El año arranca con protesta de Dreamers
Con pancartas en mano un grupo de jóvenes inmigrantes y partidarios se reunieron este miércoles frente a la oficina de la senadora demócrata de California Dianne Feinstein en Los Ángeles para...
Con pancartas en mano un grupo de jóvenes inmigrantes y partidarios se reunieron este miércoles frente a la oficina de la senadora demócrata de California Dianne Feinstein en Los Ángeles para pedirle que luche por la aprobación del Dream Act.
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Video: Mas de 30,000 empleados de Toys “R” Us piden su Indemnizacion
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Video: Mas de 30,000 empleados de Toys “R” Us piden su Indemnizacion
Esta demanda se está llevando a cabo gracias a una campaña que cuenta con el apoyo del grupo activista Center for Popular Democracy. Más de 50,000 personas han firmado una petición reclamando a la...
Esta demanda se está llevando a cabo gracias a una campaña que cuenta con el apoyo del grupo activista Center for Popular Democracy. Más de 50,000 personas han firmado una petición reclamando a la compañía este derecho monetario.
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Safety coalition: ‘Scaffold Law’ study is ‘flawed’
Safety & Health Magazine - April 18, 2014 - A recent study that questioned the usefulness of New York state’s “Scaffold Law” is flawed, according to a new report from a worker safety advocacy...
Safety & Health Magazine - April 18, 2014 - A recent study that questioned the usefulness of New York state’s “Scaffold Law” is flawed, according to a new report from a worker safety advocacy coalition.
In December, a study from State University of New York’s Rockefeller Institute of Government concluded that New York’s Labor Law 240 – which imposes a strict liability on employers for workplace injuries at height – drives up the cost of business without improving worker safety.
But an April 17 report from the Center for Popular Democracy and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health called the Rockefeller study “biased,” noting that the study was paid for by the New York Civil Justice Institute, a group created by an alliance criticized as working on behalf of employer and industry interests.
The Rockefeller study confused correlation with causation, the two worker safety advocacy groups say, by claiming differences between worker injury rates in construction and non-construction industries in New York and elsewhere are entirely due to the Scaffold Law.
CPD and NYCOSH are partners in a newly launched Scaffold Safety Coalition, a group of workers, advocates and other organizations that have joined to defend the state’s Scaffold Law.
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Jobs Report Shows We Are Not at Full Employment
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Jobs Report Shows We Are Not at Full Employment
Connie Razza, Director of Strategic Research for the Center for Popular Democracy released the following statement following today’s jobs report:
Connie Razza, Director of Strategic Research for the Center for Popular Democracy released the following statement following today’s jobs report:
“The December jobs report showed modest progress for the economy, but lingering problems cast doubt on recent claims by numerous Fed policymakers that we are near full employment. The employment to population ratio for prime-age workers remained flat throughout 2015, showing that job gains are growing in sync with the growth in new prime-age workers. And today’s report also showed that nominal wage growth, which has been insufficient for years, remained well below target. A healthy labor market would be adding enough jobs that workers could demand higher wages.
Despite chronic signs of economic weakness, the Federal Reserve prematurely chose to raise interest rates last month. Recently released minutes from the Fed’s December meeting showed that Fed officials voted to raise rates despite “significant concern about still-low readings on actual inflation and the uncertainty and risks present in the inflation outlook.” With the economic recovery still sluggish and inflation still well below the Fed’s target, there is simply no reason to further slow down the economy. Fed officials must look beyond the top-line unemployment number in assessing whether we are at full employment, and proceed with caution at upcoming FOMC meetings.”
To schedule interviews with Connie Razza, send an email to ajain@populardemocracy.org.
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www.populardemocracy.org
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.
Knight: ‘My fellow Americans...’ Se fuerte!
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 was the first U.S. President to use the phrase “my fellow Americans”in an Inauguration speech, according to historian Andrew Bergen, but over the years the catch...
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 was the first U.S. President to use the phrase “my fellow Americans”in an Inauguration speech, according to historian Andrew Bergen, but over the years the catch phrase suggesting all of us being together, like a family, became so common that it lost its impact, if not meaning.
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'Welcome to Florida!'
“The Hispanic Federation, a group that outraised most of the other groups for Puerto Rico relief efforts, called a meeting in October in New York, which led to the creation of Power For Puerto...
“The Hispanic Federation, a group that outraised most of the other groups for Puerto Rico relief efforts, called a meeting in October in New York, which led to the creation of Power For Puerto Rico, a coalition that includes longtime Latino civil rights organization Unidos.us, Make the Road, the Center for Popular Democracy, and Hedgeclippers (an organization focused on exposing the connections between Wall Street and Puerto Rico’s debt crisis).”
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A City Invokes Seizure Laws to Save Homes
The power of eminent domain has traditionally worked against homeowners, who can be forced to sell their property to make way for a new highway or shopping mall. But now the working-class city of...
The power of eminent domain has traditionally worked against homeowners, who can be forced to sell their property to make way for a new highway or shopping mall. But now the working-class city of Richmond, Calif., hopes to use the same legal tool to help people stay right where they are.
Scarcely touched by the nation’s housing recovery and tired of waiting for federal help, Richmond is about to become the first city in the nation to try eminent domain as a way to stop foreclosures.
The results will be closely watched by both Wall Street banks, which have vigorously opposed the use of eminent domain to buy mortgages and reduce homeowner debt, and a host of cities across the country that are considering emulating Richmond.
The banks have warned that such a move will bring down a hail of lawsuits and all but halt mortgage lending in any city with the temerity to try it.
But local officials, frustrated at the lack of large-scale relief from the Obama administration, relatively free of the influence that Wall Street wields in Washington, and faced with fraying neighborhoods and a depleted middle class, are beginning to shrug off those threats.
“We’re not willing to back down on this,” said Gayle McLaughlin, the former schoolteacher who is serving her second term as Richmond’s mayor. “They can put forward as much pressure as they would like but I’m very committed to this program and I’m very committed to the well-being of our neighborhoods.”
Despite rising home prices in many parts of the country, including California, roughly half of all homeowners with mortgages in Richmond are underwater, meaning they owe more — in some cases three or four times as much more — than their home is currently worth. On Monday, the city sent a round of letters to the owners and servicers of the loans, offering to buy 626 underwater loans. In some cases, the homeowner is already behind on the payments. Others are considered to be at risk of default, mainly because home values have fallen so much that the homeowner has little incentive to keep paying.
Many cities, particularly those where minority residents were steered into predatory loans, face a situation similar to that in Richmond, which is largely black and Hispanic. About two dozen other local and state governments, including Newark, Seattle and a handful of cities in California, are looking at the eminent domain strategy, according to a count by Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor and one of the plan’s chief proponents. Irvington, N.J., passed a resolution supporting its use in July. North Las Vegas will consider an eminent domain proposal in August, and El Monte, Calif., is poised to act after hearing out the opposition this week.
But the cities face an uphill battle. Some have already backed off, and those that proceed will be challenged in court. After San Bernardino County dropped the idea earlier this year, a network of housing groups and unions began working to win community support and develop nonprofit alternatives to Mortgage Resolution Partners, the firm that is managing the Richmond program.
“Our local electeds can’t do this alone, they need the backup support from their constituents,” said Amy Schur, a campaign director for the national Home Defenders League. “That’s what’s been the game changer in this effort.”
Richmond is offering to buy both current and delinquent loans. To defend against the charge that irresponsible homeowners who used their homes as A.T.M.’s are being helped at the expense of investors, the first pool of 626 loans does not include any homes with large second mortgages, said Steven M. Gluckstern, the chairman of Mortgage Resolution Partners.
The city is offering to buy the loans at what it considers the fair market value. In a hypothetical example, a home mortgaged for $400,000 is now worth $200,000. The city plans to buy the loan for $160,000, or about 80 percent of the value of the home, a discount that factors in the risk of default.
Then, the city would write down the debt to $190,000 and allow the homeowner to refinance at the new amount, probably through a government program. The $30,000 difference goes to the city, the investors who put up the money to buy the loan, closing costs and M.R.P. The homeowner would go from owing twice what the home is worth to having $10,000 in equity.
All of the loans in question are tied up in what are called private label securities, meaning they were bundled and sold to private investors. Such loans are generally the most unfavorable to borrowers and the most likely to default, Mr. Gluckstern said. But they are also the most difficult to modify because they are controlled by loan servicers and trustees for the investors, not the investors themselves. If Richmond’s purchase offer is declined, the city intends to use eminent domain to condemn and buy the loans.
The banks and the real estate industry have argued that such a move would be unprecedented and unconstitutional. But Mr. Hockett says that all types of property, not just land and buildings, are subject to eminent domain if the government can show it is needed to promote the public good, in this case fighting blight and keeping communities intact. Railroad stocks, private bus companies, sports teams and even some mortgages have been subject to eminent domain.
Opponents, including the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Realtors and some big investors have mounted a concerted opposition campaign on multiple levels, including flying lobbyists to California city halls and pressuring Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration to use their control of the mortgage industry to ban the practice.
Tim Cameron, the head of Sifma’s Asset Management Group, said any city using eminent domain would make borrowing more expensive for everyone in the community and divert profits from the investors who now own the loan to M.R.P. and the investors financing the new program. “Eminent domain is used for roads and schools and bridges that benefit an entire community, not something that cherry-picks who the winners are and who the losers are,” he said.
Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, has introduced a bill that would prohibit Fannie, Freddie and the F.H.A. from making, guaranteeing or insuring a mortgage in any community that has used eminent domain in this way. Eminent domain supporters say such limits would constitute a throwback to the illegal practice called redlining, when banks refused to lend in minority communities.
Opponents have also employed hardball tactics. In North Las Vegas, a mass mailer paid for by real estate brokers warned that M.R.P. had “hatched a plan to make millions of dollars by foreclosing on homeowners who are current on their payments.”
In a letter to the Justice Department, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California complained that the opposition was violating antitrust laws and that one unnamed hedge fund had threatened an investor in the project.
But not all mortgage investors oppose the plan. Some have long argued that writing down homeowner debt makes sense in many cases. “This is not the first choice, but it’s rapidly becoming the only choice on how to fix this mess,” said William Frey, an investor advocate.
Mr. Frey said that the big banks were terrified that if eminent domain strategies became widespread, they would engulf not only primary mortgages but some $450 billion in second liens and home equity loans that are on the banks’ balance sheets. “It has nothing to do with morality or anything like that, it has to do with second liens.”
Many of the communities considering eminent domain were targeted by lenders who steered minority families eligible for conventional mortgages into loans with higher interest rates and ballooning payments. Robert and Patricia Castillo bought a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Richmond because their son, who is severely autistic, would anger landlords with his destructive impulses. They paid $420,000 for a home that is now worth $125,000, Mr. Castillo, a mechanic, said.
They have watched as their daughter’s playmates on the block have, one by one, lost their homes. But they are reluctant to walk away from the house in part for the sake of their son.
“We’re in a bad situation,” Mr. Castillo, 44, said. “Not only me and my family, but the whole of Richmond.”
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Climate change activist ‘surprised’ after being unanimously approved for LA City Council board
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Climate change activist ‘surprised’ after being unanimously approved for LA City Council board
The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday unanimously approved the appointment of environmental activist Aura Vasquez to the Board of Water and Power Commissioners.
Vasquez, director of...
The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday unanimously approved the appointment of environmental activist Aura Vasquez to the Board of Water and Power Commissioners.
Vasquez, director of climate justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, represents a departure from previous commission appointees, who tend to come from the world of politics or business.
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Report Shows Unemployment Rate in Twin Cities 4x Higher for Blacks than Whites
InsightNews - March 18, 2015 - At a press conference and rally last week, NOC released a report as part of a national day of action, showing that the unemployment rate for Blacks in the Twin...
InsightNews - March 18, 2015 - At a press conference and rally last week, NOC released a report as part of a national day of action, showing that the unemployment rate for Blacks in the Twin Cities is four times higher than for whites, calling on the Federal Reserve to prioritize full employment in all communities. "Minnesota is a great place to live, if you're white," said NOC executive director Anthony Newby. "The unemployment rate is 2.8%. But for black folks, unemployment is over ten percent--crisis levels. The Federal Reserve is considering raising interest rates because Wall Street thinks the economy has recovered. But that would only increase unemployment, especially in communities of color."
"Historically, the African-American community has been cut out of opportunities the government was supposedly providing to everyone--for example, homeownership programs that African-Americans could not participate in, public education programs that African-Americans were either cut out of or cut short, livable wage jobs that African-Americans would not be considered for," said Pastor Paul Slack, pastor of New Creation Church in Minneapolis and President of ISAIAH. "It's time for the Federal Reserve to act specifically in the interest of the African-American community and other low-income communities, by keeping interest rates low so that we can rebuild the wealth that was stolen from us through this recent economic crisis."Joe Elliott worked at the Target Center for five years until he was unexpectedly laid off. "I liked the job--I met a lot of great people, and went to concerts and games. But I didn't like the money. I deserve more than $8.40/hour. It wasn't supporting my daily living--bills, kids, transportation. But it's hard looking for a job as an African-American male.""The Minneapolis Fed President, Narayana Kocherlakota, has expressed support for keeping interest rates low," said Anthony Newby. "That's great. But he's also retiring in a year. We need an open and transparent process for community input on the next Minneapolis Fed president."The Federal Reserve has a key policymaking meeting coming up in mid-March.
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Capitolwire: Report, Teachers' Unions Want Legislature to Mandate Stricter Audits of “Cash Cow” Charter School Industry
Capitolwire - October 1, by Christen Smith - A report released Wednesday insists meager state oversight has allowed charter school officials to defraud taxpayers out of $30 million over the last...
Capitolwire - October 1, by Christen Smith - A report released Wednesday insists meager state oversight has allowed charter school officials to defraud taxpayers out of $30 million over the last 17 years.
And “that's just scratching the surface of the problem,” says Ted Kirsch, president of the American Federation of Teachers' Pennsylvania chapter.
“It's only talking about what's being reported and there are other things that haven't gotten to the surface yet and they are still being investigated,” he said during an interview Wednesday. “The (fraud) problem is a lot more widespread.”
The Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education and Action United authored the 15-page report last month in which it calls for a moratorium on new charters while the state Attorney General's office investigates all 174 charter schools for potential fraud. The report also pushes the General Assembly to mandate annual fraud risk assessments capable of detecting and preventing waste and abuse.
“While the state has complex, multi-layered systems of oversight in the charter system, this history of financial fraud makes it clear that these systems are not effectively detecting or preventing fraud,” the report reads. “Indeed, the vast majority of fraud was uncovered by whistle-blowers and media exposes, not by the state's oversight agencies.”
The report's index details allegations of fraud against 11 separate charter schools across the state. At least nine of the charter school officials mentioned in the report have pleaded guilty and received prison sentences.
“It’s time for lawmakers to stop providing charter industry players a blank check with little oversight and no accountability,” said Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, the parent organization of the Pennsylvania State Education Association. “...For students in all types of schools—traditional, charter or magnet—the key is having a sound structure for oversight and accountability, while providing educators with autonomy to create great learning environments for their students. Let’s work with families, educators and community members to make sure all students can attend great schools that meet their needs.”
“What's lacking here is a process to hold the charter operators accountable,” Kirsch said. “We need some laws that govern the accounting procedures and how money is handled by charter operators. These people are making a lot of money. It's a cash cow.”
Tim Eller, spokesman for the Department of Education, criticized the report Wednesday for “failing to mention” the state uses the same accounting practices for both public schools and charter schools.
“All public schools, including charter schools, are subject to audits by the state Auditor General,” he said. “The Auditor General is charged with ensuring that public entities are using taxpayer dollars for their intended purpose.”
Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he couldn't confirm the report's $30 million figure, but said “we have found waste in the system,” particularly related to the issues of lease reimbursement and special education funding.
The auditor general uncovered “$1.2 million in improper lease reimbursements” in an August 2013 audit of Chester Community Charter School — Pennsylvania's largest. He said Wednesday lease reimbursement fraud represents about half of the charter cases his office has uncovered.
The audit found that Chester Community Charter School's founders sold the original building to a non-profit organization for $50.7 million, then created a for-profit management company to run the charter school, all the while collecting illegal reimbursement payments from the state for the buildings.
When asked about the report’s proposals regarding more oversight, DePasquale said: “If we had more resources, certainly we could audit more schools. That's absolutely true. But we need partners at the Department of Education to respond when we do find issues.”
DePasquale also suggested the General Assembly pass charter school reform that would address fraud involving lease reimbursements.
Two separate pieces of legislation — House Bill 6188 and Senate Bill 1085 — included measures to improve transparency and accountability in charter schools, but both bills have been stalled in the opposing chambers since budget negotiations wrapped up in July.
“House Bill 618 which passed the House in September of 2013 was basically loaded with accountability measures related to governing audits and academic performance,” said Steve Miskin, spokesperson for House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny. “We are hoping the Senate passes it.”
Senate leadership did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
“If the widespread allegations mentioned in the report prove to be true, then those guilty should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” said Bob Fayfich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, in a statement released Wednesday. “However, the report draws sweeping conclusions about the entire charter sector based on only 11 cited incidents in the course of almost 20 years, while ignoring numerous alleged and actual fraud and fiscal mismanagement in the districts over that same time period, which dwarf the charter school allegations in terms of alleged misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
Fayfich says the coalition supports mandating more stringent audits in the name of accountability, but doesn't think the public sector should be exempt.
“If the authors’ recommendations are to conduct a fraud audit of every charter school based on the actual and alleged misdeeds of a few, and initiate a moratorium on all charter schools until those audits are complete, then, in the name of intellectual integrity, the same recommendations should apply to traditional public school districts,” he said. “Fraud and fiscal mismanagement are wrong and cannot be tolerated, but to highlight them in one sector and ignore them in another indicates a motivation to target one type of public school for a political agenda.”
Renee Martin, acting communications director for the Attorney General Kathleen Kane, said Wednesday a copy of the report “has been shared with our attorneys.”
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