Duggan on the Donald
Duggan on the Donald
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: National Federation of Independent Business President Juanita Duggan, fresh off her secret special-interests meeting with Donald Trump last week, has some advice for...
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: National Federation of Independent Business President Juanita Duggan, fresh off her secret special-interests meeting with Donald Trump last week, has some advice for downtowners scratching their heads about how to interact with the unconventional campaign: Treat it like any other. "We’re doing what we would do with any campaign: asking questions and letting them know our agenda," she told PI. "It was an extremely substantive meeting with the candidate himself. That speaks for itself."
A4A's Nick Calio, the only other known attendee, wasn't available for comment, according to a spokesman. (Both Duggan and Calio contributed to Jeb Bush's campaign, for the record.) Other major trade groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, API and the National Association of Manufacturers, weren't invited. The New York Times reported that Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who's advising Trump, invited people for whom he has “great respect.” Trump's spokeswoman didn't answer a request for comment.
MACK'S BACK: Connie Mack, the former Florida congressman who recently left Levick, registered to lobby for DCI Group on behalf of Puerto Rico bondholders. Mack declined to specify which investors, but he previously worked for DCI on behalf of hedge fund BlueMountain Capital Management on its dispute with the island commonwealth. DCI Group is the grassroots/"AstroTurf" specialist that The New York Times said helped coordinate a lobbying campaign purportedly comprising retiree bondholders.
Mack criticized the current bill on Puerto Rico's debt, telling PI it features an unconstitutional stay and a "bailout in the form of a super Chapter 9."
NO DEAL: Pharma giants Pfizer and Allergan have called off their $160 billion merger after Treasury released new anti-inversion rules Monday, Pro Tax’s Bernie Becker reports. Pfizer was planning to move its legal address to Ireland, and the deal would have been the largest in a series of mergers allowing companies to take foreign addresses, reducing their tax bills. Conservative groups, including Americans for Tax Reform and 13 others, have called on Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to address the issue through tax reform instead of regulations. http://politico.pro/1S241li
— Roberti Global, Tarplin Downs & Young and Ogilvy Government Relations lobbied for Pfizer on inversions, and SKDKnickerbocker was also advising the drugmaker. Van Heuvelen Strategies represents Allergan on international taxes.
STATUS UPDATES:
— The Center for American Progress named Liz Kennedy its new director of government and democratic reform, after having served as counsel and campaign strategist at Demos, working on voting rights, money in politics and corporate accountability, among other issues.
— Rob Hill, who most recently directed the field efforts at the Small Business Administration, joins Precision Strategies as the director of mobilization and campaign management. The firm also hired Sam Libowsky from Starcom MediaVest Group as principal for paid media and Nathaniel Lubin, Obama campaign veteran and former White House director of the office and digital strategy, as of counsel, focusing on paid media and digital strategy.
— Vernessa Pollard and Veleka Peeples-Dyer were named co-leaders of McDermott Will & Emery's expanded FDA practice. Pollard came over from Arnold & Porter last month, and the firm is planning to add at least three more lawyers to the group this year.
NEW BUSINESS: Cassidy & Associates is now lobbying for Patagonia on coastal resiliency, infrastructure, clean water and watershed restoration. The lobbying firm also signed Delmarva Group, the law offices of Eugene Vamos, Geos Institute, Osen LLC, Parts Life and Steadman Philippon Research Institute.
— McBee Strategic Consulting started a partnership with government and public affairs firm Tendo Consulting in London.
GRAY AREA: The House Ethics Committee will not conduct a full investigation into allegations against Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), POLITICO’s John Bresnahan reports, after the Office of Congressional Ethics found several potential violations. Grayson has been accused of receiving compensation from a hedge fund and other entities he controlled while in Congress. Though the committee will continue to review these allegations, it is not required to act further. Grayson, who is running for Senate, has accused his primary opponent, Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, of instigating OCE’s probe, and has called for an investigation of OCE and its congressional staff. http://politi.co/1PTKdc4
COMING ATTRACTIONS: Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate Democratic leader, will be introducing former Sen. Blanche Lincoln for her award at the Bryce Harlow Foundation dinner later this month. Former House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, now with PwC, will be introducing the current chairman, Kevin Brady. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) will deliver a special tribute to the late Bryce Harlow. There will also be taped tributes expected to come from a prominent U.S. ambassador, top congressional leaders and a former president.
— Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) hosted a book-signing party for her daughter Stefany's book, "Ellie & Coach," at the townhouse of 3 Click Solutions' Patrick Murphy. The book celebrates her daughter Ellie's struggle with diabetes with the help of her family and service dog. Attending were Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
KASICH'S CASE: Allies of Gov. John Kasich will hold a large meeting this afternoon to brief supporters and donors, reports POLITICO’s Anna Palmer. The event will be headlined by Ohio Sen. Rob Portman. Also slated to attend: Kasich senior strategist John Weaver, Republican operative Charlie Black and Bob Rusbuldt, co-chair of the governor’s steering committee and head of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, and more, in the American Trucking Association’s townhouse. http://politi.co/1RE1ED2
COACH LUNTZ: After Republican polling firm Luntz Global, founded by consultant Frank Luntz, asked CEOs across the country about their views on traditionally left-leaning policies, they found that the majority supported raising the minimum wage, increasing paid parental leave requirements and increasing paid sick leave, BuzzFeed's Cora Lewis reports. Managing Director David Merritt has since coached business lobbies, like the Council of State Chambers of Commerce, on how to reconcile these differences. But left-leaning advocacy groups, like the Center for Popular Democracy, say business lobbies are ignoring their members' views. http://bzfd.it/1SPBhJq
ON THE HILL: The Alzheimer’s Association is bringing more than 1,200 people, it's largest-ever fly-in, to the Hill to share their personal stories and ask Congress for increased funding for medical research around the disease, and to pass the HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act. They have more than 450 meetings scheduled. Retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) will receive the Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will each receive a Humanitarian Award.
DOCTOR, DOCTOR: Doctors for America, the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and 137 other groups are calling for Congress to provide the CDC with funding for research into the causes of gun violence and how to prevent it, reports Pro Health Care’s Dan Diamond. http://politi.co/1QmvbhP
MEMORIAM: Cindy O'Malley, a government affairs counselor at K&L Gates, died March 30. She was a Robert Davis (R-Mich.) and House Armed Services Committee alum. Services have been scheduled for 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 9, 2016 at St. Ann Catholic Church in Arlington, Va. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for contributions to either American Cancer Society or the Girls & Boys Club-Camp O'Malley in Grand Rapids, Mich.
NEW PAC REGISTRATIONS:
Brand New Congress (Non-Qualified Non-Party, Unauthorized)
Florida Voters Project (Non-Qualified Non-Party With Non-Contribution Account, Unauthorized)
NAFSA PAC (Non-Qualified Non-Party, Unauthorized)
I'm Bringing Sexy PAC (Independent Expenditure-Only Committee, Unauthorized)
My Vote Matters Now
JOINT FUNDRAISING COMMITTEES:
Emily Cain Victory Fund
Future Focus
Kennedy-Sinema Victory Fund
NEW LOBBYING REGISTRATIONS:
Armory Hill Advocates (formerly known as Rawlson Policy Group): PANTHERx
Arnold & Porter LLP: Rebiotix, Inc.
Capitol Connections, LLC: Florida Aquaculture Association
CapView Associates LLC (doing business as CapView Strategies): Pfizer Inc.
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Delmarva
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Geos Institute
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Law Offices of Eugene Vamos
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Osen LLC
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Parts Life, Inc.
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Patagonia
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Steadman Philippon Research Institute
CG Technologies Inc.: Torch Technologies, Inc.
Lincoln Policy Group: American Trucking Association
Lincoln Policy Group: Cognizant Technology Solutions
Lincoln Policy Group: National Park Hospitality Association
News Corporation: News Corporation
The Ickes and Enright Group, Inc.: Deaf Professionals Arts Network
Third Dimension Strategies, Inc.: Computer Science Education Coalition
NEW LOBBYING TERMINATIONS:
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: PhRMA
Hannegan Landau Poersch Advocacy, LLC: Delaware North Companies Travel Hospitality Services, Inc.
Law Offices of George Harris, LLC: City of Dothan
By ISAAC ARNSDORF
With help from Cogan Schneier and Brianna Gurciullo
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How Obama Can Help New York Immigrants Before Leaving Office
How Obama Can Help New York Immigrants Before Leaving Office
Barack Obama may have given his farewell address, but he still has work to do. In his speech, the president rightly celebrated America’s history of welcoming immigrants and their contributions to...
Barack Obama may have given his farewell address, but he still has work to do. In his speech, the president rightly celebrated America’s history of welcoming immigrants and their contributions to our country. But Mr. Obama’s legacy on immigration is mixed. He has both deported more people than any prior president and acted in America’s best traditions by letting the Dreamers - undocumented youth brought to the United States as children – emerge from the shadows. There is one final step that President Obama can, and should, take to cement his legacy on the side of history we know is in his heart.
Most immigrant families in the United States are mixed status, meaning most have children who are citizens and immigrant parents, including Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs). The incoming administration’s promise to deport 2-3 million people with legal infractions threatens to rip these American families apart, because the threshold for deporting legal permanent residents is so low. Experts argue that this 2-3 million number cannot be reached without deporting people for minor offenses, such as traffic tickets. This is why I recently joined 60 local elected officials from across the country in asking President Obama to grant a blanket pardon to legal immigrants who have minor infractions and pose no threat to the country. He can prevent the breakup of these American families.
Pardoning this group of immigrants fits with the president’s recent actions on criminal justice and immigration. His clemency initiative and Deferred Arrival for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program seek to fix the broken criminal justice and immigrant systems that harm American families.
Having already designated Legal Permanent Residents with minor convictions as low priorities for deportation, President Obama could protect these American families further with a presidential pardon.
Some will object, arguing that America is a country of law and order. We agree, and support the deportation of those posing a risk to our community. We also support the American belief that punishment should fit the crime. Someone who had a minor infraction such as shoplifting or excessive traffic violations as a teenager could be eligible for deportation 20 years later as a responsible adult with children who are citizens. These deportations make no sense, and hurt families and children without enhancing the wellbeing of the country.
The group making this request, Local Progress, is composed of local elected officials that know, work with, live in, represent, and are part immigrant communities. We know that deportations cripple families and harm neighborhoods and the economy. We also know that the American Dream lives in our communities and that the country benefits from these newcomers and their children. Pardoning this group would prevent the unnecessary breakup of our American families, and allow parents to stay where they belong, raising their children in the communities they have helped build.
Watching President Obama’s farewell speech, I could not help but think about the many families in my Brooklyn district that have lost a family member to deportation. The effects are harsh. When a father gets deported, the family loses income and can lose their apartment. The education of children can be disrupted, and those remaining long to be with their missing family member. For the children – citizens, immigrants, or both – it is a hurt that does not go away. It is a step the U.S. government should not take lightly, or for symbolic political reasons.
I stand with my fellow elected officials to ask President Obama to grant these pardons. I also call on my fellow New Yorkers to call the president’s office and tell him to grant clemency to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who stand to lose under President Trump. Before he leaves office, President Obama can help cement his legacy with such a pardon. He has the power, and should use it, as other presidents have done in the past. There is still time.
By Carlos Menchaca
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Trump Picks Monetary Expert for No. 2 Job at Federal Reserve
Trump Picks Monetary Expert for No. 2 Job at Federal Reserve
President Trump continued a sweeping remake of the Federal Reserve’s leadership on Monday by nominating Richard Clarida, a Treasury official in the administration of President George W. Bush, for...
President Trump continued a sweeping remake of the Federal Reserve’s leadership on Monday by nominating Richard Clarida, a Treasury official in the administration of President George W. Bush, for the Fed’s second-ranking job.
Read the full article here.
THE $15 QUESTION: Higher minimum helps workers and business
Chicago Tribune - June 5, 2014, by Connie Razza - The Great Recession is over! So say the corporations and the wealthiest among us. For the rest of us, the so-called recovery doesn’t feel like...
Chicago Tribune - June 5, 2014, by Connie Razza - The Great Recession is over! So say the corporations and the wealthiest among us. For the rest of us, the so-called recovery doesn’t feel like much of one at all.
Corporate profits and stock prices have rebounded, but wages have not. Middle-class and low-income workers are still struggling to keep up with the cost of living. Corporate recovery has been fueled by the proliferation of jobs paying low wages.
How can we fix this? Raise the minimum wage.
That’s why Aldermen Proco “Joe” Moreno, Roderick Sawyer and John Arena have introduced an ordinance to raise the minimum wage for Chicago workers to $15 an hour, following a March advisory referendum in a small number of precincts that showed about 86 percent of Chicago voters support such a proposal.
If adopted, the $15 wage would initially apply only to workers at businesses with $50 million or more in annual receipts, and their subsidiaries and franchisees, while workers at smaller businesses would see the wage phased in over a multi-year period.
A new study by the Center for Popular Democracy, where I serve as director of strategic research, shows that the ordinance will increase income for 40 percent of all Chicago workers.
But what about job loss? Big business will say the higher wage will hurt the economy and force layoffs.
Not so.
Our study shows that an additional $1.1 billion would be passed to workers as take-home pay. Almost all of that money will travel through the local economy, generating an additional $616 million in new economic activity and creating 5,350 new jobs.
And there is precedent for these findings elsewhere: The payroll company Paychex and research firm IHS did a survey that found that Washington, the state with the highest minimum wage, also has the highest annual job growth.
Raising the wage isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do. And although it may seem counterintuitive, the higher wage will help businesses grow. How?
Because too much inequality threatens economic growth and stability by limiting consumers’ ability to buy goods and participate in the marketplace. In other words, who will buy a new car if no one can afford to pay rent?
Unfortunately, the so-called recovery we’re in has been fueled largely by low-wage jobs replacing previously existing higher-wage jobs, further fueling inequality. In 2012, the Brookings Institute named Chicago the eighth most unequal city in the country.
Latinos and African-Americans make up disproportionate portions of the low-wage workforce, exacerbating racial and geographic disparities in the economy. Our study shows that a higher minimum wage will address these disparities by helping low-wage workers to participate more fully in the city’s economy as consumers, and help facilitate economic recovery in the neighborhoods where these workers live.
The current Illinois minimum wage is $8.25 an hour, a dollar higher than the federal minimum wage. Neither of these wage levels has kept pace with inflation or the cost of living, and both fall well below in purchasing power compared to the minimum wage in previous decades.
While the state and the federal government continue to ponder action, Chicago can’t afford to wait. The city is well positioned to take action, and join other cities, such as Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington, that are showing national leadership for urban America while Congress continues to stall.
More families than ever are relying on low-wage jobs to make ends meet. Let’s give them a fighting chance. Let’s make the economy work for all of us, not just the wealthy and the corporations.
Connie M. Razza is the director of strategic research at the Center for Popular Democracy, which gets funding from private philanthropy, community groups and labor organizations.
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Dem lawmakers hear demands for ‘reparations’; but let’s call it THIS so nobody gets ‘uncomfortable’
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter group received widespread applause from a crowd of Democratic state legislators, Friday, for suggesting the government award the...
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter group received widespread applause from a crowd of Democratic state legislators, Friday, for suggesting the government award the black community reparations for “systematic discrimination in law enforcement.”
“Thinking about decriminalization with reparations—the idea is we that have extracted literally millions of dollars from communities, we have destroyed families,” said Marbre Shahly-Butts, deputy director of racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, during her address at the State Innovation Exchange in Washington, D.C. “Mass incarceration has led to the destruction of communities across the country. We can track which communities, like we have that data.”
“And so if we’re going to be decriminalizing things like marijuana, all of the profit from that should go back to the folks we’ve extracted it from,” she continued.
The focus of state legislators should be “state budgets and then reparations,” Shahly-Butts said.
“‘Reparations’ makes people kind of uncomfortable, so we can call it ‘reinvestment’ if you want to. Use whatever language makes you happy inside,” she said.
Fellow panelist Dante Barry, executive director of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, also recommended some type of “reinvestment” to help black youth and said New York City would be better off investing $100 million in the black community rather than hiring more police.
“In terms of response around black youth unemployment, it gets back to this whole piece around reinvestment,” Barry said. “What would you do with $100 million? How would we better use that money to provide jobs for unemployed youth, to provide housing, to have mental health access. … It’s really about how do we rethink some of our budgetary needs and how we’re putting power behind the way that we can really incorporate reinvestment in communities.”
If there were one policy he would want state legislators to prioritize, Barry said it would be a ban on all guns on campus.
Source: Biz Pac Review
Eminent Domain: A Long Shot Against Blight
New York Times - January 11, 2014, by Shaila Dewan - You can’t fight city hall, the saying goes. But Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of Richmond, Calif., a...
New York Times - January 11, 2014, by Shaila Dewan - You can’t fight city hall, the saying goes. But Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of Richmond, Calif., a city of 100,000 souls, would tell you that fighting Wall Street is harder. Even for city hall.
Ms. McLaughlin has a plan to help the many Richmond residents who owe more money on their houses than their houses are worth, but it’s one that banks like Wells Fargo, large asset managers like Pimco and BlackRock, real estate interests and even Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants, have tried to quash. Her idea involves a novel use of the power of eminent domain to bail out homeowners by buying up and then forgiving mortgage debt.
But the financial institutions have warned that mortgage lending would halt in any city that tried eminent domain — and they have lobbied Congress to ensure that the threat is not an empty one. Opponents have filed federal lawsuits, while real estate interests have made robocalls to residents and sent mass mailers warning that the plan would allow “slick, politically connected” investors to “take houses on the cheap.” (The idea is actually to buy mortgages, not houses.)
Under similar pressures, at least four other cities that considered the eminent domain strategy have backed away, deeming the risks too great. But advocates in Richmond say their city is different. They hope a unique alignment of anti-corporate political leadership, a concerted grass-roots campaign and union support will lead to a different outcome in this working-class, largely black and Hispanic community in the Bay Area. For a dozen or so other cities that have similar demographics and are also plagued by foreclosures, Richmond has become a national test case.
Those cities, scattered in states from New Jersey to Washington, have watched as the controversial proposal has threatened Richmond’s access to capital: When the city tried to market a highly rated set of bonds in mid-August last year, there were no takers.
In September, the Richmond City Council was preparing to take one of a series of votes on the eminent domain proposal. Before the meeting, opponents amassed at a hot-dog stand near city hall. A local real estate association, backed by money from the National Association of Realtors, offered free dinners to those who showed up to don red “A Bad Deal for Richmond” T-shirts; the group included a huddle of fraternity brothers brought in from Berkeley. If eminent domain were used, a young man who declined to identify himself was telling them, a for-profit company would make big money, and teacher and firefighter pensions would be hurt.
The eminent-domain strategy is not a fabulous idea. Like virtually every other proposal to help homeowners hurt by the housing crash, it tries for simplicity but falters in the face of the enormity of the post-financial-crisis mess, and, as markets improve, it may come too late to make much difference. The plan’s legality and wisdom have been debated in editorials and blog posts, with questions ranging from the true value of the mortgages to whether the chosen homeowners deserve the help.
But to advocates, eminent domain offers perhaps the only chance to remedy the failure of the federal government and mortgage servicers to offer widespread, meaningful relief to the hardest-hit communities.
Housing markets around the country may be improving, but about 28 percent of all mortgages in Richmond are deeply underwater (meaning that the homeowners owe significantly more than their homes are worth), compared with 19 percent nationally, according to RealtyTrac.
The local foreclosure rate is declining, but it’s still much higher than the national one. In light of this, the mayor shows no sign of backing down. “The risk that is really confronting us,” she said, “is waiting on the sidelines for the next wave of foreclosures.”
When the council first voted on eminent domain, in April, members were unanimously in favor. But then the opposition campaign began. Ms. McLaughlin predicted that her motion that September night would pass with five of seven council votes, but it squeaked by with just four. Jeffrey Wright, a real estate broker who is leading the local opposition, was satisfied.
“This underwater mortgage bailout program,” he said later, “is on life support.”
The day after the vote, Ms. McLaughlin was in her office, working on an entirely different project: getting ready for a trip to Ecuador, at the invitation of that country’s president, to tour the damage that courts there have ruled was caused by oil drilling by Texaco, now owned by Chevron.
It is Chevron, not mortgage debt relief, that has defined much of Ms. McLaughlin’s tenure. The company, which has a large refinery in Richmond, is the city’s largest taxpayer and employer, and Ms. McLaughlin has led the fight — first as an activist, and then as mayor — to force Chevron to pay higher taxes and to pay more damages after a refinery explosion last year sent thousands of area residents to emergency rooms.
A longtime advocate of left-wing causes, Ms. McLaughlin, a Green Party member, is part of a Richmond political alliance that has vowed not to accept corporate campaign donations. In 2010, she was re-elected over a Chevron-backed challenger. She helped ease policies that criminalized homelessness and harried illegal immigrants, and brought a solar panel factory and a branch of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to town.
But Richmond was staggered by the recession. Homes in the city lost 66 percent of their value, on average, and are still worth less than half what they were at their peak, in January 2006. Some 16 percent of homeowners lost their homes in foreclosure, leaving so many scars on neighborhoods that the city began fining banks $1,000 a day if they failed to maintain their property; the city has collected $1.5 million so far.
Richmond held sessions where homeowners could meet with bank representatives and legal aid groups, but too often, the mayor says, the efforts came to naught. Last summer, underwater homeowners owed, on average, 45 percent more than the value of their homes, according to the city manager.
So the mayor was all ears when she heard about the eminent domain plan, from both Mortgage Resolution Partners, a company that hopes to make money by administering and financing the plan for many cities, and from her longtime ally, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, an offshoot of Acorn.
The A.C.C.E. thought an earlier attempt to use eminent domain, in San Bernardino County, had failed because of a lack of grass-roots support. So in Richmond it held a door-knocking campaign. Its success was seen when more than 100 people, most in favor, signed up to speak at the September meeting. It lasted seven hours.
Using eminent domain to heal the wounds of the mortgage crisis has been called crazy, unconstitutional and even “one of the worst ideas ever.” But it is not so far removed from mainstream thinking. In 2008, Senator John McCain of Arizona, then the Republican presidential candidate, suggested using $300 billion in federal bailout money to buy troubled mortgages and write them down.
The problem was that the mortgages had been bundled into pools and resold to thousands of investors all over the world. The rules governing many of the pools forbade the investors’ representative, known as the trustee, from selling off mortgages or modifying them unless they were already in default, even though it might be in the investors’ interest to do so.
Scholars suggested that eminent domain could give trustees the legal cover they needed to get rid of the bad loans. So far, though, the investors have not seen it that way. In Richmond, investors (including BlackRock and Pimco) asked their trustees, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, to sue the city to stop the program.
Eminent domain allows governments to condemn property for a public purpose, like building a road or eliminating urban decay, and applies to intangible property like mortgages as well as to real estate. Richmond argues that its public purpose is to prevent foreclosures and the blight of vacant properties. The idea is to buy those mortgages out of the bundles and restructure them, restoring equity to the homeowners and keep them from defaulting.
Opponents of the plan argue in legal briefs that the risk of default now, so long after the crash, is vastly overstated. More than half of the 624 homeowners initially identified for the program are current on their payments. Not only that, 91 of the loans have already received a modification that included debt forgiveness — though many early modifications were unsustainable. Then there is the question of whether homeowners who got cash by refinancing their homes during the bubble — taking out new, riskier mortgages, as many of these did — deserve help now. (Ms. McLaughlin says the homeowners fell prey to unscrupulous lenders.) Lastly, opponents calculate that with rising home values, almost a third of the homeowners aren’t even underwater, a figure that Mortgage Resolution Partners disputes.
Opponents argue that the plan may help certain homeowners but hurt other working-class people whose pension funds invested in the loans. But pensioners and those stuck in underwater mortgages are often the same people, said Stephen Abrecht, an official of the Service Employees International Union, which supports the use of eminent domain. “We have members who are locked into these kinds of situations and can’t get out of it,” he said. “We think it’s a drag on the economy and we’re interested in seeing the economy take off again.”
Mr. Wright, the real estate agent, said that what bothers him most about the plan is that it will help so few; no one with loans backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which guarantee a majority of mortgages, is included. “They’re bearing these placards saying, ‘Save our homes’ and they don’t even realize that this program won’t benefit them,” he says. “There’s a lot of false hope and that irritates me, that really irritates me.”
Wall Street also objects to the plan on principle, portraying it not as a targeted response to an extraordinary event — the housing crash — but as a dangerous precedent that disrupts contracts and would all but end mortgage lending.
“Why would anybody think that private investors would provide additional capital to the mortgage finance market when somebody thinks it’s O.K. to take it from them?” asked Tim Cameron, the head of the asset management group for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the Wall Street trade association that has been spearheading the campaign against eminent domain.
Sifma and its allies have lobbied Congress to obstruct lending in any area where mortgages are vulnerable to government condemnation and have urged support for a bill from Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, that would bar any federal guarantee for such loans.
After Richmond voted to pursue eminent domain, Sifma officials flew out to meet with city officials, providing them with a thick binder of analysis and research reports warning of potential negative consequences. Then these officials went a step further, said Bill Lindsay, the city manager, by placing a phone call to the city’s bond underwriter and complaining that the disclosure language in a coming offering — to refinance some old economic development bonds — did not adequately disclose the legal risks of the mortgage plan.
Cheryl Crispen, a spokeswoman for Sifma, said the call was routine. “Sifma staff regularly inquire with underwriters to understand market trends, and did so to better understand the impact the threat of taking mortgages was having on the offering and consequently the municipal bond market more broadly,” she said. The underwriter, RBC Capital Markets, concurred that Sifma did not try to interfere in the offering, which was halted when there was no interest from investors.
But Mr. Lindsay said all the attention was unusual. “I’ve handled 40 different bond issuances,” he said. “I never even heard of Sifma before this.”
In 2002, the Georgia Legislature passed the toughest predatory-lending law in the country. Hailed as a victory for consumers, it was intended to prevent abusive practices like steering customers to high-interest loans. Lenders immediately started trying to dismantle the law, warning that the “good guys” would no longer make loans to people with poor credit.
Some lenders did pull out of the state, and two of the three ratings agencies said they could no longer rate Georgia loans for resale to investors because they could be sued under the law. The state banking commissioner estimated that the mortgage market shrank by 15 percent. The following year, after a nasty fight, lawmakers gutted the statute.
Sifma officials point to this affair as proof that messing with housing finance can have ruinous effects. But it is an example that offers other lessons, too.
The loans that disappeared from the market after the law was passed were the same kinds of subprime loans that set off the foreclosure wave; conventional 30-year mortgages were not affected. The lenders whose departure was met with such alarm included Countrywide Financial, whose practices during the housing boom have cost billions in legal settlements.
In an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, experts concluded that had the law stayed intact, the housing crisis would have been less dire in the state, which became one of the hardest-hit. The article even implied that the whole country might have fared better, because “the Georgia drama also stemmed a tide of similar laws that were being considered in other states.”
Richmond has not yet tried to use eminent domain. The City Council must vote again before that happens. But the beating the city is taking from financial institutions makes the idea less likely to catch on in places like Irvington, N.J., and El Monte, Calif., which have expressed interest.
Richmond’s mayor says she has always known it would be a slog. “I’m not trying to minimize what we’re dealing with; it’s just like, if you’re willing to buck up against an unjust set of circumstances, you’re going to have those attacks coming at you,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “And in some sense that says you’re doing your job.”
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Richmond Fed Names McKinsey's Thomas Barkin as Its President
Richmond Fed Names McKinsey's Thomas Barkin as Its President
Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond confirmed Monday they had chosen Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., as the institution’s next...
Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond confirmed Monday they had chosen Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., as the institution’s next president.
“We are fortunate to have found an extremely well-qualified individual to serve the Federal Reserve’s Fifth District and the American people,” Margaret Lewis, chair of the Richmond board of directors, said in a statement.
Read the full article here.
One Day Before GOP Debate, New Report Highlights Ties Between Prominent New Yorkers and Anti-Immigrant Groups
One Day Before GOP Debate, New Report Highlights Ties Between Prominent New Yorkers and Anti-Immigrant Groups
Note: Photos and Video of Protest available upon request.
New York, NY (10/27/15)—Today, the Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPDA) and the Make the Road Action Fund (MRAF) ...
Note: Photos and Video of Protest available upon request.
New York, NY (10/27/15)—Today, the Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPDA) and the Make the Road Action Fund (MRAF) released a new report, “Backers of Hate in the Empire State,” highlighting the ties between several prominent New Yorkers and the nation’s largest anti-immigrant network, which has fueled the anti-immigrant rhetoric being deployed in the Republican primary contest. Immigrant New Yorkers gathered outside a midtown diamond business connected to Barbara Winston, one of the individuals identified in the report, and called for candidates and other organizations to dissociate themselves from these xenophobic New Yorkers. They then marched to Trump Tower, picketing outside both buildings with chants of "No to Hate!" and "Sí se puede!" (Yes, We Can!).
The “Backers of Hate” report (download here) finds that, while New York is home to over 4.3 million immigrants from all corners of the world, the state is also home to wealthy New Yorkers who are funding and supporting an entire network of anti-immigrant organizations. Such organizations have fed the hateful rhetoric that current GOP presidential candidates are using—and will likely deploy again in tomorrow night’s debate.
Maria Rubio, a member of Make the Road Action Fund and Brooklyn resident, said, “These New Yorkers should be ashamed of supporting groups that have promoted the anti-immigrant rhetoric and organizing across the country that has become central to the Republican debates. The money and connections of a wealthy few have strengthened these fringe groups, that say terrible things about immigrants and prevent us from being able to live in peace with our families. But make no mistake: immigrants and Latinos are watching, and there will be a heavy political price for politicians that follow the lead of the Barbara Winstons of the world.”
Ana María Archila, Co-Executive Director of the Center for Popular Democracy Action, asserted: “The type of hate that these New Yorkers are spewing should have no place in New York State. The vast majority of New Yorkers support a pathway to citizenship and policies that welcome immigrants, while Barbara Winston and the others are working to vilify immigrants, undo birthright citizenship, block immigration relief for immigrant families, and insinuate their anti-immigrant attitudes into mainstream politics. Barbara Winston, Henry Buhl, and others are using their money and connections to advance a hateful agenda that not only hurts immigrants but frays the fabric of our entire society."
Elva Meneses, member of New York Communities for Change, affirmed, “I’m here to demand that these millionaires and billionaires stop supporting hateful organizations that say terrible things about immigrants like me and try to make our lives miserable. Instead of thinking fighting for opportunities for everyone, these wealthy New Yorkers are supporting hate as they trying to block immigration reform and immigration relief for undocumented immigrants. We call on all politicians and organizations to stop taking their dirty money immediately.”
“Backers of Hate” identifies five key individuals and the Weeden Foundation as key New Yorkers who are financially backing the work of anti-immigrant groups long associated with well-known white nationalist John Tanton. These groups include the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which provides the political infrastructure for this anti-immigrant network and has been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center; the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a so-called think tank that continuously produces faulty statistics utilized by the anti-immigrant network; NumbersUSA, which serves as the watchdog of the network, and; Keeping Identities Safe (formerly the Coalition for A Secure Driver’s License). In recent months, Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and other GOP candidates have sought to mainstream the hateful ideas and false “facts” about immigration promoted by the Tanton network of organizations, fueling an ugly national debate that has also led to violent attacks against immigrants in different parts of the country.
Note: Photos and Video of Protest available upon request.
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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.
NYC and Seattle seek 'fair workweek' legislation for fast-food workers
NYC and Seattle seek 'fair workweek' legislation for fast-food workers
Municipal leaders and labor activists nationwide who fought for a $15 minimum wage now want to serve up a “fair workweek” and steady hours for fast-food workers.
New York City Mayor Bill de...
Municipal leaders and labor activists nationwide who fought for a $15 minimum wage now want to serve up a “fair workweek” and steady hours for fast-food workers.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio set a plan in motion last week to give 65,000 hourly workers in the city's fast-food industry more stable work schedules by requiring a two-week notice for employee shift assignments. City Council members have vowed to introduce the legislation in the coming weeks.
In Seattle, the City Council on Monday gave its unanimous approval to a similar ordinance, which will affect well-known retail and food service establishments, as well as certain full-service restaurants. Mayor Ed Murray is scheduled to sign the ordinance into law by next week.
While supporters of such proposals – called “secure scheduling” in Seattle – say working families need protection against erratic work schedules, some retail organizations argue these concerns have been blown out of proportion. The Washington Retail Association said the Seattle ordinance would make work schedules less flexible.
“The effects of the law threaten to reduce available work hours for retail employees, reduce hiring opportunities and impose burdensome bookkeeping and fines on retailers deemed to be in violation of the law,” the retail association said in a news release.
Other business groups, however, don’t see the scheduling legislation as a major burden for employers. Mark Jaffe, chief executive officer of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, told AMI Newswire that the proposal is fair and that it wouldn’t cause fast-food eateries to go out of business.
“How hard is it to schedule people two weeks in advance?” he said.
A number of citywide initiatives, from affordable housing to reasonable transportation options, have helped New York City maintain a productive workforce, Jaffe said, and the Fair Workweek legislation would do the same. “We don’t believe it’s an unreasonable burden on the employer,” he said. “This is a no-brainer.”
The proposal was directed toward fast-food workers because that’s where most of the scheduling concerns originate, Jaffe said. Many of those employees need to map out their schedules in advance because they often work more than one job, he said.
The New York State Restaurant Association expressed concern about the proposed legislation but hopes it can work with city officials to reduce the burden to its members.
“It’s troubling that fast-food restaurants, which are really a local franchisee-run small business, have been singled out yet again when these restaurants are already being subjected to greater regulations than any other industry,” said the restaurant association’s chief executive officer, Melissa Fleischut, in a prepared statement. “Labor costs for quick-serve restaurants are skyrocketing, and under state law the hospitality industry is already subject to call-in pay and extra pay for a longer-than-10 spread of hours in a single day.”
In addition to providing employees a two-week notice on work schedules, the New York City proposal would force employers who make last-minute schedule changes to pay extra compensation to affected workers. The plan would also place restrictions on the practice of what’s called “clopening” – when an employee is required to work a closing shift followed by an opening shift.
“We will regulate that practice and require that there be at least 10 hours between a closing shift and an opening shift that a worker has to perform,” de Blasio said during a public announcement last week.
The mayor dismissed anticipated concerns about layoffs resulting from the proposal, saying that he heard the same rumblings when the city was moving to expand paid sick leave for workers. “Guess what happened?” de Blasio said. “This city has added 290,000 private-sector jobs.”
Jan Teague, chief executive officer of the Washington Retail Association, said in a prepared statement that the Seattle proposal could limit the ability of businesses to take part in the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program and make it more difficult for college students to find temporary jobs over the summer and during holidays.
Teague has also expressed concern that employers would end up paying higher “predictive pay” to workers in order to fill shifts resulting from a worker calling in sick or quitting abruptly.
“Any way you slice it, this ordinance will make the workplace less flexible to meet the needs of employees and employers,” Teague said during the debate over the Seattle measure. “Sadly, this ordinance will reduce the number of hours available for many retail and restaurant employees – and they cannot afford to see their incomes go down.”
In addition, she took issue with the idea of discouraging time allotments between shifts of less than 10 hours. Some workers want to have shifts close together during part of the week to free up time later for second jobs or helping to care for a family member, Teague said.
The National Retailers Association took a similar position. “Government intervention in the scheduling of employees through a one-size-fits-all approach intrudes on the employer-employee relationship and creates unnecessary mandates on how a business should operate,” the association said in a statement on its website.
Despite such concerns, the pro-worker advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy predicted that the victory for secure scheduling in Seattle would encourage other cities to follow suit.
“Those working in Seattle’s retail, restaurant and coffee chains will no longer have to turn their lives upside down just to earn enough hours to survive – and they will finally gain a greater voice in how much and when they work,” the center’s director of the Fair Workweek Initiative, Carrie Gleason, said in a prepared statement. “We can expect the vote in Seattle will inspire other cities to act.”
By Michael Carroll
Source
For Many Americans, the Great Recession Never Ended. Is the Fed About to Make It Worse?
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid, of Philadelphia, will be paying close attention. Despite holding a bachelor’s...
When the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates on July 28—and then again every six weeks after—MyAsia Reid, of Philadelphia, will be paying close attention. Despite holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science, completing a series of related internships, and presenting original research across the country, Reid could not find a job in her field and, instead, pieces together a nine-hour-per-week tutoring job and a 20-hour-per-week cosmetology gig. The 25-year-old knows that an interest-rate hike will hurt her chances of finding the kinds of jobs for which she has trained, and earning the wage increase she so desperately needs.
A Fed decision to raise interest rates, expected sometime this year, amounts to a vote of confidence in the economy—a declaration that we have achieved the robust recovery we need. “We are close to where we want to be, and we now think that the economy cannot only tolerate but needs higher interest rates,” the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, told Congress during a July 15 policy briefing.
But for many millions of Americans, the recovery has yet to arrive, and for them, a rate hike will be disastrous. It will put the brakes on an economy still trudging toward stability; stall progress on unemployment, especially for African-Americans; and slow wage growth even more for the vast majority of American workers.
The general argument for raising interest rates is that it will prevent wage costs from pushing up inflation. However, there is no data suggesting price instability; nor is there any indication that wages have risen enough to spur such inflation. For the overwhelming majority of American workers, wages have stagnated or even dropped over the past 35 years, even as CEOs have seen their compensation grow 937 percent. During the same period, wage gaps between white workers and workers of color have increased, and black unemployment is at the level of white unemployment at the height of the Great Recession. Meanwhile, the labor-force participation rate is less than 63 percent, the lowest in nearly four decades, suggesting that many Americans have simply given up looking for work.
Yellen has herself often urged the Fed to look at the broadest possible employment picture. Yet, during her recent congressional testimony, shedownplayed the Fed’s ability to address racial disparities, saying that the central bank does not “have the tools to be able to address the structure of unemployment across groups” and that “there isn’t anything directly that the Federal Reserve can do” about it. She cited, rightly, a range of other factors, including disparate educational attainment and skill levels, that contribute to economic and social disparities between racial groups. But she also glossed over the importance of the economic environment in shaping workers’ unequal chances.
One defining metric in shaping workers’ chances is the unemployment rate. A high unemployment rate facilitates racial discrimination. When there are too many qualified job candidates for every job, employers can arbitrarily limit their labor pool based on unnecessary educational requirements, irrelevant credit or background checks, or straightforward bias. A tight labor market, by contrast, makes it much harder for employers to succumb to prejudices and overlook qualified workers simply because of bias. When the number of job seekers matches the number of job vacancies, African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays and lesbians, injured veterans, and formerly incarcerated workers finally get their due in the workforce.
The late 1990s, when unemployment was at about 4 percent, bear out this thesis. During that rosier era, black unemployment was 7.6 percent, and the ratio of black family income to white family income rose substantially.
As the guardian of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve has a number of tools for encouraging a tight labor market, and one of those tools is to keep interest rates low. By keeping rates low, the Fed creates a hospitable environment for job growth by lowering the borrowing costs for consumer and business spending—including hiring new workers. By contrast, raising rates deliberately suppresses spending by consumers and businesses. In the process, it slows job growth, holds down wages, and unnecessarily maintains racial disparities.
With so many workers still struggling, there is no need to cut off this recovery prematurely. Inflation remains below the Fed’s already-low 2 percent target, unemployment and underemployment are too high, and wage growth and labor-force participation are too low. In fact, the Fed should be doing everything within its power to keep nudging the recovery forward for the workers still caught in the slipstream of the Great Recession.
The Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates this week, nor when it meets again six weeks after that. It should not raise rates at all in 2015. Doing so would cause tremendous harm to the aspirations and lives of tens of millions of working families, and would disproportionately hurt African-Americans.
MyAsia Reid knows the difference that a full-employment economy can make. She is ready to participate in the economic recovery. And she will be watching as the Fed decides whether to hold to a strategy of strengthening the recovery or pursue a new strategy that jeopardizes her chances and her community.
Source: The Nation
4 days ago
4 days ago