CPD IN THE NEWS

Nearly 40 elected city officials from all corners of the U.S., including from metros bracing for Amazon HQ2 like Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and Washington, D.C., signed an open letter on Monday urging Seattle City Council to stay the course and criticizing Amazon’s tactics during the head tax debate.” “This is particularly concerning to us given Amazon’s approach to the competition for HQ2, in which the company has promoted a bidding war of jurisdictions competing with each other to offer greater incentive packages,” the letter read. “If Amazon were serious about its support for strong affordable housing solutions, it would fully back this tax proposal and chip in to help address Seattle’s homelessness crisis. By threatening Seattle over this tax, Amazon is sending a message to all of our cities: We play by our own rules.”

Read the full article here.

Specifically, the coalition is warning against the very real prospect of higher interest rates, saying a rate hike would slow the economy and harm those for whom the so-called "recovery" has been weakest, including poor people, women, and communities of color.Instead, the coalition is calling on the Fed to ditch those plans and give vulnerable communities, including "tens of millions of Black Americans who are still struggling," a say in economic policy. 

Fed officials have for months signaled an intent to raise short-term interest rates—which were slashed to zero in 2008 in an effort to spur spending and investment—as soon as this fall or winter. As the Washington Post reported Thursday, reported wage growth "combined with the strong hiring and a rapidly falling unemployment rate, gave the Fed hope that the economy would be able to withstand the first rate hike in nearly a decade by the end of the year."

But recent volatility in stock markets in the U.S. and globally, as well as internal policy disagreements, are leading some economic observers to predict that the Fed may now beless likely to set a rate hike at its September meeting.

Regardless, the Fed Up campaign—anchored at the Center for Popular Democracy and supported by 25 groups including the Economic Policy Institute, Demos, and the AFL-CIO—says raising interest rates would be foolhardy.

And they're in Wyoming to make that view known. According to the Huffington Post, "Fed Up's member organizations brought over 100 primarily low-income grassroots activists from across the country for the gathering. It's a dramatic increase from its inaugural visit to Jackson Hole last year, when the campaign brought a group of 10 activists."

As Sam Ross-Brown wrote at the American Prospect this month, "Fed Up's goal is a more 'pro-worker' Federal Reserve, and their first step is stopping the Fed from hiking interest rates before wages and employment have a chance to catch up with the recovery. Building on a similar action last year, the coalition began circulating a petition this week demanding the Fed keep rates low until wages and employment rise."

"There is no data supporting the Fed's push for higher interest rates," said Ady Barkan, campaign director for Fed Up. "While they toy with halting the recovery, there is a crisis of stagnant wages and a lack of good jobs."

According to Whose Recovery? A National Convening on Inequality, Race, and the Federal Reserve—the Fed Up Coalition's policy agenda for three days of teach-ins and workshops in Jackson Hole—a rate hike would slow down the economy so that there are fewer new jobs and workers have less power to negotiate raises.

"By raising interest rates, the Federal Reserve will make it more expensive for us to pay our credit card, student loan, car, and mortgage payments," the Fed Up campaign says. "That means we will have less money in our pockets to buy the goods and services we need. And that will have a terrible ripple effect throughout the economy: businesses will earn less revenue, so they will lay off workers (or avoid hiring new workers) and they won’t be able or willing to give workers any raises. With bad job prospects and stagnant wages, working families won’t earn enough to buy the goods and services they need, which starts the whole cycle again."

"If this sounds like a terrible idea," the coalition continues, "that's because it is."

The Fed Up perspective is supported by economist Joseph Stiglitz, who spoke alongside the grassroots activists at an event on Thursday. The same day, Stiglitz wrote in an LA Timesop-ed:

It is hard to see why the Fed would choose slower job and wage growth for most Americans just to protect against the theoretical risk of moderately higher inflation. But, then again, it's often hard to understand the Fed's policy choices, which tend to contribute to widening inequality in the United States.

Too often, after the end of one recession, the Fed, fearing inflation, has used monetary policy to dampen the economic expansion. Its maneuvers keep inflation low but unemployment higher than it otherwise would be, negatively affecting all workers, not just those out of a job. Workers in jobs face greater stresses, downward pressure on wages and diminished opportunities for upward career mobility. The costs of higher unemployment are borne disproportionately by people in lower-income jobs, who also tend to be disproportionately people of color and women.

Beyond the particulars of interest rates and inflation, however, the Fed Up Coalition iscalling for the central bank to facilitate more robust public engagement and greater transparency, given its position as "arguably the nation's most powerful economic actor."

"For far too long, our communities have been isolated from the Federal Reserve’s policy choices," the coalition writes in Whose Recovery? "Monetary policy has been left up to the bankers and the economists, with the public largely shut out and confounded by its seeming complexity."

Unsurprisingly, the document continues, "[t]he consequences of this disengagement have been profound. For the past 45 years, with only a few exceptions, the Federal Reserve has set policy that benefits banks and harms borrowers, helps employers and hurts workers, and privileges the voices and needs of corporate elites rather than those of America's working families."

Source: CommonDreams

Shawn Sebastian, field director of Fed Up, a campaign by labor, community and liberal activist groups that wants the Fed to enact pro-worker policies, said the choice of Williams damaged the Fed’s legitimacy and credibility.“Today, the Federal Reserve concluded another opaque and controversial Reserve Bank presidential selection process by ignoring the demands of the public and choosing yet another white man whose record on Wall Street regulation and full employment raises serious questions,” he said.

Read the full article here.

The Tennessean - April 14, 2015, by Stephen Henry & Erick Hutch - Teachers are joining parents and local community groups to ask the Metro Nashville Public School Board to adopt tougher accountability and transparency standards to protect students and taxpayers. Here's why.

We should all be working together to find a coordinated approach that serves all children.

Studies confirm that the proliferation of new charters is forcing existing under-funded public schools to compete for the same taxpayer dollars without proper checks and balances. There is also a growing concern among teachers and parents that we are not doing enough to ensure equal access to ALL of Nashville's public schools.

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University recommends national standards for schools to protect students and the public. A mandate on transparency and equitable student policies ensures all students have fair access to the schools they deserve. The Institute also recommends all approved charter schools be fully funded by the state. Under our current system, Nashville taxpayers absorb the costs of state-approved charters already rejected locally.

Right now, charters cost our public school system $9,000 per student, according to a recent performance audit commissioned by the Metropolitan Government. We should require a rigorous financial review of charter expansion on our public school system – a prudent step before approving more charters.

A national study by the Center for Popular Democracy found charter school operators across the country were engaged in rampant abuses because they lacked appropriate oversight and transparency guidelines. Last month, the CPD released findings for an 11-point program for reform.

A local audit released in February, found that the unchecked expansion of new charter schools is taking a toll on existing schools. Specifically, the audit noted that when new charter schools open and compete for the same system resources, fixed costs at existing schools — such as maintenance, technology and health services —are often neglected as they cannot be reduced.

Additionally, the audit observed that existing schools cannot easily adjust staffing patterns as a result of new charters. "For these costs to be reduced significantly," the audit observed, "the school would need to close altogether." The audit also confirmed the results of a fall 2014 report that found "new charter schools will, with nearly 100 percent certainty, have a negative fiscal impact on MNPS."

As the search for the next director of MNPS begins, we need a leader who will commit the resources and support necessary for our existing schools to be successful. A single, 600-seat charter school requires $5.4 million annually from our public schools. At a time when our schools are universally considered to be under funded, now is the time to invest resources in public education instead of systematically starving it.

In 2010, the entire state of Tennessee had only 20 charter schools. In Nashville alone in the 2015-16 school year, 27 charter schools will operate at an annual cost of $75 million. Another 18 proposed charters are seeking to divert as much as $104 million annually. In fact, even if the school board approved no new charter schools, more than 5,000 charter seats will come into existence between now and the 2019-20 school year under previous charter approvals. That's the equivalent of adding five new MNPS middle schools.

It's time to protect students and taxpayers with common-sense standards that serve all of us.

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