150 Restaurants Are Donating Proceeds to Puerto Rico for World Central Kitchen’s 'World Food Day'
150 Restaurants Are Donating Proceeds to Puerto Rico for World Central Kitchen’s 'World Food Day'
World Central Kitchen will host its fourth annual World Food Day on October 13, and so far 150 restaurants nationwide...
World Central Kitchen will host its fourth annual World Food Day on October 13, and so far 150 restaurants nationwide have agreed to donate 10 percent of their proceeds to WCK’s Puerto Rico aid and to a new culinary school in Haiti.
Read the full article here.
Vermont Workers’ Center at the Fore of Health Care Advocacy
VT Digger - January 12, 2014, by Morgan True - Last week’s pro-universal health care demonstration during Gov. Peter...
VT Digger - January 12, 2014, by Morgan True - Last week’s pro-universal health care demonstration during Gov. Peter Shumlin’s inaugural address drew attention locally and nationally, and left many wanting to know more about its organizers — the Vermont Workers’ Center, which has grown substantially in the past five years.
Founded nearly two decades ago as Central Vermonters for a Livable Wage, the nonprofit labor and human rights group has evolved into a substantial grassroots organization.
In 2001, as the Vermont Workers’ Center, the group affiliated with Jobs With Justice, a national pro-labor group, and is essentially that organization’s Vermont chapter. VWC founded the Health Care Is a Human Right campaign in 2008 because the cost of medical care and health insurance was creating crises for its members that “transcended” the workplace, according to the group’s website.
The campaign is viewed by some as a model for health care advocacy in other states.
Since launching the Health Care Is a Human Right Campaign, VWC’s annual budget has grown from $154,500 in 2008 to $638,700 in 2012, the latest publicly available tax filing from the group.
James Haslam, VWC’s director, said its current budget is close to $800,000, a more than fivefold increase since the campaign began. The money comes from donations and foundation grants in roughly equal parts, Haslam said.
The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation is its largest grantor, providing $50,000 this year, Haslam said. It has given the group $160,000 since 2010, including $35,000 to offer guidance to similar groups across the U.S. Grantees are voted on by a committee of Ben & Jerry’s workers, according to a statement.
“The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation supports grassroots organizations throughout the U.S. that are working for progressive social change and a more equitable society,” according to the foundation’s statement.
VWC also chose to start collecting dues from its members in 2014, Haslam added. The dues follow a sliding scale based on members’ ability to pay, he said.
The grassroots activists have strong affiliations with national labor and human rights groups including Health Care Now, Labor for Single Payer, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, The Center for Popular Democracy and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, according to Haslam.
Kate Kanelstein, VWC’s lead organizer, is on Grassroots Global Justice Alliance’s national coordinating committee. Kanelstein was among those arrested during Thursday’s sit-in in the House chamber.
“We’re part of a broader people’s movement to turn things around for working people,” Haslam said.
Those connections have helped propel VWC to the forefront of national activism on universal public health care.
The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative provides strategic advice and training to VWC and similar groups throughout the U.S., said Anja Rudiger, director of programming for NESRI.
VWC has successfully, and appropriately, according to Rudiger, applied the principles of human rights advocacy to health policy by focusing on the hardship of individuals, rather than the “nitty-gritty” of policy debates.
By reframing access to health care as a human rights issue, VWC and others are able to highlight the injustices of the high cost of medical services and a for-profit health insurance system.
There are now Health Care Is a Human Right campaigns in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Maine. Groups in Oregon and Washington are also hoping to model health care advocacy work on the template created by VWC.
VWC is using the tactics and strategies of other human rights movements, including demonstrations and civil disobedience, which are well established, but have not previously been applied to health care, Rudiger said.
A ‘new environment’ and a national movement
Some have argued that last week’s demonstration hurt VWC’s credibility with the Legislature — one senator called the tactics “fascist” — but the demonstration has drawn increased attention from national groups and other advocates for universal health care.
Amnesty International, National Nurses United and more than 60 other labor and health care advocacy groups signed an open letter to the Vermont Legislature urging lawmakers to press on with Act 48, the state’s universal health care law. NESRI helped get many of the signatories to that letter, Rudiger said.
The Rev. William Barber, most famous for starting the Moral Monday movement, wrote a letter of solidarity, calling it immoral for people not to have access to medical care.
The backlash from lawmakers was anticipated, Haslam said, and he doesn’t think it hurts VWC’s ultimate goal of achieving universal access to health services.
“No one that truly supports universal health care is not going to support it because of a protest,” he said.
The visceral reaction from legislators may be partly because the Statehouse hasn’t been the venue for Occupy-esque demonstrations previously, said longtime State Curator David Schutz, though they’ve become increasingly common elsewhere in Vermont and nationally.
“It’s a new environment,” Schutz said, one ushered in by the October occupation of the governor’s offices in the nearby Pavilion Building.
That action was primarily the work of Rising Tide Vermont, the local affiliate of a national climate advocacy group, to protest the expansion of a Vermont Gas pipeline. The Workers’ Center helped organize that demonstration, which resulted in 64 arrests, though charges were later dropped.
Keith Brunner, the communication coordinator for the center, was among those arrested at the pipeline demonstration. Though he was present at the Statehouse last week, he was not arrested.
The only comparable event to Thursday’s demonstrations that took place in the Statehouse during the past 30 years was during the debate over civil unions in 2000, Schutz said.
It was necessary to rile official Vermont, Rudiger said, because it appears Shumlin has unilaterally stalled the state’s movement toward universal health care.
“It’s not about being disrespectful to lawmakers, it’s about highlighting the conditions in people’s lives that bring about those actions and that’s always what civil disobedience has been about,” she said.
Nationally, advocates for public universal health care were aware of the movement in Vermont, but few had received the news of Shumlin’s “wavering,” Haslam said.
Last week’s demonstration was an opportunity to get that message out and put Vermont back in the national spotlight in order to keep the momentum behind a universal health care program for the state, Haslam said.
VWC workers among those arrested last week
Many in Vermont’s political Twittersphere expressed surprise — or consternation — that several of Thursday’s demonstrators, including some who were arrested, are paid employees for the Workers’ Center.
In addition to Kanelstein, field organizers Shela Linton, Elizabeth Beatty-Owens, Avery Pittman and campaign coordinator Matt McGrath were among the 29 arrested.
Members, volunteers and staff were told at a planning meeting that the sit-in carried the risk of arrest, Haslam said. Those who participated in the sit-in chose to take that risk in order to push for legislative hearings on the governor’s single payer report.
The Workers’ Center employees who were arrested had “personal experiences with health care crises,” Haslam said. Many got involved because of that experience, and started out as members or volunteers before being hired.
Lobbying only a small part of what VWC does
The Workers’ Center is limited in its ability to lobby elected officials because it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The organization is aware of that line, and takes steps to make sure it’s not crossed, according to Haslam.
Its field organizers are registered lobbyists, Haslam said, which is corroborated by the Secretary of State’s database.
The IRS threshold for tax-exempt nonprofits is whether lobbying activities constitute “a substantial part of its overall activities,” with expenditures on lobbying capped at 20 percent for a group the size of VWC.
The Vermont Workers’ Center keeps time sheets and records expenditures to ensure they meet the expense limits, Haslam said. Its 2012 990 tax filing, the most recent available, says those expenditures are available on request and does not list them.
Lobbying as part of the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign is not a substantial portion of the center’s overall operation, Haslam added.
The group is involved in community organizing and leadership development, and helps build grassroots networks and coalitions on a broad array of issues, primarily labor-related, he said.
The Workers’ Center has supported striking FairPoint workers, recently unionized home care workers and workers at the University of Vermont who are trying to form a union.
They operate a workers’ hotline to field workplace complaints and employ an accountability monitor to help enforce Burlington’s livable wage ordinance.
The Workers’ Center also runs the People’s University for Learning and Liberation with a staffer dedicated to preparing workshops, skill building, continuing education for its members and affiliated groups.
Source
Experts Urge Fed To Pursue 'Genuine Full Employment' Before Rate Hike
The Federal Reserve should pursue "genuine full employment" with "robust wage growth" before raising interest rates, ...
The Federal Reserve should pursue "genuine full employment" with "robust wage growth" before raising interest rates, experts from the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute argue in anew report.
The report authors say the Fed, the central bank of the United States, can help reverse wage stagnation and narrow gender and racial wage gaps through its monetary policy.
Most Americans have faced wage stagnation over the last 35 years, despite there being a 64.9 percent growth in productivity during this time, according to the report. Wage growth also remained sluggish last month, with average hourly earnings increasing only 2 percent in June from one year ago.
A move by the Fed to slow the economy with an interest rate hike before "genuine full employment" is achieved will "hamper the ability of workers' wages to rise," the authors wrote.
"Because the vast majority of American workers have seen near-stagnant wages even as economy-wide productivity growth has constantly risen, there's ample space for wage gaps to close without anyone losing wages," said report co-author Josh Bivens, EPI's research and policy director. "The Fed has a powerful role in shaping labor market trends and raising wages. By pursuing full employment, it could help to close these wage gaps among workers."
In the report, the experts highlighted wage trends over recent decades among men and women as well as racial groups. Over the past 35 years, racial wage gaps between whites and Latinos or blacks have widened, the report says. During the same time period, disparities in median earnings between men and women did narrow by about 30 percent, but over a quarter of that progress was due to a decline of men's wages, according to the report.
For its part, the Fed has a "dual mandate" to keep prices stable and maximize employment. The Fed's current inflation target is 2 percent, and full employment is defined by the financial institution as a jobless rate between 5.0 percent to 5.2 percent. The nation's unemployment rate in June was 5.3 percent.
At some point this year, the Fed could begin to raise short-term interest rates, which were cut to near zero percent during the Great Recession to support the economy.
The report authors argue that the Fed's full employment estimate is "too meek," adding that the financial institution "should experiment aggressively with letting the unemployment rate fall as low as possible before raising interest rates."
"[T]he Fed should allow much lower unemployment levels, so long as no accelerating inflation results," the report adds. "Substantial evidence supports pursuing this more tolerant approach to falling unemployment. The late 1990s saw much lower rates (4.0 percent for two full years in 1999 and 2000) without sparking accelerating price inflation."
According to the experts, annual wage growth should also be in the 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent range before the Fed considers an interest rate hike.
Here are the three key recommendations listed in the report:
The Federal Reserve should set a clear and ambitious target for wage growth, which will provide an important and straightforward guidepost on the path to maximum employment. Wage targeting can be fairly easily tailored to the Fed's price-inflation target and pegged to increases in productivity.
The Fed should maintain a patient, but watchful posture. The history of the past 35 years shows a generally steady downward trend in price inflation and that prematurely slowing the economy results in higher than desirable unemployment.
The Federal Reserve should not consider an interest-rate hike until indicators of full employment--particularly wage growth--have strengthened.
"Failure to aggressively target and achieve genuine full employment by keeping interest rates low and setting a clear and ambitious target for wage growth explains a large part of why wages continue to stagnate," said report co-author Connie Razza, CPD's director of strategic research. "There is increasing talk about raising interest rates, but it would be a terrible mistake for the Fed to do so. Raising interest rates too soon will slow an already sluggish economy and will disproportionately harm women and people of color."
Source: Progress Illinois
Three profs arrested at D.C. protest
Three Yale professors were arrested in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday for engaging in civil disobedience in support of...
Three Yale professors were arrested in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday for engaging in civil disobedience in support of immigrant rights.
On Wednesday, over 10,000 people rallied at Upper Senate Park in Washington in support of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act. Three University professors — Alicia Camacho, Zareena Grewal and Daniel HoShang — were among more than 180 protesters who were arrested after the two-hour protest for “crowding, obstructing or incommoding” by sitting on the steps leading to the U.S. Capitol.
Read the full article here.
5 Things to Know about Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump Education Choice
5 Things to Know about Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump Education Choice
Billionaire Betsy DeVos, a major GOP funder and party activist from Michigan, has been tapped by Donald Trump to become...
Billionaire Betsy DeVos, a major GOP funder and party activist from Michigan, has been tapped by Donald Trump to become the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education next year.
Many have decried the choice as a looming disaster for public schools in America, with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia observing that DeVos' "efforts over the years have done more to undermine public education than support students. She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers--which take away funding and local control from our public schools--to fund private schools at taxpayers' expense."
Randi Weingarten, the president of AFT, stated that "Betsy DeVos is everything Donald Trump said is wrong in America--an ultra-wealthy heiress who uses her money to game the system and push a special-interest agenda that is opposed by the majority of voters. Installing her in the Department of Education is the opposite of Trump's promise to drain the swamp."
The choice signals the President-elect's intention to put the expansion of taxpayer-funded charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools at the center of his national agenda on education.
Through her riches, Betsy DeVos has had a disproportionate influence on national and state policies affecting millions of Americans, helping to force through changes to the law that gut the rights of workers and redirect American tax dollars to fund risky charter school experiments that have repeatedly failed for America's children.
She has also applauded efforts to gut election laws that are designed to prevent corruption, recasting the issue of money in politics as free speech and her right to speak "as loudly as we please." (Her remarks about this and her praise for Tom DeLay's "honesty" begin at the 52-minute mark here.)
Here are five facts to get smart about who Betsy DeVos is and what her nomination could mean for America.
1. Betsy DeVos Refused to Send Her Children to Public Schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Betsy and her husband Dick DeVos, Jr., have four children they raised in the prosperous town of Ada, Michigan, which is the headquarters of AmWay, the multi-level marketing company that made the DeVos family billionaires. She is also an heir to the Prince Corporation fortune from sun visors and other car parts.
The public elementary, middle, and high school in Ada, a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan, are highly ranked, but she did not send her children to public schools. She has said that her two daughters were home-schooled for a number of years.
Instead of sending their children to public schools, for nearly three decades, Betsy and Dick have focused on pushing vouchers for private schools and bankrolling politicians to advance their agenda to redirect American tax dollars away from truly public schools.
2. She Retained a Convicted Felon to Lobby for Her Wish List of Education Reforms (and There Are Other Scandals)
In 2004, Betsy DeVos hired Scott Jensen to aid the legislative agenda of her group "American Federation for Children" (AFC), a 501(c)(4) arm of Alliance for School Choice, her 501(c)3), which push so-called education reform measures.
The problem is that in 2002, Jensen had been charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor for misconduct in office--for illegally using his office as the Republican Assembly Speaker to direct that state employees to perform campaign work at public expense. He and the others who were charged challenged the reach of state statutes in court through various appeals from 2002 through 2004, but they lost their efforts to prevent criminal trials.
But, the fact that Jensen was charged with felonies for misusing public tax dollars for partisan political purposes did not deter Betsy DeVos from hiring him in 2004 to advance her personal agenda to change American schools on behalf of AFC.
In 2005, he was tried in state court and convicted on all counts. The presiding judge told Jensen "what you did was a great wrong to the citizens of this state" because "You used your power and your influence to run an illegal campaign funding operation." The judge sentenced Jensen to five years, including 15 months of confinement along with supervised release.
That conviction and public condemnation did not end Jensen's job for Betsy DeVos. Jensen appealed his conviction, and he also lost his office in the legislature, but he had a job with DeVos.
For the next five years, Jensen was a convicted felon and DeVos' point person in pushing her school choice agenda in the states.
In 2010, after changes in the judiciary, Jensen won an appeal of his conviction and agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor crime to settle the case.
His conviction for that crime also had no impact on DeVos' decision to keep him on to push school choice.
Accordingly, perhaps it should come as no surprise that while all that was going on, another DeVos family school choice PAC was fined for $5.2 million by the Ohio Elections Board in 2008 for circumventing Ohio campaign finance laws. It was the largest fine for violating election laws in state history.
Do the ends justify the means for Betsy DeVos?
3. DeVos Has Pushed Policies Cloaked as "Choice" that Undermine Public Schools in Michigan and Nationwide
Her particular area of interest is the deregulation and privatization of the education system, initially through the introduction of education "vouchers."
The primary organizations that DeVos has bankrolled to carry out these policy goals are the dark money group, American Federation for Children (AFC), which is a 501(c)(4), and its affiliated 501(c)(3) nonprofit group, Alliance for School Choice. These groups have become major contributors to the right-wing corporate education reform echo chamber.
AFC describes itself as "creating an education revolution" through what is described as "school choice," via vouchers (tax dollars spent on private schools including religious schools), tax credits, and non-taxable "Education Savings Accounts."
AFC has gone through several evolutions since its 1998 founding including name changes. Some of these changes occurred after political controversies such as violations of campaign finance laws in Ohio and Wisconsin, as noted above.
AFC is and always has been a very important player in local state and national politics, helping to strongly support Republican candidates who move her education privatization agenda forward.
For example, AFC invested heavily in Wisconsin's recall elections to protect its political allies, including Republican Governor Scott Walker. Since 2010, AFC has spent at least $4.5 million on independent expenditures and issue ads in Wisconsin. This amount doesn't include the individual donations given by members of the DeVos family, or any spending on dark money groups trying to influence the elections without disclosing their donors.
AFC also aggressively promotes the school privatization agenda via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where Jensen has represented AFC's lobbying agenda.
ALEC, describes itself as a voluntary association of state legislators but it operates as a corporate bill mill where the corporations that fund most of ALEC's operations and where corporate lobbyists and special interest representatives get an "equal voice and vote" with elected officials to approve "model" bills without the press or public present. AFC has been a "trustee" level sponsor of ALEC and is a member of ALEC's Education Task Force.
AFC works alongside ALEC to push so-called "model bills" promoting "school choice" and tax changes to subsidize private schools. Essentially, both ALEC and AFC want that national priority to be expanded funding for charter schools, which defunds truly public schools.
The nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the head of the Department of Education is a clear sign that the nation is about to embark on a dangerously extreme national experiment in the privatization of our education system that could deal a death blow to our public schools as we have known them.
There's little doubt that DeVos would use her power to undermine one of America's greatest innovations that helped make our country and economy so strong in the 20th century--quality public schools--and instead, use the idea of 'reform' to further subsidize private schools along with for-profit companies and non-profits operating charter schools.
The expansion of charters has marched forward despite the fact that fly-by-night charter operators that have committed more than $200 million dollars in fraud and waste in recent years, as documented by the Center for Popular Democracy.
Some of that expansion has occurred through for-profit companies, like K12 Inc., getting tax dollars for so-called "virtual schools," to operate as charters or as part of the public school system.
Dick DeVos, in a joint interview with Betsy DeVos, noted that he "commended to homeschoolers to consider is check out K12... Bill Bennett reviews the K12 personally, ... it's very consistent with our Christian world view..."
Like Betsy DeVos' AFC, K12 has had a seat and vote on ALEC's Education Task Force, and K12 has a seat on ALEC's corporate board. K12 has paid its CEO millions in stock in the company, whose revenues come overwhelmingly from public school budgets. CMD has called one of the leaders of K12 the highest paid "teacher" in America.
As the Center for Media and Democracy has detailed, the federal government has spent nearly $4 billion in tax dollars on the charter school experiment advanced by DeVos and other billionaires, like the Kochs and the Walton family.
CMD has also documented how charter schools in the DeVos backyard of Michigan have been embroiled in fraud and scandal, and how the state has even received federal tax dollars for charters that never even opened. That does not include the nearly $1 billion state spending that the Detroit Free Press has documented have gone to charters in that state.
4. Theocracy: She Has Pushed for Vouchers and More to Get Tax Money to Support Christian Schools
DeVos has approached the issue of education as a religious issue for her personally and as an area which she wants to change the law to reflect her personal views. A long-time partisan activist, she got involved in education "reform" in the early 1990s, around the time that her husband ran for a seat on the Michigan state Board of Education.
After he stepped down from that post, in 1993 she and her husband took on the "Education Freedom Fund," which, she has said, "I would define as ultimately Christian in its nature because in excess of 90% of the parents who receive these scholarships choose Christian schools to go to." EFF provides private funding for private school tuition, and is supported with significant donations from the DeVos family.
Why did she and here husband choose to get involved in the political battles over public education even though they did not send their kids to public schools and they financially support private Christian schools?
In a joint interview for "The Gathering," a group focused on advancing Christian ideology through philanthropy, she and her husband said they decided to focus on reforming public education and funding for private education because the "Lord led us there" and "God led us."
At that meeting, they were asked if it would not have been simpler to fund Christian schools directly rather than fund political efforts like vouchers to get more tax dollars to fund Christian schools, and she replied: "There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education versus what is spent every year on education in this country... So, our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's Kingdom," adding that they want "to impact our culture [in ways] that may have great Kingdom gain in the long-run by changing the way we approach things."
Her husband added: "We are working .... to allow for our Christian worldview, which for us comes from a Calvinist tradition, and to provide for a more expanded opportunity someday for all parents to be able to educate their children in a school that reflects their world view and not each day sending their child to a school that may be reflecting a world view that may be quite antithetical to the worldview they hold in their families."
When asked if they are "against public education," they have denied that charge while trying to reframe the conversation.
Betsy DeVos responded: "No, we are for good education and for having every child have an opportunity for a good education. And having grown up in families that are in the business world, we both believe that competition and choices make everyone better, and that ultimately if the system that prevails in the United States today had more competition, if there were other choices for people to make freely that all of the schools would become better as a result and that excellence would be sought in every setting. So we are very strong proponents of fundamentally changing the way we approach education ... because there are hundreds of thousands and millions of children that are forced to go every day to a school that is not meeting their needs and it's not right."
Her husband added that they are for "public education" but that's not the same as "public schools." He said public funding for education of all kinds is a "laudable concept" that should not be forced to operate through "government-run schools."
He also stated: "In my opinion, the Church has sadly retrenched from its central role in our community, to where now as we look at many communities in our country the church which ought to be in our view far more central to the life in our community has been displaced by the public school as the center for activity the center for what goes on the community...."
He added, "it is certainly our hope that churches would continue no matter what the environment whether there is government funding someday through vouchers or tax credits or some other mechanism...that more and more churches will get more and more active and engaged in education. We just can think of no better way to rebuild our families and our communities than to have that circle of church, school, and family much more tightly focused and being built on a consistent world view."
Betsy DeVos did not disagree with this statement of their shared goals and responded: "If I can just add to that very quickly, I think for many years the church in general has felt that it is important for the children of the congregation to be in the schools to make a difference but in fact I think what has happened in many cases for the last couple of decades is that the schools have impacted the kids more than the kids have impacted the schools. The young children need to have a pretty solid foundation to be able to combat the kind of influences that they are presented with on a daily basis."
(All quotes above are transcribed from their hour-long interview for "The Gathering," available here.)
5. She Bragged that Her Family Was the Biggest GOP Funder of "Soft Money," Plus They Have Funneled Millions in Dark Money
Betsy DeVos has used her family fortune to distort public policy to suit her personal agenda through direct donations and dark money because, in her own words, she wants a "return on our investment."
The DeVos family is a major funder of the Republican party. In a 1997 op-ed that DeVos wrote for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, she pointedly admitted, "my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party." She also said that she decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that they were buying influence and simply concede the point, admitting "we expect a return on our investment," to make America reflect their vision for it.
DeVos has served as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and was the finance chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
In addition to the disclosed and undisclosed political spending for controversial politicians like Tom DeLay--whom Betsy DeVos has called one of the most honest men in politics--the DeVos family through the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation has been a major funder of many extreme socially conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and Coral Ridge Ministries.
The DeVos family fortune funds pro-education privatization, anti-union and pro-school voucher groups.
In 2011 alone, the DeVos foundation gave $3 million to David Koch's Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group created and funded by the Koch Brothers. The DeVos Foundation gave another $2.5 million to the Koch conduit DonorsTrust from 2009 to 2010.
The DeVos foundation has also contributed millions of dollars to other right wing organizations such as the State Policy Network, Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, Federalist Society, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and others.
Betsy and Dick DeVos were featured at a meeting of the ALEC sibling group, the State Policy Network, which gave its highest award in 2014 to the Mackinac Center for pushing the misnamed "right to work" bill into law in Michigan, even though that think tank has claimed to the IRS that it engages in no lobbying.
Their fortune has helped to underwrite Mackinac's operations and agenda, which has included expanding powers for emergency managers to replace elected officials, which helped create the conditions for the Flint, Michigan, tragedy of kids being poisoned by lead in their water, as CMD has detailed in a history of those provision.
In 2015, DeVos money also helped fund the push for adoption of a statewide religious freedom restoration act, or RFRA law, that awards adoption agencies in Michigan the right to claim a religious exemption from having to serve LGBTQ couples. Both the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation and the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation gave money to Bethany Christian Services, which lobbied hard for passage of the controversial RFRA.
Recently, the DeVos family also helped fund two pieces of extreme state legislation in Michigan. The state preemption bill, dubbed the "death star," HB 4052, passed by the legislature in 2015 bans cities from enacting their own laws governing wages and benefits. In one fell swoop, the law preempted local regulation of nine wage and benefit policies ranging from minimum wage to worker training and organizing.
Kim Haddow and CMD researchers contributed to this article.
By Lisa Graves
Source
City Governments Spend More For Policing Than Social Services
City Governments Spend More For Policing Than Social Services
Watch a discussion about how governments spend more money on policing than they do on social services....
Watch a discussion about how governments spend more money on policing than they do on social services.
Watch the video here.
Black leaders in Pittsburgh echo frustration voiced across nation
Black leaders in Pittsburgh echo frustration voiced across nation
Pittsburgh could easily become the next Dallas as frustrations in poor black neighborhoods continue to mount over...
Pittsburgh could easily become the next Dallas as frustrations in poor black neighborhoods continue to mount over perceived economic inequalities and mistreatment by police officers, black community members said Friday.
They condemned the attacks in Dallas that left five officers dead and seven officers and two civilians wounded.
They attributed the shootings to escalating frustration over socio-economic conditions in poor neighborhoods and repeated incidents across the nation in which officers were caught on video using deadly force to subdue minorities.
“These things will fester and grow and grow and grow,” said Connie Parker, president of the Pittsburgh branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “It's Texas right now, but it can be Pittsburgh next week.”
T. Rashad Byrdsong, president and founder of Community Empowerment Association, a Homewood-based nonprofit, said police officers have become a whipping post for deep-rooted problems beyond their control.
“The real problem is the inability of our public officials to sit down and come up with some comprehensive plan on how to include everybody in this democratic process,” Byrdsong said.
Pittsburgh has had its share of high-profile incidents. The most recent in January — the fatal shooting by Port Authority police of Tyrone Kelly Jr., a 37-year-old homeless man who fatally stabbed a police K-9 dog — drew protests. Police killed Kelly while attempting to arrest him for drinking beer on Port Authority property after he stabbed the dog.
In April 2009, Officers Eric G. Kelly, Stephen J. Mayhle and Paul J. Sciullo II were killed by Richard Poplawski while responding to a 911 call about a domestic disturbance at his Stanton Heights home
Pittsburgh police Chief Cameron McLay was in Washington for a conference when news of the Dallas shootings broke Thursday night. He and his command staff returned to Pittsburgh immediately to begin reaching out to community leaders. He said he was worried about the mood he'd find when he returned to the city Friday morning.
“I expected to find the atmosphere more tense,” he said, adding that city officers remain positive. “I'm really, really proud of them.”
Officers across Allegheny County said that it was impossible not to react emotionally to the massacre in Dallas. A Pittsburgh officer directing traffic Downtown called the mood somber but professional.
Malik Bankston, executive director of the Kingsley Center in Larimer, praised McLay and Mayor Bill Peduto for initiatives to improve relations between police and residents.
“To me, that's sort of the heart of the challenges we have right now, this whole idea of building trust,” Bankston said. “That's very unglamorous, thankless work that's only going to be realized over time, but there has to be a commitment from the highest level.”
Tim Stevens, chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project in the Hill District, said Dallas is a pivotal moment for the nation to begin bridging a racial divide.
He said the majority of black people are horrified by violence directed toward police, but they also feel the justice system is weighted against them. He called on political and community leaders and residents to unite in an effort to find solutions.
“We have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Greensburg police on its Facebook page said that “no police officer wakes up in the morning wandering who they can shoot today. Realize that none of us are perfect, but we certainly strive to be the best that we can.”
By Bob Bauder & Megan Guza
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Report: Anti-gay Laws Drive Up Poverty Rates for LGBT People
Miami Herald - September 30, 2014, by Steve Rothaus - A report issued Tuesday shows that LGBT Americans face added...
Miami Herald - September 30, 2014, by Steve Rothaus - A report issued Tuesday shows that LGBT Americans face added financial burdens — and often higher poverty rates — because of antigay national, state and local legislation.
NBC News has covered the story, with a video of Arlene Goldberg, the Fort Myers widow who is suing Florida to recognize her marriage to longtime partner Carol Goldwasser.
Goldberg’s primary income is Social Security. Because Florida doesn’t recognize Goldberg’s marriage, she is unable to qualify as Goldwasser’s widow and collect her Social Security payments, which were $700 more each month than Goldberg’s.
Here’s a news release from the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and the Center for American Progress (CAP):
Washington, D.C. — A landmark report released today paints a stark picture of the added financial burdens faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans because of anti-LGBT laws at the national, state and local levels. According to the report, these laws contribute to significantly higher rates of poverty among LGBT Americans and create unfair financial penalties in the form of higher taxes, reduced wages and Social Security income, increased healthcare costs, and more.
The momentum of recent court rulings overturning marriage bans across the country has created the impression that LGBT Americans are on the cusp of achieving full equality from coast-to-coast. But the new report, Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for Being LGBT in America, documents how inequitable laws harm the economic well-being of LGBT people in three key ways: by enabling legal discrimination in jobs, housing, credit and other areas; by failing to recognize LGBT families, both in general and across a range of programs and laws designed to help American families; and by creating barriers to safe and affordable education for LGBT students and the children of LGBT parents.
Paying an Unfair Pricewas co-authored by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), in partnership with Center for Community Change, Center for Popular Democracy, National Association of Social Workers, and the National Education Association. It is available online at www.lgbtmap.org/unfair-price.
“Unfair laws deliver a one-two punch. They both drive poverty within the LGBT community and then hit people when they are down,” said Ineke Mushovic, Executive Director of MAP. “While families with means might be able to withstand the costs of extra taxation or the unfair denial of Social Security benefits, for an already-struggling family these financial penalties can mean the difference between getting by and getting evicted. Anti-LGBT laws do the most harm to the most vulnerable in the LGBT community, including those who are barely making ends meet, families with children, older adults, and people of color.”
The report documents the often-devastating consequences when the law fails LGBT families. For example, children raised by same-sex parents are almost twice as likely to be poor as children raised by married opposite-sex parents. Additionally, 15 percent of transgender workers have incomes of less than $10,000 per year; among the population as a whole, the comparable figure is just four percent. To demonstrate the connection between anti-LGBT laws and the finances of LGBT Americans and their families, the report outlines how LGBT people living in states with low levels of equality are more likely to be poor, both compared to their non-LGBT neighbors, and compared to their LGBT counterparts in state with high levels of equality. For example, the denial of marriage costs gay and lesbian families money; same-sex couples with children had just $689 less in household income than married opposite-sex couples in states with marriage and relationship recognition for same-sex couples, but had an astounding $8,912 less in household income in states lacking such protections.
DISCRIMINATORY LAWS CREATE A DEVASTATING CYCLE OF POVERTY
How do inequitable laws contribute to higher rates of poverty for LGBT people? The report documents how LGBT people in the United States face clear financial penalties because of three primary failures in the law.
1. Lack of protection from discrimination means that LGBT people can be fired, denied housing and credit, and refused medically-necessary healthcare simply because they are LGBT. The financial penalty: LGBT people can struggle to find work, make less on the job, and have higher housing and medical costs than their non-LGBT peers.
2. Refusal to recognize LGBT families means that LGBT families are denied many of thesame benefits afforded to non-LGBT families when it comes to health insurance, taxes, vital safety-net programs, and retirement planning. The financial penalty: LGBT families pay more for health insurance, taxes, and legal assistance, and may be unable to access essential protections for their families in times of crisis.
3. Failure to adequately protect LGBT students means that LGBT people and their families often face a hostile, unsafe, and unwelcoming environment in local schools, as well as discrimination in accessing financial aid and other support. The financial penalty: LGBT youth are more likely to perform poorly in school and to face challenges pursuing postsecondary educational opportunities, as can youth with LGBT parents. This, in turn, can reduce their earnings over time, as well as their chances of having successful jobs and careers.
“Imagine losing your job or your home simply because of who you are or whom you love. Imagine having to choose between paying the rent and finding legal help so you can establish parenting rights for the child you have been raising from birth,” said Laura E. Durso, Director LGBT Progress at the Center for American Progress at CAP. “These are just a couple of the added costs that are harming the economic security of LGBT people across the country. It is unfair and un-American that LGBT people are penalized because of who they are, and it has real and profound effects on their ability to stay out of poverty and provide for their families.”
Paying an Unfair Price offers broad recommendations for helping strengthen economic security for LGBT Americans. Recommendations include: instituting basic nondiscrimination protections at the federal and state level; allowing same-sex couples to marry in all states; allowing LGBT parents to form legal ties with the children they are raising; andprotecting students from discrimination and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
“At a time when so many American families are struggling to make ends meet, the report's findings point to an even bleaker reality for those who are both LGBT and people of color," said Connie Razza, Director of Strategic Research at the Center for Popular Democracy. "Unchecked employment discrimination and laws that needlessly increase the costs of healthcare, housing and childcare are doing profound harm to our economic strength as a nation. This report offers real-life policy solutions that, if implemented, would protect some of our most vulnerable individuals and families."
“Reducing the unfair financial penalties that LGBT people face in this country because they are LGBT is not that complicated. It is a simple matter of treating LGBT Americans equally under the law. For example, extending the freedom to marry, including LGBT students in safe schools laws, and ending the exclusion of LGBT people from laws meant to protect families when a parent dies or becomes disabled,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change.
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Conservatives May Control State Governments, But Progressives Are Rising
Bill Moyers - March 18, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives swept...
Bill Moyers - March 18, 2015, by George Goehl, Ana María Archila, and Fred Azcarate - In November, conservatives swept not only Congress, but a majority of statehouses. While gridlock in Washington is frustrating, the rightward lurch of statehouses could be devastating. Reveling in their newfound power, state lawmakers and their corporate allies are writing regressive policies that could hurt families by exacerbating inequality, further curtailing an already weakened democracy, and worsening an environmental crisis of global proportions.
From a law that would censor public university professors in Kansas to a governor who prohibits state officials from using the term “climate change” in Florida, ideologues in state capitols are wasting little time when it comes to enacting an extreme agenda. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wisconsin officially enacted right to work legislation on Monday, a policy that’s shown to lower wages and benefits by weakening the power of unions. Missouri, New Mexico, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois are all entertaining various versions of the law. In states like New York and Ohio, legislators are considering severe cuts to public education, while vastly expanding charter schools.
Of course, a look at key 2014 ballot initiatives shows voters held progressive values on issues like the minimum wage, paid sick days, and a millionaires tax. And just 36.4 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in 2014, meaning that there is surely a silent majority sitting on the sidelines.
The path to policies that put families first is not short, but a bold coalition across the country took an aggressive step forward this week.
On March 11th, under the banner “We Rise,” thousands of people joined more than 28 actions in 16 states to awaken that silent majority and call their legislators to account. A joint project of National People’s Action, Center for Popular Democracy, USAction and other allies across the country, the message of the day was simple: our cities and states belong to us, not big corporations and the wealthy. We can work together and push our legislators to enact an agenda that puts people and the planet before profits. And at each local action, leaders unveiled their proposals for what that agenda would look like in their cities and states.
In Minnesota, grassroots leaders are fighting for a proposal to re-enfranchise over 44,000 formerly incarcerated people. In Nevada, our allies are agitating for a $15 minimum wage. In Illinois, we are organizing for closing corporate tax loopholes and a financial transaction tax (a “LaSalle Street tax”) that would help plug the state’s budget hole. With each of these proposals, we are moving from defense to offense and changing the conversation about race, democracy and our economy.
We’ve seen over and over again in American history, change starts close to home – in our towns, cities and states. On March 11th, we saw a fresh reminder of the power of local change. Our families and communities are defining this new front in American public life, and we will continue rising to challenge corporate power and win the policies that put people and planet first - not last.
If November was a wave election, then this Spring will be a wave of bottom-up people power activism. What starts with defending people and our democracy from an extreme corporate conservative agenda, will pivot to offense as grassroots organizations across the country fight to fundamentally reshape our government and our economy from the bottom up. Expect an unabashedly bold agenda that holds the potential for awakening the progressive majority and ushering in a new era in America, an era where our country works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well connected.
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Coalition Plans to Press Senate Candidates to Back Minimum Wage Rise
Coalition Plans to Press Senate Candidates to Back Minimum Wage Rise
The minimum wage has already been an issue on the presidential campaign trail. Now, three national progressive groups...
The minimum wage has already been an issue on the presidential campaign trail. Now, three national progressive groups plan to use it to pressure Senators in tight races to back higher wages or face a backlash on election day.
The Working Families Organization, the National Employment Law Project Action Fund, and the Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund are teaming up with grassroots organizations in seven battleground states to educate voters about where lawmakers stand on a policy they say can help low-wage workers and the economy.
They also plan to pressure candidates who have opposed higher minimum wages or who haven’t picked a side. In the coming weeks, they are planning a series of actions they hope will influence swing voters, drive voters to the polls, and shame lawmakers into advocating for higher pay floors.
“There’s unprecedented momentum this year for raising the minimum wage. Voters are hungry for leaders who’ll take a strong stand in raising wages and frustrated with their Republican majorities in Congress,” said Paul Sonn, a spokesperson for the National Employment Law Project Action Fund.
While the focus is on Senate races, “partners in this effort are educating voters on where candidates for office from president down to city councilperson stand on raising wages,” said Mr. Sonn, who added that Hillary Clinton is a strong supporter of raising the federal minimum wage while Donald Trump “has been all over the map.”
With control of the Senate hanging in the balance after Republicans won the majority in 2014, the groups are betting minimum wage could be a pivotal issue in key races in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. They are in the process of scheduling protests outside of Senate debates, arranging door-to-door canvassing, organizing candidate forums and town halls and doing polling on the issue. Another tactic they plan: inviting candidates to spend a day shadowing a low-wage worker on the job, and possibly exposing those who won’t do it.
Republicans are defending 24 Senate seats this November, while Democrats are defending 10. Democrats need to win at least five net seats to gain back control from Republicans, or four if Hillary Clinton wins the White House and Tim Kaine is elected vice president and can break tied Senate votes.
Some of the lawmakers the groups plan to target because of the lack of support they’ve shown for higher minimum wages are Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who is in a contest against Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, and Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, challenged by Democrat Jason Kander.
In Pennsylvania, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey could feel some heat from the groups in his race against Democrat Katie McGinty, who has repeatedly called for raising the federal minimum wage. And in Wisconsin, they will target Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in his contest with Democrat Russ Feingold, who has made raising the minimum wage a pivotal part of his campaign.
Marina Dimitrijevic, the state director of the Wisconsin Working Families Party, one of the grassroots groups involved, said the organization plans to bring a crowd to a mid-October debate between Sen. Johnson and Mr. Feingold. It will also invite Mr. Johnson to a roundtable discussion about raising minimum wages.
“I hope he comes and listens,” she said.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and leading Democrats in Congress have gained no traction on bills to increase it. Pay floors have been rising in cities and states instead to as high as $15 an hour.
Hillary Clinton has said she supports a $12 federal minimum wage but thinks states or cities should be allowed to set higher rates if they have local support. She has stopped short of backing the $15 federal minimum many unions and other left-leaning groups are calling for, but she has won many of their endorsements nonetheless.
Donald Trump has wavered on the issue, saying last year that wages were “too high,” then saying this year that he would like to see an increase in the minimum wage. He recently called for a $10 federal minimum, though he said the states should really call the shots.
By MELANIE TROTTMAN
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