Democracy for America Holds Solidarity Rallies Across the Nation
Democracy for America Holds Solidarity Rallies Across the Nation
Democracy for America (DFA) members joined Americans across the country to stand against white supremacy and against...
Democracy for America (DFA) members joined Americans across the country to stand against white supremacy and against the deadly violence committed by Nazi groups in Charlottesville.
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Two Federal Reserve Openings Provide One Chance to Counter Trump
The Federal Reserve is facing a significant change in leadership that goes beyond the installation of a new chairman....
The Federal Reserve is facing a significant change in leadership that goes beyond the installation of a new chairman. It is also awaiting the appointment of two other top officials who will play a crucial role in shaping Fed policy.
President Trump, who has already nominated Jerome H. Powell as the Fed’s next chairman, also gets to pick a new vice chairman. But the other open position, the presidency of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is not Mr. Trump’s choice to make.
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Liberals Turn to Cities to Pass Laws and Spread Ideas
If Congress won’t focus on a new policy idea, and if state legislatures are indifferent or hostile, why not skip them...
If Congress won’t focus on a new policy idea, and if state legislatures are indifferent or hostile, why not skip them both and start at the city level?
That’s the approach with a proposed law in San Francisco to require businesses there to pay for employees’ parental leaves.
It might seem like a progressive pipe dream, the kind of liberal policy that could happen only in a place like San Francisco. But Scott Wiener, the city and county supervisor who proposed the policy, sees it differently.
“The more local jurisdictions that tackle these issues, the more momentum there is for statewide and eventually national action,” he said.
It’s part of a broader movement, mostly led by liberal policy makers, to take on not just the duties that make cities run — like road maintenance and recycling — but also bigger political issues. Think soda taxes, universal health care, calorie counts on menus, mandatory composting and bans on smoking indoors.
The federal government is too gridlocked to make anything happen, these policy makers say. So they are turning to cities, hoping they can act as incubators for ideas and pave the way for state and federal governments to follow.
Conservatives used the strategy in the 1960s and 1970s, often for anti-regulatory policies. On the liberal side, Baltimore helped inspire others by passing a living wage law in 1994. The method has grown more popular in recent years, said Margaret Weir, a professor at Brown University who studies urban politics.
“Historically, especially for groups that want more government action and more generous social and economic policies, they could go to the federal government and achieve those things,” Ms. Weir said. “That has become more difficult. It’s a reflection of the loss of power at the federal level.”
Opponents have frequently responded by trying to limit the legislative power of cities. Many states have passed so-called pre-emption laws, which block cities from making their own laws on certain issues, including gun control, plastic bag bans, paid leave, fracking, union membership and the minimum wage. It’s a strategy pioneered by the tobacco lobby and later much used by the National Rifle Association. In all but seven states, state laws pre-empt local gun laws.
The pro-business American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, has pushed for many of the pre-emption laws. More recently, however, it has adopted the methods of its opponents. It has helped policy makers in local government make laws to reduce the size of government, for instance, even when states decline to do so.
One division of ALEC, called the American City County Exchange, has most notably pushed for local right-to-work laws to allow workers who are members of a union to opt out of paying dues. Yet in other cases, it has drafted legislation to prevent cities from coming up with their own laws, including on issues like plastic bag bans and containers for composting.
“Sometimes cities and counties overstep the powers they’ve been given,” said Jon Russell, director of the exchange and a town councilman in Culpeper, Va. “There are certain times states and cities are going to disagree, but for the most part, we’re going to figure out ways to resolve certain regulatory issues while staying in our lanes.”
The demographics of big urban centers — often more liberal and diverse than other parts of the country, and more likely to be governed by a single party — foster more progressive policy-making than elsewhere.
And that policy-making does seem to bubble upward to the national level. Workers’ rights are one of the main focuses of today’s urban politics, and several such city policies are now getting state and national attention, including in the presidential campaign. Paid sick leave is an example. The first city to require it was San Francisco in 2006. It is now the law in 23 cities and states, and President Obama last fall required federal contractorsto provide it. (Meanwhile, more than a dozen states have pre-emption laws to stop cities from requiring paid sick leave.)
Minimum wage is another example. SeaTac, Wash., passed a $15 minimum wage in 2013. Nearby Seattle followed, and then so did San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mountain View, Calif., and Emeryville, Calif.
Fourteen states have since changed their minimum wage laws, two bills in Congress would do the same nationally, and all three Democratic presidential contenders have said they would raise the federal minimum wage.
“It’s all due to victories at the city level,” said Ady Barkan, co-director of Local Progress, a network of local progressive elected officials. “They actually did it and showed it was possible politically and as a policy matter.”
But many of these policies have not caught on widely. Take soda taxes: Berkeley, Calif., is the only city to have passed one. Similar laws have failed in San Francisco and New York state.
Other city legislation that could eventually be passed at the state or federal level includes those related to drones, ride-hailing and home-sharing.
San Francisco’s paid parental leave policy, which would be the first such law in the nation, would apply to all businesses with at least 20 employees, some of whom work at least some of the time in the city, including national chains that do not offer paid leave to workers elsewhere.
Californians already receive paid parental leave from the state. It is one of three states to offer it; the state’s temporary disability fund pays 55 percent of workers’ salaries, up to a maximum salary of $105,000. In San Francisco, companies would pay the remainder for six weeks of “bonding leave” for all new parents, including fathers, same-sex parents and adoptive parents.
The city’s board of supervisors, which will vote on the policy, has not a single Republican. It would be a much harder sell almost anywhere else.
From Mr. Wiener’s point of view, that gives the board a responsibility: “To push the envelope on these issues, because we can.”
Source: New York Times
How a Grassroots Coalition Got the Elitist Federal Reserve to Sit up and Listen on Race
How a Grassroots Coalition Got the Elitist Federal Reserve to Sit up and Listen on Race
A year ago, the Federal Reserve, our nation’s most powerful economic policy maker, said that there was nothing it could...
A year ago, the Federal Reserve, our nation’s most powerful economic policy maker, said that there was nothing it could do about racial disparities. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, there is "a rising recognition within the Fed that the racial gaps in the economy are becoming more pronounced and that there is a role for monetary policy to play in shrinking those gaps."
That's a major shift in how monetary policy gets made. How did it happen? A grassroots uprising from low-income people of color, the unemployed, and the underemployed pushed issues of racial justice front and center into debates about monetary policy – and they succeeded in changing the conversation at the Federal Reserve.
The Fed Up campaign is a coalition of community-based organizations from across the country, labor unions, policy think tanks, and expert economists who decided to take on the Federal Reserve, long considered immune to outside criticism.
The Great Recession of 2008 brought things to a head. With Congress failing to pass an adequate stimulus in the wake of the crash and authorizing almost nothing since, it’s become clear that the Federal Reserve is the country’s only institution acting to stimulate the economy.
Progressives are concerned about raising wages, getting good jobs for more people, and building the bargaining power of workers to win victories like paid sick days and fair scheduling.
But they didn’t think to target the Federal Reserve, an institution designed to remain as insulated from the public as possible. The Fed system comprises a Board of Governors, whose members are appointed to 14-year terms by the President and approved by the Senate, as well as boards of directors for each of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks. These regional boards are overwhelming white and male and draw their membership largely from the corporate and financial sectors, which makes sense as two thirds of them are appointed by commercial banks.
Given the Federal Reserve’s opaque, insular structure designed to keep the influence of regular people at bay, it’s nothing short of remarkable that the Fed Up campaign has altered the conversation as much as it has in two short years.
Since its launch in the summer of 2014 the Fed Up Campaign has released reports on racial disparities in the economy andthe unrepresentative composition of the Fed, met with Fed Chair Janet Yellenface to face as well as 11 out of the 12 regional Bank presidents, conducted protests, and lobbied members of Congressto question Yellen on racial disparities during her semi-annual Humphrey Hawkins testimony before Congress.
Under questioning from Congress in February 2016, Janet Yellen insisted to Congress that she could not do anything about racial disparities. Yet, not even four months later, when Janet Yellen testified at the Humphrey Hawkins hearing in June, something was different.
Yellen began her testimonywith statistics on racial disparities in income and employment among Blacks and Latin@s. This is something the Fed has never done before. By including data on racial disparities, Yellen signaled that the status of communities of color is relevant to the Fed's decisions on the economy and she said that broad-based inclusion in the recovery is a priority..
Yellen made this historic move on racial justice because of the pressure the Fed Up coalition put both on the Fed and on Congress. In May, Fed Up worked with Congress members to send a letter to Yellen urging better public representation and diversity on the 12 regional Banks' boards of directors, which was ultimately signed by 127 senators and representatives.
Then Fed Up released aslate of candidatesfrom more diverse backgrounds who could be appointed to the leadership of the Federal Reserve Regional and a new reportabout potential conflicts of interest among current directors, which received coverage in the Wall Street Journal.
The advocacy with Congress worked. After meeting with Fed Up coalition member Common Good Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) urged Yellen at her Congressional hearing to appoint people from more diverse backgrounds to the regional Banks. Sen. Robert Menendez(D-NJ) urged Yellen to improve on diversity, citing the fact that 83% of regional board directors are white – a figure from our February report.
And Sen.Elizabeth Warren(D-MA) echoed Fed Up's callfor reforming the process for selection regional Bank presidents, calling the process "broken" and saying, "I think Congress should take a hard look at reforming the regional Fed's selection process so that we can all benefit from a Fed leadership that reflects a broader array of both backgrounds and interests."
The next day Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) echoed Warren's call, asking Yellen whether she'd considered our recommendation to appoint three Class C directors at each regional Bank from backgrounds in academia, labor groups, and community-based organizations.
We still have a long way to go before one of the most powerful, secretive, least democratically accountable, and thoroughly corporate dominated institutions truly represents the public and serves all of the public -- including low-income people and communities of color.
But Janet Yellen’s most recent Humphrey Hawkins testimony does show that the Federal Reserve is not completely insulated from public opinion, and that regular people standing up and demanding to be heard can push even the Federal Reserve to listen.
By Shawn Sebastian
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The Refugees in New York’s Hotel Rooms
On Sept. 20, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, turning my life upside down. At the time, my two daughters and I were...
On Sept. 20, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, turning my life upside down. At the time, my two daughters and I were living in Carolina, a town on the northeastern side of the island. In just a day, my clothes were turned to rags, my home was destroyed, and I lost the few belongings I had.
My mother lived in the same town but her house was still standing. For two months, we slept on a couch in her living room. But we couldn’t stay there forever. In December, the Federal Emergency Management Agency moved us to New York City. Since then, we’ve been staying in hotels provided by FEMA in the Bronx and Brooklyn, like hundreds of other families who were moved to New York after the storm. Read more here.
Piden Fondos para Programa de Ayuda Legal a Inmigrantes en NY
El Diario - February 24, 2015, by Cristina Loboguerrero - Legisladores estatales y grupos que abogan por los derechos...
El Diario - February 24, 2015, by Cristina Loboguerrero - Legisladores estatales y grupos que abogan por los derechos de los inmigrantes pidieron ayer al gobernador Andrew Cuomo que apruebe fondos para implementar un programa que daría defensoría legal gratuita a los inmigrantes indocumentados que afrontan un proceso de deportación.Los asambleístas Francisco Moya y Marcos Crespo, junto a representantes de varias organizaciones hicieron su pedido frente a la Corte federal de inmigración en el bajo Manhattan."El derecho de acceder a un abogado es uno de los derechos más importantes", precisó Moya, asambleísta de Corona, Queens, quien estima que hacen falta $4.5 millones para implementar el programa en todo el estado.Su colega Marco Crespo, por su parte, indicó que la iniciativa permitiría mantener unidas muchas familias y traería además beneficios "sociales y económicos".Ambos legisladores pusieron como ejemplo el programa Unidad Familiar Inmigrante de la Ciudad de Nueva York (NYIFUP, por su sigla en inglés), que con un financiamiento de $5 millones otorgado por el Concejo Municipal opera a pleno desde noviembre pasado. Según la abogada Ángela Fernández, directora de la Coalición de Derechos de los Inmigrantes del Norte de Manhattan, NYIFUP ha beneficiado a unos 900 inmigrantes."Hay 1,300 inmigrantes en el estado que por no poder pagar a un abogado están en riesgo de ser deportadas", dijo Fernández.
Un día en la Corte
Los lunes, martes y miércoles, tres jueces revisan los nuevos casos en sus oficinas del piso 11 de la mencionada Corte, 201 de la calle Varick. Se estima que cada magistrado ve entre 7 a 15 casos por día; el resto de la semana lo dedican a los casos ya presentados.
Cada sala tiene unas pocas sillas, destinadas a la familia del procesado. Delante de las sillas hay un pequeño escritorio donde se sienta el acusado, vestido con el uniforme de recluso; a su izquierda, un intérprete; a su derecha, el abogado defensor. Enfrente, un representante del gobierno argumenta por la deportación.En el centro de la pequeña sala, el juez escucha atentamente a las dos partes. El acusado no puede dirigirse directamente al juez.Los abogados llegan temprano en la mañana para entrevistar a los detenidos y revisar sus casos antes de presentarlos en la corte durante las horas de la tarde.Oscar Hernández (21) fue detenido en 2011. Gracias a la ayuda legal del grupo de Servicios de Defensores de Brooklyn pudo salvarse de ser deportado y ahora está en proceso de legalizar su situación migratoria."No es lo mismo cuando uno está representado por un abogado, porque al desconocer las leyes y no poder pagar a alguien se está desorientado en todo el proceso", dijo el hombre, que vino a Estados Unidos hace siete años escapando de la violencia de su país
Source
New Report: Big Banks Require Tellers to Use Predatory Practices
Bill Moyers & Company - April 9, 2015, by Katie Rose Quandt - Front-line workers at our nation’s big banks —...
Bill Moyers & Company - April 9, 2015, by Katie Rose Quandt - Front-line workers at our nation’s big banks — tellers, loan interviewers and customer service representatives — are required by their employers to exploit customers, according to a revealing report out today from the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD). Big banks have internal systems of penalties and rewards that entice employees to push subprime loans and credit cards on customers who would be better off without them.
CPD’s report outlines several illegal predatory practices big banks have been caught employing, usually via their front-line workers:
Blatantly discriminatory lending: In 2011 and 2012, Bank of America and Wells Fargo paid out settlements for charging higher rates and fees to tens of thousands of African American and Hispanic borrowers than to similarly qualified white customers. Minority customers were also more likely to be steered into (more expensive, riskier) subprime mortgages.
Manipulating payment processing to maximize overdraft charges: When a savings account balance drops too low, the bank charges a hefty overdraft fee on each subsequent purchase. Both Bank of America and US Bank paid settlements for intentionally processing customers’ largest debit card payments first, regardless of chronological order, in order to hit $0 faster and maximize overdraft fees. US Bank was also accused of allowing debit card purchases on zero-balance accounts to go through (and incur overdraft fees), instead of denying the charges upfront.
Forcing sale of unneeded products: Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup were accused of forcing customers to purchase overpriced property insurance.
Manipulative sales quotas: Lawsuits show Wells Fargo and Bank of America created incentive programs for employees with the interests of the company — not the customer — in mind. Wells Fargo’s sales quotas encouraged bank workers to steer prime-eligible customers to subprime loans, while falsifying other clients’ income information without their knowledge. Bank of America’s “Hustle” program rewarded quantity over quality, encouraging workers to skip processes and checks intended to protect the borrower.
Instead of cutting back on the risky, unethical practices that led to the Great Recession, the CPD report asserts that big banks have not learned from their mistakes. Bank workers report higher levels of sales pressure in 2013 than in 2008, and most do not have the job security or seniority to simply refuse to hawk credit cards or steer customers into risky financial situations. While the financial sector is turning near-record profits, the average bank teller made just $12.25 an hour in 2013 (a real-dollar decrease from 2007), causing 31 percent of tellers’ families to rely on public assistance. What’s more, 85 percent of these underpaid front-line bank employees are women, and one-third are people of color. Most are in no position to risk losing their job or having their pay docked for stepping out of line.
Several anonymous big bank employees went into detail about how their employers incentivize sales:
An HSBC employee reported that when workers fell short of sales goals, the difference was taken out of their paychecks.
A teller at a major bank said she is expected to sell three new checking, savings, or debit card accounts every day. If she falls short, she gets written up.
Customer service representatives at one major bank’s call-center said everyone is expected to make at least 40 percent of the sales of the top seller. Credit card sales count for extra, encouraging callers to push credit cards on customers who would be better served with checking or savings accounts.
A call-center worker said she offers a credit card to every customer, regardless of whether it would be beneficial. She explained: “If you aren’t offering, you can get marked down — the managers and Quality Analysts listen to your call, and can tell if you aren’t offering.”
“We’re not servicing their needs,” said one front-line worker. “What they want, what they need, isn’t important to us. Selling them a product is … Some of our customers just have their savings, many are just retirees.”
As the report concludes, “Our nation’s big banks are committed to a model that jeopardizes our communities and prevents bank employees from having a voice in their workplace.”
Source
Why the Phrase 'Late Capitalism' Is Suddenly Everywhere
An investigation into a term that seems to perfectly capture the indignities and absurdities of the modern economy......
An investigation into a term that seems to perfectly capture the indignities and absurdities of the modern economy...
Read the ful article here.
Whose Recovery? We’re ‘Fed Up’
The Fed Up campaign made their presence known in Jackson Hole, Wyoming hoping to convince the Republican Party that the...
The Fed Up campaign made their presence known in Jackson Hole, Wyoming hoping to convince the Republican Party that the Federal Reserve is ruining the economy. CNBC’s Heesun Wee and campaigner Connie Razza discuss.
Duration: 12:05
Source: MSNBC
Hillary Clinton Embraces Progressive Federal Reserve Reforms
Hillary Clinton Embraces Progressive Federal Reserve Reforms
Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton came out in favor of changes to the Federal Reserve that would reduce the number of...
Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton came out in favor of changes to the Federal Reserve that would reduce the number of bankers in key central bank positions on Thursday, marking a major coup for national progressive groups championing reform.
“The Federal Reserve is a vital institution for our economy and the wellbeing of our middle class, and the American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest,” Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “That’s why Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue.”
The campaign also provided insight into the type of Federal Reserve governors that Clinton would appoint.
“Secretary Clinton will also defend the Fed’s so-called dual mandate — the legal requirement that it focus on full employment as well as inflation — and will appoint Fed governors who share this commitment and who will carry out unwavering oversight of the financial industry,” Ferguson said.
The announcement brings the Democratic presidential front-runner closer to the position of her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sanders proposed barring financial executives from sitting on the boards of the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks in an op-ed in The New York Times in December.
The Clinton campaign statement came in response to a letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen from 11 Democratic senators and 116 House Democrats. The letter, spearheaded by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), urged the Fed to appoint more women and people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds while expanding the representation of consumer and labor groups on regional Fed bank boards.
Currently, the vast majority of Fed bank board directors are white men. People representing either the financial industry or other major business sectors also occupy most of the seats.
It appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities.
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
The Fed’s control over monetary policy allows it to raise borrowing costs to head off inflation and reduce them to maximize employment. The members of Congress who wrote to Yellen argue that the disproportionate influence of financial officials and the lack of diversity at the Fed hamper its sensitivity to groups with a more precarious position in the job market.
Clinton had said virtually nothing about her agenda for the powerful central bank until now.
The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups headed by the Center for Popular Democracy that has been at the forefront of recent efforts to make Federal Reserve reform a key part of the liberal agenda, confirmed that it has been in talks with the Clinton campaign for months.
“Secretary Clinton did the right thing today by coming out in favor of reforming the Federal Reserve,” said Ady Barkan, director of Fed Up. “We’re very excited that she listened to the voices of community leaders from around the country who have said that we need a Federal Reserve that reflects and represents the American people and that creates a strong economy for all.”
Some liberal economists previously noted that Clinton’s reticence about the Fed was inconsistent with her stated plans to return the country to the prosperity of the late 1990s, which enabled widespread wage growth. They argue that the era’s well-distributed economic gains were due in no small part to the permissive monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Dean Baker, one such economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, was elated to hear about Clinton’s remarks.
“Holy shit — that’s great news,” Baker said in an email upon receiving the news.
“While Senators Sanders, Warren, and others on the left side of the party took the lead, it appears there is now widespread agreement among top Democrats that the Fed has to redouble its commitment to full employment and to be more attentive to how its policies affect African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities,” Baker continued. “There is also agreement that the Fed’s current archaic structure needs to be changed.”
By Daniel Marans
Source
11 hours ago
11 hours ago