Does the Federal Reserve need reforming?
Does the Federal Reserve need reforming?
First, the Federal Reserve is a pretty complex place. Thereâs the Fed in Washington we talk about every time interest...
First, the Federal Reserve is a pretty complex place. Thereâs the Fed in Washington we talk about every time interest rates are changed (or not changed). Then there are 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, each with a board of directors of nine people.
Thatâs where the Democratic Party, and activist groups on the left, are aiming their fire.
Currently, three of those nine directors are representatives of private banks (private banks are members of the regional Federal Reserve Banks). Another three are community representatives, but also elected by private banks. The remaining three are appointed by the Board of Governors.
Critics on the left, in addition to calling for more diversity within the Federal Reserve system, also want private banks gone from regional fed banks. âThese private banks get a say on whoâs on those board of directors and they get representatives on those boards of directors,â said Ady Barkan, campaign director of Fed Up, a left-leaning group thatâs pushed for changes at the fed. âItâs an egregious example of regulatory capture.â
Barkan says that regional bank presidents tend to be more conservative, more hawkish on interest rates, than their counterparts in Washington D.C. He blames both a lack of diversity and the influence of private banks. âYou canât imagine for example that cable networks would get some special role in choosing people on the FCC,â said Andrew Levin, professor of economics at Dartmouth College.
But the fed has already undergone some major reforms to limit influence. Under Dodd Frank, the private-bank representatives who serve on regional boards donât get to nominate regional presidents anymore. âThe bankers themselves are not involved in the choice of that person,â explained Stephen Ceccetti, professor of economics at Brandeis International Business school. âThat is the person who participates in monetary policy discussions and decisions.â
Ceccetti also argues that the conservative, hawkish leanings of some regional Fed presidents are actually at odds with bank profits. âHigher interest rates donât help banks,â he said.
Lastly, he said, regional Fed banks arenât responsible for actually regulating banks, âthey donât even get to see the stuff.â
Chair Janet Yellen herself has said that if the fed were redesigned from scratch, it would probably look pretty different than it did a hundred years ago, but, in her view, it works pretty well. Ceccetti agreed, saying âI donât see that anyoneâs been able to show that thereâs any harm or pressure applied by the banks through their directors to the policy of the Federal Reserve.â
Changing the structure of the fed would require an act of congress.Â
By SABRI BEN-ACHOURÂ
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Activists âFed Upâ With Rate Rise Talk Offer Plosser a City Tour
Bloomberg News - November 15, 2014, by Jeff Kearns & Christopher Condon -Labor and community organizers meeting...
Bloomberg News - November 15, 2014, by Jeff Kearns & Christopher Condon -Labor and community organizers meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen challenged officials who are ready to raise interest rates to first come visit the poorest neighborhoods with them before saying that the economy has recovered.
Kati Sipp, one of about two dozen activists meeting Yellen, said at a press conference yesterday in front of the central bank in Washington that she would show Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser âwhat life is like in this economyâ for his cityâs unemployed.
âClearly Charles Plosser hasnât been coming out the way that I work,â said Sipp, director of Pennsylvania Working Families. âI work on 60th Street in West Philadelphia in a storefront office, and every single day someone or a couple of people come in to my office because they are looking for work.â
A spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Fed declined to comment.
Members of the group met with Yellen and Fed governors Stanley Fischer, Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard. The coalition of 20 community groups, labor unions and religious leaders from around the U.S. wants the Fed to hear the concerns of ordinary Americans as it prepares to raise rates. Itâs part of wider public pressure, including from lawmakers of both parties, who want more accountability and transparency from the central bank.
The Fed has been criticized by Democratic and Republican groups over its rescue of big Wall Street banks in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and over subsequent steps to support the economy through zero interest rates and massive bond purchases.
Yellen Meeting
The group meeting with Yellen and her colleagues yesterday included individuals struggling to find work despite the improving economic picture in the U.S., Ady Barkan, senior staff attorney at the Brooklyn-based Center for Popular Democracy, one of the organizers of the meeting, said in an interview.
âThey all listened very intently and asked questions,â Barkan said of Yellen and the three governors. âThey were very interested in hearing about the personal stories of the folks we brought.â
Those included Reginald Rounds, a resident of Ferguson, Missouri, near St. Louis, where protests erupted after an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by police in August. The predominantly black town became a symbol of racial inequality and militarized policing as armored trucks and tear-gas canisters rolled through the suburban community after the shooting.
âSky-Highâ
Barkan said Rounds told the Fed officials that âsky-high unemploymentâ in the St. Louis area had contributed to âdesperationâ in the town.
Another speaker was Shemethia Butler, an unemployed woman from Washington. She recounted for Yellen how she was laid off from a job that offered no paid sick days after becoming ill and missing time at work, Barkan said.
Barkan said he had agreed with Fed officials not to recount how Yellen and the governors responded.
Eric Kollig, a Fed spokesman, declined to comment on the meeting.
The jobless rate has fallen to 5.8 percent from a 26-year high of 10 percent in October 2009. Interest rates have been held near zero since December 2008, and most Fed officials project that they will raise borrowing costs sometime in 2015.
Still, millions of Americans can find only part-time work, and average hourly wages have risen at about a 2 percent pace for the last five years, barely outpacing inflation.
Big Banks
âThe economy is not working for the vast majority of people,â Barkan told reporters before the meeting in front of the central bank headquarters facing the National Mall. âItâs too important of an institution to be controlled and dominated by big banks and corporations rather than the public.â
In addition to low rates to help the unemployed, the groups are pushing for a more open and transparent search process for regional bank presidents that includes more community input. Barkan said the group asked Yellen for support in arranging meetings with each regional Fed president.
While formal changes to the process of selecting regional Fed leaders would require legislation, Barkan said the Fed board of governors held significant informal influence over the process.
âIâm sure they could change the process if they wanted to,â he said.
Plosser, Fisher
Plosser and Richard Fisher of Dallas both plan to retire next year and the âFed Upâ coalition wants more public input in naming their successors. Both banks have said they have hired executive search firms to find candidates.
Regional bank chiefs are picked by their respective boards, which are typically composed mostly of banking and business executives. Philadelphiaâs nine-member board includes Comcast Corp. Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis.
Both presidents have cast dissenting votes this year against the Fedâs policy, and have been among officials favoring raising rates sooner to prevent inflation and financial-instability pressures from building.
âItâs important that real people are also representing the public and Federal Reserve policy making,â Sipp said. âWe want publication of the names that are under consideration so that we know who they are, that itâs not just a puff of white smoke and suddenly we have a newâ president.
Search Firms
The Philadelphia Fed has hired executive search firm Korn/Ferry International and said yesterday that the Los Angeles-based company has set up an e-mail address -- PhiladelphiaFedPresident@KornFerry.com -- to receive inquiries.
The Dallas Fed announced two days ago that it hired Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. to seek a replacement for Fisher.
Economist Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, told reporters yesterday that the Fedâs willingness to arrange the meeting was âincredibly encouragingâ because the central bank âis one of the most important institutions in the world but few Americans know it.â
While the unemployment rate has declined to a six-year low, there remains âtoo large a gap between today and a healthy economy,â he said, adding that stakes are highest for disadvantaged groups, including African-Americans. Their unemployment rate tends to be twice as high as the broader U.S. level both âin good times and in bad,â Bivens said.
The rate was 10.9 percent in October, and rose to a 26-year high of 16.9 percent in March 2010, Labor Department data show. The rate for whites was 4.8 percent last month.
Wider Inequality
Yellen, a labor market economist for most of her three-decade career in government and academia, has shown concern for people who arenât fully benefiting from a stronger economy. Last month, in a speech in Boston, she questioned whether widening inequality is âcompatible with values rooted in our nationâs history.â
Since becoming chair in February, Yellen has focused attention on those who have been left behind after five years of economic expansion. In March, she told a community development conference in Chicago the Fed hadnât done enough to combat unemployment and cited local residents who have struggled with joblessness.
In August, the Center for Popular Democracy brought low-wage workers to the Fedâs annual monetary policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they spoke briefly with Yellen on the sidelines of the event and met with Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who also wants to raise rates sooner.
The activists arrived at the Fed wearing the same shirts that they wore when they gathered in the lobby of the Jackson Lake Lodge during the symposium: bright green T-shirts emblazoned with the question âWhat Recovery?â
Source
NY furioso con plan tributario aprobado por el Senado
NY furioso con plan tributario aprobado por el Senado
Las principales autoridades y activistas de Nueva York rechazaron este sĂĄbado el plan tributario aprobado en la...
Las principales autoridades y activistas de Nueva York rechazaron este sĂĄbado el plan tributario aprobado en la madrugada por el Senado federal que deberĂĄ ser armonizado con el de la CĂĄmara Baja antes de llegar al despacho del presidente Donald Trump.
âLos republicanos han votado por un plan que ni siquiera tuvieron tiempo de leer. Una vez mĂĄs probaron que les importan mĂĄs sus donantes de campaña que las familias trabajadorasâ, indicĂł el alcalde Bill de Blasio en un comunicado tras agregar que esta votaciĂłn significa un incremento de impuestos para 87 millones de familias.
Lea el artĂculo completo aquĂ.
NY Daily News Letter to the Editor: Body Count
New York Daily News - April 15, 2014, by Josie Duffy - Â Re âHardhat in fatal plungeâ (April 15): How many more deadly...
New York Daily News - April 15, 2014, by Josie Duffy - Â Re âHardhat in fatal plungeâ (April 15): How many more deadly accidents have to happen before the construction and insurance industries drop their campaign to weaken workplace safety laws? In the past month alone, there have been two fatal construction accidents in Midtown, underscoring the dire need to protect and expand worker safety rules, especially the Scaffold Law. Instead, construction and insurance companies are pouring money into a high-priced campaign to convince Albany to weaken common-sense safety rules that hold building owners and contractors responsible if their safety lapses lead to injuries or deaths. Weakening the law would make dangerous jobs more deadly, especially for immigrant and Latino workers who, studies show, are more likely get hurt on the job. The latest construction deaths should end this debate. Source
A Five-Point Plan for Sanders Going Forward
A Five-Point Plan for Sanders Going Forward
When Bernie Sanders announced a year ago that he was running for president, few of his supportersâand probably not even...
When Bernie Sanders announced a year ago that he was running for president, few of his supportersâand probably not even Sanders himselfâexpected that he would actually win. It appeared that Sanders, like his hero Eugene Debsâwho ran for president five times in the early 1900s on the Socialist Party ticketâwas running mainly to inject progressive issues into the national debate and to help build a movement for radical change.
Debs never captured more than 6 percent of the popular vote (in 1912), but his campaigns played an important role in shaping Americansâ views. In the 1912 presidential race, Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson (the eventually winner) and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt co-opted many of Debsâs ideas. Congress eventually adopted some of the planks of the Socialist Partyâs 1912 platform, including the minimum wage, child labor laws, womenâs suffrage, Social Security, unemployment insurance, occupational health and safety laws, and the creation of the Labor Department.
So in âDebsianâ terms, Sanders has already won. His attacks on the âbillionaire classâ have resonated with the American people. Far more than Hillary Clinton, he has tapped and channeled Americansâ anger over rising inequality, declining living standards, and the disproportionate political influence of big business and the super-rich. Although he calls himself a democratic socialist, Sanders is really championing a new New Dealâan American version of European social democracy.
And polls reveal that a majority of Americans agree with his policy agenda for challenging the political and business establishment. One CNN poll found that 71 percent of Americansâincluding 84 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents and 51 percent of Republicansâbelieve that our economic system unfairly favors the wealthy. Another poll by CBS and The New York Times found that 63 percent of Americans favor increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and large corporations to help reduce income inequality. Indeed, poll after poll has also showed that large majorities of Americans favor a campaign-finance overhaul, stricter Wall Street regulations, government-mandated paid family leave, and a federal minimum wage increase to $15 an hour by 2020.
Sanders has pushed Hillary Clintonâa liberal on domestic social issues, a centrist on taxes and business regulations, a sometime foreign policy hawk, and a less-than-ardent progressiveâto the left. Indeed, the Democratsâ presidential primary has largely been fought on Sandersâs terms. His prioritiesâincreasing the minimum wage, toughening Wall Street regulations, expanding Medicare and providing free public higher education, combating unemployment (particularly high among African-Americans), paid family leave, and ending the nationâs dependence on fossil fuelsâhave dominated the debates and pushed Clinton to adopt milder versions of his proposals. (In some areas, such as police racism, our biased criminal justice system, and mass incarceration, Clinton has taken the lead and Sanders has followed suit.)
In one year, Sanders has gone from being a relatively invisible senator from a small stateâan outsider in the upper chamber and in mainstream politics, not even a registered Democratâto being a political force to be reckoned with. Along with Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, he now leads the Democratic Partyâs progressive wing.
Nevertheless, in the last few weeks it has become clear that Sanders will not be the Democratic Partyâs nominee for president. In states that have already held primaries, Clinton has gained 12,989,134 (57 percent) of the votes compared with 9,957,889 votes (43 percent) for Sanders. In the delegate count, Clinton is beating Sanders 1,772 (54 percent) to 1,498 (46 percent). Sanders ran a remarkable campaign, but heâs come up short.
Ardent Sanders supporters who still believe that he has a chance to capture the nomination are simply wrong. Even if Sanders beats Clinton in all the remaining primaries (Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, California, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia), he wonât have enough delegates to garner the nomination at the partyâs Philadelphia convention. That reality requires Clinton and Sanders to recognize that theyâand their supportersâneed one another. It also begs the question: What should Sanders do? How can he build on his popularity and success in this yearâs campaign to further his goal of transforming American society and politics?
Drawing on the ideas of many peopleâactivists, journalists, scholars, and others, inside and outside Sandersâs campâI suggest a five-point plan for Sanders and the Sanderistas. This plan gives the many liberals and progressives who have âfelt the Bernâ a road map to ensure that the 74-year-old Vermont socialist with a Brooklyn accent makes the transition from candidate for president to catalyst for change.
Step One
Between now and the convention, Sanders should fight to the end to get as many delegates as possible. Voters in the remaining primariesâall of which save the June 14 Washington, D.C., contest will be held on June 7âhave the right to vote for Sanders or Clinton. Americans deserve to see how much support Sanders has for his progressive agenda. Moreover, having a competitive race with a large Democratic turnout is particularly important in California, which follows an unusual system in which the two candidates with the most primary votes, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Democratic registration in California has been surging, so a strong turnout by Sanders supporters could shut out Republicans from the run-offs for U.S. Senate and some tight congressional contests, and help guarantee more Democratic victories in November.
Between now and the June primaries, Sanders should stop criticizing the Democratic National Committee and Hillary personally and return to focusing on policy issues. After those primaries, he should negotiate a truce with Clinton. In exchange for Sanders suspending his campaign and endorsing Clinton before the Democratic convention, the two Democrats should agree on a strategy that gives Sanders and his followers a significant voice at the convention, during the fight against Trump, and in the run-up to the next Clinton administration.
Step Two
At the convention and through Election Day, Sanders will surely remain on the public stage. He will certainly get a prime-time speaking role at the Democratic convention, where he can reiterate his attacks on the nationâs economic and social injustices, attack Trump, and strongly endorse Clinton.
He should also use his leverage to shape the partyâs platform on issues like Wall Street reform, the minimum wage, skyrocketing college tuition, and paid family leave, and insist that Clinton incorporate some of his key policy ideas into her campaign stump speeches. One sign that Clinton and DNC chair Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz are taking heed of Sandersâs insurgency is the appointment this week of a majority of progressives to the partyâs platform committee. They include AFSCMEâs Paul Booth, former EMILYâs List head Wendy Sherman and Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress. Also on the committee are House Democrats Luis Guttierez, of Illinois, Barbara Lee of California, and Marylandâs Elijah Cummings, along with Ohio State Representative Alicia Reece, all stalwart progressives. They join Sandersâs nominees Cornel West, House Democrat Keith Ellison of Minnesota, environment activist Bill McKibben, Arab American leader James Zogby, and Native American White House aide Deborah Parker. (Unfortunately missing from the committee are any progressive economists.)
Sanders has predicted that the convention could get âmessy,â explaining that âthatâs what democracy is about.â But Sanders should discourage his supporters from disrupting the convention inside and outside the hall. If his followers want to protest, there are plenty of targets in Philadelphiaâbig banks, insurance companies, McDonaldâs, Walmart storesâwhere they can rally against the billionaire class. A prime target for protesters would be Verizon, where they could join the picket lines of employees who have been on strike since April.
When the convention is over, Sanders should energetically campaign for Clinton in key swing states and for progressive Democrats running for Congress in close races, in order to increase turnout among his supporters. He should make sure that his key staff members land posts on Clintonâs campaign and those of Democratic candidates in battleground races. These aides can help mobilize Sandersâs volunteers and followers to support Clinton. Also in this window, Sanders should escalate his attacks on Trump and remind his supporters of the damage that a Trump presidency would do to the country and to the progressive agenda.
Step Three
After Election Day, once Clinton has won the White House and the Democrats have recaptured the Senate, Sanders will be in a strong position to reshape the agenda of both the Democratic Party and the nation. New York Senator Charles Schumer, a liberal on social issues but a strong ally of Wall Street, may well be the Senateâs next majority leader. To balance the partyâs leadership, Sanders should push for a progressive to replace Wasserman Schultz as head of the DNC. Strong candidates include such popular legislators as Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon (the only Senate member to endorse Sanders), and Dick Durbin of Illinois, and House members Karen Bass and Xavier Becerra (both of California), Keith Ellison of Minnesota, and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. The partyâs next chair could also come from the ranks of such respected political veterans as Democracy Alliance head Gara LaMarche, Common Cause Director Miles Rapoport, or even billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer. (Full disclosure: Rapoport serves on the Prospectâs board.)
Step Four
After January, when the new president and Congress take office, Sanders will become chair of the powerful Senate Budget Committeeâassuming Democrats retake the upper chamber, as predicted. In that position, Sanders can influence federal budget, tax, and regulatory policy to advance a progressive agenda around financial reform, anti-poverty initiatives, health care, environmental sustainability, affordable housing, Social Security, labor law reform, workplace safety, paid family leave, and even campaign-finance reform, immigration reform, and the military budget.
One of his perks in that post will be to fill the committeeâs staff with experts from universities and such progressive think tanks as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Employment Law Project, and the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He will also be able to hold public hearingsâin Washington, D.C., but also in cities around the countryâon a wide range of issues. Hearings provide opportunities for ordinary Americans as well as experts to make their voices heard, gain media attention, and advance a progressive agenda. They can serve as forums that can help support grass-roots activists.
Sanders could also work with progressive think tanks and activist groups to create a âshadow cabinetâ of experts on the left to parallel Clintonâs cabinet picks. This Sanders circle could issue regular reports on what the major federal executive agencies could be doing to advance an economic and social justice agenda, much as the Heritage Foundationâs Mandate for Leadership reports became the blueprint for the Reagan Revolution.
Step Five
Through the 2018 midterm elections and beyond, Sanders can help build the âgrass-roots political revolutionâ without which, as he has said throughout his campaign, there is little hope for transformational change. Sandersâs campaign success has been fueled by the many grass-roots insurgencies that in recent years have challenged the political and economic establishment. These include Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Fight for $15, campus campaigns to divest from fossil fuels and slash student debt, and crusades for womenâs health care access, marriage equality, and gun safety. Sandersâs campaign helped give voice to these activists and their issues. They fed his campaign and were fed by it.
Many progressive politicians have promised to transform their electoral campaigns into ongoing movement operations, but few have had the patience or resources to do so. Many of Jesse Jacksonâs supporters hoped that his presidential efforts in 1984 and 1988 would evolve into a permanent Rainbow Coalition of progressive activists, but it didnât happen. After Obama won his brilliantly executed 2008 campaignâbuilt by an army of seasoned political and community organizers who trained hundreds of thousands of volunteers in the art of activismâhe created the nonprofit now known as Organizing for Action (OFA).
Many of the organizers who worked on that campaign went to work for OFA, hoping to build an infrastructure to keep campaign volunteers involved in issue battles in between election cycles. But OFA has not lived up to its early promise, in large part because Obama made it an arm of the DNC in a bid to build support for his legislative agenda.
Occasionally, however, the candidate and the movement forge ahead beyond the campaign. After the writer Upton Sinclair narrowly lost his 1934 bid to become California governor on a radical End Poverty in California (EPIC) platform, his followers built a statewide movement through EPIC clubs that revitalized the stateâs Democratic Party into an effective political operation over the next several decades. Similarly, Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, a former political science professor and community organizer, took seriously his responsibility to turn his electoral support into a broad statewide progressive movement. After he died in a tragic plane crash in 2002 while running for a third term, his supporters launched several organizationsâincluding Wellstone Action, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, and Minnesotans for a Fair Economyâto mobilize Minnesotans around issues and help recruit, train, and elect progressives to office.
Ever since Sanders first announced his plan to run for president, many journalists and activists have looked for signals that he was making plans, once the election was over, to transform his campaign into that âgrass-roots political revolutionâ heâs been calling for. Not surprisingly, during the campaign Sanders and his top advisers have focused almost entirely on winning votes and delegates. But early on, some of his key operatives were already thinking about the longer term.
Next month, some progressive leaders inside and outside the Sanders campaign will convene a three-day meeting in Chicago for what they are calling a Peopleâs Summit to strategize about how to build on the Sanders campaign over the long haul. Neither Sanders nor his aides have agreed on what a post-campaign operation would look like. But many understand that Sanders is in a unique position to use his influence and fundraising ability to build an organization or network to mobilize his supporters that, in the short term, can push President Clinton and the Democrats in Congress to the left on key issues like the minimum wage, health-care reform, Supreme Court nominees, and Wall Street regulation, and, in the longer term, can become an ongoing force for progressive change.
Can Sanders sustain the momentum of his campaign into the marshy terrain of movement-building? He has the capacity to raise money from the millions of people who helped him collect more than $200 million for his campaign. He has an unprecedentedly large list of volunteers who could form the basis of an ongoing organization. How many will want to participate in or contribute to a Sanders-led movement is anybodyâs guess. How Sanders deploys these lists, and how he will connect with the many existing progressive groupsâunions, environmental groups, community organizing networks, and othersâis another open question.
Election campaigns have a set of rules, and a predictable beginning, middle, and end, that helps bring people together for a common goalâelecting a candidate on a particular date. Movements are more complicated. The American progressive movement is a diverse mosaic with many groups that compete for attention and funding. They work on many different issues. Some are more willing than others to participate in coalitions, agree on a common set of issue priorities, and forge compromises on legislation. Some are reluctant to endorse candidates or get involved in election campaigns. Many of the activists affiliated with these groups came together to support Sanders, but there is no guarantee that they wonât go their own ways after Election Day.
As the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for eight years (1981-89), Sanders helped build a political coalition that not only adopted progressive laws and helped build progressive institutions but also stayed in power for three decades after he left office to run for Congress. In the House and Senate, however, Sanders been known as more of a gadfly than a coalition-builder.
But even as a figurehead, Sanders can play an important role in strengthening the left. Sanders can select a number of key issues and work closely with unions and other groups that are already working on those causes. He can be their champion and give them more visibility. He can show up at their meetings and rallies and support their causes. He can raise money to support existing local, statewide, and national groupsâlike National Peopleâs Action, Planned Parenthood, MoveOn, the Center for Popular Democracy, the Sierra Club, Black Lives Matter, United We Dream, and many othersâthat recruit and train people in the skills of citizen activism and campaign mechanics, and that help elect progressive Democrats to local, state, and national office.
Going into the 2018 midterm elections, and beyond, Sanders can focus attention on helping a select group of progressive Democrats win primary battles and support their campaigns against Republicans running for local and state offices as well as Congress. In that way, he can help groups build and train a âfarm teamâ of progressive candidates to run for myriad offices, laying the groundwork for expanding the progressive caucuses in the House and Senate.
As part of this inside/outside strategy, Sanders could work with progressive activist groups and his progressive Senate and House colleagues to identify a few key legislative priorities to build multi-year campaigns around these issues. He and his network can convene an annual âFeel the Bernâ conference (and some state-level summits as well) to bring together the many strands of the progressive movement, highlight their commonalities, celebrate their victories, showcase their leaders, organizers, and candidates, and identify the key battles on the horizon.
This five-point plan will likely meet with resistance from some Sanders supporters who argue passionately that he can still win the Democratic nomination. Sandersâs string of primary wins has made the notion of a President Sanders begin to seem at least plausible. His favorability ratings have consistently exceeded Clintonâs. He has shown that he can raise significant sums from millions of small-dollar contributors without relying on Wall Street, corporate America, and the super-rich to bankroll his campaign. He has attracted huge crowds and recruited large numbers of volunteers in blue and red states alike. He has surprised many skeptics with his knowledge of policy details and his first-rate performances at Democratic debates.
Indeed, it is remarkable how well Sanders has done despite what he and his supporters have justifiably called a âriggedâ system. His backers are correct that some of the partyâs rulesâregarding the debate schedule, super-delegates, and other matters, many of them mishandled by Wasserman Schultz, the transparently pro-Clinton chair of the Democratic National Committeeâput Sanders at a disadvantage.
Sandersâs enthusiasts hope that they can persuade enough super-delegates to switch their loyalties away from Clinton. Their main argument is that Sanders has a better chance than Clinton to beat Trump. In a race once regarded as a coronation for Clinton, recent polls of registered voters show her in a statistical dead heat against Trump. Sanders, by contrast, who enjoys much higher favorability ratings than Clinton, bests Trump, 54 percent to 39 percent, in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Of course, Sanders has not yet been subjected to the kind of opposition media campaign that he would certainly face were he the nominee. Slateâs Michelle Goldberg noted in February that Republicans were already salivating about how they would excavate the radical speeches and writings from Sandersâs past, seek to discredit him as an unpatriotic Marxist ideologue, and exploit âhis youthful opposition to the CIA and his anti-military leaningsâ if he were to win the nomination. Republicans would not only paint Sanders as an extreme âtax and spendâ liberal but also try to transform him, in the publicâs imagination, into a supporter of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, and Mao Tse-tung. This assault may not work with under-40 voters for whom the Cold War is a distant memory and who associate socialism with Scandinavia, not Cuba or China. But such attacks could certainly weaken many undecided votersâ support for Sanders.
By contrast, most Americans already know Clintonâs vulnerabilities since sheâs been in the public arena for decades. This accounts for her low favorability ratings, but it also somewhat inoculates her from GOP efforts to further destroy her support. And Clinton is likely to win a surge in Democratic and independent support once she wins the nomination, just as Republicans began rallying behind Trump once he became his partyâs presumptive nominee.
And the âSanders or bustâ crowd is playing into Trumpâs hands. Some even say they wonât support or vote for Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination, arguing that she and Trump are equally undesirableâtwo sides of Americaâs corrupt corporate-dominated political system. The media have exaggerated the number and ferocity of Sanderistas who hold these views, but if enough Sanders followers refuse to vote for Clinton, it could help Trump win in several key battleground states like Colorado, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Florida, and possibly hand Trump the White House.
Some Clinton supportersâparticularly among pundits and journalistsâhave also turned nasty, taking to the blogosphere and talk shows to trash Sandersâs ideas and to attack his most zealous enthusiasts as sexist, racist, and rude. But Clinton knows she needs Sandersâs supporters to win the White House, which is why she has adopted watered-down versions of Sandersâs agenda and why she has tread lightly in criticizing Sandersâat least publicly.
Sanders himself recognizes that his primary goal of making America a more humane and fair society will be made much more difficult if Trump becomes the nationâs president. Despite his differences with Clinton over policy issues, Sandersâas both a politician and a leader of a social insurgencyâknows that his movementâs ability to influence the nationâs political culture and public policy will be much greater with her, rather than Trump, in the White House.
Electing Clinton will not produce the âpolitical revolutionâ that Bernie has been calling for. Indeed, he acknowledged that even if he won the White House, little would change without a significant grass-roots movement to mobilize Americans to challenge corporate Americaâs disproportionate influence on our political life. Sandersâs supporters donât want to give up on his election, but they may end up with something more lasting in the endâa generation-long movement. The five-point plan is a good place to start.
Â
By Peter DreierÂ
Source
Charter schools misspend millions of Ohio tax dollars as efforts to police them are privatized
Akron Beacon Journal - 05.30.215Â - No sector â not local governments, school districts, court systems, public...
Akron Beacon Journal - 05.30.215Â - No sector â not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals â misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.
A Beacon Journal review of 4,263 audits released last year by State Auditor Dave Yostâs office indicates charter schools misspend public money nearly four times more often than any other type of taxpayer-funded agency.
Since 2001, state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival .
And the extent of the misspending could be far higher.
Thatâs because Yost and his predecessors, unable to audit all charter schools with limited staffing and overwhelmed by the dramatic growth in the schools, have farmed out most charter-school audits to private accounting firms.
Last year, these private firms found misspending in one of the 200 audits of charter schools they conducted, or half of 1 percent, while the stateâs own police force of auditors found misspending in one of six audits, or 17 percent of the time.
âYou donât even have to understand audits to know that something is broken there,â said Kyle Serrette, director of Education at the Center for Popular Democracy.
The Center for Popular Democracy, based in Washington, D.C., is allied with teachers unions that generally oppose privatization in public education.
released in April, the nonprofit watchdog detailed $200 million in waste, fraud and abuse in charter schools in Ohio and 14 other states.
Serrette said none of the 43 states with charter schools has created an accountability system designed to catch fraud. But Ohio has all of the telltale flaws, and more.
Because the money must first be spent, audits are conducted years after public funds go missing.
â[Financial] audits are historical. Theyâre not out in front of these things,â said Robert Hinkle, Ohioâs deputy state auditor.
And the audits, which note potential fraud but give no actionable opinion, arenât designed to detect fraud. They merely check revenues against expenses, ensuring tax dollars going in match receipts and cash balances.
Often, though, the receipts are unavailable.
âYou have a system in Ohio, and everywhere else, where every single year charter school operators are getting audited. And every single year, those audits come up clean. Itâs because they are not set up to catch fraud waste and abuse,â Serrette said.
And finally, there has been a historical lack of political will to strengthen state law so auditors can delve more deeply into the private contracts that charter schools enter.
âEvery year, state lawmakers fail to ⊠take the evidence that [the media] is providing and change that into law that would improve the system,â Serrette said.
Of the 10 charter schools responsible for the most misspending, all but one closed. The money likely never will be retrieved.
What academic records remain of their last report cards show none scored higher than the lowest possible grade, though only two were shuttered by the state for poor academics. One voluntarily closed. The rest cited financial and contractual issues for closing.
Taxpayers high and dry
Ohio first employed private accounting firms to take over school audits about a decade ago as the number of charter schools swelled and budget cuts thinned the auditorâs staff.
Last year, private accountants audited 41 percent of the roughly 5,800 Ohio organizations that received taxpayer funds, and 54 percent of charter schools, according to Yostâs office.
While there were fewer than 400 charter schools among the 5,800, they accounted for 70 percent of all tax dollars found to be misspent, often intentionally and illegally, according to 14 years of audits reviewed by the Beacon Journal.
And the difference between state and private auditors was profound: For every $1 private auditors found to be misspent, state officials found $102 in their audits.
Most charter schools that misspent tax dollars folded for financial issues, and after six years of failure to make restitution, the state can no longer collect.
And so more than $25 million remains unpaid â and likely never will be.
The $27.3 million misspent since 2001 is only what the state knows about.
Charter school audits often cite ânumerousâ missing financial documents.
These documents â from receipts to contracts to bills â must be reviewed to ensure public funds are spent for a proper public use.
Last year, Yost declared financial records at five taxpayer-funded agencies too disorderly to audit; four were charter schools.
Audits privatized
Originally, all charter schools were audited by the state.
âWe had to do all of them in house,â Hinkle said. âItâs just been within probably the [Auditor Mary] Taylor administration that, if we had some community schools that through prior audits have been fairly clean â again the issue is resources in a time when we were downsizing the number of employees â we allowed some contracting of community school audits.â
Today, networks of charter schools managed by the same private companies â among them Akron-based White Hat Management and Summit Academy Management â are bundled together and bid out to be audited year after year by the same private accounting firm.
The contracts usually last five years â longer than some charter schools are open. By bundling schools that employ the same treasurer (sometimes hired by the management company), there is greater efficiency because books are more uniform.
âIt just makes sense for economy of scale, for the pricing we can get from the firms and also for the interest that we can get from a number of firms. If I send out one 80-hour [audit] job, I may not get as much interest as if I send out 10 of those jobs and itâs an 800-hour job,â Hinkle said.
The state pays around $41 per hour. Last year, REA & Associates, an accounting firm headquartered in New Philadelphia, conducted 111 of the 373 charter school audits, including nearly every audit on schools managed by White Hat and Summit Academy, the stateâs largest operators.
Charting reform
Auditor Yost has taken notice of the misspending in the charter school sector, which nationally ranks low on academic performance and high on privatization.
Only Michigan and Texas have a greater portion of charter schools operated by private, for-profit companies, which are not compelled to disclose how they spend public money.
Sen. Peggy Lehner has proposed a bill that would require these private companies â which run most charter schools in Ohio â to give a more detailed account of how tax dollars are used. This heightened transparency in the auditing process was not included in charter school reform bills proposed earlier this year by the House and governor.
Yost worked with Lehner and a group of mostly charter-school advocates to draft the law change.
Meanwhile, the auditor is eyeing charter schools with what limited resources he has.
âWeâve already brought in a few of those audits,â Brittany Halpin, Yostâs spokesperson, said.
â[Yost] is considering bringing them all in,â she said.
Source: Ohio.com
Yellen Says Debate Over When to Hike Now Center Stage
MarketWatch - August 22, 2014, by Greg Robb - With the economy mending, the Federal Reserveâs emphasis is ânaturally...
MarketWatch - August 22, 2014, by Greg Robb - With the economy mending, the Federal Reserveâs emphasis is ânaturally shiftingâ to the debate over when to raise interest rates, the head of the U.S. central bank said Friday.
âWith the economy getting closer to our objectives, the FOMCâs emphasis is naturally shifting to questions about the degree of remaining slack, how quickly that slack is to be taken up, and thereby to the question of under what conditions we should begin dialing back our extraordinary accommodation,â Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said in a speech opening the central bankâs summer policy conference in Jackson Hole.
Yellen said there was âno simple recipeâ for the Fed to follow, but again warned that rate hikes could come sooner than expected if progress in the labor market continued to be more rapid than anticipated or if inflation moves up more rapidly.
Balancing this more hawkish tone, Yellen said 19 labor market indicators followed by the Fed suggest the decline in the unemployment rate overstates the improvement in overall labor-market conditions.
The initial reaction in the stock market was a muted one, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.18% Â trading in a narrow range. Read Market Snapshot
Her comments âskirted around the issue of future monetary policy by noting that whilst there were a number of factors that might mean the labor market was less of a threat to inflation than in previous business cycles, equally, there were factors that might make it more so,â said ING economist Rob Carnell in a note to clients.
Yellenâs remarks about a shift in the Fed debate toward when, and under what conditions to tighten, lend credence to comments earlier this month from Richard Fisher, the hawkish president of the Dallas Fed, who said that the discussion among policy makers at their last meeting had moved in his direction.
Minutes of that meeting released on Wednesday were also judged by Fed watchers to be hawkish.
Perhaps sensing the shift, protestors have arrived for the first time in Jackson Hole this year urging the Fed to delay any rate hike.
Yellen gave no sense a rate hike was imminent. She noted the Fed still thinks that labor-market slack is âsignificantâ and that the central bank has repeated it intends to hold rates close to zero for a âconsiderable timeâ after the Fed ends its bond-buying program, expected in October.
But her remarks suggest the first rate hike since 2006 is now on the table for active discussion.
Yellen and her allies on the Fed have signaled the first rate hike wonât happen until after the middle of next year. Hawks on the committee are pressing for an earlier move, and they have been vocal in speaking to reporters at Jackson Hole.
Source
Arrests, sit-ins, shouting â activists plan a week of nationwide protest to fight Graham-Cassidy
Arrests, sit-ins, shouting â activists plan a week of nationwide protest to fight Graham-Cassidy
Since early March, when the first Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was introduced in the...
Since early March, when the first Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was introduced in the House, activist groups have driven millions of phone calls and thousands of protesters to Washington.
To push for the billâs defeat, they led numerous rallies on Capitol Hill, occupied Senate offices, shouted in the Capitol building â and even learned, if they made enough noise, senators could hear them outside the Capitol.
Read the full article here.
Trabajadores expresan a través del arte sus experiencias como inmigrantes
EFEUSA â September 17, 2013 - Nueva York, 17 sep (EFEUSA).- Un grupo de trabajadores inaugurĂł hoy una exposiciĂłn de...
EFEUSA â September 17, 2013 -
Nueva York, 17 sep (EFEUSA).- Un grupo de trabajadores inaugurĂł hoy una exposiciĂłn de pinturas, fotografĂas y vĂdeos en la que plasmaron sus experiencias personales como inmigrantes y sus reflexiones sobre el valor de la ciudadanĂa, con motivo del DĂa de la CiudadanĂa.
La exhibiciĂłn âÂżQuĂ© significa para mi la ciudadanĂa?â realizada en la sede del sindicato Workers United en la ciudad de Newark (Nueva Jersey), es una mezcla eclĂ©ctica de dibujos, pinturas y fotografĂas en blanco y negro y a color, representativo de la diversidad de los propios miembros, que provienen de lugares tan lejanos como Europa del Este, AmĂ©rica Latina, AmĂ©rica del Sur y Asia.
Entre Ă©stos estĂĄ la ecuatoriana Naja Quintero, empleada de una guarderĂa, quien participa con dos pinturas, y en una de ellas plasmĂł lo que sintiĂł cuando llegĂł a Nueva York por primera vez, hace 14 años.
âEran las doce del mediodĂa cuando lleguĂ© al aeropuerto John F. Kennedy y crucĂ© Manhattan a pleno sol. Me deslumbrĂł la ciudad. Creo que a todos nos pasa, es la primera impresiĂłn, majestuosa y colorida. Me sentĂ como una estrellaâ, dijo a Efe Quintero.
La ecuatoriana pintĂł a un grupo de inmigrantes de diversos paĂses mirando hacia el agua y al otro lado un barco, la Estatua de la Libertad y de fondo, los rascacielos de Nueva York, entre ellos el imponente edificio Chrysler.
âPintĂ© un bote porque cuando cruzaba Manhattan veĂa el agua y a gente contemplando la belleza del paisajeâ, agregĂł Quintero, quien llegĂł a nueva York para reencontrarse con su madre, a quien no vio ni tuvo contacto con ella durante 38 años.
âTenĂa tres años cuando ella vino a Nueva York y me dejĂł con mis abuelos que luego compraron casa en otro lugar y perdimos el contacto con ellaâ, recordĂł Quintero, que localizĂł a su progenitora a travĂ©s de amistades con los que Ă©sta mantenĂa contacto en Ecuador.
La emigrante, que era maestra en su paĂs, destacĂł ademĂĄs que se esforzĂł por aprender inglĂ©s para tomar su examen de ciudadanĂa.
âCuando me informaron que habĂa aprobado el examen me dije âNaja, esto es como una gran escaleraâ donde el siguiente paso fue obtener la ciudadanĂaâ, destacĂł Quintero, quien expresĂł en su segunda obra precisamente esa experiencia.
Para ella, la ciudadanĂa es una planta y su semilla, es el momento en que los emigrantes llegan a Estados Unidos, explicĂł mientras agregaba que la ciudadanĂa tambiĂ©n significa poder votar e integrarse a una nueva vida.
âA mi me gusta estar integrada en la polĂtica, votar, es un deber cĂvico. EstudiĂ© durante un año para ese reto (para el examen de ciudadanĂa). Yo decĂa âyo puedo, yo puedoââ, dijo emocionada la ecuatoriana, quien preside el comitĂ© de arte del sindicato 32BJ, que representa a empleados de mantenimiento, porteros, encargados de edificios privados de vivienda y de guarderĂas, entre otros, la mayorĂa latinos.
âEste proyecto de arte pone un rostro a los 11 millones de inmigrantes indocumentados que son una parte indispensable de nuestras comunidades y que necesitan que el Congreso actĂșe ahoraâ (por una reforma migratoria), dijo Kevin Brown, director de la 32BJ en Nueva Jersey.
âLos inmigrantes son los estadounidenses. Son nuestras madres y padres, hermanos y hermanas, socios, hijos, abuelos, compañeros de trabajo, vecinos y amigos. Como miembros de la comunidad creativa, tenemos el compromiso de ver y mostrar la humanidad de la historia de la inmigraciĂłnâ, agregĂł.
Brown destacĂł que a travĂ©s de la mĂșsica, el teatro, la literatura, el cine, la televisiĂłn, la danza y otras expresiones de arte, los âinmigrantes y refugiados artistas visuales han definido y redefinido nuestra cultura estadounidense y la historia. Ellos ayudan a renovar nuestra historia nacionalâ.
Source
Report: In MN, Jobless Rate for Blacks is Nearly 4 Times Higher than Whites
Bring Me the News - March 5, 2015, by Adam Uren - Minnesota has the third-highest unemployment gap between white and...
Bring Me the News - March 5, 2015, by Adam Uren - Minnesota has the third-highest unemployment gap between white and black people in the country â with the jobless rate among blacks almost four times higher than among whites.
The figures come from a new study by the Center for Popular Democracy, which shows that the unemployment rate in Minnesota among black resident is 3.7 times higher compared to white people.
This is second only to the District of Columbia (5.6 times) and Wisconsin (4.6 times).
The gap in Minnesota has lessened since 2007 however, when 3.85 times
It also found that the jobless rate among Hispanic people is more than two times greater than for white people.
A rally will be held Thursday, WCCO reports, which will âdraw attention to the racial differences between wages and jobs availableâ in the Twin Cities and Minnesota as a whole.
It is being organized by representatives of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC), the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economy Policy Institute, and held at the NOC offices in W. Broadway Ave., Minneapolis, starting at 3 p.m.
Unemployment falling, gap still wide
The significant disparity between black and white unemployment remains, even though overall unemployment has dropped in recent years thanks to the recovery of Minnesotaâs economy since the financial crisis.
The unemployment rate among black people across the state fell to 11.9 percent in 2014, compared to 15.4 per cent in 2007.
However, the rate among white people stood at just 3.2 percent in 2014, down from 4 percent in 2007. The report also found that the unemployment rate among Hispanics stood at 7 percent in 2014, almost the same as it was in 2007.
The unemployment gap is even worse in the metro area, with the graph above showing that the black unemployment rate is 3.89 times higher than white.
The report features a case study of 23-year-old Minneapolis resident Tyrone Raino, who told the Center for Popular Democracy the only full-time job he could find is 40 minutes outside the city, and he works there 40 hours a week while taking a further 20 hours of classes every week.
Disparity is nothing new
Minnesota regularly features among the worst states for racial unemployment gaps.
In 2013, Minnesota was second only to Wyoming according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Star Tribune reports, when the black unemployment rate was triple the white rate.
And in 2011, MPR reported on a study by the Economic Policy Institute, which found the Twin Cities along with Memphis had the biggest white-black unemployment gaps out of the nationâs 50 biggest metropolitan areas.
When The Atlantic ran a piece last month lauding the metro area for its winning mix of affordability, opportunity and wealth, several publications responded by highlighting the gaps that suggest not everything is rosy in the Twin Cities.
Itâs not just with unemployment either. WalletHub found Minnesota has the second-worst wealth gap between white people and people of color in the United States, as well as one of the biggest gaps for home ownership levels.
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