City Council group urges JP Morgan Chase to ditch Trump council
City Council group urges JP Morgan Chase to ditch Trump council
As CEOs flee President Trump’s business advisory councils, the City Council’s Progressive Caucus is calling on JP...
As CEOs flee President Trump’s business advisory councils, the City Council’s Progressive Caucus is calling on JP Morgan Chase to do the same.
The move comes as multiple CEOs have ditched a Trump council on manufacturing business in the wake of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday. Trump did not condemn white supremacists until Monday; on Tuesday he again insisted violence had come from “both sides.” Merck CEO Ken Frazier was first to depart, calling it a “matter of personal conscience” to stand against intolerance.
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Why Is My Bank Teller Trying to Sell Me a Credit Card I Don't Want?
Mother Jones - April 9, 2015, by Josh Harkinson - Until recently, your typical banker was someone whose main job was to...
Mother Jones - April 9, 2015, by Josh Harkinson - Until recently, your typical banker was someone whose main job was to accept deposits, cash checks, and dispense basic financial advice. But now that job hardly exists anymore—at least not as we once knew it. Today's front-line bank workers—tellers, loan interviewers, and customer-service reps—earn far too little money to be considered "bankers" in the traditional sense of the word. And though they still collect and dispense money, their main job involves hawking credit cards and loans you probably don't need.
Many rank and file bank workers are seeing lower wages and more pressure to hawk financial products.Rank-and-file bank workers are both causes and symptoms of America's widening economic divide, says Aditi Sen, the author of Big Banks and the Dismantling of the Middle Class, a report released today by the Center for Popular Democracy. Based on union organizer interviews with hundreds of workers in the industry, Sen found that front-line bank workers often face quotas for hawking potentially exploitive financial products, often to low-income customers, even though the workers themselves barely qualify as middle class. "We can definitely see bank workers as part of the same continuum of issues facing all low-wage workers," she says.
Banks are, of course, notorious for squeezing profits from their employees and customers. In 2011, the Federal Reserve Board fined Wells Fargo $85 million for forcing workers to sell expensive subprime mortgages to prime borrowers. And in late 2013, a judge slapped Bank of America with a $1.27 billion penalty for its "Hustle Program," which rewarded employees for producing more loans and eliminating controls on the loans' quality.
Yet, by some accounts, these sorts of practices are getting worse. In a 2013 study by the union-backed Committee for Better Banks, 35 percent of low-level bank workers surveyed reported increased sales pressure since 2008, and nearly 38 percent stated that there was no real avenue in the workplace to oppose such practices. One HSBC bank employee, according to the study, reported that workers who failed to meet their sales goals had the difference taken out of their paychecks.
The increasing sales pressure comes at a time when the fortunes of the banks and their low-level workers have diverged widely. Bank profits and CEO pay have rebounded to near record levels while wages for front-line workers are stuck in the gutter.
And that's not all. Nearly a quarter of bank workers surveyed in 2013 reported that their benefits had been cut since 2008, and 44 percent reported that their medical and life insurance was inadequate. A recent University of California-Berkeley study found that 31 percent of bank tellers' families rely on public assistance at an annual cost of $900 million to taxpayers.
There are several factors in all of these woes. Mergers and consolidation have led some retail banks to shutter branches and lay people off. Many banks have outsourced customer-service jobs to overseas call centers, and the rise of internet and smartphone banking has further slashed demand for flesh-and-blood tellers. In other words, it's basically the same mix of foreign and technological competition that has concentrated wealth and depressed middle-class wages throughout the economy. And it means that banks can get away with paying people less, and demanding more in return.
But now the Committee for Better Banks is trying to cultivate common cause between low-level bank workers and the customers they're forced to target. The interviews featured in the new report show that many bank workers strongly oppose the sales quotas as unfair and exploitive. For instance:
A teller at a top-five bank reports that she is subject to stringent individual goals on a daily basis: If she does not make three sales-points (selling someone a new checking, savings, or debit card account) each day in a month, she gets written up.
Customer service representatives at a call center for another major bank report that each individual has to make 40 percent of the sales of the top seller to avoid being written up. Selling credit cards counts more towards sales goals than helping someone open up a checking account or savings account, thereby crafting skewed incentives based on the profitability of a product sold, not on how well it matched the needs of a customer.
"There was one guy who had three credit cards and I ended up pushing a fourth on him, even though I knew that was not good for him.""A lot of time people would call and already have one, two, or three credit cards with us," says Liz, a member of the Committee for Better Banks who worked in a Bank of America call center for five years and did not want to give her last name. "They might have a situation where they are low on funds and we end up pushing another credit card on them. There was one guy who had three credit cards and I ended up pushing a fourth on him, even though I knew that was not good for him; he would just be in more debt. But if didn't, I would end up being put in a reprimand."
On Monday, members of the Committee for Better Banks will converge in Minnesota's Twin Cities to deliver a petition to bank offices demanding better pay and more stable work hours for rank-and-file workers, and an end to sales goals that "push unnecessary products on our customers."
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Fed Language in DNC Platform Could Be Stronger, Activists Say
Fed Language in DNC Platform Could Be Stronger, Activists Say
The Democratic national platform’s language calling for a more diverse Federal Reserve and for the promotion of full...
The Democratic national platform’s language calling for a more diverse Federal Reserve and for the promotion of full employment is historically progressive, but it still could be stronger, some activists say.
Advocates on the “Fed Up” campaign, led by the progressive Center for Popular Democracy, are pleased that the platform — amended in a committee meeting over the weekend — includes language that supports banning commercial bankers from Fed leadership.
But the activists are still hoping for more explicit support bolstering the Fed’s mandate to promote “full employment,” said Jordan Haedtler, Fed Up’s campaign manager.
As it stands, the platform committee adopted an amendment to “protect and defend the Federal Reserve’s independence to carry out the dual mandate assigned to it by Congress — for both full employment and low inflation — against threats from new legislation.”
An amendment promoted by Fed Up would have sketched out a more detailed stance on full employment, but it failed 70-100 at the meeting. That amendment stated: “The Federal Reserve should be a fully public institution that serves the American people and pursues a genuine full employment economy that creates good jobs and rising wages for all.”
Haedtler said the platform’s language about protecting the the Fed from “the threat” of new legislation might actually be counterproductive. His group hopes to lay the groundwork for legislation overhauling the central bank during the next administration. It is likely, however, that the platform writers were referring to legislation from conservatives to abolish the Fed or severely shrink its capabilities.
“I appreciate that full employment is fleetingly mentioned, but the fact is that sound new legislation regarding the Federal Reserve is necessary,” Haedtler told Morning Consult in an interview.
Democrats in Congress have also pushed for more diversity in the Fed’s top layer. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, pressed Fed Chair Janet Yellen during a recent hearing for a commitment to fixing the bank’s diversity problem.
“Diversity is an extremely important goal, and I will do everything I can to advance it,” she told him.
The words “full employment” haven’t appeared in a Democratic National Committee platform since 1988, Haedtler said. But Fed Up hopes to see the language bolstered further in the platform’s preamble.
“This is not as strong as past mentions of full employment in Democratic platforms going back several decades, where the fact that the Federal Reserve has a role in creating full employment is more fleshed out and a plan for how to get there is described,” he said.
The Fed Up activists also want to amend the platform to outline the Fed’s path to becoming a fully public institution.
By TARA JEFFRIES
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What Does Black Lives Matter Want?
What Does Black Lives Matter Want?
On August 1 the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition of over sixty organizations, rolled out “A Vision for...
On August 1 the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition of over sixty organizations, rolled out “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice,” an ambitious document described by the press as the first signs of what young black activists “really want.” It lays out six demands aimed at ending all forms of violence and injustice endured by black people; redirecting resources from prisons and the military to education, health, and safety; creating a just, democratically controlled economy; and securing black political power within a genuinely inclusive democracy. Backing the demands are forty separate proposals and thirty-four policy briefs, replete with data, context, and legislative recommendations.
But the document quickly came under attack for its statement on Palestine, which calls Israel an apartheid state and characterizes the ongoing war in Gaza and the West Bank as genocide. Dozens of publications and media outlets devoted extensive coverage to the controversy around this single aspect of the platform, including The Guardian, the Washington Post, The Times of Israel, Haaretz, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Of course, M4BL is not the first to argue that Israeli policies meet the UN definitions of apartheid. (The 1965 International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the 1975 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid define it as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”) Nor is M4BL the first group to use the term “genocide” to describe the plight of Palestinians under occupation and settlement. The renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, for example, wrote of the war on Gaza in 2014 as “incremental genocide.” That Israel’s actions in Gaza correspond with the UN definition of genocide to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by causing “serious bodily or mental harm” to group members is a legitimate argument to make.
The few mainstream reporters and pundits who considered the full M4BL document either reduced it to a laundry list of demands or positioned it as an alternative to the platform of the Democratic Party—or else focused on their own benighted astonishment that the movement has an agenda beyond curbing police violence. But anyone following Black Lives Matter from its inception in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict should not be surprised by the document’s broad scope. Black Lives Matter founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi are veteran organizers with a distinguished record of fighting for economic justice, immigrant rights, gender equity, and ending mass incarceration. “A Vision for Black Lives” was not a response to the U.S. presidential election, nor to unfounded criticisms of the movement as “rudderless” or merely a hashtag. It was the product of a year of collective discussion, research, collaboration, and intense debate, beginning with the Movement for Black Lives Convening in Cleveland last July, which initially brought together thirty different organizations. It was the product of some of the country’s greatest minds representing organizations such as the Black Youth Project 100, Million Hoodies, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Dream Defenders, the Organization for Black Struggle, and Southerners on New Ground (SONG). As Marbre Stahly-Butts, a leader of the M4BL policy table explained, “We formed working groups, facilitated multiple convenings, drew on a range of expertise, and sought guidance from grassroots organizations, organizers and elders. As of today, well over sixty organizations and hundreds of people have contributed to the platform.”
“A Vision for Black Lives” is a plan for ending structural racism, saving the planet, and transforming the entire nation—not just black lives.
The result is actually more than a platform. It is a remarkable blueprint for social transformation that ought to be read and discussed by everyone. The demands are not intended as Band-Aids to patch up the existing system but achievable goals that will produce deep structural changes and improve the lives of all Americans and much of the world. Thenjiwe McHarris, an eminent human rights activist and a principle coordinator of the M4BL policy table, put it best: “We hope that what has been created carries forward the legacy of our elders and our ancestors while imagining a world and a country profoundly different than what currently exists. For us and for those that will come after us.” The document was not drafted with the expectation that it will become the basis of a mass movement, or that it will replace the Democratic Party’s platform. Rather it is a vision statement for long-term, transformative organizing. Indeed, “A Vision for Black Lives” is less a political platform than a plan for ending structural racism, saving the planet, and transforming the entire nation—not just black lives.
If heeded, the call to “end the war on Black people” would not only reduce our vulnerability to poverty, prison, and premature death but also generate what I would call a peace dividend of billions of dollars. Demilitarizing the police, abolishing bail, decriminalizing drugs and sex work, and ending the criminalization of youth, transfolk, and gender-nonconforming people would dramatically diminish jail and prison populations, reduce police budgets, and make us safer. “A Vision for Black Lives” explicitly calls for divesting from prisons, policing, a failed war on drugs, fossil fuels, fiscal and trade policies that benefit the rich and deepen inequality, and a military budget in which two-thirds of the Pentagon’s spending goes to private contractors. The savings are to be invested in education, universal healthcare, housing, living wage jobs, “community-based drug and mental health treatment,” restorative justice, food justice, and green energy.
But the point is not simply to reinvest the peace dividend into existing social and economic structures. It is to change those structures—which is why “A Vision for Black Lives” emphasizes community control, self-determination, and “collective ownership” of certain economic institutions. It calls for community control over police and schools, participatory budgeting, the right to organize, financial and institutional support for cooperatives, and “fair development” policies based on human needs and community participation rather than market principles. Democratizing the institutions that have governed black communities for decades without accountability will go a long way toward securing a more permanent peace since it will finally end a relationship based on subjugation, subordination, and surveillance. And by insisting that such institutions be more attentive to the needs of the most marginalized and vulnerable—working people and the poor, the homeless, the formerly incarcerated, the disabled, women, and the LGBTQ community—“A Vision for Black Lives” enriches our practice of democracy.
For example, “A Vision for Black Lives” advocates not only closing tax loopholes for the rich but revising a regressive tax policy in which the poorest 20 percent of the population pays on average twice as much in taxes as the richest 1 percent. M4BL supports a massive jobs program for black workers, but the organization’s proposal includes a living wage, protection and support for unions and worker centers, and anti-discrimination clauses that protect queer and trans employees, the disabled, and the formerly incarcerated. Unlike the Democratic Party, M4BL does not subscribe to the breadwinner model of jobs as the sole source of income. It instead supports a universal basic income (UBI) that “would meet basic human needs,” eliminate poverty, and ensure “economic security for all.” This is not a new idea; some kind of guaranteed annual income has been fundamental to other industrializing nations with strong social safety nets and vibrant economies, and the National Welfare Rights Organization proposed similar legislation nearly a half century ago. The American revolutionary Thomas Paine argued in the eighteenth century for the right of citizens to draw a basic income from the levying of property tax, as Elizabeth Anderson recently reminded. Ironically, the idea of a basic income or “negative income tax” also won support from neoliberal economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek—although for very different reasons. Because eligibility does not require means testing, a UBI would effectively reduce the size of government by eliminating the bureaucratic machine of social workers and investigators who police the dispensation of entitlements such as food stamps and welfare. And by divesting from an unwieldy and unjust prison-industrial complex, there would be more than enough revenue to create good-paying jobs and provide a basic income for all.
Reducing the military is not just about resources; it is about ending war, at home and abroad. “A Vision for Black Lives” includes a devastating critique of U.S. foreign policy, including the escalation of the war on terror in Africa, machinations in Haiti, the recent coup in Honduras, ongoing support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and the role of war and free-trade policies in fueling the global refugee crisis. M4BL’s critique of U.S. militarism is driven by Love—not the uncritical love of flag and nation we saw exhibited at both major party conventions, but a love of global humanity. “The movement for Black lives,” one policy brief explains, “must be tied to liberation movements around the world. The Black community is a global diaspora and our political demands must reflect this global reality. As it stands funds and resources needed to realize domestic demands are currently used for wars and violence destroying communities abroad.”
Finally, a peace dividend can fund M4BL’s most controversial demand: reparations. For M4BL, reparations would take the form of massive investment in black communities harmed by past and present policies of exploitation, theft, and disinvestment; free and open access to lifetime education and student debt forgiveness; and mandated changes in the school curriculum that acknowledge the impact of slavery, colonialism, and Jim Crow in producing wealth and racial inequality. The latter is essential, since perhaps the greatest obstacle to reparations is the common narrative that American wealth is the product of individual hard work and initiative, while poverty results from misfortune, culture, bad behavior, or inadequate education. We have for too long had ample evidence that this is a lie. From generations of unfree, unpaid labor, from taxing black communities to subsidize separate but unequal institutions, from land dispossession and federal housing policies and corporate practices that conspire to keep housing values in black and brown communities significantly lower, resulting in massive loss of potential wealth—the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Structural racism is to blame for generations of inequality. Restoring some of that wealth in the form of education, housing, infrastructure, and jobs with living wages would not only begin to repair the relationship between black residents and the rest of the country, but also strengthen the economy as a whole.
To see how “A Vision for Black Lives” is also a vision for the country as a whole requires imagination. But it also requires seeing black people as fully human, as producers of wealth, sources of intellect, and as victims of crimes—whether the theft of our bodies, our labor, our children, our income, our security, or our psychological well-being. If we had the capacity to see structural racism and its consequences not as a black problem but as an American problem we have faced since colonial times, we may finally begin to hear what the Black Lives Matter movement has been saying all along: when all black lives are valued and the structures and practices that do harm to black communities are eliminated, we will change our country and possibly the world.
By By Robin D. G. Kelley
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A guaranteed “Jobs For All” Program is Gaining Traction Among 2020 Democratic Hopefuls
A guaranteed “Jobs For All” Program is Gaining Traction Among 2020 Democratic Hopefuls
A longtime organizer, Barkan — who has Lou Gehrig’s disease — gained national recognition after his viral confrontation...
A longtime organizer, Barkan — who has Lou Gehrig’s disease — gained national recognition after his viral confrontation of Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., over his support for the Republican tax plan and the cuts to Medicare that it would impose. When he was diagnosed with ALS in late 2016, Barkan was working with the Center for Popular Democracy on a campaign to reform the Federal Reserve and American monetary policymaking with it. Following Trump’s election, he has continued to fight for that and against a range of Republican policies.
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Middlesex County Decides Not to Honor Federal Detainers from ICE for Some Inmates
The Star-Ledger - July 10, 2014 by Sue Epstein - Middlesex County officials are no longer complying with a federal...
The Star-Ledger - July 10, 2014 by Sue Epstein - Middlesex County officials are no longer complying with a federal request to hold all immigrants suspected of being undocumented in the county jail for an additional 48 hours after their scheduled release.
In a policy change approved by Middlesex County freeholders last week and put into effect Tuesday, the detainee can be freed unless charged with a first- or second-degree crime, is identified as a known gang member and has been subject to a final order of removal by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Thomas Kelso, the Middlesex County counsel, said in a statement that people not meeting the serious offense criteria would continue to be released immediately after meeting the legal obligations.
"The policy was established after extensive review and consideration," Freeholder Director Ronald G. Rios said. "We need to be sensitive to the rights of individuals, but must protect our citizens from those with histories of violent crime. We believe that the policy that has been implemented in Middlesex County strikes a fair balance."
Although immigration rights groups applauded the change in policy, they contended that it did not go far enough.
Karina Wilkinson, co-founder of the Middlesex County Coalition for Immigrant Rights, said she wanted the county to stop honoring all 48-hour courtesy detainer requests from federal immigration authorities for county inmates.
"We are pleased to see Middlesex County moving in the right direction in ending their compliance with ICE detainers," Wilkinson said. "The county could still go further to respect the constitutional rights of everyone."
Wilkinson’s group began discussing the proposed policy change with county officials in December.
FIRST IN N.J.Wilkinson and Emily Tucker, an attorney for the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group, said Middlesex County was the first county in the state to change its policy, joining more than 115 jurisdictions nationwide that have enacted similar changes. And of those 115, Wilkinson said, 90 have refused to honor any ICE detainers.
Tucker said the policy changes came on the heels of several federal court rulings that detainers are not legally binding, and that a federal court decision in Oregon said that honoring the detainers could open the jurisdiction to lawsuits.
"The courts have said ICE shows no probable cause to hold these inmates," Tucker said. "It is not the business of law enforcement to enforce immigration orders, it is the federal government’s job. The counties should not be holding anyone on behalf of ICE without a warrant."
Wilkinson said that in 2012, when a federal program known as Operation Secure Communities began in New Jersey, there were 330 detainers issued for inmates at the Middlesex County jail, making the county third in the state behind Essex and Hudson counties in the number of requests issued.
Tucker said the coalition of organizations that pushed Middlesex County to change its policy is working with Essex and Hudson counties in an effort to reach a similar outcome.
According to the ICE website, when a suspected undocumented immigrant is arrested the FBI forwards the fingerprints to the Department of Homeland Security to check against its immigration databases.
If the check shows that a person is undocumented or otherwise removable because of a criminal conviction, a 48-hour detainer is issued to the local jurisdiction.
Bryan Cox, a spokesman for ICE, said the agency remained "committed to working with our law enforcement partners and making our communities safer by protection public safety and national security, and the integrity of the immigration.
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Climate Justice activists to EPA: make Clean Power Plan work for fossil fuel afflicted communities!
While the fossil fuel industry and Republican states and senators step up legal and political challenges to Obama's...
While the fossil fuel industry and Republican states and senators step up legal and political challenges to Obama's Clean Power Plan, protests have also been flooding in to the EPA's ten regional offices from climate activists - demanding that it cut out dirty biofuels and 'carbon trading' loopholes, and protect vulnerable communities from fossil fuel pollution.
Last week, activists at each of the Environmental Protection Agency's ten regional offices issued their own corrective on the Obama administration'sClean Power Plan.
Days before the end of the federal comment period, theClimate Justice Alliance's Our Power Campaign - comprised of 41 climate and environmental justice organizations - presented its Our Power Plan.
The document identifies "clear and specific strategies for implementing the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, in a way that will truly benefit our families' health and our country's economy."
Introduced last summer, the CPP looks to bring down power plants' carbon emissions by 32% from 2005 levels within 15 years. The plan was made possible by Massachusetts vs. EPA, a 2007 Supreme Court ruling which mandates that the agency regulate greenhouse gases as it has other toxins and pollutants under the Clean Air Act of 1963.
Under the CPP, states are each required to draft their own implementation plans by September of this year, or by 2018 if granted an extension. If they fail to do so, state governments will be placed by default into an interstate carbon trading, or 'Cap and Trade', system to bring down emissions.
After COP21, OPP is the next logical step
Michael Leon Guerrero, the Climate Justice Alliance's interim coordinator, was in Paris for the most recent round of UN climate talks as part of the It Takes Roots Delegation, which brought together over 100 organizers from North American communities on the frontlines of both climate change and fossil fuel extraction.
He sees the Our Power Plan (see goals, below) as a logical next step for the group coming out of COP21, especially as the onus for implementing and improving the Paris agreement now falls to individual nations:
"Fundamentally we need to transform our economy and rebuild our communities. We can't address the climate crisis in a cave without addressing issues of equity."
The Our Power Plan, or OPP, is intended as a blueprint for governments and EPA administrators to address the needs of frontline communities as they draft their state-level plans over the next several months. (People living within three miles of a coal plant have incomes averaging 15% lower than average, and are 8% more likely to be communities of color.)
Included in the OPP are calls to bolster what CJA sees as the CPP's more promising aspects, like renewable energy provisions, while eliminating proposed programs they see as more harmful. The CPP's carbon trading scheme, CJA argues, allows polluters to buy 'permissions to pollute', or carbon credits, rather than actually stemming emissions.
The OPP further outlines ways that the EPA can ensure a "just transition" away from fossil fuels, encouraging states to invest in job creation, conduct equity analyses and "work with frontlines communities to develop definitions, indicators, and tracking and response systems that really account for impacts like health, energy use, cost of energy, climate vulnerability [and] cumulative risk."
The all-too predictable fightback
Lacking support from Congress, the Obama administration has relied on executive action to push through everything from environmental action to comprehensive immigration reform. The Clean Power Plan was central to the package Obama brought to Paris. Also central to COP21 was US negotiators' insistence on keeping its results non-binding, citing Republican lawmakers' unwillingness to pass legislation.
Predictably, the CPP has faced legal challenges from the same forces, who decry the president for having overstepped the bounds of his authority. Republican state governments, utility companies, and fossil fuel industry groups have all filed suit against the CPP, with many asking for expedited hearings.
Leading up the anti-CPP charge in Congress has been Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has called the plan a "regulatory assault", pitting fossil fuel industry workers against the EPA. "Here's what is lost in this administration's crusade for ideological purity", he wrote in a November statement, "the livelihoods of our coal miners and their families."
Organizers of last Tuesday's actions, however, were quick to point out that the Our Power Plan is aimed at strengthening - not defeating - the CPP as it stands. Denise Abdul-Rahman, of NAACP Indiana, helped organize an OPP delivery at the EPA's Region 5 headquarters in Chicago, bringing out representatives from Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, National People's Action and National Nurses United.
"We appreciate the integrity of the Clean Power Plan", she said. "However, we believe it needs to be improved - from eliminating carbon trading to ensuring that there's equity. We want to improve CPP by adding our voices and our plan, and we encourage the EPA to make it better." Four of the six states in that region - which includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin - are suing the EPA.
Endorsed by the National Domestic Workers' Alliance, Greenpeace and the Center for Popular Democracy, among other organizations, the national day of action on the EPA came as new details emerged in Flint, Michigan's ongoing water crisis - along with calls for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation and arrest.
The EPA has also admitted fault for its slow response to Flint residents' complaints, writing in a statement this week that "necessary [EPA] actions were not taken as quickly as they should have been." Abdul-Rahman connected the water crisis with the need for a justly-implemented CPP:
"The Flint government let their community down by not protecting our most precious asset, which is water. The same is true of air: we need the highest standard of protecting human beings' air, water, land."
Source: The Ecologist
Clinton Joins Crowd Calling for an Overhaul of Fed Governance
Clinton Joins Crowd Calling for an Overhaul of Fed Governance
Hillary Clinton is the latest voice calling for changes at the Federal Reserve. A spokesman for the front-...
Hillary Clinton is the latest voice calling for changes at the Federal Reserve.
A spokesman for the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination released a statement Thursday saying that the Fed “needs to be more representative of America as a whole” and arguing that “commonsense reforms -- like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks -- are long overdue.”
The statement, sent by Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson and first reported by the Washington Post, comes as Democrats unleash a volley of criticism against the central bank. Earlier on Thursday, lawmakers called for more consideration of African American, Latino and female candidates for top Fed posts in a letter to Chair Janet Yellen. The missive was signed by a majority of the Democratic members of Congress.
Clinton’s position garnered praise from the union-backed Fed Up coalition, which coordinated the congressional letter.
The campaign’s comment also partly echoed a proposal that Fed Up put out last week, in which former Fed economist Andrew Levin suggested structural reforms for the central bank. Levin argued that the Fed should be made a more public institution.
Currently, regional reserve bank boards have nine directors: six are elected by member banks, with three representing commercial banks and three representing the public. The final three directors are appointed by the Board of Governors in Washington, and are also meant to represent the public.
Bank Control
That means two-thirds of the board seats at the 12 regional Fed banks are controlled by commercial banks, Levin wrote, saying that the directors should instead be affiliated with small businesses and non-profit organizations and selected through a “process overseen by the Federal Reserve Board and involving the elected officials in each Fed district.”
“The process should ensure that directors are representative of the public in terms of racial/ethnic and gender diversity and educational background and professional experience,” Levin wrote.
Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed, said Thursday that “diversity for the Federal Reserve is critical,” and that progress has been made both at the board of directors and at the staff level in making sure the Fed reflects the communities that it serves.
Preserving Independence
Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker pushed back against proposals to make the Fed more public in an article posted Thursday. He said the regional branches’ hybrid governance structure “has come to play an important role in the independence of monetary policy” and “independence allows monetary policy to place greater weight on the long-term benefits of low and stable inflation.”
“The current Fed governance structure may not be ideal,” Lacker wrote. “But until there is a proposal that preserves the monetary policy independence that is so vital to the Fed’s mandate, we should stick to what we have.”
While there have been various Congressional attempts at shaking up Fed structure in recent years, those have made little headway. For instance, Republican Senator Richard Shelby proposed a bill last year that would have tweaked the New York Fed, making its leader a presidential appointee, among other changes, but it never passed.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has also weighed in on the Fed in recent days. On CNBC last week, Trump said that he’s a “low-interest” person and that he would replace Yellen when her term ends.
By Jeanna Smialek
Source
Here and Now
Here and Now
At noon, members of the Hedge Clippers campaign, New York Communities for Change and The Center for Popular Democracy...
At noon, members of the Hedge Clippers campaign, New York Communities for Change and The Center for Popular Democracy protest Blackstone, a company behind foreclosures in Puerto Rico, 345 Park Ave., Manhattan.
Read the full article here.
Room for Debate: The Public Pension Problem
Bring Financial Managers in House The New York Times - December 5, 2013, by Connie Razza - This past year, investment...
The New York Times - December 5, 2013, by Connie Razza - This past year, investment management fees on New York City pensions increased 28 percent. Over the past seven years, they have more than doubled to $472.5 million annually. The city pays very high fees even in years when the funds lose value.
Internal control of pension fund assets for public workers will help rebalance a city's relationship with Wall Street.
These fees unduly burden the funds and add to the uncertainty with which our city's retired and current employees face the future. The rapid rise in pension fund fees is just one of many symptoms of our badly broken financial system, which fails to serve the broader economy and promote general prosperity. Instead, it promotes and exacerbates inequality. As part of the New Day New York Coalition, the Center for Popular Democracy has proposed a sweeping solution. New York should create a highly skilled in-house financial management team for pension fund assets. Even with salaries high enough to attract top quality managers, the city would not pay the typical "2 percent of assets under management, plus 20 percent of profits" that hedge funds, private-equity firms and real-estate firms typically charge. The profit motive of in-house managers will be fully aligned with city employees and they will be better situated to ensure that investments are financially responsible, contributing to our broader economy and to the funds' bottom line. The creation of the in-house financial team would save the pension funds hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As significant a change as this would be, it is an idea that the city's former chief investment officer has advocated, and that incoming city comptroller Scott Stringer has expressed interest in. Also, pension funds in Alaska, California, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada, already do this, to varying degrees. All of these funds also rely on outside managers for some of their investments, but insourcing much of the pension investment management would give the city funds meaningful leverage when working with outside management firms. Building an internal capacity to manage the pension fund assets of city workers is an important step toward rebalancing the city's relationship with Wall Street.
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3 days ago
3 days ago