Campaign News

IN OCTOBER 2016, Ady Barkan — a California-based activist at the Center for Popular Democracy — was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Last year, he was going for long jogs along the Santa Barbara coast. Today, he doesn’t have the strength to cut a piece of meat at the dinner table or pick up his 30-pound toddler.

Read the full article here.

In just two years, more than 13 million workers have received a raise, most notably in Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Massachusetts and just last month in New York, where wages for fast-food workers were raised. 

Work strikes and broad-based mass mobilizations are inspiring and filling a much-needed void. This worker-led movement is stepping in where the federal government has failed. 

Nearly 50 percent of workers earn less than $15 an hour and 43 million are forced to work or place their job at risk when sick or faced with a critical care giving need. When Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb, Martin O'Malley, and Lincoln Chafee take the stage in Las Vegas on Tuesday night for the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2016 election, will they be addressing this powerful and significant constituency?

Will they provide relief for working families by presenting real policy solutions that go to the core of what it means to thrive? Or will they trade sallies and barbs in a bid to prevail in a popularity contest, overshadowing the experience of millions of working families in America?

Democratic contenders are likely to lament the fate of a declining middle class squeezed by the rapacious appetites of the 1 percent. This is important, but the candidates will also need to focus on ensuring that the middle class grows through a fair minimum wage, and struggling American workers, many of whom are women and people of color, can take paid sick time off without being penalized.

Not in recent decades have we seen such a vibrant backdrop of resistance and organizing around wages and workers' rights in this country, and Democratic candidates must not squander this golden opportunity to raise awareness around these issues and set an agenda that goes to the heart of what Americans need.

And the workers have been heard: a $15 minimum wage has been passed in the nation's largest cities. In addition, laws raising the minimum wage to more than the federal standard of $7.25 an hour have passed in a number of states and cities. There are now campaigns to raise the floor and standards for workers are being led in 14 states and four cities.

We've seen how lives can change when workers are paid a salary allowing them to make ends meet. Unable to adequately provide for her family on $9 an hour, health-care worker and single mother Sandra Arzu is one of the workers who fought fora $15 minimum wage in Los Angeles. The raise will fundamentally change her life and ability to put food on the table for her family and pay the rent.

Higher wages are vital to improving the lives of low-wage workers but it's not a cure-all. It's also important for low-wage workers to have access to paid sick days to take care of themselves and their families without fear of retribution. A Center for Popular Democracy report published earlier this month reveals 40 percent of surveyed Starbucksworkers reported facing barriers to taking sick days when they were ill.

The candidates need to address in a real way what workers must manage daily. Like a Starbucks barista from Washington State who describes coming to work sick out of fear she would lose her job if she took the day off. She says she rested on cardboard spread out on the floor so she could step in when there was heavy foot traffic in the store.

The federal government has an opportunity to dignify the lives of all workers in this country and address persistent inequality by enacting nationwide policies raising the minimum wage and enforcing paid sick leave. Millions of workers have issued a clarion call to the Democratic candidates and it's now their turn to respond with aggressive policy solutions to address the divide in this country.

We will be watching closely on Tuesday night to see if the candidates have heard the call from this key Democratic constituency — a constituency the Democratic party can't afford to lose.

Source: CNBC

In the middle of meetings of the world’s central banking elite in Wyoming’s Jackson Lake Lodge in August 2015, Lael Brainard sat down with activists who were denouncing calls for tighter monetary policy amid America’s sluggish wage growth.

As the Federal Reserve Board member listened intently over the course of about an hour, protesters from New York ranging from fast-food employees to a worker on film sets talked about the difficulties of making ends meet on rock-bottom wages in a high-cost metropolis, recalls Shawn Sebastian, field director of the Fed Up coalition that arranged the meeting.

Ms Brainard’s decision to drop by carried a message. A fairly new member of the Board of Governors who had said relatively little about monetary policy, Ms Brainard was about to set out her stall as a vocal advocate of low interest rates at the Fed — based in part on the absence of wage growth.

Her steadfast calls for continued economic stimulus have burnished her credentials among pro-worker groups including Fed Up, which met a broader range of Fed officials at this year’s Jackson Hole gathering. They come amid speculation that she could be in line for a cabinet role if the Democrats hold the White House in November.

“When it comes to monetary policy, Lael Brainard is one of the strongest and loudest voices advocating for policies that working families across the US need,” says Mr Sebastian.

In Washington, Ms Brainard is being spoken of as one of the candidates for Treasury secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration — a move that would make her the first woman to head the department. At the same time she has become the target of Republican attacks because of her public support for the Clinton campaign and fury within the party over easy-money policies.

Early this year Ms Brainard donated $2,700 to the Clinton campaign, a decision described by former officials as a blunder for a sitting Fed governor during an election year — even if it is permissible under Fed rules. It increased the Fed’s political vulnerability at a time when it is a prime target for vituperative assaults on its independence by Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.

The donation was the subject of sharp exchanges in Congress last month as Fed chair Janet Yellen was forced to reject claims by Republican representative Scott Garrett that the central bank is excessively cosy with the Democrats.

There are people who blather on and she is not one of them

Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Joe Biden

Ted Truman, a former Fed official who is a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says Ms Brainard’s donation was a personal mistake that “didn’t help the Fed at all”. He also argues that the issue pales in comparison with politically charged episodes in the past, such as the Nixon years when the Fed was leaned on heavily to keep rates low.

Ms Brainard’s forceful drive for easy monetary policy began two months after the 2015 Jackson Hole meetings, when she delivered a blunt speech that left some with the impression that she was at loggerheads with Ms Yellen. Ms Brainard warned against prematurely lifting rates amid slack in the labour market and subdued inflation — even as the chair was steering markets to expect a move by the end of the year.

Ms Brainard did not go on to formally dissent when Ms Yellen presided over a rate increase that December. Since then the two policymakers have appeared more closely aligned, with both recently arguing that the US recovery has further room to run before the central bank needs to increase rates again.

Ms Brainard has urged caution in part because of the risk that overseas shocks ricochet back to the US via highly integrated financial markets. This global focus builds on her work as the US’s top financial diplomat under former Treasury secretary Tim Geithner between 2010 and 2013, where in the gruelling post of undersecretary for international affairs she was a key US figure in discussions over the euro area debt crisis, as well as the broader global fallout from the financial crash.

Fed should not rush to raise rates, says Brainard

Already low expectations of a September increase fall further after policymaker’s cautious comments

One official who spoke with her regularly was George Papaconstantinou, Greece’s finance minister from 2009 to 2011. He recalls hearing from Ms Brainard two or three times a week during the febrile days of early 2010, as Europe dragged its feet over how to handle the Greek crisis and the US pushed for action. The calls were partly “therapy” for him and partly information-gathering by Ms Brainard so she had “a better sense of how close we were to the edge”. He says: “She clearly knew her stuff.”

Ms Brainard, who declined to comment for this article, developed her interest for global affairs in part on the back of her upbringing as a diplomat’s daughter, spending some of her childhood behind the iron curtain in Poland and East Germany. A former MIT economics professor, she has three children and is married to Kurt Campbell, a former top state department official.

A reserved individual, Ms Brainard left the Treasury with a mixed reputation among officials, some of whom found her unsupportive and distant. Others, including Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to vice-president Joe Biden, praise her straight-talking manner and clarity of thought. “There are people who blather on and she is not one of them,” he says.

When Washington observers size up potential Treasury secretaries, Ms Brainard’s name comes up alongside Gary Gensler, the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook.

What gives Ms Brainard’s claim potency is not only her international and domestic economic experience, but also the helpful absence of a stint on Wall Street in her curriculum vitae. For many Democrats, her very public campaign for low rates has only strengthened her qualifications for the post.

By Lael Brainard

Source

“At a time when the Federal Reserve is starved for new, more well-rounded thinking, it is troubling that its opaque, secretive process for selecting its leadership could only yield a candidate cut from the same cloth as so many previous appointments: Wall Street and the highest echelons of corporate America. This was an opportunity for the Fed – especially the traditionally inaccessible Dallas Fed – to embrace a more transparent processes and to choose a president who can bring a new, more inclusive perspective that can foster a real recovery for communities in Dallas and beyond. Instead, the Dallas Fed selected a veteran of Goldman Sachs who is currently a director at the headhunting firm that was hired to fill this position. Neither the process nor the result serves the public interest. The Fed should do much better. 

“The process in Dallas has been especially worrying from the beginning. Outgoing President Richard Fisher convened a committee of former Fed presidents to advise on the selection process, in possible contravention of Dodd-Frank. There were reports of candidates being subjected to ideological litmus tests. The Dallas Fed shut out the Fed Up coalition – made up of community, labor, and consumer organizations – since December and refused to even acknowledge our simple requests for basic transparency, even as the Dallas Fed presidency remained vacant for the past 5 months.

“The self-dealing is reminiscent of the similarly opaque process in Philadelphia: Patrick Harker was a member of the very search committee that selected him as the next President of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve. The revolving door in the Federal Reserve continues to spin, with Richard Fisher leaving the Dallas Fed to work at Barclay’s Bank (which pleaded guilty to serious financial crimes), and a Goldman Sachs banker coming in.

“In the meantime, the people of Texas are still struggling with stagnant wages and enormous racial disparities. And the Fed still seems primed to intentionally slow down the economy later this year. With multi-millionaire Wall Street bankers in its highest leadership positions, how could the American people expect anything else?”

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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.