Texas Matters: Unemployment Still A Problem For Texas Minority Communities
Texas Public Radio - March 6, 2015, by David Martin Davies - The U.S. Labor Department reports that the latest national...
Texas Public Radio - March 6, 2015, by David Martin Davies - The U.S. Labor Department reports that the latest national unemployment rate is 5-point-5 percent. That’s good news for the economy overall and the sluggish recovery. But if you are still one of those without a job then the unemployment rate is 100%. But for minority communities the recovery has yet to arrive. A coalition of community and labor groups in Texas is calling for the Federal Reserve to focus on full employment and higher wages for blacks, Latinos, native peoples and others in poor neighborhoods who have been left out of the recovery. Connie Razza is the Director of Strategic Research at the Center for Popular Democracy.
Listen to the clip here.
Black Lives Matter might get a big cash injection from liberal mega-donors
Black Lives Matter might get a big cash injection from liberal mega-donors
An elite liberal donor group that has given away more than $500 million is now considering funding the ...
An elite liberal donor group that has given away more than $500 million is now considering funding the Black Lives Matter movement, Politico reports. Activist leaders of groups like the Black Youth Project 100, The Center for Popular Democracy, and the Black Civic Engagement Fund will be featured guests at a Tuesday fundraising dinner of The Democracy Alliance.
Although the civil rights messages of Black Lives Matter fall in line with the values of the Democracy Alliance, some question if the group's confrontational activism, such as shutting down freeways, might alienate the rich donors. DA President Gara LaMarche, for one, admits it might be an issue — but he isn't too worried: "We have a wide range of human beings and different temperaments and approaches in the DA, so it's quite possible that there are people who are a little concerned, as well as people who are curious or are supportive... we'll take stock of that and see where it might lead."
While funding could mean a significant boost toward building a more cohesive architecture for the Black Lives Matter movement, some activists value the group's independence over the allure of big money. And although the Democracy Alliance is left-leaning and separate from the Democratic Party, there's the additional problem of Black Lives Matter activists asking inconvenient questions of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Still, that doesn't deter everyone. "The progressive donor world should be adding zeroes to their contributions that support this transformative movement," Steve Phillips, a Democracy Alliance contributor, said.
Source: The Week
Left takes aim at the Federal Reserve
Left takes aim at the Federal Reserve
Liberal activists are putting a target on the Federal Reserve for the 2016 elections, much to the delight of the Bernie...
Liberal activists are putting a target on the Federal Reserve for the 2016 elections, much to the delight of the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Denouncing an agenda that they say tilts toward Wall Street, members of the “Fed Up” coalition on Monday unveiled a set of reforms that would alter how the central bank does business.
“No longer are we focused only on fixing the Fed’s monetary policy and internal governance positions,” said Ady Barkan, the group’s campaign director. “We are now beginning an effort to reform the Federal Reserve itself.
“Ask all of the presidential candidates what their plans are for the Federal Reserve,” he added in a call with reporters.
While touting its reform proposals, the group was joined Monday by a top policy official with Sanders, who has made criticism of Wall Street a cornerstone of his presidential bid.
Warren Gunnels, Sanders’s policy director, said the Democratic candidate was not yet ready to endorse the coalition’s proposal, needing more time to review it.
But Sanders has pitched his own Fed reforms, and Gunnels said the Vermont senator is “very passionate” about overhauling how the Fed does business. Gunnels said the central bank should delay raising rates any time soon.
“The Fed should not raise interest rates until unemployment is lower than 4 percent,” he said. “Raising rates must be done as a last resort, not to fight phantom inflation.”
The “Fed Up” coalition said it had reached out to every remaining presidential campaign with its reform proposal. None of the Republican campaigns responded, but the group has had “very substantive conversations” with staffers to Hillary Clinton, according to Barkan.
“We urge Secretary Clinton to show leadership on this issue and hope that she will soon be coming out with her plan to reform the Federal Reserve,” he told The Hill.
Clinton’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The leftward pressure on the Fed is coming at a critical time.
The bank is trying to step back from intense stimulus it injected into the economy after the financial crisis. It raised rates for the first time in nearly a decade in December, but so far has opted not to raise them any further at subsequent meetings.
Looming over its deliberations is the presidential election. The central bank prides itself on its political independence, and any major decisions in the months to come could expose it to charges it is working to benefit one party or the other.
While many economic indicators are improving, many community groups like Fed Up argue that many middle-class and working-class Americans are feeling none of those gains. They point to stagnant wage growth and a low labor participation rate as evidence that the Fed has ample reason to continue boosting the economy.
The coalition’s reform proposal was written by Andrew Levin, a Dartmouth economist who spent two decades at the Fed, including time as a special adviser to Fed chiefs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen.
While most conservative critiques of the Fed center on how it conducts monetary policy, Levin focuses most of his fire on the dozen regional Fed banks scattered across the country.
Levin argues that the regional institutions are undemocratic entities that hand bank executives huge influence at the Fed. The regional banks are directly backed by commercial banks, which occupy most of the seats on each regional bank’s board. In turn, those boards pick each regional Fed president, who at some point will hold a rotating spot on the Fed’s board, which handles the nation’s interest rates.
Under Levin’s plan, regional Fed banks would have to solicit public input when selecting their presidents. Regional banks would be required to put together a list of candidates through input from both the public and public officials from their specific region. The plan calls for Fed banks to emphasize diversity, considering candidates across a range of racial, gender and educational backgrounds.
Levin highlighted that in the 100-year history of the Federal Reserve system, there has never been a black head of a Fed regional bank.
The unveiling of the reform plan came on the same day that Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen met privately with President Obama to discuss the central bank’s work and the state of the economy.
High-ranking Republicans have been critical of the Fed, particularly for the unprecedented stimulus program it carried out under Bernanke. Top GOP candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have accused the Fed of harming the economy with its efforts, and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has also been a frequent critic of the bank.
Sanders occupies a fairly unique political position when it comes to the Fed. He was one of just two Democrats to back a vote earlier this year on a Republican bill that would subject the central bank to a full outside review.
Did you know 67% of all job growth comes from small businesses? Read More
Separately, Sanders has also pushed to “Audit the Fed,” and the Levin plan also includes a comprehensive annual review of the Fed’s operations.
The Vermont senator has floated his own Fed reform proposal, arguing in a December piece in The New York Times that the institution has been “hijacked” by bankers. His plan would limit the influence of the financial sector on selecting Fed officials and require the Fed to prioritize unemployment when considering interest rates.
Fed officials have repeatedly resisted any efforts to change how it does business, frequently arguing that changes could render the central bank ineffective or subject it to improper political pressure.
By Peter Schroeder
Source
Fed Up Says It Unjustly Lost Rooms at Jackson Hole Meeting
Fed Up Says It Unjustly Lost Rooms at Jackson Hole Meeting
A coalition of community and labor groups known as “Fed Up” said 39 members planning to stay at the hotel hosting the...
A coalition of community and labor groups known as “Fed Up” said 39 members planning to stay at the hotel hosting the Federal Reserve’s prestigious annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were unfairly singled out when their 13 room reservations were canceled.
The group, which is pressing the U.S. central bank to appoint more minorities and women to its leadership, said most of its attendees would have been black and Latino. It has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice and other government officials. The group believes it lost the rooms because of “specific targeting of the Fed Up coalition.”
Fed Chair Janet Yellen is the first woman to lead the U.S. central bank and it remains under pressure to become more diverse. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined calls for reform in May and the central bank has taken fire from Republicans, who warn its low interest rate policies risk inflating another asset bubble.
The Fed Up coalition, which wants rates to stay low to boost hiring and lift wages, has discussed its concerns with Fed officials, including Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed, which hosts the annual Jackson Hole monetary-policy conference in late August.
Faced with criticism that it doesn’t look out for the interests of poorer Americans, the Fed has been making efforts to change. The Kansas City Fed said on Thursday that it will hold a conference on the challenges low- to moderate-income communities face on Sept. 7-8 at its headquarters.
Booking Error
Alex Klein, vice president and general manager of Grand Teton Lodge Company and Flagg Ranch, said the reservations were canceled because “an error in the booking system” resulted in the Jackson Lake Lodge being oversold by 18 rooms. “We worked proactively and diligently with guests to relocate them to our nearby Flagg Ranch property,” he said in a statement.
The Kansas City Fed has a contract to provide rooms for guests at the symposium and “has no input regarding any decisions that the Lodge makes outside of its contract with us,” said bank spokesman Bill Medley.
The symposium, which gathers policy makers and economic-thought leaders for a three-day retreat in the heart of the Grand Teton mountains, is probably the most important event of its kind on the central-banking calendar. Yellen will attend and plans to address the conference on Aug. 26. This year’s meeting, which is invitation only, is focused on the topic “Designing Resilient Monetary Policy Frameworks for the Future.”
The hotel, while remote, is open to the public and Fed Up representatives have made the trip for the past two years. In 2015, Fed Up held an alternative conference at the Lodge which was addressed by Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
By Steve Matthews & Jeanna Smialek
Source
Jill Cicero and Elizabeth Nicolas: Women in the legal profession
Jill Cicero and Elizabeth Nicolas: Women in the legal profession
Jill Cicero, president of the Monroe County Bar Association, and managing partner of Cicero Law Firm LLP, and Elizabeth...
Jill Cicero, president of the Monroe County Bar Association, and managing partner of Cicero Law Firm LLP, and Elizabeth Nicolas, a worker’s rights attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy, and former staff attorney for the Empire Justice Center, talk about continuing discrimination, harassment and bias in the office and in court.
Listen to the conversation here.
Another Police Department Says ‘No’ To ICE’s Detainer Requests
Mint Press News – August 27, 2013, by Katie Rucke - Newark, N.J.’s refusal to detain undocumented immigrants for...
Mint Press News – August 27, 2013, by Katie Rucke -
Newark, N.J.’s refusal to detain undocumented immigrants for minor offenses could serve as an olive branch to the immigrant community.
As of last month, the Newark, New Jersey police department is no longer taking orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain undocumented immigrants who have been picked up for minor criminal offenses such as shoplifting or vandalism.
The policy was signed into law by Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio on July 24.
Newark may be the first and only law enforcement agency in New Jersey no longer to honor detainer requests from ICE, but it’s far from the only police department in the country to have done so. Police departments in Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, Chicago, New York City and New Orleans have also implemented policies stating they won’t honor ICE detainer requests.
The policy change was applauded by civil rights and faith leaders, who say the detainers — which allow law enforcement to hold in custody for up to 48 hours, without a warrant, those whose immigration status is in question — discourage communities of immigrants and law enforcement officials from having a cooperative relationship.
Immigrant-rights advocates said they view the new police protocol as an olive branch to undocumented people living in the U.S., who may be hesitant to cooperate with police officers who are investigating crimes in the community for fear they may be deported. New Jersey reportedly has one of the largest immigrant populations in the nation.
“Law enforcement officials across the country have recognized that local police officers should not be in the business of federal immigration enforcement,” said Udi Ofer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey, which advocated for the policy shift.
“With this new policy in place, the Newark Police Department has made it clear that all residents, regardless of their immigration status, are safe to cooperate with the police,” Ofer continued in the release. “This policy ensures that if you’re a victim of a crime, or have witnessed a crime, you can contact the police without having to fear deportation. This will make all Newarkers safer.”
Emily Tucker is an attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy. She said the group was “thrilled that Newark is standing in solidarity with immigrant families by rejecting all future collaboration with the federal deportation apparatus.
“Spending local tax dollars to take parents away from their children and workers away from their jobs is both morally wrong and bad for the economy,” Tucker said. “We hope the Newark policy will serve as a model for the rest of New Jersey, and for cities around the country who don’t want local resources being spent to help ICE meet its arbitrary enforcement quotas.”
New Jersey to New Orleans to Los Angeles
The New York Times recently published an editorial applauding those cities that have announced they will no longer be cooperating with ICE’s detainer requests and encouraged other cities to follow suit.
“The federal dragnet that makes little distinction between tamale sellers and dangerous criminals — greatly expanded by the use of local law enforcement officials across the country — has been ensnaring record numbers of minor offenders,” the editorial board wrote. “This melding of local crime fighting and immigration enforcement has led to unjust imprisonment, policing abuses, racial profiling and paralyzing fear in immigrant communities.
“The damage to public safety is measurable; a recent study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that Latinos, both immigrants and native-born, often shun the police and are reluctant to cooperate with criminal investigations. Combating domestic violence, sexual abuse and gang-related crimes becomes far more difficult when local cops are de facto federal agents.”
Amy Gottlieb, director of the American Friends Service Committee, said she hoped other law enforcement agencies would implement similar policies, adding that “any detainer policy where people are aware that the police department is acting in support of the immigrant community is going to be helpful for police and immigrant relations.”
While Newark officers will no longer hold persons in an immigration detention center for committing a minor-level offense, the Newark Police Department will still report information to ICE after arresting an individual and also will continue to share fingerprint information with federal investigators.
“If we arrest somebody for a disorderly persons offense and we get a detainer request, we’re not going to hold them in our cell block,” DeMaio said. “I don’t know if we’ve ever gotten a detainer request on a guy with a misdemeanor,” adding that the department received a total of eight detainer requests in 2012.
Helpful or harmful to a city’s crime fighters?
While California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has said he would sign legislation limiting who state and local law enforcement officials can hold for deportation, and while Connecticut’s legislature unanimously passed similar legislation, not everyone thinks the policy is a good idea.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan, for example, called the policy “another in a long line of missteps” by his opponent, Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), saying the new policy will only lead to an increase in crime.
“We’re sending a signal,” he said, that “you can come to the country illegally, you can shoplift, you can vandalize but it’s alright. We’re going to make sure you’re safe. It’s a great message to our kids.”
Kevin Griffs, a spokesman for the Booker campaign, said Lonegan’s understanding of the policy was inaccurate and explained that “all serious offenders obviously go to the county jail, and ultimately, the mayor’s thinking was that this was going to improve relations between the police department and the immigrant community and help the Newark Police Department catch more of the real bad guys.”
ICE officials have declined to comment on the policy change.
Source
Progressive Activists Protest For A Cause You Should Hear More About, But Won't
More than a dozen community activists picketed the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia this week, protesting what they...
More than a dozen community activists picketed the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia this week, protesting what they say is the bank president’s refusal to meet with them to discuss how Fed monetary policy affects real people.
The roughly 15 activists are members of ACTION United, an organization representing low-income people of color in Philadelphia. ACTION United is affiliated with the national Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups advocating Fed monetary policies that prioritize full employment and shared economic prosperity.
Fed Up and ACTION United planned Tuesday's protest because they say that Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker reneged on a promise to meet, and allow group members to give him a tour of low-income neighborhoods where they are active. The activists point to a video in which Harker appears to commit to the meeting in a conversation with ACTION United organizer Kendra Brooks at the annual Jackson Hole symposium in August.
When Brooks followed up, Theresa Singleton, the Philadelphia Fed’s vice president and community affairs officer, said in an email obtained by HuffPost that a meeting was not in the cards, because the bank is reluctant to work with “just one organization."
Instead, Singleton invited Brooks to Tuesday’s community development briefing for low- and moderate-income community stakeholders. Singleton also said Fed staff would “design and organize” their own community tour.
That response rankled Fed Up and ACTION United members. The Federal Reserve has a dozen regional banks, and the activists have met or have planned meetings with all of the regional Fed leaders except Philadelphia's since the campaign began in August 2014. They want a meeting -- and they want it to take place in an economically distressed community of color -- not in the Fed’s offices.
So they decided to pressure the Philadelphia Fed with a protest, featuring Fed Up’s trademark “What recovery?” signs and green "Whose Recovery?" T-shirts.
ACTION United also sent Brooks to the community development briefing, where she and several nonprofit executives and bankers who work with low- and moderate-income earners spoke with Harker and Singleton.
Brooks said she was mostly pleased with what she heard from Harker and other Fed officials, who she said sounded genuinely committed to researching the conditions in communities the Fed serves and finding ways to improve “economic autonomy” in the Philadelphia region.
“The outcome of the meeting was much better than we anticipated, but going in, we did not know the information that we knew coming out.” Brooks said. “We hope he will continue to keep the doors open for organizations like ours and our coalition. And that we will continue to be a part of that conversation and not excluded.”
But Brooks noted that the Fed officials did not discuss how monetary policy and the Fed’s adjustment of interest rates disproportionately affects low-income workers and communities of color.
For the Fed Up campaign, the exclusion of monetary policy reaffirms that nothing short of a meeting between Harker and activists will suffice.
“We appreciate and accept the invitation to discuss community development and research, but this is not a substitute for the promise President Harker made to Fed Up,” said Shawn Sebastian, a policy advocate and staff attorney for the Fed Up campaign. “President Harker promised to speak with working families in the black neighborhoods of Philadelphia about their experiences -- where unemployment is double white unemployment. Harker promised to discuss how his monetary policy decisions can build a true full employment economy that works for everyone.”
Philadelphia Fed spokeswoman Marilyn Wimp, in an email to HuffPost, didn't address a question about whether Harker reneged on his promise to meet with protesters. She instead pointed to Tuesday's briefing as evidence of Harker's interest in reaching out to diverse parts of the community.
But the list of the Tuesday briefing’s attendees reveals that Brooks was the only stakeholder from a group with a position on Fed interest rates.
Crafting monetary policy is a main responsibility of the Federal Reserve regional banks. Regional Fed presidents occupy five of the 12 seats on the Federal Open Market Committee, responsible for adjusting the Fed’s benchmark interest rates. Lately, they have accounted for half of the committee’s votes, because the Senate has failed to approve presidential nominees for two of the seven seats reserved for members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington.
The FOMC keeps its benchmark interest rates low when it is more concerned about full employment, and raises them to curb excessive inflation when the economy has grown enough to drive up prices.
Fed Up wants the central bank to maintain current low interest rates for the near term, which will allow economic demand to continue to grow, benefitting workers with more jobs and higher wages. The campaign applauded the Fed’s decision to leave rates unchanged in September.
But Fed Up leaders said they're worried about the Philadelphia Fed and the role its president may play in future monetary policy decisions. The Philadelphia region's previous Fed president, Charles Plosser, who left the post in March, was an outspoken inflation hawk.
Harker, who will serve a one-year term on the FOMC in 2017, was a member of the Philadelphia Fed board’s search committee for a new president, recusing himself once he became a candidate.
Harker’s views on monetary policy are not yet known. He is a former trustee of the Goldman Sachs Trust, which Sebastian and other Fed Up critics said they worry will make him more sympathetic to financial institutions' concerns about inflation.
Source: Huffington Post
This Is Exactly How HIV Activists Disrupted Congress to Save Health Care
This Is Exactly How HIV Activists Disrupted Congress to Save Health Care
Late last month, thousands of Americans with HIV/AIDS -- many of them among the millions of Americans who rely on...
Late last month, thousands of Americans with HIV/AIDS -- many of them among the millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid or Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans for their health coverage -- saw the news and breathed yet one more major sigh of relief: GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell announced that, lacking the votes needed to win, the Senate would not go forward on its final effort this year to kill the ACA (aka Obamacare) and take a devastating bite out of Medicaid.
Read the full article here.
Rep. Blanc arrested, then released following D.C. demonstration
Rep. Blanc arrested, then released following D.C. demonstration
Blanc was in Washington participating in a sit-in along with advocates from Living United For Change in Arizona, or...
Blanc was in Washington participating in a sit-in along with advocates from Living United For Change in Arizona, or LUCHA, and national groups like United We Dream and Center for Popular Democracy. The groups demanded that Congress pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill protecting the more than 700,000 young undocumented immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or DACA.
Read the full article here.
Falciani celebra que siete directivos del Santander declaren en la Audiencia Nacional por blanqueo
Falciani celebra que siete directivos del Santander declaren en la Audiencia Nacional por blanqueo
El ex informático del banco suizo HSBC, Hervé Falciani, que destapó los nombres de presuntos evasores fiscales en...
El ex informático del banco suizo HSBC, Hervé Falciani, que destapó los nombres de presuntos evasores fiscales en bancos helvéticos, ha celebrado que siete directivos del Banco Santander estén citados a declarar en la Audiencia Nacional por un delito de blanqueo de capitales, ya que, según ha dicho, "cada día hay ejemplos similares en otros países".
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
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