Former Fed Adviser, Activists Lay Out a Plan for Change at the Fed
Former Fed Adviser, Activists Lay Out a Plan for Change at the Fed
A former Federal Reserve adviser is joining with an activist group to argue for overhauls at the central bank that they say would distance it from Wall Street and make its activities more...
A former Federal Reserve adviser is joining with an activist group to argue for overhauls at the central bank that they say would distance it from Wall Street and make its activities more transparent and accountable to the public.
Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin—special adviser to Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen between 2010 and 2012 when they were Fed chairman and vice chairwoman—is pressing for the overhaul with Fed Up coalition activists.
Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin, special adviser to then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke between 2010 to 2012, is pressing for the overhaul with Fed Up coalition activists. Many of the proposed changes target the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which are quasi-private and technically owned by commercial banks in their respective districts.
“A lot of people would be stunned to know” the extent to which the Federal Reserve is privately owned, Mr. Levin said. The Fed “should be a fully public institution just like every other central bank” in the developed world, he said in a conference call announcing the plan. He described his proposals as “sensible, pragmatic and nonpartisan.”
The former central bank staffer said he sees his ideas as designed to maintain the virtues the central bank already brings to the table. They aren’t targeted at changing how policy is conducted today. “What’s important here is that reform to the Federal Reserve can last for 100 years, not just the near term,” he said.
That said, what is being sought by Mr. Levin and the activists is significant and would require congressional action. Ady Barkan, who leads the Fed Up campaign, said the Fed’s current structure “is an embarrassment to America” and Fed leaders haven’t been “willing or able” to make changes.
A Federal Reserve spokesman declined to address the proposal.
Mr. Levin wants the 12 regional Fed banks to be brought fully into the government. He also wants the process of selecting new bank presidents—they are key regulators and contributors in setting interest-rate policy—opened up more fully to public input, as well as term limits for Fed officials.
Mr. Levin’s proposal was made in conjunction with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up coalition, a group that has been pressuring the central bank for more accountability for some time. The left-leaning group has been critical of the structure of the regional banks, and has been pressing the Fed to hold off on raising rates in a bid to make sure the recovery is enjoyed not just by the wealthy, in their view.
The proposal was revealed on a conference call that also included a representative from Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, although all campaigns were invited to participate.
Mr. Levin says the members of the regional Fed bank boards of directors, the majority of whom are selected by the private banks with the approval of the Washington-based governors, should be chosen differently. The professor says director slots now reserved for financial professionals regulated by the Fed should be eliminated, and that directors who oversee and advise the regional banks should be selected in a public process involving the Washington governors and local elected officials. These directors also should better represent the diversity of the U.S.
Mr. Levin also wants formal public input into the selection of new bank presidents, with candidates’ names known publicly and a process that allows for public comment in a way that doesn’t now exist. The professor also wants all Fed officials to serve for single seven-year terms, which would give them the needed distance from the political process while eliminating situations where some policy makers stay at the bank for decades. Alan Greenspan, for example, was Fed chairman from 1987 to 2006.
With multiple vacancies in recent years, the selection of regional bank presidents has become a hot-button issue. Currently, the leaders of the New York, Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis Fed banks are helmed by men who formerly worked for or had close connections to investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Levin called for watchdog agency the Government Accountability Office to annually review and report on Fed operations, including the regional Fed banks. He also wants the regional Fed banks to be covered under the Freedom of Information Act. A regular annual review hopefully would insulate the effort from perceptions of political interference, Mr. Levin said.
By Michael S. Derby
Source
Fed's Williams vows more transparency after meeting with Fed Up
San Francisco Fed President John Williams has promised more transparency after a rare meeting with a coalition of community and labor groups which also urged the U.S. central banker to keep...
San Francisco Fed President John Williams has promised more transparency after a rare meeting with a coalition of community and labor groups which also urged the U.S. central banker to keep interest rates low.
Williams largely dismissed their call to hold off on interest-rate hikes, repeating his mantra that monetary policy will depend on economic data. But he said the meeting earlier this week pushed him to "think a little more proactively" about how the Fed recruits and promotes top management.
"I want the Fed to be more transparent," Williams said in an interview. "We've learned along the way that this process of selecting presidents and other aspects of the Fed are not that clear to the public. We should make it more open."
While the San Francisco Fed is not searching for a president or first vice-president, "we want to make sure not only are we doing it right, but also in the future maybe to move the ball forward even further," he said.
He noted that the Minneapolis Fed's openness about its ongoing presidential search is one example to learn from.
The Fed's perceived opaqueness has drawn increasing fire in recent months, with Fed Chair Janet Yellen in testimony this week standing her ground against Congressional efforts to subject the Fed to more oversight. Regional Fed banks' executive searches are also under scrutiny for apparent insularity.
Williams said the meeting also reminded him that despite strengthening overall economic growth, there are "a significant number of people who are left behind and struggling."
One example is Ebony Isler, who ran a hairdressing business until recession-hit clients could not afford her services.
Now, as a part-time cashier at the San Francisco Giants' downtown ballpark, she relies on high-interest loans to bridge her paydays.
"I can't find a job that pays me enough to be self-sufficient," Isler said in an interview after she and a dozen other members of the non-profit group Fed Up met with Williams on Monday.
The group, which first grabbed national attention last summer when it crashed the Kansas City Fed's annual central bankers' meeting in Jackson Hole Wyoming, presented Williams a report arguing that as long as inflation and wage growth remains dull, the Fed should keep rates near zero. (/news/mind-gap-how-federal-reserve-can-help-raise-wages-america-s-women-and-men)
Williams regularly meets with bankers and chief executives.
Meeting with activists, he said, "helps you to think concretely about why are people out of the labor force, what are the problems they are facing."
The group has also sat down with Yellen, Kansas City Fed President Esther George and Boston Fed chief Eric Rosengren.
Source: CNBC
Advice From Seattle: On Local Level Citizen Activism After The Sanders Campaign
Advice From Seattle: On Local Level Citizen Activism After The Sanders Campaign
As the 2016 primary season ends and Bernie Sanders backers look beyond next month’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, many who’ve “felt the Bern” have their eye on local politics.
...
As the 2016 primary season ends and Bernie Sanders backers look beyond next month’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, many who’ve “felt the Bern” have their eye on local politics.
Hundreds, if not thousands, will be heeding the call of Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a Sanders’ endorser and convention delegate.
“We need people running for school boards,” Ellison told the New York Times in May. “We need people running for City Council. We need people running for state legislatures. We need people running for zoning boards, for park boards, to really take this sort of message that Bernie carried and carry it in their own local communities.”
Fortunately of those seeking relevant political advice, former Seattle City Councilor Nick Licata has just published Becoming A Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies, & Advice For Changing Our World (Sasquatch Books, 2016). His book draws on several decades of experience as a progressive elected official and varied campus and community organizing work before that.
Like Sanders, Licata was a Sixties’ radical. He belonged to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Bowling Green State University and learned retail politics, at the dormitory level, when he ran successfully for student government president.
Like some Sanders supporters who may become candidates in the near future, Licata had an unconventional resume when he first sought public office. He had lived in a well-known Seattle commune for twenty years and founded two alternative publishing ventures, the People’s Yellow Pages and the Seattle Sun. A Democrat with Green Party sympathies, he defeated a candidate who was backed by the mainstream media and out-spent him 2-to-1.
“In the previous 128 city council elections, only two candidates had won when both daily newspapers endorsed their opponent,” Licata reports, so “the odds didn’t look good.” Fortunately, his message that the city should invest more resources “in all neighborhoods and not concentrate them in just a few” resonated with an electoral coalition of “young renters” and “older home-owners.” Licata’s own track record of neighborhood activism gave him the necessary name recognition and grassroots street cred to win.
NIMBYism or More?
Becoming A Citizen Activist is full of useful tips about how activists and allied politicians can collaborate on issue-oriented campaigns. His book makes clear that “going local” is different from backing a presidential campaign focused on national and international questions. According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things.” By that, the author means linking voter concerns about global threats like climate change to concrete and achievable steps that city government can take to address local manifestations of the larger problem.
He describes how Seattle’s four years of skirmishing over plastic bag regulation originated in one neighborhood’s opposition to a new waste transfer station. What might have been just another exercise in NIMBYism evolved into a city-wide push for waste reduction, at its source, plus much greater recycling. A plastic bag fee, imposed by the city council, was overturned after a plastic bag industry-funded referendum campaign but the city’s ban on Styrofoam containers survived. In 2011, the city council passed a broad ban on single-use plastic bags, which the industry opted not to challenge either in court or at the polls.
Licata’s other examples of progressive policy initiatives include raising local labor standards, strengthening civilian oversight over the police, providing greater protection for undocumented immigrants, decriminalizing marijuana possession, and using cultural programs to foster a sense of community.
Several of his most interesting case studies reveal the tendency of legislators—even liberal-minded ones—to be overly timid and skeptical about policy initiatives that push the envelope. In 2011, for example, Licata tried to lower the expectations of constituents who met with him about a paid sick leave mandate opposed by local employers. “I cautioned that it was not likely that we’d see it anytime soon,” he admits in the book.
Yet, less than nine months later, he was “shown to be wrong.” Not only was there sufficient public support but “well organized advocacy groups” marshaled “a wealth of data to prove that the sky wouldn’t fall if paid sick leave passed.”
Several years later, when some Seattle fast food workers staged union-backed job actions to highlight their minimum wage demand, it was the same story:
“....Politicians like me were sympathetic but also felt that fifteen dollars was way too big a lift. In my own case, I thought there were more readily achievable goals—like fighting wage theft. I found myself initially offering cautious verbal support and not much more.”
What made Seattle’s “fight for fifteen” winnable was grassroots organizing by local labor organizations and left-wing activists, who were able to inject the issue into the 2013 mayoral race between incumbent Mike McGinn and his challenger, state senator Ed Murray. Shortly before the election, Murray endorsed a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour while McGinn insisted that Washington state should take action instead of the city.
Key Socialist Presence
That year, it also made a big difference to have an energetic and charismatic socialist candidate running for city council under the “Fight for Fifteen” banner. Kshama Sawant took on Richard Conlin, “a well-liked liberal politician” who cast the city council’s lone vote against paid sick leave and opposed raising the minimum wage without further study. According to Licata, Conlin, like McGinn, was defeated due to the votes of “many disaffected Democrats who wanted more aggressive council members willing to speak out on issues.”
Once elected, Sawant was quick to utilize what Licata calls “the unique means that public officials have to help mobilize the public.” Among these are holding public hearings, forming issue-oriented or constituency-based task forces and commissions, and backing ballot measures like the threatened popular referendum on “15 Now” that kept Mayor Murray and his allies from weakening minimum wage legislation more than they did in 2014.
Yet when Sawant—a generation younger than Licata—first ran against his longtime colleague, Richard Conlin, the council’s most left-leaning member didn’t support her. In Becoming a Citizen Activist, Licata now acknowledges Sawant’s unusual strengths as a radical politician, including her social media savvy, “dedicated following,” and ability to project “a message that resonated with the public.” Her tweets, blogging, and website use “helped her obtain 80 percent citywide name recognition after a year on the council, far surpassing all the other council members,” Licata reports.
According to the author, local pollsters surveying the relative popularity of city councilors prior to Seattle’s 2015 election found that Sawant’s “numbers were higher than all the others but mine, and I beat her by only one point.” These results might explain why Mayor Murray and the Seattle business community failed to unseat their Socialist Alternative critic when she ran for re-election last year, with Licata’s backing this time. (Licata himself chose to retire from the city council.)
New Forms of Organization
Readers interested in further detail about their over-lapping council careers will have to wait for American Socialist, a political memoir by Sawant (to be published by Verso next year) or Jonathan Rosenblum’s forthcoming book for Beacon Press about labor and politics in Seattle. Rosenblum worked on Sawant’s re-election campaign which, in his view, demonstrated “the indispensability of organization” and an “independent political base.”
Unlike Licata’s own more typical electoral efforts in the past, Sawant’s “campaign strategies and tactics were not directed by a single candidate or campaign manager.” Instead, Rosenblum points out, they were “developed through collective, thoughtful discussions” among Socialist Alternative members who live in Seattle and “are connected to a broader base of union and community activists.” (See http://www.alternet.org/activism/socialist-win-seattle-anomaly-or-harbinger)
One limitation of Licata’s book is the absence of any discussion about fielding slates of progressive candidates who are committed to a common platform that includes rejection of corporate contributions. To his credit, Licata did play a major role in creating the multi-city network of progressive elected officials known as Local Progress. In the Bay Area, this group includes Richmond, CA. city councilor (and former mayor) Gayle McLaughlin, whose Richmond Progressive Alliance only runs candidates who spurn business donations.
Nationally, about 400 mayors, city councilors, county supervisors, and school board members use Local Progress as a “think tank” and clearing house for alternative public policies. Assisted by the Center for Popular Democracy in New York, the group distributes a 60-page handbook for improving labor and environmental standards, housing and education programs, public safety, and municipal election practices. At annual conferences—like its national meeting in Pittsburgh on July 8-9—local victories of the sort Licata describes in his book are dissected and their lessons disseminated. (For details, see http://localprogress.org/)
Local Progress leaders believe that neither street politics nor electoral victories alone will make a sufficient dent in the status quo. As Licata told his fellow “electeds” when they met in New York two years ago, municipal government changes for the better only when progressives have “an outside and inside game...people on the inside and people protesting on the outside to provide insiders with backbone.” Licata’s new book provides many useful examples of that necessary synergy.
(Steve Early is a longtime labor activist and author of a forthcoming book about progressive politics in Richmond, California entitled Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City (Beacon Press, 2017). A version of this review appeared originally in Working In These Times, He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com)
By Steve Early
Source
Groups demand recovery money for Puerto Rico
The Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road CT plan to deliver postcards at the Bridgeport office of U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, demanding Congress "have a heart" and send an aid package to...
The Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road CT plan to deliver postcards at the Bridgeport office of U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, demanding Congress "have a heart" and send an aid package to Puerto Rico with no additional oversight or austerity measures.
"The efforts also preview a larger mobilization on the 6-month anniversary of Hurricane Maria, when hundreds of activists from across the country will travel to Washington, D.C. to demand a comprehensive aid package for Puerto Rico that does not impose more austerity, oversight or privatization," said Julio López Varona, a spokesman for the group.
Read the full article here.
Proposed Legislation Could Grant State Citizenship to Undocumented Immigrants
SILive.com - June 16, 2014, by Ryan Lavis - With the legislative session in Albany scheduled to end this week, one New York lawmaker is pushing legislation that would grant sweeping rights of...
SILive.com - June 16, 2014, by Ryan Lavis - With the legislative session in Albany scheduled to end this week, one New York lawmaker is pushing legislation that would grant sweeping rights of citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants and non-citizens, including the right to vote and access to healthcare.
The New York Is Home Act, sponsored by Bronx state Senator Gustavo Rivera, would provide benefits to non-citizens who meet certain criteria.
Requirements include proof of residence in New York state for at least 3 years, pledges to abide by New York laws and uphold the state constitution, as well as a willingness to serve on New York juries. Additionally, non-citizens would also have had to pay state taxes for at least 3 years.
After meeting these criteria, non-citizens would receive a form of state citizenship that includes the right to vote in all state and local elections and hold certain public offices. Additionally, they would have access to college financial aid and health insurance programs, and the ability to apply for drivers and professional licenses, according to a summary of the bill.
Staten Island Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) opposed the bill.
"Extending the privilege of voting to those in our country illegally devalues United States citizenship and further erodes the incentive to enter the country through safe and proper channels," Ms. Malliotakis said in a statement. "While some of us are fighting to protect taxpaying citizens, others are looking to give rights and benefits to non-citizens. It is a shame that during these last days of session, this is the priority of some legislators."
State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) questioned the logistics of the bill, and noted the responsibility of such immigration reform should ultimately fall on Congress.
"These are issues that rightfully belong to the federal government, and we need a Congress more willing to develop comprehensive solutions to citizenship," Sen. Savino said.
According to the bill, this legislation would not interfere with the federal government's authority to regulate immigration.
The bills sponsor told the Daily News that he does not expect his legislation to pass anytime soon.
"Obviously this is not something that's going to pass immediately, but nothing as broad as this or as bold as this passes immediately," Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), told the Daily News.
Source
Divest From Prisons, Invest in People—What Justice for Black Lives Really Looks Like
Divest From Prisons, Invest in People—What Justice for Black Lives Really Looks Like
This article is the second part of a series of conversations with contributors to the demands of the Movement for Black Lives. Part One was on reparations.
In July 2015, more than 2,000...
This article is the second part of a series of conversations with contributors to the demands of the Movement for Black Lives. Part One was on reparations.
In July 2015, more than 2,000 members of The Movement for Black Lives—a group composed of more than 50 racial justice organizations—convened in Cleveland to recognize the violence committed against Black people in this country and around the world. At the assembly, participants decided the Movement needed to form a coalition that articulated concrete ways to build a more equitable society. Six legislative platforms emerged that covered issues like economic justice, reparations, political empowerment, and divestment from policing and incarceration. In their Invest-Divest platform, the authors called instead for investment in programming, like restorative justice initiatives, that would decrease incarceration and strengthen communities.
We’ve come to accept policing and incarceration as catch-all solutions.
According to the Brookings Institution, White Americans are equally likely to use and more likely to deal drugs, while African Americans are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and sentenced harshly. For U.S. residents born in 2001, the Bureau of Justice Statistics predicts that 1 in 111 White women will go to prison in her lifetime, while 1 in 18 Black women will. For White men, the likelihood is 1 in 17; for Black men, 1 in 3.
“At the heart of the Invest-Divest demand is the recognition that our city, state, and federal budgets reflect the dehumanization, and the degradation of Black life through lack of investment in anything besides Black incarceration or surveillance,” says Marbre Stahly-Butts, co-author of demands from the Invest-Divest platform that call for reallocating government funds from law enforcement to long-term safety, and decriminalizing drug and prostitution crimes.
Stahly-Butts, a facilitator of the Cleveland convening and deputy director of racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, explains that our current criminal justice system is based on a premise of comfort, rather than of safety: Instead of addressing the roots of uncomfortable issues such as drug addiction, mental illness, and poverty, we’ve come to accept policing and incarceration as catch-all solutions. This disproportionally affects African Americans.
Here she discusses why divestment from the prison and military industries is as critical to a just future as investment in public institutions.
The following interview has been lightly edited.
Liza Bayless: How does the Invest-Divest platform play into the Movement for Black Lives?
Marbre Stahly-Butts: The call for Invest-Divest has been at the center of organizing and activism work for at least the last decade, if not more. Since slavery, but especially in the age of mass incarceration in the last 30 or so years, [there has been an] incredible increase in the amount of spending that goes to police departments—to cages, prisons and jails, corrections offices, military equipment, and surveillance equipment. At the same time, [there has been] divestment from the social safety net, from social services and education to affordable housing.
What makes our communities safe is not more guns, more police, or more cages.
What makes our communities safe is not more guns, more police, or more cages, but employment opportunities, safe housing, jobs, education, restorative justice. To live in the world we’re envisioning requires a real investment—both by private parties, but also by public dollars.
Bayless: In August, the Department of Justice announced it would end use of private prisons. How significant is this step?
Stahly-Butts: It’s an important step and in many ways a symbolic step, but I think it’s essential that states follow suit. The caging of our people actually happens on a local level, and so the same week that the Department of Justice made that announcement, I believe in Florida they decided to continue contracts with local prisons and, in fact, expand them.
Most of our people are kept in public facilities, so there’s a real need to decarcerate and not just de-profitize. It would matter a lot if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did it, because that’s, in fact, where most of the [prison] beds are.
A month [after the announcement], the Department of Justice released guidelines around its increased funding of police officers and officers in schools. So it’s important to realize that the criminalization—and the incarceration—of our people really is something that the government has not divested from, and in some ways has actively continued.
There’s a lot of work to be done, but I was pleased about implications of ending those contracts.
Bayless: Usually we hear from organizations about investment more than divestment. What makes the concept of divestment so important to this platform?
Stahly-Butts: I think that we see a general narrative on the left around the need to increase infrastructure and investment. Obama, Clinton, and other progressives constantly affirm their commitment to investment strategies, whether it’s health care, job programs, or educational funding. But the divestment piece is essential to a conversation around the livelihood, wealth, health, and survival of Black, brown, and poor communities.
There has to be a conversation about real solutions to incarceration.
If we continue to lock up and put one of every three Black men under police control; if we continue to incarcerate Black women at the highest-growing rates; and continue surveillance and denying people [driver’s] licenses and housing opportunities when they are out of incarceration, [then] we’re undermining our investments if we’re not also divesting from these systems that have led to this mass criminalization of folks for behaviors that often have nothing to do with public safety.
Bayless: The topic of mass incarceration has been at the forefront of the country’s conversations about racial injustice. Is there something missing from that discussion?
Stahly-Butts: It’s essential that we talk about the entire purview of things that don’t belong under the criminal code, from the way poverty is criminalized to the ways homelessness is criminalized. Even in Florida, wearing saggy pants [has been criminalized].
There has to be a conversation about real solutions to incarceration, and not just changing the practices of putting people in cages, but also changing the entire orientation for communities that criminalize them en masse, that have police in schools, that believe that the only answer to mental health and other issues is cages and handcuffs. There’s a real need for cultural change and a social conversation about the roots of the system, and other ways to deal with these issues that is not state violence.
Bayless: By focusing on decriminalization of certain crimes—in this case, nonviolent ones such as drug and prostitution crimes—as fundamentally different from “violent” crimes, is there a risk people convicted of the latter could end up with harsher sentences?
Stahly-Butts: There’s a false dichotomy between violent and nonviolent crimes. We often talk about it as if there’s some fine line, but in fact every state, every city defines that differently. Whether we’re talking about crimes that hurt people or impact property, or crimes that are about mental health or drug addiction, the idea of investment is key to all of them.
Folks are working locally to realize what it means to build alternative structures to criminal justice.
If we use the money that we’re currently using to cage people, and take the literally trillions of dollars to invest in the well-being of our people—in jobs, education, trauma-informed services, restorative justice—we would see a real addressing of all sorts of social issues, including the ones that make people less safe.
Bayless: Anything else you’d like to add about this platform?
Stahly-Butts: Folks are working locally to realize what it means to build alternative structures to criminal justice, to divest from policing and invest in communities. Despite the past two years—where we’ve seen literally dozens of Black folks be killed on video, and uprisings in communities from Baltimore to Ferguson—we’ve seen incredible movement and energy.
By Liza Bayless
Source
Taking on the Private Prison Industry’s Corporate Backers
Activists are trying to combat both the accelerated tracking and detaining of immigrants and the use of for-profit prisons to hold them by targeting the big banks that prop up for-profit prison...
Activists are trying to combat both the accelerated tracking and detaining of immigrants and the use of for-profit prisons to hold them by targeting the big banks that prop up for-profit prison companies.
Read the full article here.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Challenger Has a Chance
During the presidential primary, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has managed the impressive feat of angering virtually every liberal in America. Bernie Sanders ...
During the presidential primary, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has managed the impressive feat of angering virtually every liberal in America. Bernie Sanders supporters think she displays a transparent biasfor Hillary Clinton. Party stalwarts, including Clinton fans, criticize the decision tohide primary debates on weekend nights, ceding hours of free media time to Republicans in the formative stages of the election. And in a recent interview with the New York Times Magazine, Wasserman Schultz insulted millennial women for being “complacent” about abortion rights. This is an incomplete list.
In two separate petitions, more than 94,000 people have demanded that Wasserman Schultz resign as DNC chair. But back in her district, in Hollywood, Florida, Timothy Canova has another idea: vote her out of office.
Last Thursday, Canova, a former aide to the late Sen. Paul Tsongas and a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law, jumped into the Democratic primary in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. It’s Wasserman Schultz’s first primary challenge ever, and with frustration running high against her, it’s almost certain to draw national attention. But Canova first became interested in challenging Wasserman Schultz not because of her actions as DNC chair, but because of her record.
“This is the most liberal county in all of Florida,” Canova said in an interview, referring to Broward County, where most of Wasserman Schultz’s district resides (a small portion is in northern Miami-Dade County). But she more closely associates with her significant support from corporate donors, Canova argued. He listed several of Wasserman Schultz’s votes, such as blocking the SEC and IRS from disclosing corporate political spending (which was part of last month’s omnibus spending bill),opposing a medical marijuana ballot measure that got 58 percent of the vote in Florida, preventing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from regulating discrimination in auto lending and opposing their rules cracking down on payday lending, and supporting “fast track” authority for trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“I think anyone who voted for fast track should be primaried. I believe that ordinary citizens have to step up,” Canova said.
Canova espouses many of the populist themes that attract the left: fighting corporate power, defending organized labor, and reducing income inequality. But this is not just a Bernie Sanders Democrat. You have to go back further. Tim Canova is a Marriner Eccles Democrat.
Eccles chaired the Federal Reserve during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. And Canova believes the central bank should revisit Eccles’s unorthodox strategies to jump-start a broad-based economic recovery. “In the 1930s, the regional Fed banks made loans directly to the people,” Canova said. “Instead of purchasing $4 trillion in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, [the Fed] could buy short-term municipal bonds and drive the yield to zero for state and local governments. They could push money into infrastructure, making loans to state infrastructure banks.” Canova has even suggested that the government create currency outside of the central bank, breaking their monopoly on the money supply, as President Abraham Lincoln did with the “Greenback” in the 1860s.
During World War II, FDR directed Eccles’s Fed to finance American war debt at low rates, eventually producing a stimulus that helped to end the Great Depression. It was a time when the Fed was far more accountable to democratically elected institutions, one that Canova looks back upon fondly. “People like to talk about the Fed’s independence, that’s really a cover for the Fed’s capture,” he said. “They look out for elite groups in society, and the hell with everybody else.”
A growing faction of progressives are beginning to return to their roots, asking whether Fed policies truly support the public interest. The Fed Up campaign, with which Canova has consulted, seeks to pressure the Fed to adopt pro-worker policies. A surprise movement in Congress just cut a 100 year-old subsidy the Fed handed out to banks by $7 billion. Even mainstream figures like economist Larry Summerswonder whether the Fed’s hybrid public/private structure, which critics believe makes it beholden to financial interests, makes sense.
Progressive debates on central banking are not as advanced here as in Europe, where British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wants a “quantitative easing for people,” where the central bank injects money directly into the economy rather than filtering it through financial institutions. But Canova, who says his views were most influenced by an undergraduate economics professor who taught with one book—John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money—bridges this gap. Twenty years ago this week, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Timesopposing the reappointment of Alan Greenspan as Fed chair because of his support for high real interest rates. If elected this fall, he would instantly become the strongest advocate in Congress for a people’s Fed.
While Debbie Wasserman Schultz has few known views on the Federal Reserve, Canova’s populism offers a strong counterweight to her corporate-tinged philosophy. And even before that contrast plays out, the hunger for any challenge to Wasserman Schultz is palpable.
“The money is coming in more rapidly than believable,” said Howie Klein, co-founder of Blue America PAC, which raises money for progressive Democrats. Wasserman Schultz has been on Klein’s radar since she, as chair of the “Red to Blue” campaign for electing House Democrats, refused to campaign against three Republicans in Florida because of prior friendships and their joint support for the state sugar industry.
Klein sent a Blue America fundraising email shortly after Canova’s announcement, and raised $7,000 within 12 hours, and over $10,000 at last count. The intensity of support reached beyond the PAC’s traditional donor base. “Our average donation is $45, but in this case we’re getting $3, $5,” Klein said. “For people who our donors have never heard of, it can take three-four months to do that. It’s just because ofDebbie Wasserman Schultz.”
Similarly, Canova says he’s seeing tens of thousands of visits to his website andFacebook page, suggesting support beyond south Florida. However, he wants to localize rather than nationalize the race. The district, initially drawn with Wasserman Schultz’s input when she served in the Florida state Senate, is now more Hispanic and less reliable for a politician who Canova believes has lost touch with her constituents.
“You talk to people at the Broward County Democratic clubs, they say she takes us for granted,” Canova said. The political model for his campaign is David Brat, another academic who took on a party leader—then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor—and defeated him, on the grounds that Cantor ignored his district amid constant corporate fundraising.
If there’s one thing Wasserman Schultz can do, it’s raise money—that’s why she chairs the party. She will have a big cash advantage and the power of incumbency. But Canova thinks he can outmatch her by riding the populist tide. “There’s a tendency to get so down about the system, but this is an interesting moment we’re living in,” Canova said. “This is a grassroots movement. We’re tapping in without even trying yet.”
Source: The New Republic
Mayor, council declare paid sick leave 'do-over'
Crain's New York Business - January 17, 2014, by Andrew Hawkins - Acting on one of his main campaign promises just three weeks into his administration, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a bill to...
Crain's New York Business - January 17, 2014, by Andrew Hawkins - Acting on one of his main campaign promises just three weeks into his administration, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a bill to significantly expand the city's paid sick leave law to apply to businesses with as few as five employees.
Flanked by his new partner atop city government, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, as well as a majority of the city's new elected leaders, the mayor effectively declared a "do-over" on paid sick days. They will re-introduce the original bill, which lacks many of the current law's concessions that had been included by former Council Speaker Christine Quinn at the behest of the business community.
"Paid sick leave legislation works for everyone," Mr. de Blasio said, standing outside an Ecuadorian restaurant in Bushwick, in response to a reporter's question about concerns from small businesses. "It improves productivity, it improves the retention of workers, and it creates a better environment for customers."
The new bill would apply to every business in the city with five or more employees. There will be no phase-in period (the current law to take effect April 1 would only apply to businesses with 20 or more employees, and drop to a 15-employee threshold after one year), nor will it have "economic trigger" language that would delay the legislation if the economy slumps; Ms. Quinn had insisted on such a provision in the law that passed last year.
An exemption for the manufacturing sector will be removed, and grandparents, aunts and uncles will be added to the definition of family members allowed to take days off to care for ill children. The Department of Consumer Affairs will still be the enforcing agency, even though it currently lacks the capacity of a regulatory body, not to mention a commissioner appointed by Mr. de Blasio.
"This is basically the original legislation that for three years had a supermajority [in the council]," Mr. de Blasio said, referring to a veto-proof majority.
Ms. Mark-Viverito, fresh off her win of the speaker's race, said there would be committee hearings, but seemed to imply that there had been enough debate already.
"There was no deal struck," she said bluntly. "This is a conversation that has been going on for many years."
There was some grumbling from Republicans in the City Council. Council Minority Leader Vincent Ignizio said the bill was "well-intentioned," but questioned the timing of the announcement.
"Ultimately we're putting an additional imposition on small business," he said. "And it's just going to force small businesses to reduce their workforce."
Mr. de Blasio said that with the passage of the new bill, paid sick leave benefits will be extended to an additional 355,000 workers in the city, mostly in the retail and food-service industries.
Business groups that for years fought the bill seemed resigned in their reactions that a new progressive era had descended on city government. The Manhattan and Brooklyn chambers of commerce both released statements applauding the mayor and City Council for addressing the needs of workers in New York.
"We do continue to be concerned with the costs of doing business in New York City and the burdens placed on the backs of the small business owners," said Nancy Ploeger, president of the Manhattan chamber.
Michael Weber, co-chair of the Hospitality Practice Group at Littler Mendelson, the nation's largest labor and employment law firm, echoed that sentiment.
"It makes it even more difficult for small businesses to be profitable and to be competitive," he said of the bill.
But James Copeland, director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy, said the measure would still ban employees from taking private legal action against their employers.
"In other words, you're going to require that there be an administrative action, not to get private lawyers suing businesses on this stuff," he said. "That's actually better than some other cities that have this type of legislation."
Mr. de Blasio argued that other cities with similar laws experienced no negative ramifications. "What we've seen in Seattle, San Francisco, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, more recently Philadelphia—all over the country you see this consistent movement where states and localities are moving in this direction because it's been proven to work," he said.
But in San Francisco, which has a universal paid sick leave law, studies suggest the impact has strained some businesses. According to a study conducted in 2011 by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, almost one third of businesses affected by the ordinance had some difficulty administering the changes and roughly 14% saw a marked decrease in their profitability after implementation.
Still, Mr. de Blasio boasted that New York's law would be "the strongest in the nation," and said that this and other policies signaled a new direction for City Hall.
"This City Hall is going to be on the side of working families," he said.
Source
Interviews for Resistance: New Progressive Coalition Calls for “Millions of Jobs”
Interviews for Resistance: New Progressive Coalition Calls for “Millions of Jobs”
A coalition of unions and other progressive organizations is pushing lawmakers on a jobs and infrastructure bill that would put millions of people to work.
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A coalition of unions and other progressive organizations is pushing lawmakers on a jobs and infrastructure bill that would put millions of people to work.
Read the full article here.
2 days ago
2 days ago