"You can save my life - remember this conversation": Father with ALS confronts Senator Jeff Flake on flight from DC to Arizona over tax bill*
"You can save my life - remember this conversation": Father with ALS confronts Senator Jeff Flake on flight from DC to Arizona over tax bill*
A terminally-ill father suffering Lou Gehrig's disease shared his personal story with Sen. Jeff Flake with the ambition to make an influence on his stance of the GOP tax reform bill.
Ady...
A terminally-ill father suffering Lou Gehrig's disease shared his personal story with Sen. Jeff Flake with the ambition to make an influence on his stance of the GOP tax reform bill.
Ady Barkan, 33, approached the Republican lawmaker during his flight home from Washington D.C. - where the ill Barkan had spent days protesting the bill.
Read the full article here.
Low-paid earners at risk for theft
Times Union - March 21, 2014, Letter to the Editor by The Rev. Sam Trumbore - Hard-working employees are often at a significant disadvantage when dealing with their employers.
Employees...
Times Union - March 21, 2014, Letter to the Editor by The Rev. Sam Trumbore - Hard-working employees are often at a significant disadvantage when dealing with their employers.
Employees sometimes don’t know that they are not being paid according to the law. Overtime is often not given appropriately. Employers liquidate their businesses without paying their workers.
A 2009 National Employment Law Project study determined workers in New York City lose $1 billion per year due to wage theft. A recent survey of fast-food workers in New York City found that 84 percent suffered some form of wage theft over the previous year.
That was supposed to be fixed with the Wage Theft Protection Act that went into effect in 2011. The problem now is that when a worker files a claim, it can take years to resolve it. Employers often appeal settlements, which takes even longer.
The state Department of Labor just does not have the required number of investigators to enforce labor law in a timely fashion. More than 14,000 cases were waiting resolution in 2013, cases that could take as long as five years to complete.
This is a very unfair hardship on low-income workers who need those wages to put food on the table and pay the rent and utilities.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature need to add funding to the Department of Labor to increase the number of investigators and judges working on these cases and decrease this backlog. The working people of New York need the assurance that employers will treat them fairly. The growing backlog of cases is not sending this message.
The Rev. Sam TrumboreMinister, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
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Report: Millions of Dollars in Fraud, Waste Found in Charter School Sector
The Washington Post - April 28, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - A new report released on Tuesday details fraud and waste totaling more than $200 million of uncovered fraud and waste of taxpayer funds...
The Washington Post - April 28, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - A new report released on Tuesday details fraud and waste totaling more than $200 million of uncovered fraud and waste of taxpayer funds in the charter school sector, but says the total is impossible to know because there is not sufficient oversight over these schools. It calls on Congress to include safeguards in legislation being considered to succeed the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The report, titled “The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And Abuse,” was released jointly by the nonprofit organizations Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy. It follows a similar report released a year ago by the same groups that detailed $136 million in fraud and waste and mismanagement in 15 of the 42 states that operate charter schools. The 2015 report cites $203 million, including the 2014 total plus $23 million in new cases, and $44 million in earlier cases not included in last year’s report.
It notes that these figures only represent fraud and waste in the charter sector uncovered so far, and that the total that federal, state and local governments “stand to lose” in 2015 is probably more than $1.4 billion. It says, “The vast majority of the fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.”
The report makes these policy recommendations:
■ Mandate audits that are specifically designed to detect and prevent fraud, and increase the transparency and accountability of charter school operators and managers. ■ Clear planning-based public investments to ensure that any expansions of charter school investments ensure equity, transparency, and accountability. ■ Increase transparency and accountability to ensure that charter schools provide the information necessary for state agencies to detect and prevent fraud.
It also says:
State and federal lawmakers should act now to put systems in place to prevent fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. While the majority of state legislative sessions are coming to an end, there is an opportunity to address the charter school fraud problem on a federal level by including strong oversight requirements in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is currently being debated in Congress. Unfortunately, some ESEA proposals do very little reduce the vulnerabilities that exist in the current law. If the Act is passed without the inclusion of the reforms outlined in this report, taxpayers stand to lose millions more dollars to charter school fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.
The charter school sector has expanded significantly in the last decade and now educates about 5 percent of the students enrolled in public schools. The Obama administration has supported the spread of charter schools; President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2016 includes $375 million specifically for charters, a 48 percent increase over last year’s actual budget.
Proponents say charters offer choices for parents and competition for traditional public schools. Critics say that most charters don’t perform any better — and some of them worse — than traditional public schools, take resources away from school districts, and are part of an effort to privatize public education.
The report says that any “effective, comprehensive fraud prevention system” should include:
■ Taking proactive steps to educate all staff and board members about fraud; ■ Ensuring that one executive-level manager coordinates and oversees the fraud risk assessment and reports to the board of directors, oversight bodies, and school community; ■ Implementing reporting procedures that include conflict disclosure, whistleblower protections, and a clear investigation process; ■ Undergoing and posting a fraud risk assessment conducted by a consultant expert in applicable standards, key risk indicators, anti-fraud methodology, control activities, and detection procedures; and ■ Developing and implementing quality assurance, continuous monitoring, and, where necessary, correction action plans, with clear benchmarks and reporting
The report details cases across the country, among them:
The District of Columbia In February 2015, the DC Public Charter School Board unanimously voted to revoke the charter of the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School. The DC Attorney General is suing the founder, Kent Amos, for diverting public education funding to a private company for his personal profit. That private management company paid Amos more than $2.5 million over the last 2 years. Over the past 10 years, the school has paid the private entity more than $14 million and, while costs to the private company declined over that time, management fees rose. The charter board’s oversight report showed “no pattern of fiscal mismanagement.” Members of the DC Public Charter School Board have described their limited ability to oversee for-profit management companies, which face no requirement to disclose salaries or other pertinent information.
Michigan In April 2014, Steven Ingersoll, founder of Grand Traverse Academy, was convicted on federal fraud and tax evasion. He did not report $2 million of taxable income in 2009 and 2010. The school’s audit revealed a $2.3 million prepayment to Ingersoll’s school management company. The school’s later decision to write down $1.6 million of the loan put the school in a deficit position for the first time. Ingersoll then used half of a $.8 million loan for school construction to pay down some of his debt to the school.13 After the founder’s ouster, his daughter-in-law continued to handle the finances of the school.
Ohio In January 2015, the state auditor released a report of the results of unannounced visits by inspectors to 30 charter schools. In nearly half of the schools, the school-provided headcount was significantly higher than the auditors’ headcount. Schools are funded based on headcount, so these inflated figures amount to taxpayer dollars siphoned away from students. Among the seven schools with the most extreme variances between reported head count and the auditors’ headcount, almost 900 students were missing, at a cost of roughly $5.7 million.16 Auditors identified eight other schools with troubling, but less significant variances. In June 2014, a grand jury indicted the superintendent and 2 board members of Arise! Academy in Dayton of soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for awarding a “lucrative” consulting contract to a North Carolina-based company. The contract was worth $420,919 and the charter personnel received kickbacks in the form of cash, travel, and payments to a separate business.
California In July 2014, the Los Angeles Unified School District performed a forensic audit of Magnolia Public Schools. They found that the charter-school chain used education dollars to pay for six nonemployees’ immigration costs and could not justify $3 million in expenses over four years to outsource curriculum development, professional training, and human resources services that the school itself reported doing.
How Twitter vaulted 'Abolish ICE' into the mainstream
How Twitter vaulted 'Abolish ICE' into the mainstream
Ana Maria Archilla the co-executive director of Center for Popular Democracy, said that at first progressives "were worried about the political implications."
But "when Randy could say it...
Ana Maria Archilla the co-executive director of Center for Popular Democracy, said that at first progressives "were worried about the political implications."
But "when Randy could say it in rural Wisconsin, in Paul Ryan, territory,” she continued, activists felt they had made a breakthrough.
Read the full article here.
Letter: No point putting faith in GOP lawmakers
Letter: No point putting faith in GOP lawmakers
Anyone who buys the GOP story that they are going to give us better health care is a sucker. We will get hosed by the lying GOP. Anyone who votes for this garbage of a health care proposal should...
Anyone who buys the GOP story that they are going to give us better health care is a sucker. We will get hosed by the lying GOP. Anyone who votes for this garbage of a health care proposal should be voted out of office. If this becomes law, every working man and woman should change their dependents, then let us see how these leeches get by with no salary. We do that and the federal government has no income.
Read the full letter here.
Meet The Foreclosed Grandmas Facing Federal Charges For Protesting ‘Too Big To Jail’
Seven women were arraigned Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on federal charges of “unlawful entry” stemming from last month’s homeowner sit-ins at the Department of Justice and a lawfirm called...
Seven women were arraigned Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on federal charges of “unlawful entry” stemming from last month’s homeowner sit-ins at the Department of Justice and a lawfirm called Covington and Burling. Protesters targeted Covington for its revolving-door relationship with a government that’s failed to prosecute Wall Street. When Lanny Breuer stepped down as head of DOJ’s criminal division this winter after Frontline revealed him as the primary culprit in the government’s apparent ‘too big to jail’ approach to foreclosure fraud, Covington provided him a new professional home. It’s also provided a moniker for the group formally charged on Tuesday: the “Covington Seven.”
The women face one of three different legal paths, their attorney Mark Goldstone told ThinkProgress. The charges bear a maximum penalty of six months jail time and/or a $1,250 fine. While a small fine is more likely to be the outcome, Goldstone said, that would come with a conviction on their permanent records. The women might be able to escape conviction provided they are not re-arrested and they do not return to Covington and Burling premises.
After their arraignment, members of the Covington Seven told ThinkProgress why they’d gotten involved.
Sherry Hernandez of Los Angeles told me her Countrywide mortgage ballooned after just four months, with her monthly payments jumping by $800. Her family decided to get a different loan and get out of the suddenly-unaffordable Countrywide mortgage, since they knew they had notarized paperwork showing their loan did not carry penalties for paying it back early. “But they held us to this prepayment penalty we didn’t agree to,” Hernandez said, which “raised our payment trying to get out of the predatory loan by $75,000 more.” Countrywide was the largest subprime lender, and implicated in much of the ugliest financial conduct of the housing bubble and bust. Yet a few years after it was bought by Bank of America, a firm called PennyMac sprang up, run almost entirely by Countrywide alumni. The Hernandezes sued Countrywide successfully, but meanwhile the second loan they’d taken out to replace the predatory one had been sold off…to PennyMac. “PennyMac has foreclosed,” Hernandez said. (PennyMac declined to comment on an individual case, citing privacy laws.)
Asked what she wanted to her message to be on the day she attended the sit-in, Hernandez chuckled. “Oh I have the perfect line. It’s the line they used on us when our hands were cuffed behind our backs, the seven little grandmas: ‘If you don’t arrest them, they’ll just do it again.’”
Deborah Castillo of St. Louis came home from voting on Election Day of 2012 to find an eviction notice on her front door. Castillo, 60, had seemed well positioned for her financial future just a few years earlier, with a good handle on her own mortgage and an investment property nearly paid off. “I had a two-family flat that was $3,000 from being paid for,” Castillo said, “but I had to refinance that in 2005 to help pay for the medical bills for my son, who’s schizophrenic.”
“That was my so-called nest egg, that was our security. And so I had to refinance that, unfortunately with Countrywide.” The same year, Castillo’s daughter contracted bacterial meningitis, and Castillo took 9 months away from her phone company job to care for her daughter. When the balloon payment hit, Castillo couldn’t keep up. Her husband lost his job amid the economic downturn, compounding their struggles. Just a few years on from nearly owning their “nest egg” rental property, Castillo found herself drawing down retirement savings to make ends meet.
And then, in the middle of the loan modification process, US Bank foreclosed on the Castillo family home. “[They] sat on the paperwork,” Castillo told ThinkProgress. The bank refused to accept payments while the modification was pending, yet charged Castillo penalties for missed payments. “Their lack of processing my document on time allowed them to put me in foreclosure,” she said. With eviction pending, Fannie Mae sought and won a $17,000 judgment against Castillo “for being in my home illegally.” (A representative of US Bank officially declined to comment, citing policy against discussing ongoing litigation.)
Castillo is clear-eyed about the culprits in her case. “Something can happen to you in life, no matter what, that can cause you to get into a bind,” Castillo said. “But US Bank, they’re not losing.” Thanks to bailouts, “there was no reason for the banks to settle or work with people, because the government guaranteed that they would win, that they would not be left holding the bag.” And now, with the initial crisis that sparked the government aid to the financial sector, no one in Washington was doubling back to address the paperwork rigmarole that the bailed-out companies used to boot the Castillos from their home. That’s how Castillo ended up getting handcuffed in the Covington and Burling lobby. “We wanted to get someone’s attention. And unfortunately, doing it the legal way through the court is not getting their attention,” she said.
“I worked my ass off to help [President Obama] get elected,” said Castillo, whose volunteer work for the 2008 campaign earned her the photo-op at right. “And now I want him to work his ass off to keep not only me in my home, but everybody else. Because he didn’t get there on his own. I don’t think he’s forgotten, but he needs to put his foot up somebody’s ass and make them remember, we helped put them there.”
Castillo, Hernandez, and the other five, whose stories reflect the same themes of deception and bullying, have to choose how to respond to the unlawful entry charges prior to a July court date. But whichever path each decides to walk, they’ll face more punishment than any of the companies involved in these wrongful foreclosures have faced. “The charges are much harsher for those that sit in front of a doorway than those who steal billions of dollars, force people out of their homes, wreck the economy, and wreck people’s lives,” Goldstone, their lawyer, said. “It demonstrates there’s two systems of justice.”
Source:
Voters Want Less Charter School Growth and More Regulation, Survey Finds
Ed Week - March 3, 2015, by Arianna Prothero - A national poll of U.S. voters finds that although a majority of voters support charter schools, they aren't necessarily in favor of expanding them...
Ed Week - March 3, 2015, by Arianna Prothero - A national poll of U.S. voters finds that although a majority of voters support charter schools, they aren't necessarily in favor of expanding them.
The survey, conducted for In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy—two groups involved in education policy and skeptical of charters—found participants largely favor charter school reform proposals such as requiring open board meetings, regular audits, and policies to help shield district schools from the impact of charter schools opening up nearby.
The two organizations are partnering to push a series of charter school accountability proposals. The initiative, called the Charter School Accountability Agenda, was unveiled in tandem with the poll results and quickly received support from the American Federation of Teachers, one of the two national teachers' unions. The proposals are based off of a September report released from Brown University's Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
However, the survey also found that lack of school choice falls last on a list of education concerns, including issues such as class-size and parental involvement.
Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said they either wanted the number of charter schools in their area maintained or reduced.
Forty-four percent said they favored charter schools when asked without a description of what charters are, but that number climbed to 52 percent when participants were provided a description. Eighteen percent said they opposed charter schools when not given a definition, and 38 percent said they opposed charter schools after seeing a description.
When asked if charter schools are public or private schools, 30 percent said the former and 58 percent checked the latter.
Those results are somewhat reminiscent of another poll conducted recently by Gallup, which found strong support for charter schools even though many people didn't really understand how charters work.
The public polling firm GBA Strategies surveyed 1,000 people, selected randomly from a national voter file, on behalf of the Center for Popular Democracy and In the Public Interest. You can dig into more of the survey results here.
Source
NYPD Collars May Day Protestors Demonstrating Against Trump’s ‘Greedy Corporate’ Backers
NYPD Collars May Day Protestors Demonstrating Against Trump’s ‘Greedy Corporate’ Backers
May Day kicked off in Manhattan with police arresting 12 activists protesting against major corporations the objectors accused of supporting and profiting from President Donald Trump’s aggressive...
May Day kicked off in Manhattan with police arresting 12 activists protesting against major corporations the objectors accused of supporting and profiting from President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda, in front of the JP Morgan Chase Tower on Park Avenue.
The individuals arrested included four protestors from the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York; two from inner-city organizer New York Communities for Change; one from the anti-Trump Action Group Network; one from the public health activist group CTZNWELL; one from the liberal nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy and one from the teachers union-backed Alliance for Quality Education. The cuffs and threat of imminent prolonged processing did not apparently dampen the demonstrators’ spirit.
Read full article here.
Los estados deben ser líderes en la protección de los inmigrantes
Los estados deben ser líderes en la protección de los inmigrantes
Si bien ciertos candidatos a la presidencia han ocupado los titulares con sus indignantes propuestas de deportar a los inmigrantes indocumentados, el hecho es que los inmigrantes se van a quedar y...
Si bien ciertos candidatos a la presidencia han ocupado los titulares con sus indignantes propuestas de deportar a los inmigrantes indocumentados, el hecho es que los inmigrantes se van a quedar y hacer de Estados Unidos un lugar más próspero.
Dada esa realidad –y la total de inacción a nivel federal respecto a una reforma de inmigración– los estados han comenzado poco a poco a adoptar medidas para tratar a los inmigrantes con dignidad y darles la oportunidad de una vida mejor.
Un estudio reciente de la Fundación RAND concluyó que el número de normas a nivel estatal relativas a la inmigración aumentó diez veces del año 2005 al 2013, y durante el 2015, 46 estados aprobaron 391 leyes relacionadas con inmigración.
Muchas de las leyes alientan a los inmigrantes a salir de la clandestinidad. Por ejemplo, doce estados han adoptado medidas para permitir que los inmigrantes indocumentados obtengan licencia de conducir y 20 estados permiten que los inmigrantes se matriculen como residentes en universidades e instituciones de enseñanza superior del gobierno. Por otro lado, solo tres estados prohíben explícitamente que los inmigrantes indocumentados se inscriban en instituciones de educación superior.
Nueva York ha sido un líder en este frente. En el año 2015, la ciudad de Nueva York se convirtió en la ciudad más grande del país en inaugurar una tarjeta de identidad municipal. Desde entonces, la política ha sido un gran éxito, pues cientos de miles se han inscrito, muchos de ellos inmigrantes que anteriormente no podían abrir una cuenta de banco o siquiera obtener una tarjeta de biblioteca. Ahora se ha reanudado e intensificado la campaña a favor de las licencias de conducir en el estado.
Sin embargo, mientras Nueva York y otros estados avanzan valientemente, algunos estados están dando un paso atrás. Además de políticas a favor de los inmigrantes, el estudio de RAND también reveló que algunos estados están tomando medidas para hacer la vida de los inmigrantes más difícil y peligrosa al redoblar la actividad policial y privar a los inmigrantes de beneficios esenciales.
En esta lista, Arizona es uno de los ejemplos más atroces. A pesar de que se ha criticado mucho al estado por la ley antiinmigrantes del 2010, en meses recientes los legisladores estatales han tomado medidas para hacer que Arizona sea incluso más hostil con sus inmigrantes. La legislatura está promoviendo una serie de medidas legislativas que, entre otras cosas, prohibirían que las ciudades sirvan de santuario y dificultarían solicitar identificación municipal.
No es la única manera en que los legisladores estatales están tratando de restarles poder a las ciudades de Arizona, que tradicionalmente han acogido más a los inmigrantes. Los legisladores también están a punto de aprobar una medida que penaliza a las ciudades por adoptar un salario mínimo más alto o licencias por enfermedad, negándoles fondos para servicios como los departamentos de policía y bomberos.
En efecto, las medidas permitirían que Arizona imponga prácticamente un golpe de estado y haga caso omiso de los deseos de sus propios ciudadanos. No es de sorprender, pues se trata de un estado donde se permitió que fuera necesario hacer fila durante horas en los recintos para las elecciones primarias de los republicanos el mes pasado, negándoles a muchos el fundamental derecho al voto.
Y para que no pensemos que el problema se limita al otro extremo del país, hay señales de peligro aquí mismo. Varios senadores estatales están tratando de prohibir disimuladamente las ciudades santuario en Nueva York al esconder una nueva disposición en el presupuesto estatal, lo que aumenta la probabilidad de que pase desapercibida.
Ya no se pueden tolerar medidas que merman la democracia y perjudican a los inmigrantes. Los estados como Arizona han ayudado a marcar la pauta para las virulentas elecciones contra los inmigrantes de este año. Antes de que se haga incluso más daño, debemos hacer todo lo posible para poner un alto a las medidas contra los inmigrantes.
By Shena Elrington
Source
Peralta pushing to pass Carlos’ Law
Peralta pushing to pass Carlos’ Law
“Citing a 2013 report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Peralta said that between 2003 and 2011, three out of four victims in fatal construction accidents in the United State were immigrants or...
“Citing a 2013 report by the Center for Popular Democracy, Peralta said that between 2003 and 2011, three out of four victims in fatal construction accidents in the United State were immigrants or U.S.-born citizens of Latino heritage.“Among the cases investigated by [the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration] in New York state that number is 60 percent,” Peralta said. “In New York City it’s 74 percent. And in Queens it’s 88 percent.
Read the full article here.
4 days ago
4 days ago