Internal Emails Show ICE Agents Struggling to Substantiate Trump’s Lies About Immigrants
Internal Emails Show ICE Agents Struggling to Substantiate Trump’s Lies About Immigrants
As hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up across the country last February in the first mass raids of the...
As hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up across the country last February in the first mass raids of the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials went out of their way to portray the people they detained as hardened criminals, instructing field offices to highlight the worst cases for the media and attempting to distract attention from the dozens of individuals who were apprehended despite having no criminal background at all.
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Regional Feds’ Head-Hunting Under Scrutiny Over Insider Bias, Delays
New York/Washington. Efforts to fill top positions at some US Federal Reserve regional branches are casting a spotlight...
New York/Washington. Efforts to fill top positions at some US Federal Reserve regional branches are casting a spotlight on a decades-old process that critics say is opaque, favors insiders, and is ripe for reform.
Patrick Harker took the reins as president of the Philadelphia Fed this week, in an appointment that attracted scrutiny because he served on the committee of directors that interviewed other prospective candidates for the job he ultimately took.
The Dallas Fed has been without a permanent president for more than three months as that search process stretches well into its eighth month. And the Fed’s Minneapolis branch abruptly announced the departure of its leader, Narayana Kocherlakota, more than a year before he was due to go, with no replacement named to date.
The delays and reliance on Fed employees in picking regional Fed presidents can only embolden Republican Senator Richard Shelby to push harder for a makeover of the central bank’s structure, which has changed little in its 101 years.
A bill passed in May by the Senate Banking Committee that Shelby chairs would strip the New York Fed’s board of its power to appoint its presidents. And it could go further, given the bill would form a committee to consider a wholesale overhaul of the Fed’s structure of 12 districts, which has not changed through the decades of shifting US populations and an evolving economy.
The bill is part of a broader conservative effort to expose the central bank to more oversight, and some analysts saw the Philadelphia Fed’s choice as reinforcing the view that the Fed needs to open up more to outsiders.
Nine of 11 current regional presidents came from within the Fed, a proportion that has edged up over time. Twenty years ago, seven of 12 were insiders.
“The process seems to create a diverse set of candidates in which the insider is almost always accepted,” said Aaron Klein, director of a financial regulatory reform effort at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Since it was created in 1913, the central bank’s decentralized structure was meant to check the power of Washington, where seven Fed governors with permanent votes on policy are appointed by the White House and approved by the Senate.
The 12 Fed presidents who are picked by their regional boards usually vote on policy every two or three years, and they tend to hold more diverse views.
Former Richmond Fed President Alfred Broaddus told Reuters the regional Fed chiefs have more freedom “to do and say things that may not be politically popular” because they are not politically appointed. “On the other hand, there is the question of legitimacy since they are appointed by local boards who are not elected.”
“Tone deaf”
Two-thirds of regional Fed directors are selected by local bankers, while the rest are appointed by the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington.
Critics question how well those regional boards — mostly made of the heads of corporations and industry groups meant to represent the public — fulfill their mission.
Last year, a non-profit group representing labor unions and community leaders organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, urged the Fed’s Philadelphia and Dallas branches to make the selection of their presidents more transparent and to include a member of the public in the effort.
Philadelphia’s Fed in particular proved “tone deaf” in its head-hunting effort, said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Harker was a Philadelphia Fed director when the board started looking to replace president Charles Plosser, who left on March 1, and he was among the six directors who interviewed more than a dozen short-listed candidates for the job, according to the Philadelphia Fed.
But on Feb. 18, Harker floated his own name, recused himself from the process and a week later his colleagues on the board unanimously appointed him as the new president.
While the selection follows Fed guidelines and was approved by its Board of Governors, it raised questions of transparency and fairness.
“The Philadelphia Fed’s search process might have made perfect sense in a corporate environment, but is obviously problematic for an official institution,” said Crandall.
The board’s chair and vice chair, Swathmore Group founder James Nevels and Michael Angelakis of Comcast Corp, respectively, declined to comment, as did Harker.
Peter Conti-Brown, an academic fellow at Stanford Law School’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, and an expert witness at a Senate Banking Committee hearing this year, proposed to let the Fed Board appoint and fire regional Fed presidents or at least have a say in the selection process.
In the past, reform proposals for the 12 regional Fed banks have focused on decreasing or increasing their number and their governance.
Changes to the way the regional Fed bosses are chosen could strengthen the influence of lawmakers at the expense of regional interests.
For now, delays in appointments of new chiefs force regional banks to send relatively unknown deputies to debate monetary policy at meetings in Washington, as Dallas and Philadelphia did last month when the Fed considered raising interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.
The Minneapolis Fed still has time to find a new president before Kocherlakota steps down at year end.
“For now the Fed criticism is just noise, mostly from Republicans,” said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group. “But once the Fed begins to raise interest rates … then the left will weigh in as well.”
Source: Jakarta Globe
More Cities Should Do What States and Federal Government Aren't on Minimum Wage
Early this month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a guaranteed $15 minimum wage for all city government...
Early this month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a guaranteed $15 minimum wage for all city government employees by the end of 2018. This is a big win for over 50,000 workers across the city struggling to provide for their families, including those directly on the payroll and tens of thousands working at non-profits that contract with the city.
Unlike in Seattle and Los Angeles, where city officials are empowered to raise the minimum wage for the entire workforce in their cities, Mayor de Blasio is unable to unilaterally raise wages for all New York City workers. That power lies with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature. The governor's efforts to lift the minimum wage to $15 are being hampered by a Republican-controlled state Senate.
De Blasio's decision to raise wages for city employees is a crucial independent step towards a more equitable city - and should be seen as an inspiration for cities around the nation. It also reflects the power and momentum of a groundbreaking worker-led countrywide movement demanding higher wages.
Even as state and federal administrations drag their feet on the inevitable question of a decent minimum wage for working families in the United States, de Blasio's gutsy move shows cities can and should take matters into their own hands.
The mayor's minimum wage raise closely follows his announcement last month giving six weeks paid parental leave, and up to 12 weeks when combined with existing leave, to the city's 20,000 non-unionized employees. The mayor has now moved to negotiate the same benefits with municipal unions. Again, New York City private sector workers must look to Albany or Washington, D.C. to move on paid family leave for all.
Mayor de Blasio's recent actions support his goal of lifting 800,000 New Yorkers out of poverty over ten years. More than 20 percent of the city's population lives in poverty, a huge swath of a city commonly associated with extraordinary wealth.
The last couple of years have seen unparalleled momentum from workers themselves - from New York City to Los Angeles and Chicago - calling for livable wages, resulting in minimum wage raises for fast food workers and other groups.
Workers are not waiting patiently on government officials – they are organizing in an unprecedented way. Progressive mayors like de Blasio are responding with sound policy, while less responsive officials are being put on notice. Cities like Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago are paving the way, showing that it is possible to act independently of state and federal governments.
In addition, laws raising the minimum wage to more than the pitiful federal standard of $7.25 an hour have passed in a number of states. There are now campaigns to raise the floor and standards for workers being led in 14 states and four cities. This momentum is building into a crescendo that will have deep implications for the 2016 presidential election.
Nearly half of our country's workers earn less than $15 an hour and 43 million are forced to work or place their jobs at risk when sick or faced with a critical care-giving need. Now is the time for cities to listen to their workers and override state and federal passivity to allow millions of hard-working Americans to provide for their families.
*** JoEllen Chernow is minimum wage and paid sick days campaign director at Center for Popular Democracy. On Twitter @popdemoc.
Source: Gotham Gazette
Accountability of Charter Schools in Illinois Raises Questions
WTAX News Radio - February 2, 2015 - Charter schools in Illinois are in the cross hairs of a new report alleging a lack...
WTAX News Radio - February 2, 2015 - Charter schools in Illinois are in the cross hairs of a new report alleging a lack of accountability leading to between $13 million and $27 million in fraud.“At a time when (Chicago Public Schools are) crying broke, and public schools are grossly under-resourced, and there’s a public demand for transparency and accountability around every corner,” says Action Now executive director Katelyn Johnson, “it seems unconscionable that CPS and the state of Illinois would not invest in rigid financial oversight of charter schools.”Johnson’s group is supporting the Center for Popular Democracy in the report, “Risking Public Money.”Andrew Broy has a differing viewpoint. He’s the president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and dismisses the other two groups as union-funded and anti-charter to begin with.“The question” about accountability, he says, “is if there are challenges with an internal governing board, how do we uncover that and make sure it’s taken care of, and the current law equips districts with all the tools they need to make sure that happens.”Source
Who’s truly rebuilding the Democratic Party? The activists.
Who’s truly rebuilding the Democratic Party? The activists.
In June 2010 I made a very bad tweet that I came to regret. (Hard to imagine, I know.) I yelled at the disability...
In June 2010 I made a very bad tweet that I came to regret. (Hard to imagine, I know.) I yelled at the disability rights group Adapt.
I’d come to DC to attend a conference of progressive leaders, “America’s Future Now.” And while I knew a lot about financial reform, I didn’t know enough about politics, activism, or the Democratic Party.
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Thousands Today Say #WeRise To Reclaim Government For The People
Campaign for America's Future - March 11, 2015, by Isaiah J. Poole - At the office of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, more...
Campaign for America's Future - March 11, 2015, by Isaiah J. Poole - At the office of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, more than 2,500 demonstrators, most wearing white “We Rise” T-shirts, staged a protest against cuts in Medicaid and other social services. In Albany, N.Y., more than 2,000 people marched to the state capitol to protest education funding cuts. In Denver, dozens of activists came out in support of immigration rights measures, including driver’s licenses for undocumented workers.
These are just a few of the dozens of actions that took place in 16 states today as part of “We Rise: National Day of Action to Put People and Planet First.” Local and national progressive organizations mobilized around different aspects of a common agenda that stood in opposition to the right-wing and corporatist policies pushed through state legislatures in these states. The actions were all broadcast under the Twitter hashtag “#WeRise.”
“What we saw today was a stirring of the democratic spirit,” said Fred Azcarate, Executive Director of USAction. “People are upset at elected officials who spend more time working for big corporations and wealthy campaign donors than representing the people they were elected to serve. Today, people rose up to reclaim government and demand that legislators work for them and their families.”
The states where We Rise demonstrations were organized also include Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The events were led by groups affiliated with National People’s Action, Center for Popular Democracy, USAction, and other allies.
“Apparently conservatives believe they have a mandate to give big corporations another free ride on the backs of everyday people,” said George Goehl, Executive Director of National People’s Action. “But they’re wrong. They have no such mandate. Instead, as we can see in the resistance to draconian policy or Chuy Garcia’s campaign to unseat Rahm Emanuel as Mayor of Chicago, there is a new brand of populism taking root in America. People are fed up with politicians doing the bidding of big money. They’re ready for leaders who will work for, not against, people and the planet.”
“Politicians working primarily on behalf of big corporations are making it harder and harder for families to get by,” said Ana María Archila, Co-Executive Director of The Center for Popular Democracy. “Our families won’t stand for this, and today thousands of workers and families raised our voices in state houses across the country to demand that elected officials join us in leveling the playing field so that each and every family can thrive.”
The Campaign for America’s Future is working with two of the organizations behind today’s “We Rise” events, National People’s Action and USAction, in sponsoring the “Populism2015″ conference in April, with the Alliance for a Just Society. One goal of that conference is to build political momentum from today’s events around a populist progressive agenda “for people and the planet.” Register for the April 18-20 conference in Washington through the Populism2015 website.
Urban Outfitters heeds call to end on-call shifts
WELL, THAT was fast! Yesterday I wrote about an "on-call" scheduling practice at Urban Outfitters that's...
WELL, THAT was fast!
Yesterday I wrote about an "on-call" scheduling practice at Urban Outfitters that's unbelievably abusive to its lowest-wage workers. Within hours of the column hitting print, Urban announced it was killing the practice for good.
Coincidence? You decide.
Here's yesterday's statement from the Philly-based billion-dollar retailer, which also owns the brands Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain and Bhldn.
"We are always looking for ways to improve, and as such we have decided to end on-call scheduling for all [Urban] brand associates throughout North America. We look forward to continuing to find ways to better fulfill our mission of providing fashion and lifestyle essentials to our dedicated customers."
This is amazing news for employees at Urban's 518 North American stores.
For years, they'd been receiving their work schedules only a few days in advance, with some shifts designated as "on call." But they wouldn't be told, until three hours before the shift was to begin, whether they'd actually be needed to work. If they weren't, they wouldn't be paid, even though they'd been required to hold that time for the company.
The unpredictability had wreaked havoc on workers, who are mostly young and female.
They were unable to schedule classes if they were in school. Or to schedule hours at a second job if they needed a full-time income. Or to reliably arrange day care or pay their bills, since their cost to do both was fixed even though their working hours weren't.
What a crappy way to treat members of the demographic that Urban targets so heavily.
"It's pretty messed up," one worker, a college student, told me. She was paying her way through school, but Urban's scheduling meant she couldn't schedule other work to help pay tuition. "It's hard to plan."
Readers reacted with disgust to the column.
"Retail needs to be called on the carpet!" wrote emailer rgrassia. "We need more people with the ability to do something to pressure these companies to change the ways they conduct themselves."
Reader Madeleine Pierucci excoriated Urban for "co-opting the '60s struggles and playing it to the detriment of its 2015 workers. Not cool." She also planned to picket Urban's Center City store next week.
And a furious churchgoer named Samantha C. vowed to spread the word throughout the National Baptist Convention to have its 100,000 church members boycott Urban's stores in protest.
"It's time for slavery to stop," she declared.
Urban's change of heart is a testament to the power of the press, says Carrie Gleason. She's director of the fair-workweek initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy and has been working for a very long time to get employers to end on-call staffing.
"The media has helped shift the public opinion in terms of what is acceptable around employers' expectations of their employees' time," she told me. "I think Urban's announcement is a direct response to the fact that the public is now holding the whole retail industry to higher standards."
I'd like to take credit for Urban's reversal, but the truth is, another media outlet has been hammering at on-call scheduling by retailers - and not just Urban - for a while now.
The online news site BuzzFeed has chronicled the issue so doggedly that the New York state attorney general in April called companies on the carpet for the practice, following his investigation into the legality of on-call staffing at 13 retailers whose New York stores employ thousands of low-wage workers.
As a result, huge chains like Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie and Gap announced plans to discontinue the practice not just in New York but nationally, improving hundreds of thousands of workers' lives.
Urban, though, had said it would discontinue the practice only in New York. Everywhere else, it would be exploitation as usual.
It turned my stomach that Philly-based Urban - a company that so many of us grew up with and feel affinity for - would treat its workers so shabbily. And I said as much in my column, which we - ahem - pushed on the Daily News front page and on Philly.com.
If that helped nudge Urban into doing the decent thing, then yesterday was a good day.
Not just for Urban's workers. But for Urban's shareholders:
As news hit that Urban would end its on-call scheduling, CNBC reported, the company's stock rallied 4.68 percent.
You're welcome, Urban.
And thank you.
Source: Philly.com
Police lay out security approach for People's March in wake of Dallas shootings
Police lay out security approach for People's March in wake of Dallas shootings
A scheduled protest march by a host of progressive advocacy groups as part of the Still We Rise convention downtown...
A scheduled protest march by a host of progressive advocacy groups as part of the Still We Rise convention downtown came with an added dose of tension and scrutiny a day after a protest in Dallas culminated in the shooting of five police officers.
The “People’s March” scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Friday is part of the opening festivities for Still We Rise, a convention organized by the Center for Popular Democracy that’s brought 1,500 people to the city to gather over various causes such as workers' rights, climate change, criminal justice reform and many others.
They’re causes that overlap with the protest march in Dallas over recent police shootings in Minnesota and New Orleans. At that march Thursday, snipers targeted police officers, killing five and wounding seven others, according to various reports.
The People’s March is expected to protest against UPMC, Bank of New York Mellon and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in a parade that will trail from the David L. Convention Center hosting Still We Rise to the U.S. Steel Tower, headquarters for UPMC, then to One Oxford Centre and across the Smithfield Street Bridge to the Pittsburgh office of Pat Toomey.
A spokesman or BNYMellon declined comment on the event. A representative for UPMC did not return a call seeking comment.
A statement by the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police laid out the public safety strategy and acknowledged calling on law enforcement resources beyond Pittsburgh.
“The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is committed to keeping people safe during this afternoon’s planned People’s Convention March that begins at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. There will be a visible presence of uniformed officers along with a not-so-visible presence of plain clothes officers,” reads the statement, quoting the event organizers’ intention of protesting growing inequality and “a toxic atmosphere of hate.”
“Officers will exercise extreme caution to ensure the safety of both our officers and the public,” continued the statement. “The Public Safety Department has been and will continue to be in communication with the FBI. The Police Bureau will work closely with law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local levels.”
The event otherwise marked a modest convention event for the city, in which the 1,500 attendees represent 2,587 room nights at downtown hotels such as the Omni William Penn, the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown, the Westin Convention Center and others.
The Still We Rise proceedings come on the same weekend that the city of Pittsburgh is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its incorporation as a city, including a Bicentennial Parade scheduled for Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m., just one of what’s expected to be more than 100 affiliated events throughout the city in the coming weeks.
Yet the city’s celebration of its birthday has been overshadowed by the shootings in Dallas and by the police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota that helped to trigger them.
Anticipating the anger and sadness from the shootings, on Friday Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, working with Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald, called for “communitywide peace summit” to be held sometime next week.
“We are all affected by the violence in our communities – whether it be here in Pittsburgh, in Dallas, or so many other cities – and we all must do everything we can to stop it,” he said in a prepared statement. “Pittsburgh is a strong and resilient place, and our bonds are even stronger when all of us in the city work together.”
Peduto announced the plan for the summit without a determined date at a meeting today of Local Progress, a national network of progressive elected officials and other organization leaders from throughout the country.
By Tim Schooley
Source
What We Know About Trump and Clinton's Treasury Picks
What We Know About Trump and Clinton's Treasury Picks
Clinton has been defending herself from accusations that she is too cozy with Wall Street since the primaries, when an...
Clinton has been defending herself from accusations that she is too cozy with Wall Street since the primaries, when an obscure U.S. senator from Vermont built a movement in part by blasting her for collecting chunky speaking fees from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS). Trump has carried on with that line of attack, telling an Iowa rally in late September, "if she ever got the chance, she'd put the Oval Office up for sale." So it may seem odd that Trump's campaign finance chair and apparent favorite for the Secretary of the Treasury, according to a Fox Business report on November 3rd, is second-generation Goldman Sachs partner Steve Mnuchin.
There is less clarity about who Clinton would nominate if she won, perhaps because she has to contend with skepticism of capitalism-as-usual among fans of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, without veering too far to the left of the general electorate. Two names tend to pop up, however: Facebook Inc. (FB) COO and Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg, followed by Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard. Other possibilities include TIAA CEO and Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL, GOOG) board member Roger Ferguson.
Trump: Mnuchin
Steve Mnuchin may not seem to be the obvious choice to fashion economic policy for a populist, anti-establishment campaign like Trump's. Before taking over as the Republican's campaign finance chair in May, Mnuchin pursued a varied career as an investment banker, hedge fund manager, retail bank owner and film producer. (See also, Trump Announces New Economic Advisory Team.)
After graduating from Yale, where he roomed with Sears Holdings Corp.'s (SHLD) current CEO Edward Lampert, Mnuchin cut his teeth at Salomon Brothers. He joined Goldman Sachs, where his father was a partner, in 1985. According to a 2012 Bloomberg profile, Mnuchin was "front and center" when instruments such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps were created. Fairly or unfairly, such exotic securities carry a whiff of the financial crisis, as does Goldman Sachs' mortgage department, which Mnuchin headed for a spell before becoming chief information officer in 1999.
He left Goldman Sachs in 2002 to work at his college roommate's hedge fund. The next year he started another fund with George Soros, and a year after that he formed Dune Capital with two other Goldman alums. This period marked the beginning of Mnuchin's Hollywood career, with Dune Capital's production wing funding dozens of films including Mad Max: Fury Road, American Sniper and Avatar.
Mnuchin's biggest financial opportunity came with the collapse of the subprime mortgage bubble. "In 2008 the world was a scary place," Mnuchin told Bloomberg in 2012. The market for mortgage-backed securities, with which he was intimately familiar, had collapsed, and no one seemed able to assign a value to assets such as IndyMac, a bank the FDIC had taken over. Mnuchin and a consortium of private equity investors he managed to woo over, including Soros, bought it on the cheap. The deal included a loss-sharing agreement with the FDIC. They renamed the bank OneWest and began foreclosing on borrowers, attracting criticism from campaigners who portrayed it as overly zealous and possibly driven by a profit incentive – born of the loss-sharing agreement – to foreclose rather than pursuing other options. (See also, Lessons Learned from the Banking Crisis.)
Mnuchin has donated to Clinton in the past, as has Trump. Speaking to Bloomberg in August, though, he was on message: "she's obviously raised a ton of money in speaking fees, in other things, from special interest groups. This campaign is focused on people who want to help rebuild the economy."
Clinton: Sandberg, Brainard or Ferguson
Clinton suggested at a town hall meeting in April that she plans to fill half of her cabinet with women. Most reports regarding her pick for Treasury secretary, a position that has never been filled by a woman, mentioned Facebook's Sheryl Sanderberg and the Fed's Lael Brainard. Another, less-frequently mentioned name is Roger Ferguson, who would be the first African-American to hold the job.
Sandberg
Sandberg has Treasury Department experience. Before becoming one of the most successful women in notoriously macho Silicon Valley, she served as chief of staff to Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. She received her BA and MBA from Harvard in the 1990s and spent a year at McKinsey & Co. She worked for Summers, who had been her professor at Harvard, from 1996 to 2001, which offered her the experience of dealing with the Asian financial crisis. She spent the next seven years as a vice-president of Google, then Mark Zuckerberg hired her away as Facebook's chief operating officer. Within two years she had turned the company profitable. In 2012 she became the first female member of Facebook's board. (See also, Who Is Driving Facebook's Management Team?)
Sandberg has also become an icon for some feminists for her 2013 book Lean In – and its attendant hashtag – which documents the barriers women face in the workplace while encouraging them to dispense with internalized barriers, fears and excuses that hold them back. Despite a generally enthusiastic reception, some critics have labeled the book as elitist: the opportunity to network at Davos may have made Sandberg's barrier-breaking easier. (See also, Sheryl Sandberg's Latest Speech Goes Viral.)
Brainard
Lael Brainard spent part of her childhood in communist East Germany and Poland with her diplomat father. She studied at Wesleyan and went on to get a masters and a doctorate in economics from Harvard. She taught at MIT's Sloan School of Management and worked at McKinsey before joining the Clinton administration as deputy director of the National Economic Council. She went to work at the Brookings Institution during the Bush administration, then served in Obama's Treasury as undersecretary for international affairs. At that time, that position – often described as the Treasury's top diplomat – was the highest Treasury post a woman had held. (See also, Fed's Brainard Urges Caution on Interest Rate Hike.)
Brainard has been a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since June 2014, where she's attracted praise from progressives and deep suspicion from conservatives for appearing to depart from the central bank's technocratic, apolitical norms. She engaged with "Fed Up" activists protesting plans to tighten monetary policy at August's Jackson Hole meeting. (See also, Rising U.S. Labor Productivity Cements Fed Hike.)
Brainard also gave the maximum amount of $2,700 to Hillary Clinton's campaign. That decision earned furious condemnation from Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee during Fed chair Janet Yellen's September testimony, which came just two days after Trump accused the Fed of "doing political things" at the first presidential debate. Yellen defended Brainard's donation, saying she had not violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees in the executive branch from engaging in certain political activities.
Ferguson
Roger Ferguson earned a BA, JD and Ph. D in economics from Harvard then worked as an attorney in New York from 1981 to 1984. He spent the following 13 years at McKinsey, then joined the Fed Board of Governors in 1997. He became vice chair two years later, and rumors began to swirl in 2005 that he would be the next chair. Bush nominated Ben Bernanke instead, and Ferguson resigned shortly after Bernanke's term began the following February.
In 2008 he became president and CEO of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF, since shortened to TIAA). He has been a board member of Alphabet since June 2016.
By David Floyd
Source
Charter Schools Had Tough Week
Times Online - October 5, 2014, by The Times Editorial Board - It’s been a tough week for supporters of the charter...
Times Online - October 5, 2014, by The Times Editorial Board - It’s been a tough week for supporters of the charter school movement in Pennsylvania.
On Tuesday, PA Cyber School founder Nick Trombetta and his attorney were back in a federal courtroom trying to have evidence suppressed in his upcoming criminal trial on charges of mail fraud, theft, tax conspiracy and filing false tax returns. Trombetta is accused of siphoning off millions of taxpayer dollars for his own gain.
On Wednesday, a new report was released citing Trombetta as an example of $30 million in fraud and financial mismanagement among the state’s charter schools since 1997.
The report was done by three organizations — the Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education and Action United. It follows a national report in May by the first two groups that claimed $136 million has been lost to waste, fraud and abuse by charter schools.
While the numbers are alarming, we know that all charter schools are not part of the problem. Still, it only takes a few incidents — such as the case against Trombetta — to give the entire movement a black eye.
What we will say is that state’s charter school law is badly in need of revision, particularly in the area of accountability. State legislators need to step in now and address the problems if charter schools are to remain part of the state’s education program.
Source
1 month ago
1 month ago