Listen to Death Cab for Cutie’s New Anti-Trump Song “Million Dollar Loan”
Listen to Death Cab for Cutie’s New Anti-Trump Song “Million Dollar Loan”
Last year, Death Cab for Cutie released the album Kintsugi. Today, the band have put out a new song called “Million Dollar Loan,” along with its video, directed by Simian Design. The song targets...
Last year, Death Cab for Cutie released the album Kintsugi. Today, the band have put out a new song called “Million Dollar Loan,” along with its video, directed by Simian Design. The song targets Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who famously said his father gave him $1 million to start his business dealings. It’s part of a new program called 30 Days, 30 Songs, created by writer Dave Eggers. Starting today until Election Day (Tuesday, November 8), there will be new songs each day from artists including My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Aimee Mann, Thao Nguyen (of Thao & the Get Down Stay Down), and clipping. In addition, 30 Days will include an unreleased R.E.M. live song.
Below, listen to “Million Dollar Loan,” read Ben Gibbard’s statement on the track, and see the 30 Days, 30 Songs single artwork (featuring an eagle with Trump’s hair). Read 30 Days, 30 Songs’ mission statement here. All of 30 Days’ proceeds will go to the Center for Popular Democracy and their efforts toward Universal Voter Registration for all Americans.
Lyrically, “Million Dollar Loan” deals with a particularly tone deaf moment in Donald Trump’s ascent to the Republican nomination. While campaigning in New Hampshire last year, he attempted to cast himself as a self-made man by claiming he built his fortune with just a “small loan of a million dollars” from his father. Not only has this statement been proven to be wildly untrue, he was so flippant about it. It truly disgusted me. Donald Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he is unworthy of the honor and responsibility of being President of the United States of America, and in no way, shape or form represents what this country truly stands for. He is beneath us.
By Matthew Strauss
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Dreamers exigen “Dream Act” y replican a Kelly: “no somos flojos”
Dreamers exigen “Dream Act” y replican a Kelly: “no somos flojos”
En el marco de un día de acción nacional a favor del Dream Act, más de 500 activistas exigieron este miércoles que el Congreso apruebe la medida, y condenaron al jefe de Gabinete de la Casa...
En el marco de un día de acción nacional a favor del Dream Act, más de 500 activistas exigieron este miércoles que el Congreso apruebe la medida, y condenaron al jefe de Gabinete de la Casa Blanca, John Kelly, por sugerir que algunos jóvenes indocumentados no se apuntaron al “DACA” de 2012 por “flojos”.
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
New Program Arms Immigrants Facing Deportation with Legal Aid
WNYC - November 20, 2013, by John Hockenberry - Fifty years ago, in a case called Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court mandated that those accused of a crime must be provided a lawyer,...
WNYC - November 20, 2013, by John Hockenberry - Fifty years ago, in a case called Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court mandated that those accused of a crime must be provided a lawyer, regardless of their ability to pay. With that decision the public defense system was born.
While Gideon has changed the equation for many indigent defendants, the law doesn't apply to all cases—just those in criminal court. Immigrants facing detention or deportation have no right to a court-appointed attorney and are left to advocate for themselves. In New York, at least 60 percent of detained immigrants lack access to counsel during their immigration proceedings.
But the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project is looking change that.
With funding from the New York City Council and Cardozo Law School in Manhattan, the Project—the first of its kind in the country—provides indigent immigrants representation in detention and deportation proceedings, regardless of whether they can pay.
The Project is the result of a task force of attorneys, activists and experts, chaired by Judge Robert Katzman, chief judge of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to the task force, immigrants facing deportation in New York courts that have the help of an attorney are 500 percent more likely to win their case than those who lack counsel. Judge Katzmann says he hopes the Immigrant Family Unity Project will allow more immigrants access to justice, while helping immigrant families to stay together.
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Black Lives Matter asks state Dems for 'reparations'
Will Black Lives Matter revive the debate over reparations?
The case for reparations is typically made as a form of economic compensation to descendants of slaves. These days, some racial...
Will Black Lives Matter revive the debate over reparations?
The case for reparations is typically made as a form of economic compensation to descendants of slaves. These days, some racial activists also make the case for reparations as compensation for systemic discrimination in law enforcement.
Several black leaders addressed Democratic state legislators Friday at the State Innovation Exchange in Washington, D.C.
"Thinking about decriminalization with reparations," Marbre Shahly-Butts, deputy director of racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, said. "The idea is we that have extracted literally millions of dollars from communities, we have destroyed families. 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." That comment received widespread applause from the crowd of Democratic state legislators. Shahly-Butts was referring to decriminalizing more than drug crimes, but also loitering, bans on saggy pants and thousands of other laws that disproportionately affect blacks.
Shahly-Butts added, "'Reparations' makes people kind of uncomfortable, so we can call it 'reinvestment' if you want to. Use whatever language makes you happy inside."
Fellow panelist Dante Barry, executive director of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, also called for a type of reinvestment. "In terms of response around black youth unemployment, it gets back to this whole piece around reinvestment," Barry said. He spoke about New York City's plan to spend $100 million on 1,000 new cops. "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."
Barry must have decided "reinvestment" made him happier inside than "reparations."
When asked if she could pick just one policy change for state legislators to work on, Shahly-Butts replied, "State budgets and then reparations are my two go-to [ideas]." In response to the same question, Barry called for banning all guns on campus.
Source: Washington Examiner
Opioid protest at Harvard art museum
Opioid protest at Harvard art museum
ctivists said that this was the fourth protest of its kind targeting an art gallery or school named after the Sackler family. The Sacklers have their names on spaces at the Louvre, the Royal...
ctivists said that this was the fourth protest of its kind targeting an art gallery or school named after the Sackler family. The Sacklers have their names on spaces at the Louvre, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Smithsonian, and the Guggenheim in New York, among others. The Center for Popular Democracy, the nonprofit that supports the Opioid Network, also participated in Goldin’s protest at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in April.
Read the full article here.
Barkin Tapped as Next President of Richmond Fed Bank
Barkin Tapped as Next President of Richmond Fed Bank
The Federal Reserve's Richmond regional bank announced on Monday that Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., will be the bank's next president...
The Federal Reserve's Richmond regional bank announced on Monday that Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., will be the bank's next president.
He will succeed Jeffrey Lacker, who resigned as the bank's president in April after revealing his involvement in a leak of confidential information in 2012 that had triggered congressional and FBI investigations.
Read the full article here.
Is 'Audit the Fed' going mainstream?
Is 'Audit the Fed' going mainstream?
Auditing the Federal Reserve, a financial reform long pushed by the libertarian right, just got a boost this week from an unexpected quarter: A respected Dartmouth economist who issued a new...
Auditing the Federal Reserve, a financial reform long pushed by the libertarian right, just got a boost this week from an unexpected quarter: A respected Dartmouth economist who issued a new proposal to impose transparency and oversight on the nation’s powerful central bank.
Though largely dismissed by mainstream economists, “Audit the Fed” has become an applause line for central banking skeptics like Sen. Rand Paul, who believe the Federal Reserve wields too much power too secretly. In recent years the idea has spread from right-wing politicians to the conservative mainstream, and even critics on the left: A Senate vote on Paul’s “Audit the Fed” legislation in January garnered 53 votes. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voted for that bill and has pushed for increased transparency at the Fed to the delight of campaign crowds suspicious that the central bank is rigged in favor of Wall Street.
This week, the Fed Up campaign, a 30-month-old group of labor and community organizations pushing for more openness at the Fed, released its own platform for reforming the Fed’s governance structure, including a new idea for an audit—or "annual review"—that could give the idea more mainstream credibility.
The author is Andrew Levin, an economist now at Dartmouth College who has decades of experience at the Fed and a reputation as a thoughtful observer of the institution. While most financial insiders have long dismissed “Audit the Fed” as an unserious political slogan from people unversed in economics, Levin’s proposal has provoked a more serious reckoning with Fed transparency. And increasingly, economists are coming to the same conclusion: More sunlight might do the central bank some good.
“The Fed is overly sensitive about reviewing its policies,” said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who has worked at the Fed off-and-on for the past 30 years.
At issue is whether decisions made by the top officials of the Fed should be open to review by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Technically speaking, the Fed is already audited – it’s subject to the same GAO scrutiny of its operations as any other federal agency. But its most influential decisions, deliberations on monetary policy that attract global attention and can move stock markets dramatically, are conducted in secret by a dozen top Fed officials. Seven of them, known as Fed governors and based in Washington, are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The remaining five spots are reserved for the presidents of the 12 regional Fed banks on a rotating basis. Collectively known as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the group generally meets eight times a year, with minutes released three weeks afterwards. Transcripts of those meetings are released on a five-year lag, effectively sealing its deliberations in the short-term.
Because banks ultimately own the regional Fed banks, and have a say in nominating many of their directors, critics say this structure leaves the door open for favoritism to Wall Street, and needs outside scrutiny to ensure it properly balances its dual mandate of stable inflation and full employment. Supporters say the Fed's relative independence is a virtue, and worry its monetary decisions would be worse in the long run if its officials constantly felt Congress breathing down their necks.
The more traditional right-wing “Audit the Fed” legislation would call for a GAO audit of the Fed within 12 months of passage, and thereafter enable any lawmaker or congressional committee to request an audit of the central bank, including the FOMC’s monetary policy decisions, whenever they wanted.
In his new plan, Levin proposes something slightly different: it would require the GAO to conduct a review of all aspects of the Fed, including monetary policy, but make the review annual and determined by GAO staff rather than Congress. “[Paul’s legislation] just seemed like a way to threaten the Fed,” said Levin.
His proposal would also call for seven-year term limits for Fed officials and reform the process that the regional Fed bank presidents are selected. Though he recoiled against terming the GAO review an “audit,” his proposal would give the GAO new powers to examine different aspects of the Fed, as it does with other agencies in the federal government. Instead of called by Congress, it would be annual and determined by agency staff. “From one year to the next, it might focus on some aspects of the Fed's operations. One year, maybe it would focus on monetary policy strategy and communications,” Levin said. “Another year, maybe it wouldn't spend much time on that.” The results would be publicly available.
Narayana Kocherlakota, the former president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, expressed support for the idea of regularly scheduled GAO audits of the Fed’s monetary policy. He didn't take a position on earlier audit proposals, but echoed Levin’s concern that allowing lawmakers to request a GAO audit “would be very bad and would lead us down a bad path where essentially Congress was running monetary policy.”
The Federal Reserve declined to comment on Levin’s plan. But Fed Chair Janet Yellen and other Fed officials have aggressively attacked prior proposals to increase oversight over the FOMC’s deliberations. In January, before the Senate voted on Paul’s legislation, Yellen sent a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Harry Reid opposing the bill. “These reviews could only serve to create public doubt about the conduct and independence of monetary policy,” she wrote.
“All of that criticism does apply to my proposal,” Levin said after reading those lines from Yellen’s letter. But he argued that such oversight is necessary in a democracy. He added, “After all, the Congress is the Fed’s boss.”
Levin enters this debate with considerable experience. He spent two decades as an economist for the Fed and then was a special adviser to then-Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Vice Chair Yellen from 2010 to 2012. He also advised many other central banks, including the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada and the Bank of Japan. Those policy bona fides mean he’s being taken seriously even by people who have dismissed previous “Audit the Fed” proposals.
“Levin knows a lot about the internal workings [of the Fed] that I don’t,” said Jared Bernstein, the former top economist to Vice President Joe Biden and a frequent critic of “Audit the Fed” proposals. “He’s not coming at this from the perspective of some radical protester.”
The underlying question is whether an annual review by GAO—not one triggered by individual lawmakers or committees—will cause the Fed to be influenced by politics in its monetary policy decisions. To some extent, that already happens. The Fed, like every institution, faces criticism from an array of politicians, outside economists, and pundits. “Independence is not as black and white as many people make it seem,” said Kocherlakota.
Finding the right balance between giving the Fed room to make independent policy and holding it accountable is a constant challenge—one that extends beyond “Audit the Fed" proposals. Sanders, for instance, has proposed that FOMC transcripts be released within six months, instead of the current five years.
Few serious Fed watchers, however, have spent much time developing detailed ideas for increased Fed transparency. “I felt like there was a vacuum in the discourse,” Levin explained.
Levin’s reforms are unlikely to become law anytime soon: Lobbying efforts around such a change would be fierce, and groups like the Fed Up campaign are likely to be heavily out-spent by Wall Street banks skeptical of changes intended to reduce their influence over Fed decisions. The Federal Reserve would likely oppose the reforms as well.
By DANNY VINIK
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Workers Rising - The Report
Workers Rising: Organizing Service Jobs for Shared Prosperity in New York City
Something unique has happened in New York: a wave of low-wage worker activity. As is clear...
Something unique has happened in New York: a wave of low-wage worker activity. As is clear from this report, New York City is at a critical turning point: will the City be one where all working families can find stable, living-wage employment? Or will the entrenched inequality of the City worsen still further? This report captures the inspiring stories of low-wage workers who have put these issues in the spotlight, organizing for improved conditions in industries ranging from car wash to fast food to retail and beyond.
It is our hope that this report will help elevate the issues raised by these workers as New York prepares to elect a new City Council, a new Mayor, a new Public Advocate, and a new Comptroller to take office in 2014.
Download the report here
Executive SummaryAlthough New York’s economy has begun to recover from the Great Recession, working New Yorkers continue to face serious challenges.
Despite the significant rise in workers’ productivity over the past forty years, their wages have remained stagnant while those at the top of the economic pyramid have reaped nearly all of the benefits of our growing economy. When the recession hit in 2007, it exacerbated an already dire situation for working class and impoverished New Yorkers.
The City’s unemployment rate nearly doubled, from 5.3 percent in 2007 to 9.7 percent today. Real median income in the City fell nearly 8 percent, from $35,000 in 2008 to $32,200 in 2011. The percentage of New Yorkers who are poor rose from 18 percent to a staggering 21 percent. And twice as many people now are homeless in the City as were in 1992. Most striking of all, this widespread economic misery takes place amid unheralded wealth: according to formal measures,
Manhattan’s inequality is higher than all but one other county in the nation and approximately equivalent to that of Bolivia.
As troubling, the growing sectors of the New York City economy, such as the growing service sector, feature low-wage, no-benefit jobs, with little hope for upward mobility.
This is a familiar narrative. But the next act is inspiring and a cause for hope: 2012 was a year of unprecedented activity by low-wage workers in the service industry, including strikes, rallies, marches, and union organizing. New York’s service workers are rising and fighting back – as their predecessors did in the 1930s – against poor working conditions and poverty-level wages. Despite the real risk that speaking out may cost them their jobs, thousands of workers in New York City’s lowest wage industries are joining together to demand dignity on the job.
At car washes from Elmhurst to So-Ho and Jamaica to Mott Haven, immigrant car washers have voted to unionize. At fast food restaurants from Times Square to Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn, protesting workers have made national news by taking on and striking some of the biggest employers in America. At flagship Fifth Avenue retail stores, cashiers are calling for an end to the part-time poverty that plagues the industry. And at JFK Airport, the men and women who keep millions of travelers safe have united to demand better training, higher pay, and health insurance so their families can be healthy and safe as well. These workers’ bold actions, sparked, we believe, by the energy and anger and hope of the Occupy movement, have amplified the call for change – and broadened it to make clear that this is a fight for all New Yorkers.
In this report, we take a closer look at the growing worker movements that are throwing a spotlight on abuse on the job and at the need to build an economy typified by stable, living-wage, dignified jobs. We also highlight critical policy changes that elected officials could implement that would address the plight of low-wage workers in the City, helping to turn low-wage, dead-end jobs into stable middle class employment opportunities. Raising the minimum wage is perhaps the most important reform that legislators can enact this year to improve standards of living for working-class New Yorkers. That power—and that duty—lies with the New York State Legislature. Raising the minimum wage would result in higher pay for more than one million New York workers. Indexing the minimum wage to inflation will raise consumer spending, help strengthen the economy, and create thousands of new jobs. Although a good first step, the reforms currently under consideration are insufficient. An increase in the minimum wage to $10 per hour would give full-time workers a salary of $20,000 per year and help to reduce poverty in New York City. At the very least, the Legislature should expand New York
City’s home rule power so that it can create a City minimum wage that reflects the higher cost of living here, as compared to upstate.
The New York City Council also has the power to reshape our economy in meaningful ways. Improving the jobs and lives of low-wage workers is not only an issue of justice, but also an issue of good economics. If low-wage jobs were to be transformed into middle class jobs, workers’ higher wages would allow them to spend more on local goods and services, giving a boost to the economy that our city’s neighborhoods could desperately use.
In 2013, New York City voters will elect a new mayor and fill every seat on the New York City Council. Over the coming four years, these elected officials will make critical decisions impacting the lives of millions of people. But our future is not in their hands. It is the politicians’ future that is in ours. Will our next mayor continue programs that deliver tax breaks and subsidies to large corporations that do not deliver on promised job creation? Will our next City Council finally pass key reforms – such as legislation to provide paid sick leave to the City’s workforce – that can improve the lives of low-wage workers and their children? Will New Yorkers and our elected officials build a City in which all working families can thrive? In large part, the answers will depend on the choices that elected officials and voters make over the coming year.
These are four sets of actions that the New York City government could take to improve life for low-wage workers:
First, the City should raise standards for low wage work by passing legislation to guarantee at least five days of paid sick leave for workers – such as the Earned Sick Leave Act – and to protect workers from erratic and unpredictable scheduling that keeps them in poverty – such as the Predictable Scheduling Act. Second, New York should regulate high-violation industries where wages are low and labor abuses are rampant by passing laws like the Car Wash Accountability Act and establishing an enhanced privilege permitting system at Port Authority airports. Such policies should impose new licensing or permitting requirements, tighten environmental and safety standards, and implement other tailored policies that increase oversight of the lowest-wage, highest-violation industries. Third, in order to ensure that these new rights make a meaningful difference in workers’ lives, the City should establish a Mayor’s Office of Labor Standards to educate employers about their obligations, investigate complaints by workers that employers are violating the law, and bring enforcement actions in particularly egregious cases. Fourth, New York City should pass a resolution urging the State to modify the City’s home rule authority so that the City can set a minimum wage that is higher than the state minimum, reflecting the high cost of living here.Minimum standards in the workplace have always been resisted by much of the business community. One hundred years ago, opponents said that prohibitions on child labor and basic workplace safety laws would harm consumers. In the 1930s, they said that minimum wage and hour laws would cost jobs. And throughout the civil rights era, they said that anti-discrimination laws would destroy free enterprise and the autonomy of business owners. But today these laws are indelible and uncontroversial features of our economy. The same can be true of paid sick leave, predictable and fair scheduling, and a living wage for everybody. When standards are raised and all businesses are required to take a higher road, New Yorkers will enjoy more broadly shared prosperity and a more just society.
We sit at a pivotal moment in New York City’s history. And as low-wage workers across the City have made clear with their growing movement for change, we must take this unique opportunity to build a City that provides opportunity and economic security for all New Yorkers.
Charter Schools Had Tough Week
Times Online - October 5, 2014, by The Times Editorial Board - It’s been a tough week for supporters of the charter school movement in Pennsylvania.
On Tuesday, PA...
Times Online - October 5, 2014, by The Times Editorial Board - It’s been a tough week for supporters of the charter school movement in Pennsylvania.
On Tuesday, PA Cyber School founder Nick Trombetta and his attorney were back in a federal courtroom trying to have evidence suppressed in his upcoming criminal trial on charges of mail fraud, theft, tax conspiracy and filing false tax returns. Trombetta is accused of siphoning off millions of taxpayer dollars for his own gain.
On Wednesday, a new report was released citing Trombetta as an example of $30 million in fraud and financial mismanagement among the state’s charter schools since 1997.
The report was done by three organizations — the Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education and Action United. It follows a national report in May by the first two groups that claimed $136 million has been lost to waste, fraud and abuse by charter schools.
While the numbers are alarming, we know that all charter schools are not part of the problem. Still, it only takes a few incidents — such as the case against Trombetta — to give the entire movement a black eye.
What we will say is that state’s charter school law is badly in need of revision, particularly in the area of accountability. State legislators need to step in now and address the problems if charter schools are to remain part of the state’s education program.
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Is Zara discriminating against people of color?
Dorian Warren talks with researcher Chaya Crowder about her new report on discrimination at major “fast fashion” outlet Zara.
Source:...
Dorian Warren talks with researcher Chaya Crowder about her new report on discrimination at major “fast fashion” outlet Zara.
Source: MSNBC
2 days ago
2 days ago