The Fed should rethink how its conducts monetary policy
There is a growing sentiment that the Federal Reserve needs to change the principles by which it manages our economy. ...
There is a growing sentiment that the Federal Reserve needs to change the principles by which it manages our economy. Federal Reserve officials are saying it. Community organizations, labor unions, and think tanksare saying it. And on Friday, 20 of the country's most prominent economists released a joint letter saying it.
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Woman Who Confronted Jeff Flake in the Elevator: 'I Wanted Him to Feel My Rage'
Woman Who Confronted Jeff Flake in the Elevator: 'I Wanted Him to Feel My Rage'
The protesters who cornered Flake just before he voted on Kavanaugh's confirmation spoke out about why they did it....
The protesters who cornered Flake just before he voted on Kavanaugh's confirmation spoke out about why they did it.
Read the full article here.
Report: Lack of oversight leads to fraud, abuse in charter school operations
Arkansas Times - May 6, 2014, by Max Brantley - Don't look for Bill Moyers to be getting any grants from the Walton...
Arkansas Times - May 6, 2014, by Max Brantley - Don't look for Bill Moyers to be getting any grants from the Walton Family Foundation. His website reports on a new study about harm to taxpayers and school children from poor oversight of charter schools.
Charter school operators want to have it both ways. When they’re answering critics of school privatization, they say charter schools are public — they use public funds and provide students with a tuition-free education. But when it comes to transparency, they insist they have the same rights to privacy as any other private enterprise.
But a report released Monday by Integrity in Education and the Center for Popular Democracy — two groups that oppose school privatization – presents evidence that inadequate oversight of the charter school industry hurts both kids and taxpayers.
Sabrina Joy Stevens, executive director of Integrity in Education, told BillMoyers.com, “Our report shows that over $100 million has been lost to fraud and abuse in the charter industry, because there is virtually no proactive oversight system in place to thwart unscrupulous or incompetent charter operators before they cheat the public.” The actual amount of fraud and abuse the report uncovered totaled $136 million, and that was just in the 15 states they studied.
Here's the full report. Arkansas is not among the states studied. It had a cap on open enrollment charters for years, unlike some states where proliferation of the schools has led to shady operators, poor education and self-enrichment.
But a bit of the rubber meets the road this week in Arkansas. A Texas charter school operator,Responsive Education Solutions, is going to ask this week for permission to move its proposed Quest charter school into a building on Hardin Road in west Little Rock that neighbors says isn't suitable for the school because of traffic. Responsive Ed has a hand in seven charter schools in Arkansas. It has been faulted in a national study for quality of its work with poor kids and a Slate investigation pointed up shoddy curriculum in science (creationism) and history (fractured facts). In Little Rock, it has not been honest with regulators. It won approval for a school on Rahling Road in far western Little Rock while it was negotiating for a school site closer in, near existing Little Rock and charter schools. Then, it said it wouldn't complete the purchase on the alternative site until it had approval from state and city officials. Records show the sale has closed, though neither the city nor state has formally approved use of the property for a school. How tough is Arkansas oversight? We shall see.
A measure of the looseness of regulation in Arkansas is the decision by top regulator Diane Zook,a member of the state Board of Education, to declare she has no conflict of interest in voting (FOR) on all Quest proposals even though her nephew, Gary Newton, is a lead organizer for the school and she has supported its establishment from early in the organizing process. Newton is financed in several pro-charter-school organizations by money from the Walton Family Foundation. I wonder if lawyer Chris Heller's aunt was on the state Board of Education if anyone would object to that Board member voting on a case, like Quest, where Heller was objecting to the charter on behalf of his employer, the Little Rock School District. I'd make a small wager that Gary Newton would.
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US jobless claims at 40-year low: Is the labor market getting better?
The number of Americans applying for new unemployment benefits last week dropped to its lowest point in more than 40...
The number of Americans applying for new unemployment benefits last week dropped to its lowest point in more than 40 years, signaling that the labor market may be stronger than many economists had predicted. But the positive labor numbers do not mean that wage stagnation for those workers who do have a job is likely to end anytime soon.
Initial jobless claims fell last week to a seasonally adjusted 255,000, which is the lowest level since November 1973, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.
Summer is a volatile time for reliable unemployment numbers because it is generally the season that some large car assembly plants close for annual retooling. Because such stoppages don't affect all companies, it's more difficult for the Labor Department to accurately adjust its numbers.
Even with that caveat, Thursday's report points to a growing downward trend of unemployment that indicates a strengthening labor market.
The four-week moving average, which is less subject to weekly fluctuations and a better measure of labor market trends, fell 4,000 to 278,500 last week. The average level of claims has been near that mark since early April.
The numbers are being released as the movement for raising the minimum wage gains ground nationally. With the federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour, American cities including Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in the past year have moved to raise their minimum wages to $15 an hour.
On Wednesday, the District of Columbia authorized a petition drive that could put the $15-an-hour minimum wage on the ballot in November 2016 elections. At the same time, a New York panel recommended that fast-food workers at chain restaurants statewide have their wages raised to $15, a move widely expected to be approved by the state's acting labor commissioner.
But that doesn't mean you should immediately march into your bosses' office and demand a raise.
While job growth has picked up and unemployment is continuing its seven-year downward trend, it has not been matched by corresponding wage increases, indicating that the labor market is still predominantly skewed to employers and not workers. Wages have only risen about 2 percent during the past 12 months.
"As an economist watching the economy, we're somewhat surprised that wages pressures have been so muted to this point," IHS Economics senior director Jim Diffley told Reuters. "We do expect an acceleration and in fact think it necessary to continue the recovery."
According to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, the majority of Americans have faced wage stagnation for the past 35 years, and it is a major factor the rise of family income stagnation and income inequality. Furthermore, the failure of wages to grow highlights gender and racial wage gaps.
United States Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said that shifting wages out of its stagnation is still a major part of the “unfinished business” of the nation’s economic recovery from the Great Recession.
“The rising tide of this economic wind at our back has to lift more boats,” he told The New York Times.
Optimistic signs of labor market growth have been tempered with a note of caution from the Federal Reserve, which is monitoring labor market conditions, including wage stagnation, to determine whether to raise short-term interest rates.
”While labor market conditions have improved substantially, they are ... not yet consistent with maximum employment,” Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen told members of Congress last week.
Labor groups are calling on the Fed to hold off on rate hikes and focus on pursuing full employment in order to boost both job and wage growth.
“Raising interest rates too soon will slow an already sluggish economy, stall progress on unemployment, and perpetuate wage stagnation for the vast majority of American workers. This harm will be disproportionately felt by women and people of color, who are concentrated in the most vulnerable strata of the workforce,” said a report released by the Center for Popular Democracy and a coalition of labor groups.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Por qué la ciudad de Nueva York es una ciudad santuario modelo
Tras meses esperanza de que Donald Trump daría marcha atrás respecto a sus promesas de campaña contra los inmigrantes,...
Tras meses esperanza de que Donald Trump daría marcha atrás respecto a sus promesas de campaña contra los inmigrantes, lo opuesto ha sucedido. En las primeras semanas después de asumir el mando, Trump les ha declarado la guerra a los inmigrantes y ha prometido construir un muro en la frontera, aumentar las deportaciones y no dejar entrar a refugiados.
Su programa de gobierno va en contra de todo lo que este país valora y todo lo que la ciudad de New York siempre ha defendido. El compromiso de nuestra ciudad con los inmigrantes es el núcleo de nuestra identidad. Respetamos a los inmigrantes, apoyamos sus aspiraciones y trabajamos arduamente para que sean parte de la esencia de esta ciudad.
Como tal, la ciudad de Nueva York se considera desde hace mucho tiempo una “ciudad santuario”, donde las agencias locales de la ley se rehúsan a ser forzadas a cumplir políticas de inmigración del gobierno federal que perjudican a sus comunidades. Dichas políticas están en vigor desde hace varias décadas. Incluso Rudy Giuliani, cuando fue alcalde, defendió ardientemente las leyes que prohibían que los empleadores de la ciudad de Nueva York reportaran la situación inmigratoria de los neoyorquinos inmigrantes.
Cientos de ciudades, estados y condados siguen políticas similares. Entre ellos se encuentran algunas de las más grandes ciudades del país, como también pueblitos al interior de los estados donde ganó Trump. Las razones son las mismas: las políticas de santuario mantienen a las ciudades más seguras y prósperas al no forzar a los inmigrantes a la clandestinidad y permitirles aportar y llevar vidas plenas.
En años recientes, la ciudad de Nueva York ha ido incluso más lejos. Por medio del trabajo de muchas organizaciones de defensa, incluidas Make the Road New York y el Center for Popular Democracy, los líderes municipales han puesto en vigor una serie de programas que ayudan a los inmigrantes a tener una vida más segura y próspera, y que benefician a la ciudad de muchas maneras.
Por ejemplo, en el año 2014, el alcalde De Blasio dio inicio a IDNYC, el más extenso programa municipal de identificación en el país. Permite que los inmigrantes indocumentados abran cuentas de banco y tengan acceso a servicios sociales necesarios. Tiene un alcance de más de 850,000 personas y se ha hecho popular con una gran variedad de neoyorquinos, entre ellos muchos que no son inmigrantes (como yo).
La ciudad también ofrece excelente acceso lingüístico a los neoyorquinos que aún se encuentran en el proceso de aprender inglés, lo que incluye vitales servicios de interpretación y traducción en todas las agencias de la ciudad para los residentes que necesitan acceso a valiosos servicios municipales.
Para los residentes que enfrentan la traumática posibilidad de deportación y separación de sus familiares, la ciudad también ha creado un innovador programa a fin de proporcionar a los neoyorquinos en procesos migratorios acceso a abogados que tienen mucha experiencia en la defensa contra la deportación. Los clientes del programa tienen probabilidades aproximadamente 1,000 por ciento más altas de ganar sus casos de inmigración que quienes no tienen representación legal.
Con estas medidas, a la ciudad de Nueva York realmente ha elevado el estándar para otras ciudades en todo el país. Y ha sido beneficioso para toda la ciudad. Hoy en día, nuestra economía se encuentra en auge, la tasa de criminalidad es la más baja de la historia, y un nivel récord de turistas de todo el mundo vienen en masa. La protección de nuestros inmigrantes solo ha tenido consecuencias positivas para la ciudad de New York.
Seguiremos esforzándonos por lograr medidas de política que faciliten que los inmigrantes trabajen y vivan en la ciudad de Nueva York, y haremos todo lo posible para alentar a otras ciudades a que sigan nuestro ejemplo. A juzgar por el número de ciudades que se están pronunciando y declarándose santuarios tras los crueles e insensatos decretos ejecutivos de Trump, parece que el ejemplo de Nueva York ya está surtiendo efecto.
By Andrew Friedman
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2020 Democrats Band Together To Call For Puerto Rico Debt Cancellation
2020 Democrats Band Together To Call For Puerto Rico Debt Cancellation
Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, welcomed the legislation. “The vast...
Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, welcomed the legislation. “The vast majority of Puerto Rican debt is owned by actors who invested knowing full well that Puerto Rico could not pay,” she said. “There’s no way for Puerto Rico to recover if it has to use public money to pay hedge funds.”
Read the full article here.
Progressive Group Sues Fed, Seeking Information on Presidential Selection
Progressive Group Sues Fed, Seeking Information on Presidential Selection
The left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Reserve...
The left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Reserve, seeking to shine light on the central bank’s president selection process.
The lawsuit, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, is a product of the “Fed Up” campaign to strip private bankers’ influence from the Fed’s top rungs and increase transparency in its leadership selection. The suit was filed after the Fed ignored a FOIA request filed in August seeking information on president selections in 2015 and 2016, the group said.
“The leaders of the twelve Reserve Banks are among the most powerful and influential actors in shaping the nation’s monetary policies, yet the process by which they are chosen is completely non-transparent,” the group wrote in the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
The lawsuit comes as Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, prepares to leave the bank in February.
“The public has a right to obtain records about how the Federal Reserve’s leaders are selected, and there is no justification for the Fed’s withholding of basic information about its governance,” said Connie Chan, an attorney representing Fed Up, in a statement. “The fact that Fed Up has to bring this FOIA lawsuit is itself further evidence of the Fed’s lack of transparency.”
By Tara Jeffries
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New York's vote to curb stop-and-frisk is another win for civil rights
The Guardian - June 27, 2013, by Brittny Saunders - New York City Council passed two bills designed to guarantee safety...
The Guardian - June 27, 2013, by Brittny Saunders - New York City Council passed two bills designed to guarantee safety and respect for all New Yorkers. The measures were championed by Communities United for Police Reform, a broad coalition of city groups, and will strengthen the existing ban on police profiling and establish independent oversight of the city's police department.
Today is a new day for New York City. The move reflects a growing alarm over NYPD policies and practices that violate the rights of thousands of New Yorkers and undermine police-community relationships – practices such as the discriminatory use of stop-and-frisk that waste valuable public dollars, while producing no measurable impact on public safety.
Criticism is mounting, not only in the council, but also in federal court, where the legality of these practices is being questioned. Those same questions are echoed in the homes of regular New Yorkers – a majority of whom disapprove of stop-and-frisk and two-thirds of whom support independent oversight of the department. The message is clear: it's time for New York City to turn away from an approach to policing that results in countless rights violations each year, while doing little to reduce crime, according to an analysis by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The bills passed by city council respond to increasing evidence that in too many cases the department has substituted stereotyping for real police work. A study by the New York Civil Liberties Union found that in 2011, for example, 41.6% of all New Yorkers stopped by the NYPD were black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 years old, despite the fact that that these groups make up a mere 4.7% of the city's population. The department has continued to defend these discriminatory tactics, despite evidence that they do not even succeed on their own terms, failing to take guns off the street or to significantly reduce crime. In more than 99% of all 2011 stops, for example, no gun was retrieved. And in the first three months of 2013, crime dropped, even as stops also tapered, undermining the department's claim that stop-and-frisk is responsible for the city's lowered crime rate.
All of this suggests that the department's continued reliance on discriminatory tactics is not about what it takes to actually keep all New Yorkers (and those visiting the city) safe. Instead, it is about what it takes to convince some in New York City's whiter, wealthier communities that the administration and the department are serious about public safety.
For too long, too many city leaders have accepted discriminatory policing tactics on the assumption that the costs borne by the New Yorkers who are targeted are outweighed by the benefits enjoyed by communities that are not singled out for unlawful and abusive treatment. But the truth is the NYPD's discriminatory policies and practices have indirect negative impacts on all who live in the city, including its white residents. They allow the NYPD to substitute crude and ineffective strategies – like stopping New Yorkers on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender expression – for the sophisticated police work one might expect from the nation's largest local law enforcement agency. In the process, they position NYPD officers as adversaries instead of allies of many of the communities they are charged with protecting, reducing willingness to report crime and making all New Yorkers less safe.
It is becoming increasingly apparent, then, that the costs of massive spending on ineffective policing strategies extend beyond those borne by the individuals who are unlawfully targeted in the streets each day. But the most powerful argument for increased NYPD accountability has nothing to do with financial costs and benefits and everything to do with what we, as New Yorkers, allow to be done in our names. And it is about staying true to the city's own legacy of innovation and the conviction that here – if nowhere else – we can find a way to keep everyone safe without sacrificing anyone's rights.
City Council made an important choice today. They stopped endorsing a set of NYPD policies and practices that are discriminatory, ineffective and wasteful. They chose instead to guarantee safety and respect across the boroughs. The choices that they and other city leaders will make in the coming weeks, months and years as these bills are enacted and implemented will have a lasting impact on New York City and hopefully set a better example for cities across the country.
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Should New Orleans Allow Undocumented Immigrants to Get City-issued ID Cards?
The Times-Picayune - December 16, 2014, by Robert McClendon - One of the centerpieces of New Orleans Councilwoman...
The Times-Picayune - December 16, 2014, by Robert McClendon - One of the centerpieces of New Orleans Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell's pro-immigrant policy package is a proposed municipal identification card program.
Let us know what you think of the idea by taking the poll below and sharing your views in the comment section.
ID cards are used in so many bureaucratic and commercial interactions that they are easy to take for granted. They are often required during interactions with police, when registering children for school and when opening open bank accounts.
Undocumented immigrants, however, are frequently unable to obtain what has become the most common form of government issued identification: the drivers license.
Louisiana, like many states, has strict eligibility rules for drivers licenses, requiring applicants to prove that they are either American citizens or in the country legally.
Without a state-issued ID, undocumented immigrants are frequently unable to accomplish basic tasks, according to advocacy groups. And, with Congress seemingly hopelessly deadlocked on a reform that would normalize the status of immigrants in the country illegally, that situation is unlikely to change any time soon.
Thus, groups like the center for popular democracy, a left-wing advocacy group, are pushing for cities to take matters into their own hands by creating municipal identification cards that do not require applicants to prove they are in the country legally.
The idea is still relatively new. The first community thought to have created a city-ID program is New Haven, Connecticut, which launched its program in 2007. It's unclear how many cities nationwide have followed suit.
A white paper issued by the Center for Popular Democracy says that other cities with local ID programs include: San Francisco; New York; Richmond, California; Oakland, California; Los Angeles; Washington DC and several municipalities in New Jersey.
Critics of such programs say they undermine security by making it easier to obtain government identification and some have said it will make it easier for non-citizens to vote.
Anti-immigrant hardliners have said they like the strict state laws in place precisely because they make life more difficult for immigrants. The harder life is for immigrants, the more likely they are to "self deport," the activists say.
A city-issued ID program is among many policy changes that Cantrell says she will propose in a non-binding resolution early next year.
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Poll: Voters like Charter Schools but Want More Oversight
The Seattle Times - March 12, 2015, by Leah Todd - Voters want greater oversight for charter schools and more assurance...
The Seattle Times - March 12, 2015, by Leah Todd - Voters want greater oversight for charter schools and more assurance that charters — independently run but publicly funded schools — won’t hurt other public schools by drawing students away, a new national poll suggests.
Two education policy groups that are generally skeptical of charters — In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy — conducted the poll, which involved interviews with 1,000 randomly selected registered voters from across the country.
They found that while the public is mostly supportive of charter schools, most voters surveyed said they wanted better financial auditing and oversight. Though nearly one in three respondents said they knew nothing about charter schools, 62 percent said they would prefer to decrease or keep the same number of charters in their area.
A lack of choice about where to send children to school wasn’t a major issue among the voters interviewed — only about 10 percent listed that as a top concern.
The top areas of concern for those surveyed were lack of parental involvement, too much focus on standardized tests and large class sizes.
The voters surveyed overwhelmingly supported audits of charter schools’ finances to detect fraud or waste, and said that before a charter school opens, its impact on nearby public schools should be studied.
The former is already happening in Washington state, where the charter school commission has increased its oversight of the state’s lone charter following financial and organizational problems. The commission has added more financial reporting to its charter application process and has ordered a state audit into the school’s finances.
This year, lawmakers in six states considered bills to limit the number of charter schools in their states, and nine states proposed increasing charter-school transparency and adding oversight, according to Kyle Serrette, director of education at the Center for Popular Democracy.
In Washington, Sen. Jeannie Darnielle, D-Tacoma, proposed a bill that would mandate performance audits for charters and allow no more than three charter schools to open simultaneously in any single school district. The bill died in committee.
You can dig into more of the poll’s results here.
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