living in poverty. That figure is $16,020 for a family of two and $20,160 for a family of three.
That's part of what has driven similar living wage efforts elsewhere in the country. But Chucri said the idea of a $12 minimum won't sell here.
"That is too high of a wage for a place like Arizona,'' he said.
Chucri said part of the campaign against the ballot measure will be the argument that higher wages mean fewer jobs.
"Restaurateurs are going to survive,'' he said. But what they will do, Chucri said, is simply hire fewer people.
He pointed out the push toward automation already is underway.
At Panera Bread, customers place their orders through computer screens and then can pick up what they want. And even at more traditional sit-down place like Applebee's, orders can be placed through tablets at each table.
Chucri conceded, though, that is happening even in places where the minimum wage is not going up. What approval of this measure would do, he said, is hasten the day.
"I don't think it's a matter of 'if,' '' Chucri said. "It's a matter of 'when.' ''
He would not say how much his group and other business organizations intend to spend to kill the measure.
The most recent campaign finance reports show campaign organizers have raised more than $342,000. Virtually all of that comes from Living United for Change in Arizona. But Tomas Robles, former executive director of LUCHA, said much of that is from a grant to the organization from The Center for Popular Democracy, an organization involved in efforts to establish a $15 minimum wage nationally.
Another $25,000 came from The Fairness Project which has its own efforts to push higher minimum wages on a state-by-state basis.
By Howard Fischer
Source
6 days ago
6 days ago