Trump’s Immigration Policy ‘Fever Dream’
“The administration is “creating an environment of profound hostility,” as Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director...
“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.
After minimum wage changes, Bay Area workers push for ‘fair’ scheduling
After minimum wage changes, Bay Area workers push for ‘fair’ scheduling
As cities all over the state have raised their minimum wages in recent years, labor advocates in the Bay Area are...
As cities all over the state have raised their minimum wages in recent years, labor advocates in the Bay Area are turning to what they see as another piece of the puzzle for improving workers’ lives: scheduling.
From ensuring workers get the full-time hours they desire, to preventing retaliation against them for turning down last-minute schedule changes, several initiatives are aimed at making employees’ schedules more stable and reducing underemployment.
“Now, it’s about getting fair wages and fair hours,” said Jennifer Lin, deputy director of the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE).
Business interests have railed against the idea of regulating scheduling across diverse sectors, and warn of unintended consequences that could actually hurt workers looking for additional hours and flexibility in their schedules.
Angie Manetti, director of government affairs for the California Retailers Association, said that has already happened in San Francisco since that city’s Retail Workers Bill of Rights was passed last year. Managers now choose to leave shifts unfilled to avoid penalty pay from scheduling workers on short notice, leaving heavier workloads on the employees who are working, she said.
San Jose’s Opportunity to Work initiative, an ordinance on the ballot Nov. 8, would require businesses there to offer extra hours to part-time employees before hiring more workers.
The initiative would apply to businesses with 35 or more employees but exclude government jobs and allow companies to apply for a “hardship” exemption.
Dilsa Gonzalez, a San Jose resident who has held a variety of positions in the fast food sector there, hopes the measure will support people like her. Gonzalez works 16 hours per week, but she would like to work 40. When she asks supervisors for additional hours, they tell her there is no work available.
“But then they hire other people,” Gonzalez said through a translator. She tries other means of making money, including recycling or helping her husband, a mechanic, work. But in San Jose, it’s “hard to survive with just a few hours of work,” she said.
“There is a crisis of underemployment in Silicon Valley,” said Ben Field, executive officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, which gathered the required signatures to place the measure on the ballot. “It’s symptomatic of a problem across the country in which more and more wage earners are dependent on part-time work as a main source of income.”
Matthew Mahood, CEO of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, counters that the San Jose ordinance would “pit workers against each other” for full-time hours rather than creating more jobs and that the ordinance is too far-reaching.
Meanwhile, in the East Bay city of Emeryville, the City Council passed its “Fair Work Week Initiative” last week.
The initiative requires retail and fast food establishments that have more than 56 employees globally to:
• provide employee schedules two weeks in advance of their shifts;
• allow employees to decline schedule changes that happen within seven days of the changed shift;
• offer extra hours to part-time employees before bringing on new ones;
• provide employees with extra pay for taking on shifts on short notice, known as “predictability pay.”
The initiative also would require employers to allow employees to deny back-to-back closing and opening shifts and to request alternate work schedules without retaliation.
Emeryville has often been a trendsetter when it comes to passing worker protection legislation, EBASE’s Lin said. That includes the $14.44-per-hour minimum wage it established last year that at the time was the highest in the nation. She hopes to push the effort throughout the East Bay in the near future.
Moriah Larkins, an Oakland resident who has worked in retail in Emeryville for five years, is among those who say the unpredictability of retail scheduling has made life difficult. As a single mother, Larkins said, taking on last-minute shifts was difficult because child care is not easy to schedule, but she also often did not get scheduled as many hours as she wanted to pay her bills.
She now works at Home Depot, where her schedule is more secure, allowing her to plan better for her family and financially, she said. Home Depot store manager Lionel Stevens said at the City Council meeting that it issues schedules three weeks in advance, and has an open-door policy for employees who need flexibility.
A study commissioned by Emeryville indicates that relatively few workers believe work scheduling has a negative effect on their life. According to the study, 87 percent of employees said they have influence in creating their schedules, and 76 percent said their schedule has never changed with less than 24 hours of notice.
A separate study led by the backers of the Fair Work Week initiative, EBASE, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Center for Public Democracy found different results: that more workers — roughly two-thirds — get their schedule less than a week in advance and want to work more hours.
Many workers believe an ordinance is needed to close any loopholes for businesses who are not scheduling fairly.
Kelby Peeler, a Union City resident who worked at Barnes and Noble for seven years, said he would often be scheduled 30 hours one week and 10 the next, making it impossible to plan financially, and he often lost sleep with late-night closing shifts paired with opening shifts the next day.
“There are definitely good actors — it’s not like every store is having these problems,” Peeler said. “But you can’t have your schedule based on the whim of a manager.”
By ANNIE SCIACCA
Source
High-ranking Fed official resigns, reveals role in leaked confidential information
High-ranking Fed official resigns, reveals role in leaked confidential information
Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, resigned from his post effective Tuesday, after...
Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, resigned from his post effective Tuesday, after revealing he'd played a role in a leak of sensitive information to a financial analyst several years ago.
In a statement, Lacker said he spoke on Oct. 2, 2012, with an analyst at Medley Global Advisors, a macroeconomic research firm owned by the Financial Times Limited. The analyst asked about non-public policy decisions.
Read full article here.
Allentown immigration rally encourages reform
WFMZ-TV - June 18, 2013, By Rosa Duarte - A big vote on immigration reform is coming up in the U.S. Senate next week...
WFMZ-TV - June 18, 2013, By Rosa Duarte - A big vote on immigration reform is coming up in the U.S. Senate next week and that has local politicians and community leaders sounding off on the issue.
Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski took part in an immigration rally Tuesday at City Hall accompanied by City Council President, Julio Guridy.
The event, organized by a local democratic and immigrant support group had just one message and that is to urge Senators Bob Casey and Pat Toomey to vote in favor of the senate's immigration bill.
“I think it's critical for our American economy, I think it's critical for our city, I think it's critical for the country as a whole to get behind comprehensive immigration reform that has a path to citizenship,” said Pawlowski.
However that may not be easy, the bill would offer a 13-year path to citizenship for the nation's 11-million undocumented immigrants.
Even if the Senate approves the bill, it could face a tough fight in the GOP-controlled House.
"Any immigration reform bill that is going into law ought to have the majority of both parties support, if we are really serious about making that happen. I don't see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn't have a majority support of Republicans," said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday.
A recent poll done by CNN/ORC shows a small majority of Americans in support of the Senate's immigration bill. With 51% in favor and 45% against.
When it comes to a pathway to citizenship only 36% of those polled believe that should be the government's main focus while 62% say there needs to be an increase in border security.
Regardless, those who spoke at Tuesday's rally believe Washington is closer than ever in passing meaningful reform.
"They've been talking about it for some time, they have tried so many times and have failed. and I think in a bipartisan way with this gang of eight I think they're going to be successful," said City Council President, Julio Guridy.
Boehner is scheduled to meet with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Wednesday to discuss immigration reform.
The senate is expected to have its vote on the bill by the end of next week.
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Chicago Part of U.S. Citizenship Push for Legal Immigrants
Chicago Tribune - Septamber 17, 2014, by John Byrne - Chicago will join New York and Los Angeles in a corporate-funded...
Chicago Tribune - Septamber 17, 2014, by John Byrne - Chicago will join New York and Los Angeles in a corporate-funded push to try to get more legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens.
The Cities for Citizenship initiative is getting a $1.1 million contribution from Citigroup to help pay for the three cities to expand their naturalization programs. The effort also calls for additional counseling, legal assistance and financial help for immigrants in the urban centers.
The program will be coordinated by two nonprofits — The Center for Popular Democracy and the National Partnership for New Americans — with the aim of encouraging cities across the country to invest in their citizenship drives, according to a news release from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office and the other participants.
The mayors said naturalization would provide the new citizens with access to better jobs, academic scholarships and other benefits, while providing economic boosts to the cities in which they live, according to the release.
For Emanuel, it's the latest pro-immigrant move during his first term, after his early political career was marked by positions that drew the ire of immigrants' rights groups. And it's a chance to grow the Democratic Party voter base, since naturalized urban residents tend to vote Democratic.
Emanuel announced this summer that he would seek to expand the amount of shelter space available in Chicago for unauthorized immigrant children apprehended at the southern U.S. border. And he appeared with U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez in Washington DC in May to talk about the need for immigration reform.
The Cities for Citizenship program is another chance for Emanuel to try to shore up his progressive credentials and improve his standing among Chicago's sizable bloc of Hispanic voters ahead of the February 2015 municipal election. A Tribune poll in August found just 40 percent of Hispanic respondents had a favorable opinion of the mayor, down from 52 percent in 2013. And Ald. Bob Fioretti launched his mayoral bid last weekend by blasting Emanuel for policies Fioretti said favored wealthy people over Chicago's working class.
The citizenship push is also an opportunity for Emanuel to share the spotlight with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, an important figure in the re-emerging progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Earlier this summer, Emanuel traveled to New York for a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting, where he talked about early childhood education and the need to raise the minimum wage alongside de Blasio. Emanuel's office invited Chicago reporters along for the event.
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Warren Calls on Yellen to Increase Diversity at the Fed
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Tuesday committed to increasing diversity at the central bank, particularly...
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Tuesday committed to increasing diversity at the central bank, particularly within the Fed’s leadership ranks.
“It’s something we will continue to focus on,” Yellen said during the question-and-answer period of her semiannual testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. “Diversity is an extremely important goal, and I will do everything I can to advance it.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked Yellen to commit to increasing diversity among the bank’s top officials, noting that 10 of the 12 Fed’s regional presidents are men. “Does the lack of diversity among the regional Fed presidents concern you?” Warren asked Yellen.
“Yes, I believe it’s important to have a diverse group of policymakers who can bring different perspectives to bear,” Yellen responded, adding that the central bank monitors hiring searches closely to make sure regional banks recruit diverse candidates.
Warren said she trusted Yellen’s commitment, but that her response shows the Fed’s selection process for regional leaders is “broken” and lacks transparency.
“You’re telling me diversity’s important, and yet you just signed off on all these folks without any public discussion about it,” Warren said. “Congress should take a hard look at reforming the regional Fed selection process so that we can all benefit from a Fed leadership that reflects a broader array of backgrounds and interests.”
Warren and other lawmakers — 116 House members and 10 senators — signed a letter to Yellen last month that urged her to fill the bank’s top echelon with more diverse leaders. Yellen responded to the letter last week affirming the need for more diversity, according to Warren.
On Monday, activists for the “Fed Up” campaign pushed for diversity in the Fed’s regional branches in a report published by the left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy.
“It’s not enough to say, ‘I’m committed to diversity,'” Dushaw Hockett, executive director of Safe Places for the Advancement of Community and Equity, another group advocating for the Fed Up campaign, said in an interview after today’s hearing. “What’s the plan? What are the mechanisms for how we get there, and how are we going to evaluate whether we’ve achieved them?”
The emphasis on diversity comes on the heels of a Government Accountability Office report showing pervasive issues with racial and gender discrimination among rank-and-file employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where 25 percent of Asian employees, 25 percent of female employees and 27 percent of black employees said they have experienced discrimination at the agency.
By Tara Jeffries
Source
The Real Threat to the Fed’s Independence Is Wall Street, Not Trump
The Real Threat to the Fed’s Independence Is Wall Street, Not Trump
“But the real threat to the Fed’s independence isn’t coming from Trump—it’s coming from Wall Street. The Fed’s...
“But the real threat to the Fed’s independence isn’t coming from Trump—it’s coming from Wall Street. The Fed’s structural flaws have led to regulatory capture, which compromises its ability to set monetary and regulatory policy in a manner that isn’t tilted to favor those at the very top of the economic ladder. Trump may have broken a norm by commenting on monetary policy, but the Fed’s status quo is unaccountable, opaque decision-making shaped by deep conflicts of interest with the very financial institutions the Fed is ostensibly supposed to supervise.
Read the full article here.
Appointment of Another Former Goldman Sachs Insider Shows Why Fed Presidential Appointment Process Needs Reform
Appointment of Another Former Goldman Sachs Insider Shows Why Fed Presidential Appointment Process Needs Reform
Jordan Haedtler, Campaign Manager for the Fed Up coalition, released the following statement following the Minneapolis...
Jordan Haedtler, Campaign Manager for the Fed Up coalition, released the following statement following the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s announcement that it would appoint Neel Kashkari as its president:
“For the past year, the Fed Up coalition has worked to develop relationships with the presidents of all 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, and we look forward to developing a relationship with Neel Kashkari. When he ran for California Governor last year, Mr. Kashkari spent a week posing as a jobseeker in some of the hardest hit parts of the state. We hope Mr. Kashkari recognizes that job prospects remain far too weak for too many people, particularly Black and Latino people, and that his brief experiences searching for jobs in California are the real, lived experience for millions of people every day. Our partners in Minneapolis look forward to welcoming Mr. Kashkari to the Minneapolis region, and showing him the many communities in the region that are still struggling with economic recovery.
"Mr. Kashkari joins a Federal Reserve System that too often excludes the perspectives of working families and communities of color. We are very disappointed that his appointment marks the third presidential appointment this year of a regional Bank president with strong ties to Goldman Sachs. Come January, 1/3rd of the 12 regional Bank presidents will have served in senior roles at the investment bank that most epitomizes the problems that led to the financial crisis.
"Kashkari’s appointment illustrates the problem with the regional Bank president selection process. Federal Reserve Bank presidents are some of the most influential economic policymakers in the country, and they have an obligation to represent the public. Unfortunately, the public is completely shut out of the process for their selection, which is dominated by corporate and financial elites.
"We were very pleased when the Minneapolis Fed took a small and unprecedented step toward transparency by outlining the criteria for their next president. We wish the Minneapolis Fed had gone a step further, publishing the list of candidates being considered, and giving the public an opportunity for input. A history of working with labor and community groups, and an understanding of how working families and communities of color have been impacted by a sluggish economic recovery should qualify candidates for consideration. But the presidential appointments we have seen this year suggest that regional Banks are looking for a history of working at Goldman Sachs instead.”
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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.
Nearly 2,500 Bridges to Nowhere: Congress Considers Expanding Charter Program Despite Millions Wasted on Closed Schools
UPDATE July 15th -- Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) invoked cloture on the ESEA bill,...
UPDATE July 15th -- Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) invoked cloture on the ESEA bill, which contains provisions to expand the Charter Schools Program. The final vote will be held today. McConnell's move to bring matters to a close came as a surprise to the authors of the bill who had expected a more robust debate, and, as EdWeek reports, "especially squeezes Democrats who are still working on proposals to beef up accountability."
As both the House and the Senate consider separate bills that would reauthorize and expand the quarter-billion-dollar-a-year Charter Schools Program (CSP), the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has examined more than a decade of data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as well as documentation from open records requests. The results are troubling.
Between 2001 and 2013, 2,486 charter schools have been forced to shutter, affecting 288,000 American children enrolled in primary and secondary schools.
Furthermore, untold millions out of the $3.3 billion expended by the federal government under CSP have been awarded as planning and implementation grants to schools that never opened to students.
Charters Much More Likely to Close
The failure rate for charter schools is much higher than for traditional public schools. In the 2011-2012 school year, for example, charter school students ran two and half times the risk of having their education disrupted by a school closing and suffering academic setbacks as a result. Dislocated students are less likely to graduate and suffer other harms.
In a 2014 study, Matthew F. Larsen with the Department of Economics at Tulane University looked at high school closures in Milwaukee, almost all of which were charter schools. He concluded that closures decreased “high school graduation rates by nearly 10%" The effects persist "even if the students attends a better quality school after closure.”
Hidden behind the statistics are the social consequences. According to a 2013 paper by Robert Scott and Miguel Saucedo at the University of Illinois. They found that school closures “have exacerbated inter-neighborhood tensions among Chicago youth in recent years” and have been a contributing factor to the high rate of youth incarceration.
Because the U.S. Department of Education does not provide the public with any accounting for the amount of taxpayer money—whether state or federal—that has been spent on these failed charter schools, there is no way to estimate the total amount of money missing in action. However, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) recently estimated that "according to standard forensic auditing methodologies, the deficiencies in charter oversight throughout the country suggest that federal, state and local government stand to lose more than $1.4 billion in 2015."
Major Probes into Closed Charters Underway
According to a PowerPoint presentation CMD has uncovered, the watchdogs at the U.S. Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General are currently conducting major nationwide probes into the lack of accountability and oversight within the Charter School Program. One of these audits focuses on where federal grants end up when charter schools are forced to close. A spokesperson for OIG confirmed to CMD that these investigations are ongoing.
The new probes come in the wake of a scathing 2012 audit, which exposed an utter lack of financial controls in the case of money awarded to charters that later closed. “The school files had no follow-up documentation for any of the 12 closed schools reviewed,” the OIG noted in the case of California. The U.S. Department of Education had conducted no oversight and failed to ensure that states receiving tens or hundreds of millions in grants had “procedures to properly account for SEA grant funds spent by closed charter schools.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Department of Education officials have assured stakeholders that the problems with millions disappearing down black holes are now a thing of the past. But the fact that the OIG has found reason to launch major investigations this year tells a different story.
Federal Millions Missing in Action as Charter Close or Never Open
It is impossible to anticipate the findings of the ongoing OIG probes, but even a cursory review of federal charter school grants in Wisconsin and Indiana, conducted by CMD, uncovered dozens of schools that were created out of seed money under the program but later forced to shutter because of financial mismanagement, failure to educate students or lack of enrollment.
Wisconsin received $69.6 million between 2010 and 2015, but out of the charters awarded sub-grants during the first two years of the cycle, one-fifth (16 out of 85) have closed since.
Indiana was awarded $31.3 million under the Charter Schools Program between 2010 and 2015. One of the reasons the state landed the grant, the reviewers contracted by the U.S. Department of Education to score the application make clear, was that charter schools in the state are exempt from democratic oversight by elected school boards. “[C]harter schools are accountable solely to authorizers under Indiana law,” one reader enthuses, awarding the application 30/30 on the rubric “flexibility offered by state law.” This “flexibility,” which the federal program is designed to promote, has been a recipe for disaster:
The Indiana Cyber Charter School opened in 2012 with $420,000 in seed money from the federal program. Dogged by financial scandals and plummeting student results the charter was revoked in 2015 and the school last month leaving 1,100 students in the lurch.
Padua Academy lost its charter in 2014 and converted to a private religious school, but not before receiving $702,000 in federal seed money.
Via Charter School was awarded $193,000 in a “planning grant” but never opened.
Early Career Academy landed a $193,000 planning grant and was due to open last year. This has been postponed because of “governance issues,” according to the school. The charter is sponsored by a for-profit college—ITT Tech—that is currently being sued by federal government for coercing students into taking out student loans for college credits that do not transfer.
In April 2015, Education Secretary Arne Duncan testified in front of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education on abuse of federal funding by for-profit colleges, such as ITT Tech, that were “taking advantage of a massive influx of taxpayer resources.”
“The findings that we are putting forward are pretty stunning…pretty egregious. The waste of taxpayer money—none of us can feel good about,” said Duncan.
And yet, he is calling for a 48 percent expansion of the charter schools program—a program that will likely be up for the vote in the House and Senate this week, before the results of any of the OIG audits are made public to lawmakers and stakeholders.
CMD will soon be releasing the full dataset, as well as information on the methodology used to arrive at the list of closed schools, to help reporters and public school advocates tell the story.
Source: PR Watch
Activists: US Justice Department Response to Baltimore Police Racism Falls Short
Activists: US Justice Department Response to Baltimore Police Racism Falls Short
The response by the US Department of Justice to exposing Baltimore Police Department (BPD) violations of citizens’...
The response by the US Department of Justice to exposing Baltimore Police Department (BPD) violations of citizens’ constitutional rights falls short of addressing the systemic problem of racism in US policing, activists said.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — "[The Department of Justice] is being forced to look like it is responsive, so to speak, but it also can’t deal with the systemic nature of things," Pan-African Community Action activist Netfa Freeman told Sputnik.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department released a report concluding that the BPD systematically engaged in conduct that violates the US Constitution, and disproportionately targets African-Americans. In response, the Justice Department entered into a consent agreement with the BPD to reform the latter.
"We know it is not just Baltimore and it’s not just ‘bad apples’," Freeman said. The report is still "treating things like they are isolated incidents, not like it is a systemic problem or an epidemic," he said of anti-black police misconduct.
In a forum hosted by the Institute for Policy Studies, policy advocate at the Center for Popular Democracy, Marbre Stahly-Butts, said that while it was "important" for the federal government to articulate the problem of police abuses, Justice Department's actions did not go far enough.
An anti-terrorism rehearsal is held targeting a possible bomb attack during the Olympic Games at the main bus station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on May 12, 2016
Stahly-Butts argued the Justice Department should leverage the findings of the report to cut off funding to local law enforcement caught violating federal law.
"If we find… that you are violating the basic human rights of people in this city, we, as the government, will not give you taxpayer money to do that," Stahly-Butts said.
The Justice Department report covered police misconduct that took place from January 2010 through May 2015. The investigation was launched in 2015 following the widely publicized death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American who died from wounds he sustained while in BPD custody.
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29 days ago
29 days ago