The DNC Is Voting On Whether To Keep Superdelegates. Get Ready For Controversy
The DNC Is Voting On Whether To Keep Superdelegates. Get Ready For Controversy
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats are about to have a delegate fight of their own. Following the Republican’ controversy over...
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats are about to have a delegate fight of their own. Following the Republican’ controversy over bound and unbound delegates, the Democratic National Convention is about to go headlong into a conflict over superdelegates in its rules committee this weekend.
The DNC’s rules committee is expected to convene Saturday morning, where groups are planning to gather outside the city’s convention center and urge the party to end the superdelegate system.
According to a media advisory, the pre-vote press conference with rules committee members includes a formal petition delivery of more than 500,000 signatures collected by Democratic-leaning groups working to end the use of superdelegates at the Democratic National Convention.
A superdelegate is a party official or elected official who is free to cast a vote for any candidate for the presidential nomination at the party’s national convention, regardless of whom the voters of their state prefer. This is in contrast to a “pledged delegate” who must cast their ballot in accordance to the winner of their state party’s primary.
DNC rules committee members are expected at the press conference and include Aaron Regunberg, the amendment’s chief sponsor. Groups presenting the signatures will include: MoveOn.org, Demand Progress, Daily Kos, Social Security Works, Democracy for America, New Democrat Network, National Nurses United, The Other 98%, Courage Campaign, Progressive Kick, Credo, PCCC, Progressive Democrats of America, Center for Popular Democracy, Social Security Works, and Reform the DNC.
“This is a historic moment for the Democratic Party,” said Aaron Regunberg, Rhode Island state representative and rules committee member. “Saturday we vote on whether to end the undemocratic superdelegate system. It’s time to restore democracy in the Democratic Party.”
Supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders became frustrated with the superdelegate system, as they saw it as a way that damaged the Vermont senator’s candidacy during the party’s primary against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
“The super delegate system undermines the promise of one person one vote that is bedrock of democracy,” added Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of National Nurses United and rules committee member. “It was created to block the nomination of candidates who would challenge a political system that has for far too long been dominated by corporate interests and a wealthy elite. Ending this undemocratic selection process would be a strong step forward to making the Democratic Party more responsive to those thirsting for real change and a healthier America.”
By KERRY PICKET
Source
Activists Counter Federal Reserve Gathering With Push Against Interest Rate Hikes
The two-day event, ...
The two-day event, Whose Recovery: A National Convening on Inequality, Race, and the Federal Reserve, is organized by the Fed Up campaign, a coalition of groups led by the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy. It serves as a counter-conference to the annual Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City symposium, where Fed officials come together to discuss monetary policy -- and which is currently taking place at the same resort as the Fed Up gathering.
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.
The size of Fed Up’s delegation of activists and presence of prominent economists -- including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz -- attests to the rapid growth of a once-unlikely campaign that began just a year ago. Fed Up has managed to turn the esoteric issue of central bank interest rates into a key element of the progressive agenda -- and a rallying cry for low-income workers.
Rod Adams, a recent college graduate from Minneapolis, said he was attending the convention because he was disappointed in the job market. Despite his college degree, he currently makes $10.10 an hour working at the Mall of America.
“I have seen Wall Street’s recovery and corporate America’s recovery -- where is ours?” Adams demanded, eliciting cheers at a spirited press conference outside the Jackson Lake Lodge on Thursday.
The activists oppose the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates before the economy creates enough jobs to generate substantial wage growth for all workers. They believe that a premature interest rate hike would be especially harmful to workers in communities of color, who continue to suffer higher rates of unemployment than the overall population. Activists say this is partly the result of discrimination in the job market. Fed Up released a report on Thursday that uses original data to show that if there was the same low unemployment rate in every community in America, African-Americans and American Indians would experience the largest income gains.
The delegation plans to present officials attending the exclusive Fed symposium with an online petition opposing an interest rate hike that bears 110,000 signatures. The petition effort was the result of Fed Up's collaboration earlier this month with online progressive heavyweights including CREDO Action, Daily Kos, the Working Families Organization and Demand Progress. Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, gave the petition drive a high-profile boost with a popular video promoting the effort.
A similar petition that Fed Up brought last year had 10,000 signatures.
The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, which convenes the annual Jackson Hole symposium for Fed officials, declined to comment on this year's parallel protest conference.
Kansas City Fed President Esther George met with Fed Up activists during last year's symposium.
Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, is not attending this year's symposium, precluding even the possibility of an impromptu encounter with protesters.
“Janet Yellen is missing a great opportunity to see what real people look like,” Adams said. “We are not data on a spreadsheet.”
Proponents of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike in the near future argue that the Fed should begin raising rates to prevent excessive price and asset inflation. The Fed has a dual mandate to maintain full employment and stable price inflation.
William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, signaled on Wednesday that they would postpone an interest rate hike that Fed officials had previously indicated would occur in September. Dudley said turmoil in China and other emerging market economies that sparked massive swings in the U.S. stock market earlier in the week made a September rate hike “less compelling.”
Josh Bivens, the progressive Economic Policy Institute’s research and policy director, applauded the Fed’s move away from an interest rate hike, but said the reason for the Fed’s decision confirmed the need for more grassroots activism.
“A week ago the case against raising rates for the labor market was clear as day, but all of a sudden when wealthy people lost money in the stock market the tide turned against a rate increase,” Bivens said at Thursday's press conference. “I’m happy rates are less likely to go up because of that, but it is a terrible reason.”
Source: Huffington Post
No hike: Fed keeps benchmark rate near zero
WASHINGTON--Not yet. Citing global economic weakness and financial market turmoil, the Federal Reserve agreed Thursday...
WASHINGTON--Not yet.
Citing global economic weakness and financial market turmoil, the Federal Reserve agreed Thursday to keep its benchmark interest rate near zero despite the rapidly improving U.S. labor market.
But Fed policymakers' forecast indicates they still expect to bump up the federal funds rate this year for the first time in nearly a decade, with meetings scheduled for October and December. Their projections, however, show they expect to raise it even more gradually over the long-term than they previously signaled.
Richmond Fed chief Jeffrey Lacker was the lone dissenter.
The decision capped the most dramatic run-up to a Fed meeting in recent memory, with economists split on whether the central bank would raise its key rate, which has been near zero since the 2008 financial crisis and affects borrowing costs for consumers and businesses across the economy.
"An argument can be made for a rise in interest rates at this time," Fed Chair Janet Yellen said at a news conference.But she added, "We want to take more time to evaluate the likely impact on the United States" from the overseas slowdown and market gyrations.
She said Fed policymakers also want to see if further improvement in the labor market "will bolster our confidence that inflation will move back" to the Fed's annual 2% target over the medium term..
In a statement after a two-day meeting, the Fed said, "Recent global economic and financial developments may restrain economic activity somewhat and are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near-term."
Fed policymakers now expect just one rate hike this year that would push the funds rate to 0.375% from the current 0.125%, according to their median forecast. They also expect a slower rise that would leave the rate at 2.625% by the end of 2017 and a longer-run normal rate of 3.5%, down from their previous estimate of 3.75%.
The central bank said "the labor market continued to improve, with solid job gains and declining unemployment." It said consumer spending and business investment have advanced moderately while the housing market "has improved further." But amid the overseas troubles, it said exports have been "soft."
With the U.S. economy rebounding more strongly in the second quarter after a slowdown early in the year, the Fed raised its median forecast for economic growth this year to 2.1% from 1.9% in June. But after the recent global and market troubles, it lowered its projection for 2016 to 2.3% from 2.5% in June.
And with the 5.1% unemployment rate already below the Fed's previous year-end forecast, it now expects the jobless rate to be 4.8% by the end of 2016, below its June forecast of 5.1%.
Yet the central bank also expects a more modest rise in inflation, providing it more leeway to nudge up rates gently. It slightly lowered its inflation forecast to 1.7% in 2016 and 1.9% in 2017, leaving it below its 2% annual target even in two years.
Supporting the case for a Fed move was a 5.1% unemployment rate that's already at the central bank's long-run target, average monthly job gains of 212,000 this year and healthy economic growth of 3.7% at an annual rate in the second quarter. "The economy has been performing well and we expect it to continue to do so," Yellen said.
Waiting too long to act might force the Fed to hoist rates more rapidly when currently meager inflation eventually heats up, a move that could destabilize markets. Yellen said that could be "disruptive to the real economy." "I don't think it's good policy to have to slam on the brakes," she said
Yellen said she continues to expect tepid inflation to pick up as low oil prices and a strong dollar stabilize, but she said it will take "a bit more time" for those effects to dissipate.Some economists say the 5.1% unemployment rate already heralds a coming surge in wages and prices as employers compete for fewer available workers.
But annual pay growth has been stuck near a sluggish 2% pace, possibly reflecting an excess labor supply that includes part-time workers who prefer full-time jobs and discouraged Americans resuming job searches after years on the sidelines. If that's the case, the Fed may want to keep rates low longer to stimulate the economy so more of those workers can find full-time jobs.
Yellen told reporters the unemployment rate likely "understates the degree of slack in the labor market."
Meanwhile, recent news of China's economic slowdown, and the resulting turmoil in global and U.S. stocks, prompted Fed officials to temper expectations for a rate hike this week.
"The outlook abroad appears to have become more uncertain of late and heightened concerns about growth in China and other emerging market economies have led to notable volatility in financial markets," Yellen said.
She added, "We don't want to respond to market turbulence," but the volatility is prompting the Fed to investigate its cause in the global economy.While U.S. exports to China comprise less than 1% of the nation's gross domestic product, Chinese trade with other countries could have stronger ripple effects on the U.S. economy.
Before the release of the Fed's statement to reporters, a coalition of worker advocacy groups called Fed Up gathered outside holding signs such as, "Whose recovery?" and chanting, "Don't raise the interest rates!"
"The Fed should not make a decision to slow down the economy without hearing from the people it will affect," said Ady Barkan, the head of the group.
Source: USA Today
Amazon’s ripple effects: Six things that might happen if Pittsburgh gets HQ2
Amazon’s ripple effects: Six things that might happen if Pittsburgh gets HQ2
Sarah Johnson, the Local Progress Director for national advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy, said she doesn’t...
Sarah Johnson, the Local Progress Director for national advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy, said she doesn’t expect Amazon to change how it operates.
Read the full article here.
If Politicians Actually Want to Make Change, They Have to Think Like Organizers
If Politicians Actually Want to Make Change, They Have to Think Like Organizers
In 2011, after years of entrenched fighting between businesses and labor supporters, and months of negotiation in the...
In 2011, after years of entrenched fighting between businesses and labor supporters, and months of negotiation in the city council, Seattle’s paid sick-leave ordinance came down to a walk in the park. The bill’s sponsor, councilmember Nick Licata, invited his colleague Tim Burgess, the council’s stalwart fiscal conservative, for a stroll around Green Lake. At that point, few council members were willing to support the bill and Licata was nowhere close to the five-vote majority he needed.
“I figured, in some ways, the swing vote would be Burgess,” Licata explained. “Given his standing in the business community, if he supported it, then other council members would come out and support it. It would have a domino effect.”
Walking side-by-side around the park’s lakeside path, Licata learned that Burgess wanted only minor concessions. Licata brought those back to his coalition of sick-leave supporters, who agreed to most of them. The bill, which had been stuck for years in legislative limbo, began to move. Burgess voiced his support, other councilmembers followed, and Licata wrangled the votes necessary to pass one of the country’s first laws requiring all employers to provide paid sick time to workers.
Laws like this help make Seattle the progressive city it is. In the past five years alone, Seattle has become the first major city to enact a $15 minimum wage; banned the use of plastic bags; sanctioned homeless encampments on city property; helped lead the charge on statewide votes for legal marijuana and marriage equality, and more. To hear most residents tell it, this progressive streak is as inevitable as good coffee or the craggy face of Mount Ranier—the natural outcome of a city peopled by good liberals who want to do the right thing.
But, as the long fight to win paid sick leave suggests, Seattle’s progressive laws are anything but inevitable. The city’s businesses fight tooth and nail against every attempt to improve worker rights and pay, threatening an exodus to friendlier climates. And while Seattle residents say they want the city to be affordable and want to help the rapidly growing homeless population, they also show up in force to protest affordable-housing measures and proposals to open more temporary homeless encampments.
What has fueled Seattle’s progressive victories, then, isn’t some mystery potion or innate Northwestern goodness, but the same hard work that has forced progress in other cities: grassroots organizing, tenacity, and political allies like Nick Licata. For 18 years, Licata has been one of the most reliable forces inside City Hall pushing and prodding Seattle to be a more humane city.
Since his election in 1998, Licata has had his hands in every piece of progressive legislation to pass through City Hall. He fought years of serious opposition to pass the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance, championed paid sick leave and the $15 minimum wage, created Seattle’s first lobbyist-registration law, pushed for sanctioned homeless encampments, and much more. He also fought against public funding of sports stadiums, a bill to outlaw panhandling, and plenty of other attempts at city-sanctioned discrimination.
Throughout his time in office, Licata was doggedly consistent in both his political ideology and his commitment to progressive causes. Among his colleagues, he was often the one vote to the left of all others, but they respected his attention to detail and willingness to work with everyone. Licata’s consistency and legislative success helped him build a citywide progressive base that reelected him every time he ran. Occasionally, it even won him accolades outside his adopted city. The Nation named him Most Valuable Local Official in 2012.
Beyond advancing progressive policy, Licata’s time in office helped carve out a space for the current progressive bloc of councilmembers, including Kshama Sawant, Mike O’Brien, and Licata’s longtime legislative aide turned successor, Lisa Herbold. It is of course overly simplistic to draw a straight line from Licata to those that came after him, but his ability to stay true to his values while getting things done helped pull Seattle’s traditionally centrist electeds to the left and proved that voters support progressives.
“Nick, for so long, fostered and cultivated this progressive wing of Seattle,” said O’Brien. “One of the things I learned from Nick is you don’t need to shy away from progressive values. You can embrace them.”
Since his election in 1998, Nick Licata has had his hands in every piece of progressive legislation to pass through Seattle's City Hall.
Last December, Licata finished his final term as a city councilor—a move he was careful not to frame as retirement. He is not ending his political work, just changing the form it takes. Some of his time will be spent working with Local Progress, the nonprofit network of progressive local politicians he helped found in 2012. Some of it will be spent promoting his recently published book, Becoming A Citizen Activist, which is part memoir and part how-to guide for navigating local government. All of it is in service of Licata’s theory of the city as a tool for movement-based social and political change.
“With Congress deadlocked and state governments largely taken over by the right wing, large urban areas are the last bastions of progressive strength,” he explained. “But it’s hard to manifest that into political power. We need to start going where our strength is and building out from that.”
* * *
Licata’s attempt to seed state and national change by fomenting shifts at the local level is, in many respects, the logical conclusion of a career built on grassroots activism.
Licata was born in Cleveland in 1947, the son of traditional working-class Catholics who never graduated from high school. His turn towards progressive politics began during his college years at Bowling Green State University, where he helped found the school’s chapter of Students for Democratic Society, and solidified in 1970, when he was a graduate student at the University of Washington protesting the war.
After grad school, Licata moved into PRAG House, a commune that would serve as home base for 25 years of organizing and activism that eventually launched his political career. Like a true Renaissance lefty, he had hand in almost all the consequential battles of the age, as well as some of the less consequential ones. He published a directory of Seattle community groups and social services called the People’s Yellow Pages; helped form Coalition Against Redlining; launched an alternative weekly called the Seattle Sun; helped organize an annual 24-hour dance marathon called Give Peace A Dance to raise money for nuclear disarmament TV ads; and co-founded Citizens For More Important Things to fight public funding of new baseball and football stadiums in Seattle, among other things.
Much of Licata’s activist career was paid for by his work as an insurance broker, a kind of Wallace Stevens of the activist left. But after 15 years of this arrangement, Licata was unhappy and his bosses expected him to become a manager.
He left to run for city council.
* * *
In Licata’s first run at council, he was the underdog against Aaron Ostrom, a popular city staffer with establishment backing. Despite being outspent and running without major endorsements, Licata was able to organize his broad activist networks to show up at the polls and elect him.
“I was somewhat isolated [as a progressive]. I could tell my new colleagues thought I was going to be temporary. The first day in office I didn’t have a chair, though I think it was an oversight,” Licata said.
Nonetheless, Licata managed to prove his efficacy. Years of working in insurance gave him a keen eye for detail and in his first year in office, he found an extra $50,000 that had not been allocated in the budget.
Licata’s attempt to seed state and national change by fomenting shifts at the local level is the logical conclusion of a career built on grassroots activism.
“It’s a trite term, but I think I earned their respect,” said Licata. “Not that I was brilliant, but I dug into things more than usual.”
He also proved he knew how to work the system. Licata’s first major victory was killing Seattle’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics.
“It was almost like drowning the golden child. Even I was very supportive to start. Who doesn’t like the Olympics?”
But as he dug into the contract and read about other host cities, Licata realized Seattle would have to take on any financial liabilities from the games and likely wind up with a pile of debt.
“The people we’re supposed to serve most, not the tourists, not the people coming in, not the investors, not the businesses, but the people living here? They don’t gain. In fact a lot of them lose,” Licata said.
He started his uphill battle with his most conservative colleagues, highlighting the financial case against hosting the Olympics. He got his message out to local journalists who started covering the issue. He also hosted a public forum downtown in the go-to journalist watering hole. The room was packed with people who had come to listen to a panel of experts make the case against the Olympics (the pro side declined his invitation). He commissioned a countywide poll that showed people were against the bid when they knew about the debt. The council slowly came around and, in the end, eight of nine members signed a letter in opposition to the bid. Because no councilmember was willing to sponsor a resolution in support, the issue died.
Licata’s organizer approach to legislating and willingness to work with everyone was a recurring theme of his time in office and served him well in his proudest victories.
Getting the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance—a basic law that requires landlords to register rental properties so the city can make sure they’re up to code—took six years of negotiations between advocates and the Rental Housing Association.
The Paid Sick and Safe Time bill was a similarly big lift that required years of brokering negotiation between labor, activists, and businesses. Councilman O’Brien says that tenacity was an example of Licata at his best.
“He’s watching it and figuring out ‘where are my votes, who’s with me, now where do I get the next vote? I think we need to have a brown bag, we need a town hall, I need to build momentum. What are the obstacles that keep you from supporting this? Can we work on that?’” O’Brien explained.
Licata’s organizer approach to legislating and willingness to work with everyone was a recurring theme of his time in office
He continued, “The bill that came out in the end wasn’t exactly how anyone wanted it in the start, but it was great. He had the ability when he was driving something to be really aware of the politics on the floor, what changes he needed to make, how to manage that dynamic.”
Licata readily admits he can’t take sole credit for $15 Now’s success or many of the city’s big progressive victories. But he’s proud of the role he’s played as an activist on the inside connecting the fist-raised activists he came up with and the establishment whose support and votes are critical for political success.
“I’m not very good at sports analogies. But I think I’m like the midfielders in soccer. They make sure the ball gets to the striker or keeps the ball away from their own goalie. But they don’t end up on the front cover.”
Now that he’s left office, Licata wants to see if he can take his mid-fielding talents national to see if cities’ progressive momentum can combat state and national conservatism.
* * *
The idea that like-minded local politicians need to work together to bolster regional and national progressive policy is at the heart of Local Progress, the nonprofit Licata co-founded with New York City Councilman Brad Lander in 2012. They point to the minimum-wage movement as example of their success. The $15 Now effort started in Seattle then spread to other cities and gained enough momentum to get introduced at state and national levels.
The organization is young and only recently raised enough money to hire staff, but it has succeeded in recruiting 400 members in 40 states, the majority of whom are elected officials. Local Progress’ work is a mix of big-picture enthusiasm building and nitty-gritty policy work.
Licata is working part-time with Local Progress to explore how best to accomplish regional organizing. The work is rooted in a feeling that there’s no choice but to focus on cities.
Lander said, “There’s still a lot cities can do on their own through legislation and policy, as we’ve been seeing. When cities get together they can make changes in their states. Then start to make those changes nationally.”
"I think you can change the world and you have to. You just have to go about it strategically and it takes some time.” —Nick Licata
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University history professor and co-editor of Dissent magazine, agreed that ever-more-progressive city politics have helped shift the national conversation. But without a corresponding movement of national progressives activists, local politicians can only do so much.
“There has to be a left populist movement. It can’t at all dismiss the importance of race and gender and sexual orientation and environment. All that’s right. But you’re not going to win majority without having a majority,” said Kazin.
He continued, “You need a lot of young people who are excited about politics and activists, and not just at election time.”
That is, in some ways, what Licata hopes to engender with his new book. As the name implies, Becoming A Citizen Activist is Licata’s attempt to share the lessons he’s learned to help people effectively navigate city politics.
Perhaps the most important of those lessons is that success comes from barely perceptible micro-victories that build into movements and major victories in the long term.
“Everyone becomes disappointed in the gap between the ideal and the deliverable,” said Licata. “You’re not going to change the world overnight. I think you can change the world and you have to. You just have to go about it strategically and it takes some time.”
Licata’s 18 years in office and over 40 years of community activism in Seattle are certainly evidence of that. His many losses and half wins and small steps forward have added up to marked change in Seattle over time. Of course, like most cities, Seattle is still a deeply inequitable place with a growing gap between rich and poor. But Licata’s work has helped give progressives a platform from which to combat those inequities. And given that, it seems possible that bringing that same detail-focused, local approach to the national stage might eventually bring about national progressive change.
By Josh Cohen
Source
Report: Women unduly harmed by unpredictable scheduling
Al Jazeera - 05-12-2015 - Irregular hours and just-in-time scheduling are pervasive throughout the low-wage...
Al Jazeera - 05-12-2015 - Irregular hours and just-in-time scheduling are pervasive throughout the low-wage economy, but they do particular harm to working women, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Center for Popular Democracy.
Women still disproportionately shoulder responsibility for child care and other family obligations, and more than 6 million women have cited those constraints as the primary reasons they are not employed full time, according to the report.
The Center for Popular Democracy argues that juggling family responsibilities with the unsteady work hours that often come with part-time employment leads to additional challenges for women.
“Women working more hours are likely to experience the stressful effects of overwork and may often have no choice but to work overtime hours or lose their job,” the report says. “However, the over 12 million women working part time in hourly jobs are at greatest risk of both highly erratic schedules and of extreme income fluctuation."
Women were found to be slightly more likely to work jobs paid on an hourly basis: 61 percent compared with 56 percent of men. As a result, their income is more likely to fluctuate based on how many hours they are assigned to work per week or month. Additionally, their off time can be difficult to control or predict because of last-minute scheduling.
Erratic hours can be particularly hard on women, who tend to spend more time than men performing household chores and caring for children. A 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey found women in households with children under the age of 6 spent roughly an hour a day attending to their physical needs, whereas men spent roughly half an hour.
On a conference call with reporters to discuss the report, Albuquerque, New Mexico, activist Kris Buchmann said she has been “treated like my life outside of work didn’t matter” while working hourly jobs in retail.
“I can’t tell you how many times I was asked to close and then turn around and come back in after five or six hours off,” she said. “It’s not enough for a full night’s sleep or showering or anything else I have to do."
Other times, “they would call me into work, I would show up, and they would say, ‘Oh, never mind. We don’t need you,’” she said. Such unpredictability made it difficult for her to know when she would need to find child care for her son.
University of Massachusetts at Amherst sociologist Naomi Gerstel, who wrote the book “Unequal Time: Gender, Class and Family in Employment Schedules” with Dan Clawson, said erratic scheduling exists “across the entire class spectrum” but falls especially hard on low-wage workers.
If you’re in a stable, full-time position, “you’re more likely to be able to say no or find substitutes” such as baby sitters and other care workers, she said. Additionally, some higher-paying workplaces are “changing occupations to make it possible for especially women workers to take on what’s defined as flexibility."
But perks such as maternity leave have not filtered down the income ladder. And long-term changes in family structure have created a “double-edged sword” for some workers, said Gerstel. Births to unmarried women have risen steadily since the 1940s, according the U.S. Census Bureau, so more single mothers have been forced to negotiate child care on top of their work schedules.
That’s beginning to change in some parts of the country. Carrie Gleason, the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fair Workweek Initiative director, told reporters on a conference call that 11 states “have introduced some form of work hours legislation, and this is an issue that was basically not on the map last year.”
Buchmann is part of a campaign to get predictable scheduling legislation passed in New Mexico. In November, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved a legislative package known as the Retail Worker Bill of Rights, which is, in part, intended to enforce more predictable scheduling for retail workers.
Source: Al Jazeera
The pressure's on the Federal Reserve to make a diverse pick for Atlanta post
The pressure's on the Federal Reserve to make a diverse pick for Atlanta post
The selection of a regional Federal Reserve bank president normally takes place in relative obscurity, followed only by...
The selection of a regional Federal Reserve bank president normally takes place in relative obscurity, followed only by local business leaders, financial executives and analysts who track monetary policy.
But amid concerns about a lack of diversity at the highest levels of the nation’s central banking system, great attention is being focused on who will be chosen as the next head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
The search is being watched closely by members of Congress and advocacy groups that have complained publicly in recent months that the Fed’s top leadership is nearly all white.
The Atlanta region, which has a large African American population, presents the perfect opportunity to start changing that, they said.
“This would be historic,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who would like the Fed to make the next Atlanta chief the first African American to lead one of the 12 regional banks. “It would be very important, and it’s long overdue.”
As the Fed has taken on a larger role in the economy in the wake of the Great Recession, the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among key decision-makers has sparked concerns that monetary policy decisions haven’t taken into account the higher unemployment rates among African Americans and Latinos.
“Communities of color have not yet experienced full economic recovery,” said 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.
“As a really important economic policymaker, the Fed needs to actually reflect America,” he said.
Leading African American lawmakers have called on Fed Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen, the first woman to lead the central bank, and the Atlanta Fed to conduct a broad search.
Fed officials have promised to do that. But they’ve made no commitment to a diverse appointment for a complex job that includes overseeing about 1,700 employees in the Atlanta region and participating in monetary policy deliberations in Washington.
During an October webcast on the search, Tom Fanning, chairman of the Atlanta Fed’s board of directors, was asked whether the bank had “a special opportunity” to break the regional bank “color barrier.”
“That would be a great thing. We’re all for it,” he said. “We want the best person as well.”
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Fanning, chief executive of Atlanta-based energy firm Southern Co., is leading the bank’s search committee. The committee is reviewing candidates and doesn’t have a timetable for a decision, Atlanta Fed spokeswoman Jean Tate said.
The five sitting members of the Board of Governors and 11 of the 12 regional bank presidents are white. Since the central bank was created in 1913, three African Americans have served as governors, but there have been no Latinos. There never has been an African American or Latino regional Fed president.
“They just need more diversity,” Waters said.
Regional Fed presidents rotate onto the Federal Open Market Committee, where they join Fed governors in setting the level of a key interest rate that affects business and consumer loans.
The committee has started nudging up the rate as the unemployment rate has fallen below 5%. But many liberals are worried the job market isn’t fully healed, pointing to higher unemployment rates for African Americans and Latinos.
Last spring, Waters was among 116 House members and 11 senators who wrote to Yellen criticizing what they called “the disproportionately white and male” leadership at the central bank.
“Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country, cannot be understated,” said the letter, organized by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
At congressional hearings, lawmakers have pushed Yellen to do more to improve diversity among the regional bank chiefs.
The president nominates Fed governors, who must be confirmed by the Senate. Yellen and her colleagues on the Board of Governors give final approval for regional bank president selections, which are made by the board of directors of each bank.
“It’s our job to make sure that every search for those jobs assembles a broad and diverse group of candidates,” Yellen told Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) last winter after he pressed her to consider “getting an African American, for the first time in history, to be a regional president of a Federal Reserve bank.”
That was before Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart announced his resignation in September, effective Feb. 28.
Shortly afterward, Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, joined Conyers, Scott and Rep. John Lewis, another Georgia Democrat, in writing to Yellen and Fanning urging the Fed to “consider candidates from diverse personal backgrounds, including African Americans, Latinos and women.”
The letter said that “grave racial disparities exist across our nation in unemployment wages and income.” It also said that the unemployment and poverty rates for African Americans in the Atlanta region — Alabama, Florida, Georgia and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee — were about double those for whites.
For the first time, the Atlanta Fed’s search committee has asked the public to submit names of potential candidates. The Atlanta Fed also has tried to make the process more transparent by posting details on its website, including holding the October webcast in which Fanning answered the public’s questions.
Asked about the importance of diversity for addressing “the special concerns of minority communities,” Fanning said he thought the Fed already did a good job on the issue, but “increasing our cultural bandwidth” was important.
“It is incumbent upon the person that gets this job to have the broadest perspective possible,” he said. “That’s why valuing diversity is really a critical component here.”
By Jim Puzzanghera
Source
New Report Cites $100 Million-plus in Waste, Fraud in Charter School Industry
A new report by two groups that oppose reforms that are privatizing public education finds fraud and waste totaling...
A new report by two groups that oppose reforms that are privatizing public education finds fraud and waste totaling more than $100 million of taxpayer funds in 15 of the 42 states that operate charter schools.
The report, titled “Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, & Abuse,” and released by the nonprofit organizationsIntegrity in Education and the Center for Popular Democracy, cites news reports and criminal complaints from around the country that detail how some charter school operators have illegally used public money. It also makes policy recommendations, including a call for stopping charter expansion until oversight of charter operators is improved. Released during National Charter School Week, it notes that despite rapid growth in the charter industry, there is no agency at the federal or state level that has the resources to provide sufficient oversight.
The Obama administration has supported the spread of charter schools but has also called for better oversight. Proponents of charter schools say they provide choices for parents and competition for traditional public schools, but critics note that most don’t perform any better — and some of them worse — than traditional public schools and take resources away from school districts. Some critics see the expansion of charter schools as part of an effort by some school reformers to privatize public education.
The report details cases from state after state, among them:
*In Washington D.C.:
In the fall of 2008, the U.S. attorney’s office issued a subpoena for school financial records related to L. Lawrence Riccio’s “alleged criminal activities” at the School for Arts in Learning (SAIL). Known internationally for his work in the education of youth with disabilities, Riccio founded the Washington, DC charter school in 1998, but by 2007, a memo by a financial consultant to SAIL’s former chief financial officer describes complete disarray of financial matters. Though grant money had been flowing in, staff members were not allowed to purchase supplies, rent went unpaid, and funds from one Riccio-led organization paid expenses for another. Financial statements showed that SAIL and sister organizations paid a $4,854 credit card bill to cover Mr. Riccio’s travel -related expenses in Scotland, as well as membership dues and dinner tabs at the University Club, a premier private club. SAIL covered expenses for travel to Boston, Denver, Houston and New Orleans; grocery stores, drugstores, wine and liquor stores and flower shops, cafes and restaurants, a salon and spa, Victoria’s Secret and at a glass, paint and wallpaper shop in France, where Mr. Riccio and his wife maintain a private residence.
and
Former leaders of Options Public Charter School are under Federal investigation for possible Medicaid fraud and other abuses. They are accused of exaggerating the needs of the disabled students, bilking the federal government for Medicaid funds to support their care, and creating a contracting scheme to divert more than $3 million from the schools for their own companies, including a transportation company that billed the Federal government for transporting students to the school, but apparently offered gift cards to students to increase ridership on the buses. Additionally, a senior official at the D.C. Public Charter School Board allegedly received $150,000 to help them evade oversight.
*In Ohio:
Ohio Auditor of State Dave Yost, speaking about nearly $3 million in unsubstantiated expenses amassed by the Weems Charter School, said: “This is a heck of a mess…Closed or not, the leadership of this school must be held responsible, and the money must be returned to the people of Ohio.”
* In Wisconsin:
In 2008, Rosella Tucker, founder and director of the now-closed New Hope Institute of Science and Technology charter school in Milwaukee, was convicted in federal court of embezzling $300,000 in public money and sentenced to two years in prison. Tucker acknowledged taking U.S. Department of Education money intended for the school, which she started through a charter agreement with Milwaukee Public Schools. She spent about $200,000 on personal expenses, including cars, funeral arrangements and home improvement, according to court documents. Tucker has argued that the remainder of the money she received was legitimate reimbursement for school-related expenses. Tucker embezzled the $300,000 from 2003 to 2005. The Milwaukee School Board voted to close New Hope Institute of Science and Technology in February 2006, amid problems that included unpaid bills and lack of appropriate teacher licensure.
* In California:
Steven A. Bolden pleaded guilty on January 2, 2014 to stealing more than $7.2 million worth of computers from a government program. Between 2007 and 2012, Bolden invented more than a dozen education non-profits, including fake charter schools, to benefit from a General Services Administration program that gives surplus computer equipment to public schools and non-profits. In July 2012, a GSA undercover investigator was contacted by Palmdale Educational Development Schools, one of Bolden’s organizations, and sent Bolden 9 laptop computers, which Bolden sold via Craigslist.
Here’s the report:
Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, & Abuse
Source
For Safer City Schools, More Counselors, Fewer Cops
Our city is facing a tough question: how do we make schools safer? New York City schools are on the precipice of...
Our city is facing a tough question: how do we make schools safer?
New York City schools are on the precipice of returning to ineffective policies and practices like more policing and metal detectors that have harmed the students who are most in need. The city could and should instead take this opportunity to move further towards school culture and climate priorities that are designed to meet the social, emotional, and mental health needs of young people.
Read the full article here.
Lawsuit: Arizona Minimum-Wage Initiative Stiffed Petition Firm for $65,000
Lawsuit: Arizona Minimum-Wage Initiative Stiffed Petition Firm for $65,000
An Arizona employer is stiffing a small-business owner on a completed job, affecting dozens of low-income employees....
An Arizona employer is stiffing a small-business owner on a completed job, affecting dozens of low-income employees.
Sounds like the kind of greedhead Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families is targeting with its campaign to raise the minimum wage, right?
Wrong — the employer is Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families. The campaign refuses to pay the last $65,000 of a $965,000 bill to Sign Here Petitions, the company that hired the people who gathered the signatures that put the measure on this November's general-election ballot.
Sign Here owner Bonita Burks sued the campaign on September 21 to recover the balance due. In the meantime, Burks says, she has been unable to distribute final paychecks to the 45 to 50 petition gatherers she hired to get Prop 206 onto the ballot.
It's not as if the minimum-wage campaign can't afford to pay Burks, a Maricopa resident who has owned her own business for 12 years. Though the campaign ran short of money over the summer, its spokesman, Bill Scheel, confirms that Arizonans for Fair Wages expects to receive an influx of $1.5 million in donations any day now.
Scheel says the campaign intentionally shorted Burks' company because it didn't do its job well enough, resulting in tens of thousands in unexpected expenses.
If Arizona voters approve the minimum-wage measure in November, the state's minimum wage would go up to $10 an hour next year and rise to $12 in 2020. Waitresses and others who expect tips would see their wages increase from $5.05 to $7 by 2017, and to $9 by 2020. The ballot initiative also mandates that workers can take between three and five days of earned sick leave annually.
Much of the money for the campaign has come from out-of-state donors as part of a national effort by activists and labor unions. Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), the largest donor, is itself being funded by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Popular Democracy. The Commercial Workers union Region 8 States Council and California-based Fairness Project are also major contributors.
As New Times reported in August, a member of the political-strategy firm hired by the campaign, Javelina, loaned the campaign $100,000 after it ran short of cash while defending itself from a legal challenge that could have kicked the measure off the ballot.
Scheel, a cofounder of Javelina and spokesman for the campaign, said in August that he gave the campaign the loan on August 4 to cover unexpected expenses from a legal challenge by the Arizona Restaurant Association.
The restaurant owners behind the ARA, an influential organization led by Steve Chucri, one of five Maricopa County supervisors, doesn't want to see minimum wage go up and sued the campaign in an attempt to deny voters the right to decide the question. The ARA's lawyers argued that many of the campaign's signature gatherers were felons or had filled out their forms incorrectly, meaning tens of thousands of signatures should have been tossed. The workers are typically paid $3 to $5 for each signature they collect.
The ARA identified up to 85,000 signatures they claimed were no good, and expected to find even more invalid ones. At least 150,642 valid signatures were needed out of the 271,883 turned in by the campaign.
Yet before a deeper probe of the campaign's signature-gathering process occurred, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joshua Rogers dismissed the ARA's complaint because it hadn't been filed on time. The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the ruling on appeal.
The campaign had apparently run out money before the lawsuit was filed, though. On July 19, about two weeks after the July 7 deadline to turn in signatures to the state, Sign Here and the campaign — represented by Scheel — drew up a one-page amendment to their original contract. In the amendment, Burks made clear that the campaign owed $186,884.60 and would assess a late fee of $1,000 per day starting on July 18.
The campaign "understands and agrees that the final invoice amount is requires for [Burks] to pay individuals already-earned monies," the contract states, adding that if Burks is sued by the signature gatherers, the campaign will cover the costs.
Scheel signed the amended contract.
About a month later, Burks says, Scheel promised falsely that the money was on the way.
Burks provided New Times with a screenshot that shows a text exchange with Scheel on Friday, August 19:
"Bill, Please send me a text once the wire has been. Thank you," Burks texted.
"The wire has been initiated," Scheel texted back.
But the following Monday, the money had not materialized in Sign Here's account.
"Sorry," Scheel informed Burks in another text. "We have been on conference calls with the national funders all morning. We've been instructed to hold off any further wires till after the Supreme Court rules on the appeal, which we hope will be Friday."
The state Supreme Court upheld Rogers' ruling on August 30, clearing its final hurdle to make the ballot.
Scheel says Sign Here invoiced the campaign a total of $965,000, of which the campaign paid $900,000.
"We paid 93 percent of everything that was due," he says.
The campaign contracted with Sign Here for more than just making the ballot, he argues: "It was about making sure circulators were qualified. She promised 80 percent validity — it came in at barely 50 percent. That's not acceptable."
The lawsuit cost the campaign $70,000 in legal fees, and Burks' company "nearly put the campaign in jeopardy," he says.
Scheel admits that he doesn't know whether Judge Rogers would have thrown out enough signatures to void the measure, had the ARA's challenge been filed on time.
"No one ever did the math on our side," he says.
But that isn't the issue, Scheel maintains. Burks didn't properly vet the signature gatherers, which cost the campaign $70,000 by leaving a potential vulnerability for the ARA to exploit.
The campaign recouped $33,500 of the legal fees via a settlement with the ARA, Scheel says. Arizonans for Fair Wages could have asked for up to $55,000 in legal fees, but decide to settle rather than prolong the fight, he says.
Scheel also confirms, as he told New Times in August, that the campaign is about to receive $1.5 million in donations from its national backers to pay for marketing and promotion of the measure in the final weeks before the election. Some of that money has already trickled in, he says, and the campaign has used it to pay 15 of the signature gatherers who haven't received checks from Sign Here.
Burks did such a poor job, Scheel says, that according to the campaign's calculations, she owes the campaign $35,000.
Gathering signatures for a ballot initiative can be a good way to make extra money, typically paying between $3 and $5 per signature.
Gathering signatures for a ballot initiative can be a good way to make extra money, typically paying between $3 and $5 per signature.
"She's a small-businessperson who unfortunately and sadly dropped the ball," he says.
Burks says she's upset and frustrated by the situation. Signature gatherers keep contacting her, asking when they'll get their last checks.
"They're hurting bad," she says. "My phone's blowing up every day."
By her account, adding in the $1,000-a-day late fee, Arizonans for Fair Wages now owes her company $143,000.
"I'm standing firm: You owe the money, you need to pay it," she says.
Burks says she doesn't have the money to pay the petition gatherers the remainder of what they're owed and says she made "no profit" on the project. Campaign officials took advantage of Sign Here to make a strong final push to collect more signatures before the July 7 deadline, even though they were broke at the time, she adds.
"They told me in the last week: Get as many as you can because our volunteer efforts suck," she says. The workers came up with an additional 35,000 signatures.
"My team and I, we worked so hard in the 120-degree heat," she says. "I was paying bonuses. I haven't made one damned dime on it. I really wanted to see it happen, for the people."
At least one signature gatherer is suing Burks in Maricopa County Justice Court.
Donna Fox worked for Sign Here before returning home to Kingsport, Tennessee. She has been staying in Scottsdale for the past couple of weeks, making the nearly 2,000-mile trip to resolve the issue.
Fox says her work for Sign Here was impeccable, and that Burks' company owes her $1,320 for her last week's work. She is suing for three times that amount, as allowed under state law.
She could probably make a deal to get her money from Arizonans for Fair Wages, Fox says. "But I don't trust them."
Even if she wins her suit, Fox says she's not sure whether she'll ever see her money. But she's hoping Burks wins her suit against the campaign, which Fox believes treated Sign Here badly.
"This is like Donald Trump strategy," Fox says of Arizonans for Fair Wages. "You can do the work, but we're not paying you. They don't walk the walk they're talking. This is nothing more than business for them."
As for Burks, with whom Fox says she shares a friendly, albeit contentious, relationship: "I chew her out all the time. I tell her she's a complete shithead because she led people to believe the check was in the mail."
The campaign offered to settle the suit for $32,500, Burks says, but she turned them down because it wouldn't cover the money she owes to the petition gatherers.
"My circulators really need their money to pay rent and put food on the table," Burks says. "I believe Arizona Fair Wages just don't care about the people who worked so hard to get their issue on the ballot."
By BY RAY STERN
Source
1 month ago
1 month ago