CPD IN THE NEWS

More than 300 health care activists, disability rights advocates, and organizers gathered on second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Monday morning to oppose Senate Republicans’ Graham-Cassidy health care bill.

The bill would sharply reduce spending for Medicaid by billions of dollars by tying it to medical inflation, blow up Obamacare’s marketplaces, and open the door for states to curtail protections for patients with preexisting conditions.

Read the full article here.

Associated Press - August 22, 2014, by Matthew Brown — Shadowing central bankers and economists at the annual Federal Reserve conference here, a group of about 10 demonstrators pressed Fed Chair Janet Yellen not to yield to pressure to raise interest rates.

Carrying placards and green T-shirts embossed with the slogan "What recovery?" they said they'd come from New York, Missouri, Minnesota and elsewhere to draw attention to people left behind by the recovery and still unable to find work.

One demonstrator approached Yellen to press his point as she prepared to enter the opening reception Thursday night. With security guards hovering nearby, the two shook hands and spoke for about a minute before Yellen entered the closed-door gathering.

Yellen spokesman Doug Tillett said her staff would seek to arrange a meeting between the chair and the demonstrators back in Washington.

Their message was generally in sync with Yellen's stance since she became Fed chair in February to keep rates low to help support a still-subpar economy. In a speech to the conference Friday, Yellen noted that while the unemployment rate has steadily dropped, other gauges of the U.S. job market have been harder to evaluate and may reflect continued weakness.

The timing of a Fed rate increase remains unclear, though many economists foresee an increase by mid-2015.

The demonstrators, including several who said they were unemployed or had settled for low-wage jobs, said they'd traveled here to encourage Yellen not to give in to those who say rates must be increased to avoid causing high inflation or other financial instability.

The demonstrator who approached Yellen before the opening reception was Ady Barkan of a group called the Center for Popular Democracy in New York.

"She said she understood what we were saying and that they were doing everything they can," Barkan said Friday. "We'd like them to do more."

He argued that the Fed should lower its target for unemployment and factor in whether wages are rising consistently before making any move to raise rates.

Tillett, the Yellen spokesman, said, "We're certainly willing to meet with them and hear what they have to say."

Asked whether there were security concerns in having demonstrators approach Yellen and seek to buttonhole other conference attendees, Tillett said, "We appreciate their freedom of expression."

The demonstrators also met before the event with Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which sponsors the Jackson Hole event. Later, they managed to corner Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer during a break in the proceedings.

"We're not in recovery," Cee Cee Butler, a 34-year-old mother of two from Washington, D.C., told Fischer. "It may be fine on Wall Street, but on my streets, it's not fine at all...There's a lot of homeless people that live in my city, a lot of children that panhandle quarters."

Butler said she works a minimum wage job at McDonald's and receives food stamps but still can't make ends meet. She said the trip to Wyoming — her first time aboard an airplane, she said — was paid for by donations from advocacy groups.

Another demonstrator, 42-year-old Kendra Brooks, told Fischer that she holds a master's degree in business administration but has seen her income drop by more than half since losing her job as a program director at a nonprofit about a year and a half ago.

Two weeks ago, Brooks said, she began working for Action United in Philadelphia, a community advocacy group. But it's not comparable to her former job, she said, and "is like starting from scratch."

"They heard what we said, but the outcome of that, in terms of interest rates, is still pending," Brooks said of the group's interactions with Yellen, George and Fischer. "This has been what my recovery looks like, and it's a nightmare."

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Earlier this year, the New York City Council passed my resolution urging the state legislature to keep the cap on charter schools. That was nothing new: Council Members have long showed their opposition to raising the cap. But, with recent efforts by powerful special interests, including more than $13 million spent in lobbying and campaign ads, we need to remind New York why raising the cap is not only unnecessary, but also harmful to our public school children.

First, there is the capacity question. Charter schools have 2,500 unfilled seats in New York City. In addition, current charter agreements could allow for more than 27,000 additional authorized seats. In other words, these charter schools already are not handling their assigned share of students, and that burdens crowded public schools, making it more difficult for those schools to provide quality education.

Second, charter schools are not required to serve students who transfer to or join schools mid-year because of disciplinary measures or because of a family's choice. They also do not serve nearly the same amount of students with special needs as public schools. This means that when the school year starts, charters receive funding for a certain number of students yet actually end up teaching fewer than they are budgeted for. They then pocket the remainder and can boast lower class sizes while public schools again shoulder the burden.

Finally, the Center for Popular Democracy reported that New York stood to lose over $54 million to charter school-related fraud in 2014 alone. Audits can help uncover instances of fraud, mishandling of funds, conflicts of interest within governing boards, and a number of other troubling findings, yet charter schools largely oppose efforts to increase transparency. The State Comptroller's attempt to audit charter schools has already been foiled at every turn, meaning New Yorkers are left in the dark about how exactly our public dollars are spent.

Meanwhile, more than $5 billion in state money is owed to our traditional public schools to provide every child access to a "sound basic education" per the Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling. Forty-four percent of all schools in New York City are overcrowded. The City's Independent Budget Office reports that most schools are at 102 percent capacity or more, and 88 percent of the city's charter schools are co-located within a district school, adding to the space crunch.

Co-located charter schools, by the way, are an exercise in inequality: privately run schools, with access to both private and public funds, that are taking resources from underfunded district schools. What does this mean for the social climate in these schools? Many students feel, and rightfully so, that district schools and their students are not valued the way they should be.

It is sensible to provide the money and attention owed to our public schools to keep them strong. Charter schools already divert resources from the majority of students, who attend public schools. Charter schools do not serve our children, especially the most needy, with enough accountability to justify increasing their share of funding.

All children deserve an education system that celebrates their potential by giving them the space and funding necessary to achieve educational excellence. The raising of the charter cap would be damaging to our public school system in terms of morale, space, funding, and overall quality. Leaders in Albany should finish their legislative session without altering the cap. Instead, it is time to ensure a feasible means of success for public schools by giving them the focus they need and not investing in a private enterprise that has yet to fulfill its promise to New Yorkers.

***Daniel Dromm is the Education Committee Chair of the New York City Council.

Source: Gotham Gazette

Ana María Archila, un activista colombiana residente en Queens que ha liderado muchas protestas en Nueva York, ganó atención nacional ayer al confrontar al senador Jeff Flake en un elevador del Capitolio.

Lea el artículo completo aquí.