CPD IN THE NEWS

Univision - February 16, 2015 - Un juez federal de Texas suspendió temporalmente el lunes la entrada en vigor de la acción ejecutiva del presidente Barack Obama, un día antes de que comenzara la inscripción a la primera parte que frena la deportación de unos 2.4 millones de dreamers.

“No está permitido hacer nada para implementar ninguno de los nuevos programas que Obama anunció.”   El beneficio migratorio, anunciado el 20 de noviembre del año pasado por Barack Obama, en total, protege de la deportación a entre 4.5 y 5 millones de indocumentados, entre ellos, padres de ciudadanos y residentes legales permanentes (DAPA, por sus siglas en inglés) que están en el país desde antes del 1 de enero de 2010 y carecen de antecedentes criminales.   También amplía la cobertura de la Acción Diferida (DACA, por sus siglas en inglés) del 15 de junio de 2007 al 1 de enero de 2010, cuya entrada en vigor estaba prevista para este 18 de febrero. El juez Andrew S. Hanen dio la orden de frenar la medida y dictó que el gobierno federal no tiene permitido hacer nada para implementar ninguno de los nuevos programas que Obama anunció en noviembre.   Minutos después de haberse emitido la medida cautelar, el gobernador de Texas, Greg Abbott, quien lidera la demanda, anunció el fallo provisional a través de su cuenta en Twitter. Juez federal acepto su pedido para detener la orden ejecutiva para indocumentados bajo el programa de DAPA. El fallo provisional de Hanen es en respuesta a una demanda presentada en diciembre por 26 estados, liderados por Texas, contra la acción ejecutiva. Veinticuatro de ellos, gobernados por republicanos, argumentan que Obama se extralimitó en sus funciones y que la medida viola la Constitución.   La decisión de Hanen significa que aquellos dreamers (soñadores) que tenían pensado enviar sus solicitudes para evitar ser deportados a partir de este miércoles, no podrán hacerlo. El dictamen provisional ocurre mientras la Corte Federal para el Distrito Sur de Texas, que preside Hanen, sigue revisando la demanda.   En su fallo, el juez asegura que "al haber hallado que al menos un demandante satisface todos los elementos necesarios para mantener la demanda", concede "un mandato judicial temporal" para suspender la aplicación de las medidas hasta que haya "una resolución final de los méritos de esta causa o una orden ulterior de este tribunal".   La acción ejecutiva frena temporalmente por tres años las deportaciones y concede un permiso de trabajo por el mismo periodo de tiempo. Al tercer año se esperaba que pudieran renovarse ambos beneficios.   Los demandantes habían pedido a Hanen que emita una "orden judicial preliminar" que bloqueara temporalmente tanto DACA como DAPA en tanto la querella sigue su curso. El Servicio de Inmigración comenzará a recibir solicitudes de quienes califiquen para Acción Ejecutiva Extendida. Wendy Feliz, representante del American Immigration Council, había advertido en la víspera que Hanen no estaba obligado a tomar una decisión antes de este miércoles, “pero se esperaba que lo hiciera”, reportó la agencia mexicana Notimex.   Otra de las opciones que tenía el juez, además de suspender temporalmente la acción ejecutiva, era no tomar acción alguna y también rechazar el otorgamiento de la suspensión pedida por los demandantes. También Hanen pudo haber emitido una orden de suspensión parcial contra algunos de los beneficios contenidos en la acción ejecutiva.   La decisión de Hanen ocurre en momentos que el Congreso, controlado por los republicanos, debate si aprueba el presupuesto del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS, por sus siglas en inglés) para lo que resta del año fiscal 2015.   A finales de enero la Cámara de Representantes aprobó incluir dos enmiendas al proyecto, una que anula la acción ejecutiva y otra que prohíbe al DHS utilizar dineros del presupuesto en la ejecución de la medida.   El Presidente Barack Obama había advertido que vetará cualquier iniciativa de ley que frene la acción ejecutiva. Pero no puede vetar la medida de Hanen. Solo apelarla.   De no aprobarse el presupuesto antes del 27 de febrero, el DHS se quedará sin fondos para seguir operando, excepto áreas de emergencia de seguridad nacional.   Los republicanos, sin embargo, han dicho que seguirán desafiando la medida ya sea en el Congreso o en las cortes, y exigen al gobierno que escuche la voz del pueblo expresada en las urnas el martes 4 de noviembre del año pasado cuando concedió a los republicanos la mayoría en ambas cámaras del legislativo.   La demanda del 3 de diciembre fue entablada por el entonces gobernador electo de Texas, el republicano Greg Abbott, y luego secundada por otros 25 estados, 24 de ellos gobernados por republicanos. West Virginia y Montana están gobernados por demócratas, pero sus fiscales son republicanos. Nevada, un estado gobernado por el hispano Brian Sandoval, es otra de las sorpresas de esta demanda.   Los demandantes argumentaron en ella que Obama no siguió la Ley de Procedimiento Administrativo en la emisión de su directiva migratoria. Y sostienen que la acción ejecutiva de Obama, en la propia admisión del presidente, "cambia la ley y establece una nueva política, excede su autoridad constitucional y perturba el delicado equilibrio de poderes".   “La extralimitación constitucional por el presidente Obama es clara y muy preocupante”, señala el recurso.   El Center for Popular Democracy comentó que el fallo del juez Hanen es una medida cautelar temporal y que “no cambia el hecho de que la orden ejecutiva del presidente Obama sea una victoria para las familias inmigrantes.   “Hacemos un llamado al Departamento de Justicia para que presente inmediatamente una instancia ante el Quinto Tribunal de Apelaciones de Circuito para que sea desechada esta demanda sin mérito que se traduce en un ataque a las familias inmigrantes y una pérdida de dinero de los contribuyentes, dijo Joaquín Guerra, del Proyecto Organización de Texas (Texas Organizing Project) en un comunicado poco después de conocerse el dictamen de Hanen.   A mediados de enero, luego de una audiencia en la que ambas partes presentaron y defendieron sus argumentos, Hanen dijo que no emitiría un fallo sobre la solicitud de interdicto sino hasta antes del 30 de enero.   Señaló que el caso era "un área de debate legítimo" y que "no hay tipos malos en esto". Dijo que Brownsville y el sur de Texas han visto tanto los beneficios como los inconvenientes de la aplicación estricta de las leyes de inmigración y de lo que "algunas personas llaman una política laxa de aplicación".   Durante la audiencia Hanen admitió que había criticado la política de inmigración de Estados Unidos en dos fallos previos, pero también señaló que en ambos casos su determinación fue a favor del gobierno federal.   Además de Texas, los estados demandantes son Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Carolina Norte, Carolina del Sur, Dakota del Norte, Dakota del Sur, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia del Oeste y Wisconsin.   Los estados que se oponen a la acción ejecutiva no solicitan una indemnización, sino que quieren que los tribunales bloqueen la acción ejecutiva y señalan que el mandatario se extralimitó en sus poderes.   Esta no es la primera vez que Hanen se pronuncia en contra de los inmigrantes. Hanen, el año pasado, acusó al gobierno de participar en conspiraciones criminales para llevar al país niños de contrabando al reunirlos con los padres que vivían en el país de manera ilegal.   Source

"Today, the Federal Reserve concluded another opaque and controversial Reserve Bank presidential selection process by ignoring the demands of the public and choosing yet another white man whose record on Wall Street regulation and full employment raises serious questions,” said Shawn Sebastian, Fed Up’s director. Fed Up said it submitted a list of nine non-white male candidates to the New York Fed’s search committee and that most of them were never contacted.

Read the full article here.

Huffington Post - October 9, 2014, by Richard Eskow - Progressives who are elected to executive office have a unique opportunity to highlight neglected issues and stimulate much-needed debate, by taking actions which challenge the "conventional wisdom." They can change the political landscape by employing a principle that might be called "leadership by example."

The mayor of New York City is uniquely positioned to play this role, thanks to that city's prominence, and so far Bill de Blasio has done exceptionally well at it. Two of his actions -- on education and assistance to the poor -- deserve particular commendation, because they challenge the "bipartisan" consensus that has too often strangled open debate and left the public's interests unrepresented.

Action for the Impoverished

1. "Welfare Reform's" Record of Failure

"Centrist" Democrats like Bill Clinton, together with Republicans like Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, have long sung the praises of "welfare reform" -- a set of policies that promised to turn welfare recipients into "productive citizens" through a combination of educational programs, work requirements, and "tough love" that denied benefits to some of them.

Clinton signed the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" on August 22, 1996, saying it would "end welfare as we know it and transform our broken welfare system by promoting the fundamental values of work, responsibility, and families." That bill quickly became a symbol of "bipartisan consensus" and a much-touted piece of model legislation for the neoliberal economic agenda.

Unfortunately, we now know that it didn't work. In fact, it backfired. A report from the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center showed that extreme poverty increased in the United States by 130 percent between 1996 and 2013 -- and pinpointed "welfare reform" as the cause.

Despite its documented failure, the myth persists that "welfare reform" succeeded. This belief has so far proved resistant to the mounting evidence against it, perhaps because it serves the personal interests of wealthy individuals and corporations who don't care to be taxed for antipoverty programs.

This "reform" myth also serves to assuage their consciences. Politicians like Cuomo and Clinton are all too happy to help in that effort by assuring wealthy Americans that this policy is smart, even liberal, and that it only coincidentally happens to benefit them personally.

2. The End of Welfare As They Know It

The mayor of New York City cannot supersede a federal law, but a recent executive action will hopefully serve to re-open the debate on welfare "reform." De Blasio ended the policies of his GOP predecessors and eased requirements for welfare eligibility in New York City. New rules will give young people more time to complete their educations, and native speakers of foreign languages time to learn English. He also cut back on some "workfare" requirements (which in some cases amount to little more than ritual humiliation.)

For the first time, allowances will be made for parental duties, travel time, and other obstacles which are faced every day by the poor -- but which are little-understood by prosperous "bipartisans" from either party.

As a de Blasio official explained, "we have the data to show that toughness for the sake of toughness hasn't been effective."

3. Data Driven

Data. That word is anathema to "centrist" politicians and commentators who claim to be technocrats, but who are actually driven by ideology, donor cash, or both. When de Blasio issued his orders the hyperventilation was, predictably, all but instantaneous. "We don't need to guess how de Blasio's welfare philosophy will pan out," wrote Heather McDonald, who is "Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute."

Reihan Salam fulminated in Slate that welfare programs must "rest on a solid moral foundation. And that, ultimately, is what work requirements are all about."

But when the work isn't available, or people have no practical way of obtaining it, it's immoral to make them -- or their children -- suffer. By ending the inhumane but "bipartisan" policies of his predecessors, Bill de Blasio has potentially re-opened the debate on the draconian and failed "welfare reform" concept.

Action on Education

1. Charter Schools Are "Special Interests"

De Blasio's much-publicized struggle with charter school CEO Eva Moskowitz began when he overturned Bloomberg's decision to give her "Success Academy" free space in city buildings. That led her to make a series of false claims about her organization's accomplishments -- claims that were effectively debunked by Diane Ravitch and Avi Blaustein. Success Academy students aren't the best in the state, they aren't the most difficult students in the city -- and the program is so cost-inefficient that it spends over $2,000 per year more per student than other schools serving similar populations.

Bloomberg was generous to Moskowitz because her program suited his predilection for Wall Street-friendly, corporate-cozy ideas -- ideas which appeared on the surface to promote innovation or "reform," but which on further study reveal themselves as a wealth transfer from the many to the few, often at the expense of the public good.

That's exactly what the charter-school movement represents. Sure, it sounds like a good idea: Schools will "compete" for students, and those which offer the best "products" will succeed. As writer and education activist Jeff Bryant says: Everybody loves "choice," right?

But the concept is flawed at its core. Schools aren't failing because students and their parents don't have "choices" in schools. They're failing -- to the extent they are, because even that concept is overhyped -- because they don't have choices in jobs or housing. Schools are struggling because we don't pay teachers well enough, because we underfund our school districts, and because social factors (especially poverty) inhibit the learning process.

2. Rockets to Nowhere

For all the hype and all the money, there's still no evidence that charter schools work. Advocates love to claim that "school choice" offers lower-income children a way out of poverty. But Milwaukee, which the conservative American Enterprise Institute calls "one of the most 'choice-rich' environments in America," remains one of America's 10 most impoverished big cities.

And kids aren't any more educated in Milwaukee than they were before they were given all this "choice." Educator Diane Ravitch reviewed the data and found that, 22 years after the program was implemented, there was no evidence of improvement in students' test scores.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reviewed the "Rocketship" program, which has bid to take over Milwaukee's underperforming schools, and found that it isn't working. They observed that "in 2012-2013, all seven of the Rocketship schools failed to make adequate yearly progress according to federal standards."

Call it "failure to launch."

3. Follow the Money

The EPI also noted that "Blended-learning schools such as Rocketship are supported by investment banks, hedge funds, and venture capital firms that, in turn, aim to profit from both the construction and, especially, the digital software assigned to students."

That might help explain why wealthy Wall Street investors paid Moskowitz's $2,000-plus-per-student cost overruns out of their own pockets. The same hedge funders also happen to have donated at least $400,000 to Andrew Cuomo's reelection campaign. Perhaps coincidentally, Cuomo led the charge against de Blasio after he moved to end Moskowitz's taxpayer-funded privileges.

Charter schools are an ideological and investment opportunity, which explains why enormous sums of money have been expended promoting them. (The latest effort, funded by $12 million from the wealthiest families in the nation, is something called "The Education Post."

Not all charter schools are driven by the profit motive, and some may in fact do a good job. But there is no evidence to support their claims, their operating principles, or the broader "free market" ideology behind them -- an ideology that is founded on hostility to government itself.

4. Breeding Fraud

Ravitch also notes that Washington, D.C., whose "Opportunity Scholarship Program" launched at least one educational celebrity career, was equally unable to demonstrate results. Its final-year report notes that "There is no conclusive evidence that the OSP affected student achievement."

There is conclusive evidence, however, that the charter school movement has produced at least one fairly widespread outcome: fraud. A recent report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education, and ACTION United told the story. The report, titled "Fraud and Financial Mismanagement in Pennsylvania's Charter Schools," showed that the state had failed to properly audit or review its publicly-funded charter schools.

It also uncovered a pattern of abuses so disturbing it makes charter schools look like petri dishes for fraud. The director of one charter school diverted $2.6 million in school funds to rebuild his church. Another stole $8 million for "houses, a Florida condominium, and an airplane." Yet another used taxpayer funds to finance "a restaurant, a health food store, and a private school." A couple stole nearly $1 million for their personal use.

There are more revelations in the report -- and it only covers one state.

And yet, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, charter schools continue to be talked up by Bill Clinton, whose recent boosterism was described by Salon's Luke Brinker as "stunning" in its variance with the facts. (Jeff Bryant has more on the reality behind Clinton's disingenuous remarks.)

5. The Ongoing Battle

De Blasio acted wisely in moving to end Bloomberg's gift of scarce New York City school resources to Moskowitz. He was ultimately forced to back down, at least in the short term, after her big-dollar backers won a victory in Albany.

That was no surprise, given the money behind the so-called "reformers." But it's not the end of the story, either. De Blasio's position on charter schools triggered a fierce response -- but it also triggered a long-overdue conversation.

By challenging the conventional wisdom on charter schools, Bill de Blasio has started something their backers didn't want: a genuine debate on their merits. He may have lost a battle, but if the debate continues he's likely to win the war.

Leadership Through Action

By taking actions which challenge the orthodoxy of his own party's corporate wing -- an orthodoxy shared and taken to extremes by the entire GOP -- Bill de Blasio is changing the political landscape. Although he is reportedly close to the Clintons (he managed Hillary's 2000 senatorial campaign), his executive decisions are offering a new political vision for progressives who have felt starved for representation in the two-party system of recent decades.

De Blasio's deeds haven't been limited to education and welfare, of course. As we've discussed elsewhere, he's taken on issues that range from the minimum wage to the environment, and to housing as a human right.

He's made mistakes, and he's all but certain to make more as he navigates difficult political waters. De Blasio's trying to effect change from within the political process, which is always a risky endeavor. But he's made great strides in a short time. His is the sort of leadership which can change the national political landscape even as it improves the quality of life for his constituents.

Bill de Blasio is using his position as mayor of New York to lead -- with action as well as words. And for that he's owed a debt of gratitude.

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There’s no question that race and gender matter in determining people’s economic fortunes. African Americans’ unemployment rate is typically twice as high as that of whites. The racial wealth gap has widened since the financial crisis, when African Americans and Hispanics—who had a disproportionate share of their wealth tied up in their homes—disproportionately suffered from subprime loans and foreclosures. The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances finds that the median wealth of a white family in 2013, the last year studied, was $134,008. For Hispanics, it was just $13,900. For African-Americans, $11,184. And as everyone knows, or should, women still make 79 cents for every dollar men make.

These deficiencies are more likely to be ignored when our most important economic policymakers don’t reflect the faces of all Americans. Yesterday, 127 Democratic members of Congress wrote to Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen about the lack of diversity at the central bank. “The leadership across the Federal Reserve System remains overwhelmingly and disproportionately white and male,” the letter notes. Led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, this high-level challenge also castigates the Fed for being dominated by former and current executives of financial institutions and large corporations, rather than people with backgrounds in academia, labor, or consumer organizations.

The voices of those left behind most egregiously in the economic recovery are simply not present in Fed deliberations.

Momentum to fix the Fed’s diversity problem grew on Thursday when Hillary Clinton endorsed the viewpoints expressed in the letter. Her spokesperson Jesse Ferguson told The Washington Post, “Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms—like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks—are long overdue.”

The Fed’s lack of diversity might actually violate the law. Under the Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977, regional Federal Reserve bank directors are required to “represent the public, without discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, or national origin, and with due but not exclusive consideration to the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers.” The original Federal Reserve Act only mandated representation from agriculture, commerce, and industry.

It’s unclear what enforcement of that 1977 requirement would look like. But clearly the Fed isn’t living up to it. The members of Congress rely on a February report from the Center for Popular Democracy, organizers of the “Fed Up” coalition, which has pressured the central bank to adopt pro-worker policies. According to their figures, 83 percent of Federal Reserve board members are white, and 72 percent are male. Among the twelve regional Fed bank presidents, only Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed is non-white, and only Esther George (Kansas City) and Loretta Mester (Cleveland) are female. And among voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which makes monetary policy decisions, it’s even worse: All ten currently serving members are white.

The lack of occupational diversity is also pretty stark. The Center for Popular Democracy studied the regional feds’ boards of directors, finding that 39 percent represent financial institutions. The Fed’s role as a key supervisor of major banks makes this highly suspect—especially considering there is no mandate for financial interests to be represented on the Fed board.

Another 29 percent of the Fed regional directors represent commerce and industry. Only 11 percent come from community, labor, consumer, or academic organizations. Even representation from the service sector, which has an overly non-white workforce and has expanded in recent years, has shrunk as a percentage of Fed bank-board members relative to 2010, the last time the boards’ makeup was studied.

It’s unusual for members of Congress to take such a public stand on the Federal Reserve, given their mindfulness of central bank independence. But they are recognizing that the lack of diversity has an important effect on economic policy. A more diverse Fed might pay more attention to how far communities of color are from full employment when deciding whether or not to raise interest rates, which they are now deliberating. A more diverse Fed might not be as consumed with the concerns of finance and industry, and their desire to keep inflation and wages low. It might consider how banks have traditionally preyed on communities of color, and target its supervision activities to reflect that.

The voices of those left behind most egregiously in the recovery are simply not present in Fed deliberations. The members of Congress cited a recent blog post by former Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota, who said that “there is one key source of economic difference in American life that is likely underemphasized in FOMC deliberations: race.” Kocherlakota searched transcripts of FOMC meetings from 2010 (the most recent ones released). That entire year, African American unemployment stood at 15.5 percent or above. But, writes Kocherlakota, “Based on that search, my conclusion is that there was no reference in the meetings to labor market conditions among African Americans.”

Traditionally, public pressure on the central bank has come from the right, from the likes of Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” movement. Progressives were largely absent from the conversation, despite the Fed’s central economic role. No more: Thursday’s letter to Yellen is the biggest success yet for the Fed Up campaign, launched two years ago to amplify the voices of communities that didn’t benefit from the recovery. The campaign has brought together labor and community groups to demand that the Fed take its mandate to maximize employment seriously—taking into account all communities, not just affluent ones. And now Fed Up’s views have become dominant in the Democratic Party.

In addition to the hefty names of Sanders and Warren, co-signers include 116 House Democrats, more than half of the caucus, as well as the ranking members of the Financial Services Committee (Maxine Waters) and the Monetary Policy Subcommittee (Gwen Moore), the committees with oversight of the Fed. And Clinton’s endorsement of Fed Up’s sentiment puts most of the ideological spectrum of the party on the side of reform.

But what does reform look like? The Center for Popular Democracy’s February report recommends that each regional board contain at least one member from a labor group, a community organization, academia, and a community bank or credit union. A separate reform proposal from former Yellen advisor Andrew Levin includes a number of ideas, including banning anyone affiliated with a financial institution from serving as a Fed director.

These ideas can be congressionally mandated. That will take time, of course, but the movement has begun to get Democrats off the sidelines to pressure the Fed. When Yellen testified before the House and Senate in February, giving her semi-annual Monetary Policy Report, she received questions about the lack of diversity from 15 different members of Congress. Yellen expressed concern that, among other things, no African American has ever led a regional Federal Reserve bank in U.S. history.

The fact that political pressure can make a difference was again signified by the quick response of a Fed spokesman to Thursday’s letter. The Fed statement said the central bank has “focused considerable attention in recent years on recruiting directors with diverse backgrounds and experience.” Those aspirations have not yet translated into results, however, even after the Fed established an internal diversity office in 2011.

It’s hard for the traditionally cloistered Fed to ignore concerns when they come from high-level Democrats. And just having ordinary workers in the public debate already diversifies the Fed, in a sense. No longer can they simply be responsive to Wall Street without further discussion.

BY DAVID DAYEN

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