The elevator moment: when to speak up, when to stay quiet, and the power of both
The elevator moment: when to speak up, when to stay quiet, and the power of both
Anger, pain, and courage. That was what the moment was about. Two women and their pain. A U.S. Senator in an elevator,...
Anger, pain, and courage.
That was what the moment was about.
Two women and their pain.
A U.S. Senator in an elevator, literally trapped and torn.
Frozen by their escalating anger and anguish over what he had just announced.
A yes vote for Brett Kavanaugh to join the Supreme Court.
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Watch protesters descend on 5-star resort where GOP plots against American workers
Watch protesters descend on 5-star resort where GOP plots against American workers
Scores of protesters, gathered for a march organized by the Center for Popular Democracy Action in partnership with Tax...
Scores of protesters, gathered for a march organized by the Center for Popular Democracy Action in partnership with Tax March, converged on West Virginia Thursday from ten different states.
Watch the video and read the article here.
Massive Fraud In PA Charter Schools Under Corbett's Leadership
Crooks and Liars - October 2, 2014, by Karoli - What could $30 million lost dollars mean to students in Pennsylvania?...
Crooks and Liars - October 2, 2014, by Karoli - What could $30 million lost dollars mean to students in Pennsylvania? Maybe more teachers, more textbooks, better classrooms? Well, forget about it, because at least that much is in the pockets of corrupt charter school operators.
The waste and fraud in Pennsylvania charter schools is even worse than I thought. It was bad enough when Nicholas Trombetta created a nice pyramid to skim off millions in public education money to fund his own fun, but it seems he was more the rule than the exception.
Philly.com:
The instances of fraud cited in the new report include cases where charter officials were indicted or pleaded guilty and instances uncovered in state audits.
Examples include Nicholas Trombetta, founder and former CEO of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School in Midland, who is awaiting federal trial in Pittsburgh on charges that he diverted $8 million in school funds for personal use.
The tally also includes $6.3 million that federal prosecutors allege Dorothy June Brown defrauded from the four Philadelphia-area charters she founded.
But the authors give special attention to another recent case involving a city charter: New Media Technology Charter School in the city's Stenton section. The former CEO and founding board president went to federal prison in 2012 after admitting they stole $522,000 in taxpayer money to prop up a restaurant, a health-food store, and a private school they controlled, and for defrauding a bank.
From 2005 to 2009, when the crimes were occurring, third-party auditors hired by New Media failed to spot the fraudulent payments.
"Fraud detection in Pennsylvania charter schools should not be dependent upon parent complaints, media exposés, and whistle-blowers," the authors wrote. Rather, they urged, the system should be proactive and use forensic accounting methods.
But that would mean Tom Corbett couldn't make his sweet deals with the charter operators! Perish the thought.
What we have here is the sale of our public schools by Republicans to for-profit concerns who are perfectly content to take taxpayers' money to pad their own bottom lines while making sure our children 'isn't learning.'
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Campaign regulatory board stymied by Legislature
Campaign regulatory board stymied by Legislature
Minnesota’s campaign finance regulatory board heads into election season with its slimmest possible board membership...
Minnesota’s campaign finance regulatory board heads into election season with its slimmest possible board membership for taking action after the Legislature failed to confirm two appointees before adjourning its session.
Two appointments before lawmakers got hung up over concerns raised by Senate Republicans about the DFL political background of Emma Greenman. Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board appointments require confirmation from the House and Senate on a three-fifths vote; the House supplied sufficient votes to confirm Greenman and former Republican state Rep. Margaret “Peggy” Leppik during the session’s final day.
Board chairman Christian Sande said Friday that it could be August before the board is back to full strength. That’s because of the legal steps Gov. Mark Dayton must take to fill the slots, by which time election contests will be in full swing and campaign finance complaints will be streaming in.
“It means for the board to take any action the votes have to be unanimous,” Sande said. “I don’t know that it handicaps us. But it certainly does indicate that where in the past with six active members of the board it might be easier to arrive at four votes to achieve something.”
Absence of a single member would deprive the board of the quorum it needs to even meet.
The remaining members would have to be in complete agreement to impose any penalties, issue any advisory opinions or take other substantive action because state law requires four votes in favor when the typically six-member board makes decisions.
Campaign finance board appointments always have come with more political sensitivity and scrutiny than most agencies. In fact, state law dictates a specific political makeup and that some members be former lawmakers.
Greenman and Leppik had been serving on the board pending confirmation but their appointments were considered null when the Legislature adjourned without positive votes.
A Dayton spokesman says the governor plans to resubmit their names once the openings are posted, which would allow them to serve again until the Legislature returns next year and takes another look. It’s not clear when that could happen.
Sen. Scott Newman of Hutchinson said he and his Republican colleagues weren’t willing to confirm Greenman because of past and present political activity.
“Is this someone who would be able to set aside partisan politics and render judgment as to violations of campaign finance laws? We really doubted it,” Newman said in a phone interview. “We were very concerned about it because of the degree of involvement in political partisanship.”
He added, “This is not a personal attack on her. It is simply a realization of her past activities. She was a very politically active person.”
Greenman, a 36-year-old Minneapolis lawyer, is director of voting rights and democracy for the Center for Popular Democracy. Past stints include work for the Wellstone Action organization formed after the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone and for a Minnesota unit of the Service Employees International Union. In her appointment materials, she lists her political affiliation as with the DFL.
Greenman didn’t immediately return a call or email inquiring about her intentions moving forward said in an email Friday that the lack of a vote was disappointing. She said she is considering reapplying and has been encouraged to do so.
“I have had the pleasure of of serving on the board since January and believe it plays an important role in supporting and protecting Minnesota’s democracy,” she wrote.
In a packet compiled in connection with her earlier appointment, Greenman disclosed details about her past political involvement and her present job, which she said posed no conflict with a campaign board role and didn’t encompass campaign finance matters.
“At this point in my career I am able to serve on the board without any direct conflicts of interest. I do not work for any candidates or any political campaign committees. I do not currently represent the Minnesota DFL or any party official or political candidate,” she wrote in a November letter to Dayton seeking the appointment.
By Brian Bakst
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ermonters to join national protest to 'Kill the Bill, Don't Kill Us'
ermonters to join national protest to 'Kill the Bill, Don't Kill Us'
Following the direct actions of June 28 and July 10, in which 140 Americans, including many with serious health...
Following the direct actions of June 28 and July 10, in which 140 Americans, including many with serious health conditions, were arrested in their senator’s DC offices for civil disobedience, still more constituents plan to flood Capitol Hill Wednesday to stop the repeal of the ACA. Organizers say Vermont residents will also participate in this latest oppostion to "repeal and replace" Obamacare.
People with disabilities and life-threatening chronic illnesses, cancer survivors, Medicaid recipients, Affordable Care Act (ACA) policyholders, registered nurses, doctors, and others directly impacted by the Senate healthcare bill will be traveling from all states represented by Republican senators to descend upon Capitol Hill on Wednesday, July 19, with a strong message: “Kill the bill—don’t kill us!”
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Why are former Toys R Us workers planning to protest CalSTRS’ investments of private equity?
Why are former Toys R Us workers planning to protest CalSTRS’ investments of private equity?
Supporting the workers are Rise Up Retail, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Organization United for Respect....
Supporting the workers are Rise Up Retail, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Organization United for Respect.
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Local leaders ask Obama to pardon criminal immigrants before Trump takes office
Local leaders ask Obama to pardon criminal immigrants before Trump takes office
Two San Diego elected officials have joined colleagues across the country calling for President Barack Obama to issue a...
Two San Diego elected officials have joined colleagues across the country calling for President Barack Obama to issue a blanket pardon of immigrants with green cards who have committed minor crimes.
San Diego Councilman David Alvarez and San Diego Unified School District Board President Richard Barrera, along with 57 others, signed a letter organized by Local Progress, a network of progressive municipal elected officials, that was sent to Obama this week.
The group wants to undercut President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to deport individuals who, without their minor criminal histories, would not be deportable. Between 100,000 and 200,000 families could be affected by such a pardon, according to the letter.
“From literally the day after the election, we started hearing concerns from teachers that students were worried and were afraid that they were going to be deported, that their parents were going to be deported, just based on the rhetoric from the campaign,” Barrera said by telephone. “What we’re trying to do is look for every avenue that’s available to us as elected officials to protect our young people and their families.”
The letter suggests that it would be within Obama’s power to make such a blanket pardon because of former President Jimmy Carter’s pardon of draft evaders in 1977 on his first day in office.
“We must protect the legal permanent residents of our city,” Alvarez said via email. “President-elect Trump proposed a deportation plan modeled after Operation Wetback from the 1950s. Dividing families by recklessly deporting hundreds of thousands of legal permanent residents would be morally wrong and economically destructive.”
Since 2014, the Obama administration has not prioritized minor convictions for immigration enforcement, as a matter of policy not any change in law. By law, green card holders can be deported for committing offenses that would not incur jail time in today’s criminal court system, like low-level drug offenses.
Trump campaigned on the idea of deporting millions of unauthorized immigrants, particularly criminals. His transition team has yet to set forth details about which immigrants and which criminals.
By Kate Morrissey
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After A Wave Of Bad Press, This Controversial Software Company Is Making Changes
In April, the New York attorney general’s office launched an ...
In April, the New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation into the scheduling practices of 13 national retail chains, distributing a letter to the Gap, Target, J.C. Penney, and 10 other companies. The letter asked, among other things, whether these companies’ store managers use software manufactured by a company called Kronos to algorithmically generate schedules.
A few months later, Kronos was also featured prominently in an article published by the New York Times about the ill effects of erratic scheduling on Starbucks employees, especially one particular family. In a follow-up piece, the author, Jodi Kantor, points directly to Kronos’ scheduling software as the root of the problem. “I saw that her life was coming apart and that the Starbucks software had contributed to the crisis,” Kantor wrote of one of the story’s subjects.
The piece’s argument centered around the financial and scheduling unpredictability engendered by platforms like Kronos. When you don’t know if your shift might be canceled, if or when you’ll be called in, or what your hours will look like next week or the week after, it becomes very difficult to make even the most basic plans for your future. This can have devastating long-term financial and emotional impacts on workers. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., 17 percent of the American workforce is negatively affected by unstable schedules.
For their part, Kronos representatives argue that the algorithm is far from the root of the problem. “The populist view is that scheduling is evil, in that it’s causing erratic schedules for employees, and so forth,” Charlie DeWitt, vice president of business development for Kronos, told BuzzFeed News. “The fact of the matter is it’s an algorithm. It does whatever you want it to do.”
And you don’t necessarily need to work for Kronos to believe that in a competitive retail climate, the problem is more complicated than technology alone. Lonnie Golden, a Penn State economist who has extensively studied the impact of erratic scheduling, acknowledges that Kronos’ product itself is less to blame than the managers who make staffing decisions based on the data it provides. “It’s not necessarily the technology that’s responsible for minimum to no advance notice,” he said. “It’s the way in which it’s applied.”
But, he added, “where there’s a technology problem, there’s usually a technology solution.” And while Kronos maintains that managers, and not the software, are responsible for early dismissals and last-minute shift cancellations, the company is nonetheless pursuing some technological solutions.
Kronos wants to help managers better understand how scheduling adjustments affect workers and, ultimately, the bottom line. Though the company maintains that its software doesn’t produce the kind of erratic schedules that hurt wage workers, DeWitt said there was nonetheless an interest in figuring out why that perception existed — and, if possible, fixing it.
To that end, earlier this month at a retail conference in Philadelphia, the company announced that it’s working on a new plug-in that will give managers better insight into workers’ schedule stability, equity of hours worked among employees, and the consistency of schedules from week to week. In addition, Kronos is improving a feature meant to help give employees more control over their schedules: Though the software already incorporates employee availability and preferences into its scheduling calculations, improvements to a shift-swapping feature on its employee-facing web and mobile apps will theoretically allow employees to work around conflicts among themselves.
Golden said increased employee input and control would be a good thing. But some retailers, DeWitt pointed out, are uncomfortable making workers use an app outside of work hours; indeed, the practice could be seen as a shift of management responsibilities onto lower-paid individuals.
Part of the idea behind the new Kronos plug-in is to help companies tie fairer scheduling practices to reduction in absenteeism and turnover, which can be enormously costly. In other words, if Kronos can help executives see the connection between treating workers fairly and a store’s ability to increase revenue, DeWitt said, managers will have an impetus to create more predictable, stable schedules.
And just because companies are looking at this kind of data doesn’t mean they have to use it. “Companies like Kronos and Workplace Systems are starting to integrate some of these principles into their software,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, “but it’s all optional, so companies can decide not to do it.” While 12 states are currently considering legislation that would create new labor standards around the workweek, Gleason said the technology alone lacks a mechanism for enforcement.
Given market pressures and standard management practices, it’s unlikely that any change to Kronos’ technology would give workers more power — especially because, given the competitive retail climate at the moment, the bottom line tends to be the priority. “It’s not just bad managers. They have extreme pressure to increase productivity on an ever-shrinking labor budget,” Gleason said.
With these changes, Kronos has taken logical steps toward both repairing its reputation and making sure its software creates sustainable work environments. But while the company cannot control exactly how the algorithm that forecasts schedules and optimizes workforces is deployed inside different workplaces, the Kronos engineers who designed the product are nonetheless the partial architects of work environments that have been proven to be untenable for low-wage workers. The Kronos scheduling algorithm isn’t designed to serve those people; it’s designed to be sold to their bosses, and as such, will ultimately be shaped to serve the needs of management — until regulations exist that compel them to change how it’s used.
Source: Buzzfeed
Richmond Fed Chief Pick Renews Debate on Shrouded Hiring Process
Richmond Fed Chief Pick Renews Debate on Shrouded Hiring Process
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s decision to hire Thomas Barkin as its next president has renewed questions over...
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s decision to hire Thomas Barkin as its next president has renewed questions over the cloaked process of selecting officials who set the most widely watched policy interest rates in the world.
After a nearly yearlong search, Richmond’s board of directors Monday confirmedthey had chosen the McKinsey & Co. executive to start on Jan. 1. Barkin will be a voter on the interest-rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee in 2018.
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JPMorgan's Dimon defends Trump advisory role, deregulation
JPMorgan's Dimon defends Trump advisory role, deregulation
JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon on Tuesday responded to criticism from angry shareholders...
JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon on Tuesday responded to criticism from angry shareholders of his role advising President Donald Trump on economic matters, saying he would help "any president" in office.
At the bank's annual meeting in Wilmington, Delaware, several attendees demanded answers from Dimon about his role on a White House business council and JPMorgan's involvement with financial deregulation efforts in Washington.
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5 days ago
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