Rockefeller Institute Hands over Final Scaffold Law Report Draft
Times Union - September 3, 2014, by Casey Seiler - SUNY’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has released a...
Times Union - September 3, 2014, by Casey Seiler - SUNY’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has released a second draft of its controversial report on New York’s Scaffold Law. According to the Institute’s Deputy Director for Operations Robert Bullock, it’s the last draft version of the report that was shared with the report’s funder, the state Lawsuit Reform Alliance.
The business-backed group, which opposes Scaffold Law, paid $82,800 to fund the report — sponsorship that has led critics to attack the study as advocacy in the guise of research. Its authors, however, insist the research was conducted in good faith.
Scaffold Law, which places “absolute liability” on employers for gravity-related workplace injuries, is supported by labor unions but opposed by business groups that claim it needlessly drives up construction costs. Opponents would like to see New York follow other states by adopting a “comparative negligence” standard that would make workers proportionately responsible when their actions contribute to an accident.
The Center for Popular Democracy, a labor-backed group that supports Scaffold Law, requested copies of all communications between the Institute and the Lawsuit Reform Alliance. That FOIL request produced a series of emails between researchers and LRA Executive Director Tom Stebbins, including Stebbins’ suggested edits to a June 25, 2013, draft copy of the report that was not initially released by the Institute.
The Center appealed to SUNY’s FOIL officer, who ultimately decided the June 25 draft — which had been appended to an email to Stebbins — should be released. A comparison of the draft and the final report suggested that some of Stebbins’ suggestions were reflected in the final version. Researchers, however, said any changes were the result of their efforts to sharpen their analysis, and not made due to pressure from the funder.
The newly released draft, dated Aug. 7, 2013, closely resembles the final report — which neither proves nor disproves the Center’s charges that the academics buckled under pressure.
Josie Duffy of the Center for Popular Democracy, however, claims the six-week gap between the first and second drafts suggests that the Institute moved quickly to follow the Alliance’s edits.
“When LRANY wanted changes, the report’s authors dutifully made them right away — inflating the report’s findings and taking out a key section that challenged how onerous the Scaffold Safety Law really is,” Duffy said in a statement, alluding to the second draft’s disposal of a two-page section on the construction of the Champlain Bridge that found little or no impact on the project from Scaffold Law.
“SUNY says it has now disclosed everything it has, but given that LRANY and the authors held weekly conference calls to discuss the report’s progress, we may never know the full extent of their influence over the final version,” Duffy said.
In an email, Bullock said the Institute “has been open and honest about its contacts with funders and its research has been and will continue to be immune from influence. It is unfortunate that a research organization known throughout the nation for the quality and character of its work should have to defend itself from accusations leveled by the Center for Popular Democracy, an organization well known for its partisanship.”
Update: Stebbins sent the following statement:
“Reform opponents are so terrified of the data that they can do nothing but attack the method of three researchers at two top universities. The Scaffold Law costs billions and causes injuries. If the Center for Popular Democracy wants to have a real discussion about how many billions wasted and how many injuries caused by the Scaffold Law, I will have that discussion all day.”
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Bringing Black Voices to the Immigration Reform Debate
A Haitian American who grew up in Miami's Little Haiti community, Francesca Menes remembers the global cries for "...
A Haitian American who grew up in Miami's Little Haiti community, Francesca Menes remembers the global cries for "Democracy for Haiti" following the 1991 coup. Amidst the current threats to American democracy, she sees a reawakening of the political consciousness of American citizens and an opportunity to build real people power. As a longtime social justice activist and member of the Black Immigration Network'ssteering committee, Menes has learned to use her resources to lift up the voices of the most vulnerable.
Read the full article here.
Jeb and Hillary’s opportunity on workweek fairness
Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton have been trading barbs about whether Americans are working hard enough, but behind the...
Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton have been trading barbs about whether Americans are working hard enough, but behind the give-and-take is a real emerging issue that has a dire impact on our country’s 75 million hourly workers and their families: the 40 hour workweek is no longer something we can count on. The candidates have a chance to move beyond the gamesmanship and support concrete solutions at the national and local level to show their commitment to the stability of working families.
To summarize the exchange, Bush said that “people need to work longer hours.” Clinton quickly responded on Twitter, “Anyone who believes Americans aren't working hard enough hasn't met enough American workers.” Bush retorted, referencing the number of people who are involuntarily working part time and seeking full time work that, “Anyone who discounts 6.5 million people stuck in part-time work and seeking full-time jobs hasn’t listened to working Americans.”
Taken at their word, neither of them is wrong; both sides of the argument resonate in the lived experiences of the millions of people working by the hour. For hourly workers trying to work enough hours to earn enough to get by, it can mean taking the hours they can get –sometimes working short four-hour shifts, putting their lives on hold for a last-minute on-call shift, or working the late night shifts followed by too little sleep because of an early morning shift the next day – also known as a “clopen.”
This is reality for millions of Americans all across the country. Strained, exhausted, and without seeing their families some days. Their rent and bills are predictable, but the work hours they need to pay them are not.
Many of these workers both want more hours, like Bush says, and are working hard, like Clinton says. The American workforce is rapidly changing, and millions of people are caught in a cycle of too few hours, too little control of when their hours occur, and not getting paid for the time they make available to their employers. For part-timed hourly workers, there’s often no way to get ahead.
The issue missing from Jeb and Hillary’s exchange is how underemployment and unpredictability go hand in hand. The one thing these workers can count on is that their schedules will change each week, sometimes with just minutes’ notice. This last minute notice is typical of part-time hourly workers across the economy, especially in fast food and retail, by employers like Target, Starbucks, the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, and others. It’s impossible to pick up more hours at another job if you don’t know day to day what your schedule will be.
If Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are looking for real solutions to these issues, a new movement being led by working moms has some concrete policy solutions to offer. Last week, Congress introduced the Schedules That Work Act, a path-breaking bill addressing these underlying problems of part-time work that Bush and Clinton are debating. The bill is a result of workers calling for schedules they can predict, more stable hours they can count on, and the right to have a say into the hours they work without retaliation. The Schedules That Work Act has garnered a wave of support, in both the House and Senate, and comes after a year when legislators in 12 states introduced policies to guarantee a fair workweek, including active municipal campaigns that includes Minneapolis, Albuquerque, and Washington DC.
Clinton launched her campaign and declared, “I believe you should receive your work schedule with enough notice to arrange childcare or take college courses to get ahead” and Bush’s recent statements on involuntary part-time work show that even the GOP can’t ignore the under-employed. But the chaos that under-employment and unpredictable scheduling sows into workers lives is not just fuel for rhetoric, it’s real. And it requires real policy solutions. Hillary and Jeb have the chance to go deeper than their back and forth, address the common underlying problems they’ve both identified, and stand in favor of federal and local legislation that builds a fair workweek.
Gleason is the director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy
Source: The Hill
Economic Sector Bias at the Federal Reserve
In part one of this two-part posting, I looked at the gender bias at the Federal Reserve, showing how men vastly...
In part one of this two-part posting, I looked at the gender bias at the Federal Reserve, showing how men vastly outnumber women in key posts at Federal Reserve Banks throughout the United States despite the Fed's Congressional mandate. In part two of this posting, I want to take an additional look at the Fed's bias; its failure to represent the economic diversity of America.
For those of you that either didn't read part one or who are unaware of the Federal Reserve's organizational setup, here is a graphic from a report by the Center for Popular Democracy showing the link between the Federal Reserve and its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and its district banks known as Federal Reserve Banks:
Here is a map showing the regions covered by each of the 12 district banks (Federal Reserve Banks) and the 24 branches within each district:
Note that Alaska and Hawaii are covered by the San Francisco district.
If we start at the top of the organizational chart, the seven members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for a 14-year term of office. The President (and Senate) also confirm two members of the Board to be Chair (currently Janet Yellen) and Vice Chair for four year terms. The FOMC consists of 12 members; the seven aforementioned Board members, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and four other regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents on a rotating, one-year term basis. The Federal Reserve Banks form an important link between the Federal Reserve and their local economy and help to dictate the Federal Reserve's monetary policies. Each of the twelve district banks has their own president and boards of directors (nine directors in total for each bank); in addition, each of the 24 district branches has its own directors (seven directors in total for each branch). The Board of Directors for each Reserve Bank are appointed in two ways; the majority are appointed by the Reserve Bank and the remainder are appointed by the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. The directors for each district bank then appoint their own president and vice president. It all sounds rather nepotistic, doesn't it?
By law, under the Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977, the Boards of Directors of the Federal Reserve are to be
"...elected with due but not exclusive consideration to the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor and consumers.".
That is, each of the leaders/directors of the world's most influential central bank and its district banking system are to represent a wide variety of each of the economic sectors that make up the American economy.
The report by the Center for Popular Democracy compares the economic sector representation during the period from 2006 to 2010 when the Government Accountability Office examined the composition of the Federal Reserve Bank Boards and the present. Here is a graphic showing the past and present composition:
In both 2006 to 2010 and 2016, directors from the banking sector filled over one-third of the board seats, growing by 3 percentage points over the timeframe of the study. In combination, in 2016, representatives from the commercial and industrial sector and the banking sector filled 68 percent of seats, up from 63 percent in 2006 to 2010. The service sector's representation fell from 26 percent of seats to 18 percent and agriculture and food processing saw their representation fall from 6 percent of seats to 3 percent. Interestingly, even though they are relatively poorly represented compared to the other sectors, the number of directors affiliated with consumer and community organizations rose from 3 percent to 8 percent.
For your illumination, here are a few of the Directors for each of the Federal Reserve Banks that you can get a sense of who is dictating America's monetary policies:
If you are interested in who is on the boards of the other Federal Reserve Banks, please see the original report.
Interestingly, during the "financial crisis" of 2008, there was some question about directors' independence and actions taken by the Federal Reserve banks since there was at least the perception of conflicts of interest when director-affliated institutions took part in the Federal Reserve System's emergency programs. With a preponderance of representation from the banking and commercial sectors, it certainly doesn't take a genius to figure out which sectors of the economy will likely be favoured by Federal Reserve policies should there be another "financial crisis", does it?
By A Political Junkie
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Frustrated Employees Say Starbucks Still Needs to Improve Horrible Work Schedules
Frustrated Employees Say Starbucks Still Needs to Improve Horrible Work Schedules
Source: Grub Street...
Source: Grub Street
In August 2014, Starbucks promised to start making baristas' schedules more manageable. If complaints from baristas 15 months later are any indication, however, corporate still has its work cut out.
While fast-food workers rallied in 270 cities on Tuesday for better pay, a group of Starbucks workers apparently spent the daydemonstrating in front of Seattle's Pike Place location to protest what they say are ongoing scheduling snafus. A report recently backed up these claims: The advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy asked 200 employees about their workweeks, and many said they still get schedules with almost no advance notice and still do "clopenings," the infamous shift where a barista closes the store at night and returns hours later to open it the following morning.
Work life has improved for some baristas, but others claim corporate isn't doing nearly enough to fix the mind-set "that being sick is your fault." Inan essay posted this week on Medium, Darrion Sjoquist, a barista whose mom also worked at Starbucks, wrote that his store still expects workers to find someone to cover their shift, no matter the situation:
"You are expected to show up for work if your son has been missing for 24 hours or your grandfather has died. If you are so sick that it hurts to speak, you are expected to call and text and beg every available person and ask them to sacrifice their day off, their precious hours before work or after school to help you solve a problem neither of you had any control over."
As an example, he recounts a recent 4 a.m. phone call he got from a co-worker:
As soon as she said my name, I knew why she was calling. She was sick. She asked if I could cover her 4:30 a.m. to 10:30 am shift that morning. She’d tried every number she could and was having difficulty speaking, let alone standing and working for six hours. She said she didn’t know who else to call or what else she could do. She asked if I could cover even part of her shift.
"I said yes. I worked her six-hour shift that morning and returned an hour later to work my own eight-hour shift that afternoon. I worked her shift because if I hadn’t, no one would have, or even worse, she would have tried."
He and a group of baristas sent a letter to CEO Howard Schultz in hopes that "he hears my story," but they haven't gotten a reply yet. The company hasn't said much of anything lately about this mess, but at the time of that Center for Popular Democracy report, a rep noted there was still "work to do."
Fed Should “Freeze Interest Rates, Involve Citizens” Says Neighborhoods Organizing For Change
The Uptake - March 10, 2015, by Bill Sorem - Not everybody is benefiting equally from the economic recovery. A new...
The Uptake - March 10, 2015, by Bill Sorem - Not everybody is benefiting equally from the economic recovery. A new report shows in Minnesota blacks are suffering disproportionally to whites when it comes to employment.
Anthony Newby, Executive Director of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC), delivered a report of about the current economic state of people of color in Minnesota and specifically the current and possible role of the Federal Reserve Bank. The new report from the Center for Popular Democracy says since 2000, wages in Minnesota have declined by 4.5%, current unemployment rate for blacks is 10.9% vs a white rate of 2.8%.
This is the link to the full report “Wall Street, Main Street, and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard: Why African Americans Must Not Be Left Out of the Federal Reserve’s Full-Employment Mandate”
Newby argues that the Fed in addition to controlling interest rates, can control the rate of unemployment. He and Rev. Paul Slack, ISIAH President, ask that interest rates be kept at the current levels and that the Fed work to reduce unemployment.
Why there is a Federal Reserve
The nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, largely in response to a series of financial panics. There had been strong resistance to a central bank since the founding of the nation. The Fed was given the power to print money, establish bank interest rates and a number of sweeping powers. It is an independent entity within government, ownership of each of the 12 banks is claimed be the member banks, but the actual fiscal ownership is obscure. The ability to print money and loan it to the government is at the heart of its power and for many, a controversial power. President Kennedy challenged the authority of the Fed with Executive Order 11110, June 4, 1963 and he attempted to eliminate our current paper money, the Federal Reserve Note replacing it with US Notes. He did not succeed.
Newby further requested more transparency in the actions of the Fed and asked for more ordinary citizen participation. The current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Narayana Kocherlakota, has indicated a willingness to keep interest rates low and to move towards more citizen participation in the actions of the Fed. However, he retires in a year. Newby would like citizens to have input on his successor.
Rev. Slack asked for justice and compassion in the Fed policies, in part to undo past unfair actions.
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What The Federal Reserve Would Look Like If Progressives Had Their Way
What The Federal Reserve Would Look Like If Progressives Had Their Way
The progressive Fed Up coalition released an ambitious Federal Reserve reform plan on Monday designed to increase...
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
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The Fed’s Big Mistake: Rate Hikes Hurt US Workers
Protesters rallied in Washington, New York City and Philadelphia yesterday against an imminent government action that...
Protesters rallied in Washington, New York City and Philadelphia yesterday against an imminent government action that would damage the financial prospects of ordinary workers. And no, it had nothing to do with Donald Trump.
The Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign wants the Federal Reserve to break with expectations and hold interest rates steady rather than hiking them this week. They believe minority communities have yet to recover from the ravages of the financial crisis, and are still experiencing high unemployment and stagnant wages.
Read the full article here.
Mary Jo White should recuse herself from the selection of the next chair of the PCAOB: Activists
Mary Jo White should recuse herself from the selection of the next chair of the PCAOB: Activists
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary Jo White should recuse herself from the selection of the next chair...
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 .
Coalition_letter_regarding_Chair_White_and_PCAOB (1)
Source: ValueWalk
Blood in the Streets: A Conversation About Gun Violence in Chicago
Gawker - July 11, 2014, by Jason Parham - Earlier this week, writing for The Daily Beast, Roland Martin proposed a...
Gawker - July 11, 2014, by Jason Parham - Earlier this week, writing for The Daily Beast, Roland Martin proposed a solution to combat the surging violence on Chicago's South and West Sides: Send the National Guard to Chicago.
Martin's essay, narrow-minded and altogether ill-considered, was sparked by the recent killings that took place over the July 4th weekend—84 people were shot, and 14 killed. The city's poor black neighborhoods have become a recurring national talking point since President Obama, who calls Chicago home, assumed office in 2008: Violence and death, it seems, are the only constants in Chiraq. Concerned that Martin's solution for military occupation ultimately presents more harm than benefit to residents, I reached out to Ernest Wilkins, a reporter for RedEye Chicago, Josie Duffy, a writer and policy advocate at The Center for Popular Democracy, Jamilah Lemieux, senior digital editor at Ebony, and Kiese Laymon, author and contributing editor at Gawker, for answers. Our conversation appears below.
Josie Duffy: I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I'll start the conversation off by just saying one thing. If 84 people are shot and 16 are killed in one city in one weekend, I think it's clear the government has failed somewhere. So I think Martin is right insofar as the government has a responsibility to respond and attempt to rectify the problems plaguing Chicago.
But this sort of violence doesn't appear out of thin air—it's a response to a long history of systemic deprivation. That's why Martin's solution is deeply misguided, both on principle and practice. And while he suffers from a number of problems in this article – a memory deficiency, an overabundance of self-righteous moralism—perhaps the most pronounced is his laziness problem. He has a creativity deficiency.
This is his idea? More law enforcement? His suggestion is extreme, sure, but it's neither innovative nor intelligent.We're ahead of you, Roland. We've tried that. Law enforcement—from the police to the prosecutors to the prisons—have been working overtime for decades. Spoiler alert: It hasn't worked. In fact, it's made things worse in a lot of ways.
Somewhere along the way many people forgot that victims and residents of places like Chicago and St. Louis and Brownsville are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, so I don't want to pretend to know what's best for those residents. What I do know, however, is that violence across America and especially in Chicago is perpetuated against the poor and the black and the brown. It's not a coincidence that we're talking about the same demographics that have been not only ignored, but explicitly and intentionally prevented from access to education, economic mobility, and safety. This idea of the powerful causing the problem and then swooping in to benevolently gift us the "solution" is offensive. You can't make up for systemic deprivation through law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn't have the nuance, it doesn't have the tools, and it doesn't actually work. It's reactive and not preventative. Stop trying to find a shortcut where there is no shortcut.
Do any of you think there a way, as Roland suggests, to address violence without addressing poverty? Also, has Roland heard anything about Iraq and Afghanistan lately?
Ernest Wilkins: Josie, you're so on point about the residents of Chicago being able to speak for themselves. Before we consider rolling troops down Stony Island or through the Low End, maybe we should address the lack of communication taking place between the people in these neighborhoods and the people in power in Chicago. Nothing changes without that. When I say "ignored" understand that, in a lot of cases, that's literally happening. There have been countless meetings, initiatives, caucuses, fish frys, etc. with members of the communities suffering from this violence and the people in power. You would think some insight would have been gained by now. Instead, the conversation usually goes like this:
"What is the problem here? Why is everyone killing everyone?"
"We're poor. We need money and jobs in this community."
"Ok. What's the solution to this violence though?"
"We just told you. Money and jobs in the community. A lot of this goes away with opportunities to do better in life that we currently aren't being afforded due to ignorance about our plight. Stop lumping everyone into a faceless mass of "gangbangers" and listen to us as human beings."
"Maybe you're not understanding me here. WHAT. IS. THE. SOLUTION. TO. THE. PROBLEM???"
"...We give up."
Even worse, when people from these communities define the exact issues that lead to this violence, their opinions are picked apart and not taken seriously, with the response usually being some variation of tired-ass narratives like, "You need to fix your community by pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps, not blaming the white man" or "Something something Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson" or the "solution" Roland Martin presented in that piece.
The fact is, the people who die in our streets aren't looked at as real humans. We've obsessed over the numbers and crunched the stats so much that the baseline reaction now after hearing that TRIPLE the amount of the lives lost in the Boston Marathon bombing were killed over the weekend some four miles from your house is that of numbness. You aren't sad. You aren't angry. You just post an incredulous "This has got to stop!" message to your Facebook feed, and keep it moving.
Jamilah Lemieux: Josie and Ernest, I think you've both summed up a great deal of my own frustration with the media narrative that talking heads like Roland have driven and also, the apathy that comes with being detached from the actual violence. I read this week that 85 percent of the city's violent crimes affect 5 percent of the population. That means that your average Chicagoan doesn't know anyone who has been harmed or killed, nor do they live in an area that has been affected by the violence—which is primarily concentrated in two of the cities 60 zip codes.
Fourteen homicides in a weekend is a tragedy no matter what the circumstances, but I believe that so much of the reporting on these shootings has to do with 1) the 24-hour news cycle that didn't exist when the murder rate was significantly higher in the 90s and 2) the president's connection to the city. There is something so wrong about Roland implying that the entire South and West Sides are on fire. I am tired of trying to explain the culture and the geography of my hometown to people who have never set a foot outside of O'Hare Airport because they are somehow experts on all things black and terrible. And as someone who left here—I just happen to be in town this week—12 years ago for college and never moved back and never intends to do so, I recognize my own limitations in identifying some of the shifting dynamics that have brought us from being known as "Chi-Town" to "Chiraq." However, when someone says something as reckless as 'send in the National Guard' to police American citizens who have never had the honor of being treated as such, it makes it plain that folks aren't even trying to understand what is at play here.
My parents can tell you stories of black Chicagoans being terrorized by the National Guard during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the riots that ensued under the regime of the late and notorious Mayor Richard Daley (the first one). That any black man over the age of 40 would see this as a viable solution makes me question his knowledge of history and also, just what he thinks the National Guard does. They are trained to shoot and kill, to mobilize for war. How does that serve the people of this city? Who does that help? I do believe that government intervention—on a federal and local level—is appropriate, but coming in with guns to fight guns only increases the likelihood that innocent black people will find themselves incarcerated, maimed, or worse. What a solution looks like, I don't know, but as Ernest said, we should be looking to the people who are HERE and fighting that fight daily, as opposed to a tired police chief from Newark and the Army, to decide what that should be. People are poor, jobs are scare, the "you aren't welcome here anymore" gentrification is making it difficult for people to commute to the jobs they do have, to afford the rent and groceries that may have already been a challenge. But some cat from the South thinks that what we need are tanks and guns? That's infuriating.
Kiese Laymon: Thank y'all for breaking all of this down with plenty care, introspection and imagination. I'm not sure I have much to add other than more questions. Half of my family moved to Chicago, Indiana, and Racine a few decades ago to escape Mississippi.
I remember my Aunt Daisy—who lost a daughter to violence, and lost her son to years in prison after he was found guilty of violence—saying that there are more folks on the ground fighting to keep kids alive than anywhere else she ever lived. But those folks, Daisy claimed, are the least well-paid folks she knew.
I'm wondering what happens if we really invest in the work of folks in Chicago really fighting to ward off what white supremacy and unexplored sexist culture has produced. And if we can't allow or expect adequate compensation for those folks, should we find creative ways as black folks to fairly compensate and fairly train the folks in our community who want to do this work? What would a communal creative financial commitment to fighting the consequences of white supremacy look like?
And what role should black folk who don't live in those communities anymore play?
My other question is a tougher one. I come from a place very similar to Chicago. Jackson's murder rate is routinely higher proportionately than Chicago's. Like a lot of folks who grew up there in the 80s and 90s, I feel lucky to be alive. I know part of that is because of small classes, committed freedom fighters who let me know over and over that killing and fighting each other was playing into the hands of the worst of white folks, and a grandma I never wanted to let down. I'm not in Jackson anymore. And while I write words that I know some young folk in Jackson read, do we have the responsibility to go back to the communities we come from and commit to learning and teaching and fighting for the future of our people?
I work with young middle schoolers and high school kids in Poughkeepsie, but that's not home. Should we go home and commit to loving our people, especially when folks are talking bout unlovingly sending in men with guns to discipline them if they don't act right. Should we go home and fight?
Jason Parham: The answers we're looking for won't be easy. And while I don't agree that the National Guard is necessary to help mitigate the violence sweeping across the South Side and West Side of Chicago, I do agree that an increased level of authority—via residents who wield some sort of influence, community organizers, etc—might help subdue a portion of the terror taking place. But even then, we are not really unearthing the root of the problem.
As Ernest pointed out, there are a lot of variables at play here, the most horrific realization being: black life doesn't account for much in America. And the statistics Jamilah offered reinforce this. People who visit Chicago via a CNN news broadcast or a clip uploaded to YouTube see us, but they don't really see us. This, of course, is nothing new. But it is something that I think about often, and I wonder how a similar situation would play out in an area populated by, say, middle class whites. I accept this reality, though—a reality, I should say, that we are forcibly trying to alter, stubborn as it might be—and understand that there are cultural structures in place that allow for the continued devaluation of black and brown life (doubly if you're poor, triply if you're black, poor and a woman).
I don't have the one true solution to any of this. I'm a black man and I find value in our existence, in our love and support and uplift of each other. But I know that it begins with us. I take responsibility for my brothers and sisters. I acknowledge that what these young men are doing is wrong and hurtful, but I also understand that it comes from a place of anger and self-doubt and not wanting to be unloved. I am reminded of Kai M. Green's words: "What do we do with the scars, those of us who did not die, but still aren't free?" I don't want anybody to misinterpret what I'm saying: I am not making excuses for the violence, killing is a cowardly and terrible evil, but many of these young men are reckoning with traumas, tangible and intangible, they don't fully comprehend. A black man is born with a target on his back. That is our starting point. That some of us have made it this far is a miracle.
So to answer your question, Kiese: should we go home and fight? If we have the means to do so, absolutely. It begins with us; it begins with better and more sustainable community building. Why is it that these young men feel like joining a gang is their only option for acceptance and survival? Why is it that these kids are merely trying to "make it out" instead of trying to "live"? Obviously these issues are rooted to larger systemic problems within the context of America—the lingering residue of Jim Crow-era segregation, disinvestment in areas populated by poor black and Latino populations, inadequate schools in "urban" neighborhoods, the fracturing of the black family, etc etc—but not unsolvable. As Jamiliah noted, I don't want the readers to think we are speaking in absolutes here, this isn't the entire reality of communities at war—there are individuals doing great and important things on Chicago's South Side, and in neighborhoods like Brownsville and Compton—but the violence is a reminder that there is ever more work to be done.
Jamilah Lemieux: Do we have the responsibility to go back to the communities we come from and commit to learning and teaching and fighting for the future of our people?I struggle with this question often. On some level, I feel some guilt for leaving the place that nurtured my development and taking whatever talents or gifts I have to become part of this large New York machine. One of millions of transplants who, depending who you ask, either drain that city dry, or make it richer than its own natives could on their own. But on the flip, what does coming home look like? How do I make things better here? And do the unique challenges facing my hometown mean that I'm not entitled to the pursuit of happiness that led me to leave in the first place? Because I decided to leave long before "Chiraq" was something struggle rappers used to lend credence to careers that would have been felled by their lack of skills some 15, 20 years ago.
I'd like to believe that on some level, my work as a writer and editor who focuses on issues of race, gender. and sexuality is a contribution to my community—the black community, from Chicago, to Brooklyn and beyond. If I can figure out ways to help these South Side girls feel better about their sexual agency, or to address the flaws in the media narrative around Chicago from the place I've adopted as my home, is my absence still a betrayal?
In April, activist Leonore Draper was killed in a drive-by outside her home after leaving an anti-violence fundraiser. I honor her sacrifice, but I am not willing to give my life to Chicago. And while I understand the city well enough to know that the violence is largely contained to certain areas, and that Americans must be prepared to be shot at any time (see: Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook), I do feel that relocating back here comes with the increased possibility of being in the wrong place at the wrong time—especially if I were to return specifically to "help make things better." I have a child, she needs me and she needs to be safe. My ex is also from here, and when she is visiting the city without me, I just pray that the desire to go see Cousin or Auntie So-and-So in a rougher part of town takes a backseat to keeping our child away from harm. I worry over her being in shopping malls and on subway trains or anywhere that people can be found. I don't have what it takes to deal with her being down the street from where Chief Keef stays.
I try and do my best to be an ambassador for my city, to tell the Roland Martins of the world, "Look, you've got this wrong!" and to remind people that Chicago is not a city of savages, but one that has been criminally underdeveloped by structural racism and inequality. But I'm not willing to return, at least not now.
Ernest Wilkins: My family is from the Robert Taylor Homes. The environment that molded thousands of black lives—including my father's—literally doesn't exist anymore. The housing project was finally demolished in 2007. I've never been there and I never will. Still, there's still a sense of responsibility within me to do right by my people. I love Chicago. The city made me who I am. One of the main reasons I moved back home after college and living in Atlanta for a few years was to try and contribute to making the city better. As black people, I think the whole point is to recognize that situations like this affect all of us, no matter how much we might want to distance ourselves or feel like it isn't our responsibility. If you live in Brooklyn and have access to a few million, you can do more than I can on the ground here in the immediate sense. However, I can go talk to these kids and donate my time. Everyone can do something.
I think there's a sense of hopelessness and a feeling that the job is too big. The society that can save Chicago is the same one that's out here giving a man 20k to fund a goddamn potato salad on Kickstarter. We have the tools. These neighborhoods need awareness to the real issues, not rhetoric, posturing, and lack of empathy. No matter what though, the solution ain't troops, my guy.
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