The Week Ahead in New York Politics, May 1
The Week Ahead in New York Politics, May 1
What to watch for this week in New York politics:
President Donald Trump is due back in New York City for the first time since taking office this week -- see below for details and expect...
What to watch for this week in New York politics:
President Donald Trump is due back in New York City for the first time since taking office this week -- see below for details and expect protests, traffic gridlock, and political statements from all corners.
Read full article here.
Pittsburgh police, community absorb news of Dallas shootings
Pittsburgh police, community absorb news of Dallas shootings
Though far from Dallas, Minnesota or Louisiana, leaders here recognized on Friday the historic nature of a chain reaction of police-community tragedies and sought to minimize the risk of more...
Though far from Dallas, Minnesota or Louisiana, leaders here recognized on Friday the historic nature of a chain reaction of police-community tragedies and sought to minimize the risk of more violence.
A shooting such as the one in Dallas “knocks us out of our complacency,” said Howard Burton, chief of the Penn Hills police department. Although most people support officers and appreciate their protection, he said, “We know there’s a group of people out there that move in that direction, that move [aggressively] toward law enforcement.”
Such concerns led Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto to call for a peace gathering next week of law enforcement, church, activist, foundation, labor, corporate and government leaders.
Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1 president Robert Swartzwelder, who is a city officer, said he has authorized the lodge’s three-member funeral detail to go to Dallas. Normally, the lodge would be represented at funerals in Pennsylvania and adjoining states, but the extent of the tragedy in Dallas warrants a presence, he said, adding that it’s “extremely important to the law enforcement community and the family of the police officers” that they see support.
He added that the ambush will be “in the mind of very police officer that’s working” for some time.
Five law enforcement officers were fatally shot Thursday night in Dallas, with seven others injured. That was broadly interpreted as a deranged reaction to the deaths of Louisiana’s Alton Sterling and Minnesotan Philando Castile in encounters with police.
Leaders of both political parties decried all three tragedies.
“We have to ask ourselves, is this the type of country we want? I believe the answer is no,” said Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat. “When incidents like those in Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas happen, it raises concerns and questions, and we must demand change and action.”
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, wrote in a statement that the “disgusting attack has no possible justification.”
He also cited a Dallas police spokesman’s account that the violence there “was motivated by recent police shootings. Such incidents — including the shocking and disturbing videos from Minnesota and Louisiana — must be investigated thoroughly, and if any official is found to have violated the law, he should be severely punished.”
At a police accountability protest Downtown, officers escorting the marchers seemed “nervous, and that’s understandable, but they were very helpful and cooperative,” said Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, which organized the demonstration. “They’ve allowed us to do the march we envisioned, and we appreciate that.”
Pittsburgh police Chief Cameron McLay noted that concerns for lives of police officers and black citizens “are not mutually exclusive at all.”
Some suburban Allegheny County chiefs said they were running their departments as usual, and others declined to say whether they had made changes. None of those contacted by the Post-Gazette reported any threats to their officers.
Voices of the civil rights community said they want intensified attention to police-community problems — but not through violence.
“This is not going to happen in Allegheny County, because we’re going to be meeting with the young folks,” said Constance Parker, president of the Pittsburgh chapter of the NAACP. The message: “Before you get angry, think, because there’s costs you pay when you get very angry. If you don’t pay it with the law, you pay it with your body.”
By Rich Lord
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California Eminent Domain Isn't Government Run Amok
To judge from the disparaging reaction to its plan to use eminent domain to cope with underwater homes, you'd think the city leaders of Richmond, California, had proposed an outrageous and...
To judge from the disparaging reaction to its plan to use eminent domain to cope with underwater homes, you'd think the city leaders of Richmond, California, had proposed an outrageous and unprecedented distortion of state power.
Filing suit against Richmond, BlackRock Inc., Pacific Investment Management Co. and other plaintiffs alleged that the city's proposal amounts to an “unconstitutional application of eminent domain” and a “brazen scheme.” The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that it was considering ceasingto do business in municipalities that pursue this course. Media coverage generally echoed the plaintiffs’ take. USA Today’s headline summed up the conventional wisdom, declaring that Richmond “runs amok with eminent domain.”
In fact, the city's plan relies not on a novel use of eminent domain but on one endorsed by the conservative Supreme Court of 1935. And although there is a long history of excessive use of eminent domain, Richmond's plan has no place in it. Richmond's plan is to seize 624 mortgages valued at more than the homes for which they were written. Relying on a private intermediary, the city would compensate the investor holding a mortgage at a price reflecting the home's current value rather than an inflated bubble value. The city would then sell a more modest loan to the homeowner. Richmond hopes this will induce residents to remain in their homes and pay their mortgages and property taxes. Proponents of the plan also point out that this probably will lower the risk of default, protecting investors holding the mortgages.
Nonetheless, the big players in the bond markets are angry that they’re being forced to accede to the demands of a small city in California. Before they fight city hall, the plaintiffs should appreciate that use of eminent domain to seize intangible assets like mortgages has a solid history. Federal courts have long sanctioned the taking of everything from shares of stock to contract rights, insurance policies and even hunting rights.
But mortgages? Yes. Consider a famous Supreme Court case from the Great Depression. During that crisis, banks foreclosed on farmers who fell behind on their mortgage payments. In response, Congress passed the Farm Bankruptcy Act granting farmers five years to negotiate a reduction in the principal of their loans. Farmers were entitled to buy the property at the current appraised value, even if it fell short of the value attached to the original mortgage.
Then, as now, banks didn’t like the policy and went to court, arguing that it violated their property rights, as guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment. In May 1935, the Supreme Court overturned the law in a unanimous decision, the first of several such rulings that made the court into a conservative counterweight to the New Deal. Nevertheless, in the final paragraph of its decision, the court laid out an alternative course for just the kind of remedy the Farm Bankruptcy Act had sought.
Justice Louis Brandeis observed, "If the public interest requires, and permits, the taking of property of individual mortgagees in order to relieve the necessities of individual mortgagors, resort must be had to proceedings by eminent domain.”
In effect, the court stated that if the government wished to modify loans, it could only do so via an eminent domain proceeding of precisely the sort now being contemplated in Richmond. Brandeis didn’t think this a particularly controversial point; he made no effort to defend it or explain his reasoning because it was an established doctrine.
And so it remains today: Intangible assets have again and again been deemed fair game for eminent domain proceedings, so long as “just compensation” is given. In California, the state Supreme Court has taken a similar stance: A decision in 2008, for example, affirmed longstanding precedent that the state’s eminent domain law “authorizes the taking of intangible property.”
None of this is to suggest that eminent domain hasn’t been abused. In the postwar era, however, its victims have not been investors but poor, black, inner city residents.
The case that opened the door to mass evictions and confiscations was Berman v. Parker, decided by the Supreme Court in 1954. In it, a black department store owner in the District of Columbia sued to stop an eminent domain proceeding against his profitable business, which had the misfortune of being situated in an area designated as blighted.
The court rejected Berman’s protest, defining eminent domain in remarkably broad terms. If the public interest demanded that his property be torn down with less desirable properties to rescue an entire neighborhood from blight, it ruled, there was nothing Berman could do. His store was soon reduced to rubble. While many urban planners celebrated the decision, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Haar was more prescient, noting that the ruling “may cause a lot of trouble some day.”
This was an understatement: in the ensuing years, municipalities across the country used and abused their powers to confiscate the property of poor, often black residents, rarely giving “just compensation.” Entire, thriving neighborhoods vanished before the wrecking ball, destroying communities and leaving behind gaping holes in the urban fabric that remain eyesores in many cities today.
This didn’t end with the 1960s. In 2005, the Supreme Court handed down its controversial decision in Kelo v. City of New London. The case grew out of efforts by New London, Connecticut, to use eminent domain to evict working-class residents from a neighborhood in the hopes of handing the land to a private developer who promised to attract more affluent residents with a mixed-use project. The court ruled in favor of the city, vastly expanding the powers of eminent domain. The project foundered during the financial crisis and today remains a series of vacant lots, monuments to an extreme vision of eminent domain.
These are examples of eminent domain “run amok.” Yet to listen to the hysterical denunciations of the Richmond plan, a proposal to bring 624 mortgages in line with market prices is the epitome of eminent domain abuse. History suggests otherwise.
Source:
Trump’s Immigration Policy ‘Fever Dream’
Trump’s Immigration Policy ‘Fever Dream’
“The administration is “creating an environment of profound hostility,” as Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), told me. (Archila was one of the...
“The administration is “creating an environment of profound hostility,” as Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), told me. (Archila was one of the women who passionately confronted Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator last week during the Senate hearing on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, shortly before the senator urged an FBI investigation into the sexual-assault allegations.) Together with Make the Road New York (MRNY), CPD published an alarming data brief estimating that if the administration were able to effectively implement its “zero-tolerance” policy—its attempt to prosecute all people who cross the border outside of a port of entry—the number of migrants in private detention centers would rocket from between 290 to 580 percent in the next two years.
Read the full article here.
Charter Schools Are Failing and Our Democracy Pays the Price
Charter Schools Are Failing and Our Democracy Pays the Price
Taxpayer dollars are filling the bank accounts of those who manage charter schools which is evident as research by In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy that exposed the...
Taxpayer dollars are filling the bank accounts of those who manage charter schools which is evident as research by In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy that exposed the financial fraud and corruption running rampant in these schools. In California, $6 billion of public funding has been funneled into charter schools and their respective management companies leaving public schools starved for required public monies.
Read the full article here.
Data Brief: Challenges Facing Albuquerque’s Modern Workforce
Bernalillo County, New Mexico has almost 472,000 hourly workers—nearly two-thirds of its total workforceb—who would benefit from updating workplace protections to match our modern workweek. Across...
Bernalillo County, New Mexico has almost 472,000 hourly workers—nearly two-thirds of its total workforceb—who would benefit from updating workplace protections to match our modern workweek. Across multiple measures, hourly workers are more likely than salaried workers to experience volatile, precarious schedules. A national survey found that 41 percent of early-career hourly workers know their schedules a week or less in advance and half of the hourly workers in the study said their schedules were decided by their employer alone. Nearly three-quarters of hourly workers reported that their weekly work hours had fluctuated in the past month.
This brief examines who the County’s nearly half-million hourly workers are; the working conditions they face; and the tailored policies that public officials can enact to match the changing rhythms of today’s workplace.
Download the report here:
150 Restaurants Are Donating Proceeds to Puerto Rico for World Central Kitchen’s 'World Food Day'
150 Restaurants Are Donating Proceeds to Puerto Rico for World Central Kitchen’s 'World Food Day'
World Central Kitchen will host its fourth annual World Food Day on October 13, and so far 150 restaurants nationwide have agreed to donate 10 percent of their proceeds to WCK’s Puerto Rico aid...
World Central Kitchen will host its fourth annual World Food Day on October 13, and so far 150 restaurants nationwide have agreed to donate 10 percent of their proceeds to WCK’s Puerto Rico aid and to a new culinary school in Haiti.
Read the full article here.
The public compact
The public compact
It is always amusing to be the subject of a John McClaughry jeremiad. While I don’t mind being labeled as the “foremost defender” of public education, he insists on giving me full personal credit...
It is always amusing to be the subject of a John McClaughry jeremiad. While I don’t mind being labeled as the “foremost defender” of public education, he insists on giving me full personal credit for what is a state school board position.
In the instant case, John appears to be affronted by the suggestion that private (independent) schools that take public money must actually be held accountable for that money. This principle is at the core of the state board’s review of the independent school rules. Now this seems like a straightforward and fundamentally democratic concept that is generally accepted, but it has been a long-standing problem for some.
The law (16 VSA 166) provides a list of reporting requirements for independent schools if they want to chow down at the public trough. Unfortunately, as far back as the 1914 Carnegie Commission, we find evidence of the refusal of some independent schools to provide private school data even though it was the law of the land. (At that time, the Cubs were still basking in the glory of their World Series victory.)
The second paramount principle is that we have to educate all the children — regardless of needs and handicaps. That’s a necessity in a democracy. Denying a child admission on the basis of a handicap is, in most cases, illegal. Furthermore, it’s wrong. Public schools serve every child. The false fear John peddles is that the private school can’t afford to serve these children. That’s incorrect. It’s really quite simple. While great eruptions of umbrage are displayed, this problem has been solved for years. The private school contracts with (or hires) a specialist who bills the costs back to the public school. Approval in a given area requires that one sheet of paper be filed with the state. As simple as the solution actually is, some independent schools refuse to adopt an equal opportunity policy.
Instead, John proposes that Vermont “clone” Florida’s McKay Scholarship program where parents can choose the school for their handicapped child. That hasn’t worked out too well. If you think a “business management class” that sends students onto the street to panhandle is an acceptable education, then the McKay program may be just your thing. The Florida Department of Education has uncovered “substantial fraud,” including schools that don’t exist, non-existent students, and classes held in condemned buildings and public parks. And the state of Florida does not have the staff to adequately monitor the program. This is a recipe for abuse. Last May, the Center for Popular Democracy estimated that $216 million in charter school money went out the back door.
Finally, John raises the cost question and says private school scholarships would be “less expensive.” Yet he also criticizes the cost of the state’s excess public school capacity. Now let’s look at Vermont’s private independent school numbers. In 1998, there were 68 independent schools, and by 2016, the number had exploded to 93. In the decade 2004-14, independent school enrollments went down from 4,361 to 3,392. A 37 percent increase in schools with a 29 percent drop in students suggests somebody needs to revisit their business plan.
Taking it all together, (1) all who profit from the public treasury must be accountable for that money, (2) children have the right to be admitted to private schools, free of discrimination, on an equal opportunity basis, (3) private schools are a part of our system, (4) the public purse must be protected from fraud and abuse, and (5) directly or indirectly building and operating a parallel school system would be inordinately expensive and wasteful. Do these principles sound reasonable?
William J. Mathis is managing director of the National Education Policy Center and a member of the Vermont state Board of Education. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent the views of any group with which he is associated.
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Struggle and the State
Struggle and the State
Today's Dig is a very good and somewhat unusual Dig: Dan’s got two interviews with two different people. First, journalist Eric Blanc on the teacher strike wave that he's been covering for Jacobin...
Today's Dig is a very good and somewhat unusual Dig: Dan’s got two interviews with two different people. First, journalist Eric Blanc on the teacher strike wave that he's been covering for Jacobin. Then comes the Center for Popular Democracy's Xiomara Caro Diaz on last week's May Day demonstrations against austerity in Puerto Rico.
Listen to the episode here.
Corporate power on the agenda at Jackson Hole
Corporate power on the agenda at Jackson Hole
Protesters from the Fed Up group will once again be on hand this year.
Protesters from the Fed Up group will once again be on hand this year.
Read the full article here.
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