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Sign-On Letter Condemning the Actions of the Puerto Rican Government on May Day and Demanding Justice for the Puerto Rican People

May 3, 2018

We, the undersigned organizations, stand in solidarity with the Puerto Rican people and organizations that came together on May 1, 2018 to march against inhumane austerity measures that continue to drive a massive exodus of families in search of a better life. We stand with the millions of Puerto Ricans who remain on the island and fight every day to sustain their families and improve their collective quality of life. We write today to condemn the inhumane and violent police actions of the government of Ricardo Rosselló.

On May 1, 2018, thousands of Puerto Rican people, including elderly adults and children, who were exercising their First Amendment right to protest were met with state violence through the use of tear gas and violence at the hands of the police. Images captured at the event, corroborated by first-hand accounts, show crowds of people fighting to catch their breath as they ran away from police in riot gear. This type of scene has no place in a democratic society. The right to assemble and express frustration at the government is essential to the practice of democracy. We are deeply disturbed by Governor Roselló’s defense of the police brutality and demand that the local government take the appropriate actions to prosecute those who gave and executed the orders for these actions to take place.

On May 1, 2018, thousands of Puerto Ricans came out to protest the measures that the governor and the fiscal control board have put forward over the last two years. These measures adversely affect working class Puerto Ricans, and include:

Privatizing of the public school system and the power company; Doubling the tuition costs in Puerto Rico's public university; Closing over 300 schools; Slashing labor rights; Raising taxes; and Cutting pensions.

This dire situation is forcing families to flee the island en masse. The Center for Puerto Rican Studies estimates that Puerto Rico could lose 14% of its population, 470,000 people, by 2019.

On May Day, the people of Puerto Rico came out with clear demands for their government. Today we stand with them and echo their demands in solidarity, and we commit to advocate for them in the United States.

We further demand immediate accountability for the May Day violence. Our demands are as follows:

Stop austerity: The Government of Puerto Rico should stop all austerity measures and invest in the working people of Puerto Rico by strengthening labor rights, raising the minimum wage, and promoting other policies that allow families in the island to live with dignity. Living with dignity includes rebuilding Puerto Rico’s power grid with 100% clean and renewable energy and keeping the power grid and power generation in public hands under community control, so as to mitigate the climate crisis and adapt for future extreme weather.   Cancel the debt: The Government of Puerto Rico should not make, and the U.S. government should stop promoting, any more debt payments to billionaire bondholders. Instead, all government efforts should focus on securing payments to pension holders. The Puerto Rican government should also prosecute any individual that has profited from the debt crisis.   Prosecute: The Government of Puerto Rico should conduct a full, transparent and impartial investigation into the police violence during the May Day actions and prosecute every police officer and civil servant who instructed and executed these acts of violence against the Puerto Rican people. We also encourage human right organizations to conduct their own independent investigations and oversight to guarantee that this process is done with full transparency.

We, the undersigned organizations, stand in solidarity with the Puerto Rican people and their demands, condemn the actions of the Puerto Rican government, and demand that the local government take the appropriate actions to prosecute those who instructed and executed these actions.

Sincerely,

215 People Alliance 32BJ SEIU About Face: Veterans Against the War Action Center for Race and the Economy Action NC Alliance for Puerto Rico-Massachusetts Alliance for Quality Education American Family Voices Americas for Conservation Arkansas United Community Coalition Black Voters Matter Fund Blue Future CASA Center for Popular Democracy Chicago Boricua Resistance! Climate Hawks Vote Coalition for Education Justice Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) Courage Campaign CT PR Agenda Delaware Alliance for Community Advancement DiaspoRicans DiaspoRiqueños Florida Immigrant Rights Coalition- FLIC HANA Center Harry Potter Alliance Hedge Clippers Institute for Policy Studies, New Internationalism Project Journey for Justice Alliance Korean Resource Center (KRC) Lil Sis Maine People’s Alliance Make the Road CT Make the Road NJ Make the Road NV Make the Road NY Make the Road PA Maryland Communities United Massachusets Jobs with Justice Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition- MIRA Mi Familia Vota Movement Voter Project NAKASEC - Virginia National Economic and Social Rights Initiative National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC) New Haven Association of Legal Services Attorneys NYCC OLÉ in Albuquerque, NM One America Organize Florida Pennsylvania Student Power Network PICC Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) Presente Action Progressive Caucus Action Fund Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) Promise Arizona (PAZ) Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts Refund America Proyect Resource Generation Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network (SIREN) SPACEs Student Power Networks Sunrise Movement TakeAction Minnesota The Bully Project The Shalom Center United Action CT United for a New Economy United We DREAM VAMOS4PR WeChoose Coalition Womens March Youth Progressive Action Catalyst

www.populardemocracy.org

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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.

Media Contact: Samy Nemir, (929) 285-9623, solivares@populardemocracy.org

The progressive Fed Up coalition released an ambitious Federal Reserve reform plan on Monday designed to increase discussion of Fed policy in the presidential campaign.

The reforms, which would require the passage of new legislation, would turn the Federal Reserve into a public entity akin to other federal agencies, with the goal of dramatically increasing the accountability of the world’s most powerful financial body.

Currently, the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are owned by private commercial banks. As a result, financial executives dominate the regional Fed banks’ boards of directors, giving them an outsized role in key decisions like the selection of the banks’ influential presidents. 

Four of the current presidents are alumni of Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs.

Fed Up and other progressives argue that the present governance structure undermines the Fed’s role as a regulator of the country’s financial institutions. These critics also argue that the influence of big banks tends to make Fed officials more sensitive to concerns about inflation, even as they hear little from ordinary workers affected by nominal changes in the unemployment rate.

Andrew Levin, a Dartmouth economist and former adviser to the Fed chair, who authored the proposal, said on a call with reporters that the changes would bring the Fed’s structure into line with major central banks in other countries. He mocked the plain conflict of interest inherent in giving the financial industry so much power over an institution charged with regulating it.

“It should be amazing for people in the public that banks actually own shares in the Fed. A lot of people would be shocked to hear that,” Levin said.

“It would be like if lawyers owned shares in the FBI,” he added.

In the new system Levin devised, the selection process of the regional banks’ directors would be supervised by the Washington-based Federal Reserve Board of Governors, with involvement from individual governors and members of Congress in the relevant Fed bank’s jurisdiction. The majority of each bank’s directors would need to come from small businesses and nonprofits. These more diverse boards, in turn, would have to make public their process for selecting a bank president.

Members of the Fed Board of Governors, unlike the regional Fed banks, are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, which is one reason why Fed reform advocates consider them more accountable to the public.

Levin and Fed Up made clear that they view the new governance structure as a way of generating greater ethnic and racial diversity among Fed officials as well. Levin noted that in the Fed’s existence of more than a century, not one of the regional Fed presidents has been African American.

Levin called the statistic “clear evidence that something is broken.”

In making the Fed a public institution, the modified system envisioned by Levin would subject the regional Fed banks to the Freedom of Information Act and the oversight of the Fed Board of Governors’ inspector general.

The entire Fed, including the Fed Board of Governors, would also undergo an annual review by the Government Accountability Office, a government body tasked with evaluating the efficacy and accountability of federal agencies.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors declined to comment on the new plan, but chairwoman Janet Yellen has opposed past efforts to audit the Fed.

In addition, Levin’s plan changes the terms of both regional Fed bank presidents and Fed governors to seven years. Currently, regional Fed presidents serve for five years, and can be reappointed to a second term — which almost always occurs, thanks to a process that Levin and Fed Up say is typically no more than a formality. Fed Board governors now serve 14-year terms.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors declined to comment on the reform plan. But Fed chair Janet Yellen has condemned legislation in the past that would audit the Fed’s finances, claiming it would “politicize” the institution’s decisionmaking. Yellen’s stance suggests she would likely oppose the even broader GAO review.

Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who was a top economist at the Fed for many years, said of the reform plan that he is “more concerned that there are already too many limits on the Fed’s power to help the economy.”

Gagnon nonetheless said he views most of the new proposals favorably. His biggest specific objection is to the plan’s seven-year term limits, which he worries would open the Fed up to more political pressure by allowing a single president to decide its makeup.

The rollout of the Fed Up-backed proposal is timed — and packaged — to encourage presidential candidates to speak out. The coalition sent out model questions for the candidates to accompany the release of the reform proposal.

“It is important that we have a president who sees the need for sensible, pragmatic, nonpartisan reforms that will put the Fed on a path to serve the public for the next hundred years,” Levin said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has released his own plan to make the Fed more accountable to the public. His campaign expressed support for the spirit of Fed Up’s reform proposal.

Warren Gunnels, top policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), joined the call to express support for the spirit of Fed Up’s proposed reforms.

Sanders “believes we need to structurally reform the Fed so that it is a democratic institution that is responsive to ordinary Americans not just CEOs on Wall Street,” Gunnels said.

Gunnels would not say if Sanders endorsed the proposal, however, claiming the senator needed more time to review it.

He instead pointed to the Federal Reserve platform Sanders laid out in a Dec. 23 New York Times op-ed. In the column, Sanders says he would bar financial industry executives from serving on the boards of regional Fed banks altogether, make Fed assistance to banks contingent on concrete measures of service to the public, such as lending to low-income workers, and preclude the Fed from raising its benchmark interest rate until unemployment is below 4 percent.

Ady Barkan, Fed Up’s campaign director, said that the coalition had invited all five presidential candidates to join the press call, but only Sanders’ campaign had agreed to participate.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment on Fed Up’s proposal, nor did the remaining Republican presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and Donald Trump.

Getting Democratic politicians, in particular, to make the Fed a policy cause could prove a difficult task for a number of reasons.

In recent years, Fed reform has tended to be the province of conservative lawmakers eager to rein in the Fed’s unprecedented efforts to aid financial institutions and stimulate economic demand in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Democrats have cast themselves as defenders of the Fed in those circumstances, since the central bank’s actions were viewed as crucial to the recovery.

It doesn’t help matters that the Fed is an issue that’s simply not on the public’s radar.

And there is also the risk of being seen as breaching protocol by commenting on an independent, nonpartisan institution.

“I don’t think many voters understand enough to care about it,” Ari Rabin-Havt, a progressive radio host and onetime aide to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said in an interview earlier this month. “The people who do care about it somewhat, view it as a ‘temple.’”

But economists and policy experts argue that it would be a mistake for Democrats to ignore the Fed. “Central banks became and still are the only game in town” when governments want to boost economic demand and employment, according a column by New York University economist Nouriel Roubini. That’s partly as a result of the ideological backlash across the developed world against using public spending as a fiscal stimulus, and the delayed effect of other reforms.

And the Fed is especially important in the American context, because the government is likely to remain divided regardless of who wins the presidency, narrowing the possibilities of ameliorative fiscal measures.

“If the economy starts to weaken again, we cannot trust Congress to act,” Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, said earlier this month. “We will need a Fed that is ahead of the curve.”

Short of embracing reforms to the Federal Reserve’s governance, Democrats could make a bigger issue out of the two empty Fed governor seats. President Barack Obama named nominees for the positions many months ago, but Senate Republicans have failed to give them hearings.

Tim Duy, an economist at the University of Oregon, said he is “wary” of the candidates even articulating what kind of people they would nominate to the Fed Board of Governors lest they jeopardize the central bank’s independence. But he said calling for filling the empty governor seats is fair game.

“I would like [the presidential candidates] to at least say that we should have a Fed at full power, because that’s what makes for effective monetary policy,” Duy said earlier this month. “That should be a priority for Democrats and Republicans.”

By Daniel Marans

Source

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary Jo White should recuse herself from the selection of the next chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) due to an apparent conflict of interest created by the decision’s impact on White’s household income, a national coalition of 14 organizations said in a letter today.

Mary Jo White’s husband John White sits on the PCAOB’s Standing Advisory Group (SAG), selected by the members of the PCAOB, who are in turn chosen by Mary Jo White and the SEC.

John White’s role on the SAG has been marketed extensively by his law firm Cravath Swaine & Moore, LLP, where he practices securities law. His employment as a partner at Cravath forms the large majority of Mary Jo White’s family income, noted the groups.

“SEC Chair White should insure that her household income, which largely derives from her husband’s work as a Cravath attorney, doesn’t compromise her critical decisions affecting Cravath-represented clients,” said Bart Naylor, financial policy advocate for Public Citizen.

Scrutiny of Mary Jo White’s conflict of interest in PCAOB staffing was elevated in early September, whenBloomberg reported that White was considering potential candidates to replace PCAOB Chair James Doty. Doty – whose tough proposed accounting reforms have drawn industry ire and a fierce lobbying effort – has signaled he would like to return for another term.

After ensuing media coverage noted Cravath’s marketing of John White’s role on the SAG, Cravath quickly removed references to White’s position on the SAG from its website by the following day, as reported byMarketWatch.

“If there were any doubts about the improper link between Mary Jo White’s official actions and John White’s financial gain, Cravath’s frantic attempt to scrub its website put them to rest,” said Kurt Walters, campaign manager at Rootstrikers. “Mary Jo White should immediately announce her recusal from all further personnel decisions at PCAOB while her family income is so clearly at stake.”

The groups also called for the public release of any ethics guidance Chair White has relied on to date to continue her involvement in personnel matters at the PCAOB. They highlighted her previous written commitment to obtain ethics waivers before taking any action with a  “direct and predictable effect” on her husband’s employment at Cravath.

“Chair White publicly swore to rely on waivers when her actions might have a ‘direct and predictable effect’ on John White’s role at Cravath, and her role helping select the PCAOB creates an appearance of just such an effect,” said Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Effective Government.“The public is entitled to review the ethics guidance by which she reached the conclusion that she not only could go forward, but could do so without a waiver. Moreover, given the multiplicity of conflicts the Chair brought with her to the SEC and the absence of any 18 U.S.C. § 208(b)(1) or (b)(3) waivers, complete transparency in ethical guidance (with appropriate redactions) is necessary to restore public confidence in the SEC.”

The coalition letter was signed by Alliance for a Just Society, American Family Voices, Campaign for America’s Future, Center for Effective Government, Center for Popular Democracy, Community Organizations in Action, Communications Workers of America, Democracy for America, Main Street Alliance, MoveOn.org Civic Action, The Other 98%, Public Citizen, RootsAction, and Rootstrikers, and is available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/new.demandprogress.org/letters/Coalition_letter_regarding_Chair_White_and_PCAOB.pdf .

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Source: ValueWalk

Should Federal Reserve officials meet expectations and raise interest rates next week, they will be doing so over the objections of some high-profile experts, including one who used to work for the central bank.

A coalition of economists released a letter Friday urging the Fed to change the criteria it uses to make decisions. Specifically, the group, called "Fed Up," is advocating for a higher inflation rate target than the current 2 percent level. Among its members is former Minnesota Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota.

Read the full article here.