Still important to let our senators know what we think
Still important to let our senators know what we think
What do Credo Action, MoveOn, Idaho Medical Advocacy, CPD Action, Daily Kos, People’s Action, Elizabeth Warren, Mom’s...
What do Credo Action, MoveOn, Idaho Medical Advocacy, CPD Action, Daily Kos, People’s Action, Elizabeth Warren, Mom’s Rising, Our Revolution, Change.Org, AARP, and the Economic Policy Institute have in common?
Well, possibly lots of things — each is an advocacy group working to change America.
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Advocates of minimum wage hike raise more than $1.4 million
Advocates of minimum wage hike raise more than $1.4 million
Proponents of hiking the state’s minimum wage have already collected more than $1.4 million to put the issue on the...
Proponents of hiking the state’s minimum wage have already collected more than $1.4 million to put the issue on the November ballot and convince voters to support it.
But there’s no word on how much the Arizona Restaurant Association has spent so far trying to keep Proposition 206 from ever getting to voters.
New campaign finance reports due Friday show donations of $1,357,509 to Arizonans for Fair Wages and Health Families, with another $100,000 on loan from campaign consultant Bill Scheel. Most of those dollars — about $900,000 — were spent hiring paid circulators to put the issue on the ballot.
But the secretary of state’s office said Friday it has yet to get a spending report from foes. In fact, spokesman Matt Roberts said foes have not even filed to form a campaign committee, a legal prerequisite for spending any money for or against ballot measures.
There clearly has been some spending.
The restaurant association hired attorneys and filed suit on July 14 in a legal bid, unsuccessful to date, to have the measure removed from the November ballot. And the report due Friday is supposed to cover all expenses through Aug. 18.
Neither Steve Chucri, president of the restaurant group, nor Chiane Hewer, its spokeswoman, returned repeated calls seeking comment.
Roberts said his office has no legal opinion on whether the money spent in court over ballot measures has to be reported. But the legal expenses incurred by initiative supporters are listed, with their report saying the group paid $70,000 to the Torres Law Group to defend them in the lawsuit brought by the restaurant association.
Proposition 206, if approved in November, would immediately hike the state minimum wage from $8.05 an hour now to $10. It would hit $12 an hour by 2020, with future increases linked to inflation.
It also would require companies to provide five days of paid sick leave a year; small employers would have to offer three days.
There is one thing missing, however, from the report by the pro-206 group.
The report shows $998,684 of the donations coming from Living United for Change in Arizona.
But Tomas Robles, former director of LUCHA who is now chairing the campaign, said some of those dollars came from elsewhere. He said the organization has been the beneficiary of funds from groups like the Center for Popular Democracy and the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
Robles said, though, that the way Arizona law has been amended by the Republican-controlled legislature does not require detailing the specific donors or the amounts they gave.
While any spending by the restaurant association to date is unknown, the campaign is likely to be overshadowed, at least financially, by the fight over Proposition 205.
That measure would legalize the recreational use of marijuana by all adults; current law limits use of the drug to those who have certain medical conditions, a doctor’s recommendation and a state-issued ID card.
So far the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has amassed more than $3 million in donations.
Of that, $778,950 comes from the Marijuana Policy Project, the national group that funded the successful 2010 campaign for medical marijuana. A separate Marijuana Policy Project Foundation kicked in another $236,572.
Virtually all of the other five- and six-figure donations come from existing medical marijuana dispensaries. Proposition 205 would give them first crack at getting a license for one of the fewer than 150 retail outlets that would be allowed until 2021.
So far the campaign has spent nearly $2.6 million.
The opposition Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy reported collected $950,011 but has spent less than $294,000.
The Arizona Chamber of Commerce is the largest single source of funds for the anti-205 campaign, so far putting in $114,000.
There’s also a $100,000 donation from T. Sanford Denny. He’s the chairman of United National Corp., which Bloomberg says is a privately owned holding company for First Premier Bank.
Another $100,000 was chipped in by Randy Kendrick, wife of Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick.
The new reports also show that a branch of the Service Employees International Union spent $2.1 million in its ill-fated attempt to put a measure on the ballot to cap the compensation of non-medical hospital executives at $450,000 a year. Proponents gave up after a lawsuit was filed contending that many of the people who circulated petitions had not complied with state law, voiding any of the signatures they collected.
By: Howard Fischer
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Fed chairman defends interest rate hikes as Trump’s attacks show no sign of working
Fed chairman defends interest rate hikes as Trump’s attacks show no sign of working
Several protesters from the progressive group Fed Up stood outside the conference room where Powell delivered the...
Several protesters from the progressive group Fed Up stood outside the conference room where Powell delivered the speech. Much like Trump, they say raising rates again will harm working people’s chances of getting jobs and better pay. The protesters wore green T-shirts reading “The Fed wants more of us unemployed.
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New Report Details Plans for Low-Wage Worker Justice
The Village Voice - February 14, 2013 - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to work because his...
The Village Voice - February 14, 2013 - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to work because his minimum wage salary doesn't allow for him to afford public transportation, that's a problem.
Low-wage workers across the city have stood up in the past year to demand that such insecurity be eradicated and to pressure employers to finally begin to provide them with just compensation for their labor.
Building on the progress generated by these worker-led movements--in industries such as retail, fast-food, airline security and car washing--UnitedNY, the Center for Popular Democracy and other advocacy groups held a symposium and released a report yesterday analyzing the state of the city's low-wage worker movement.
"It's very difficult to try and make ends meet on $7.25 minimum wage in New York City," Alterique Hall, a worker in the fast-food industry, said during a news conference following the event. "Some nights you want to lay down cry because you [feel] like 'what's the point of going to work and putting all of myself into a job, [if] I'm going to be miserable when I get off work, miserable when I go home...and don't want to wake up and go to work the next day...to get disrespected, treated poorly and paid poorly.'"
Hall, who's been active in the push for fairer wages in the fast-food industry, is the worker who is often forced to embark on the three-hour treks to work. Hall said that his boss will sometimes said him home as a penalty for his tardiness--without considering the ridiculous journey he has to travel just to get to there.
"Working hard, and working as hard as you can, isn't paying off for them," mayoral hopeful and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, said during the news conference. "They're being underemployed, They're being underpaid. They're being taken advantage of. They're being ignored. They're becoming a permanent underclass in the city of New York."
The UnitedNY and CPD report lays out four specific initiatives that workers and advocates must pressure the city to implement in order to help better the plight of low-wage workers. The reports calls on the city and employers to :
[Raise] standards for low-wage workers. [Regulate] high-violation industries where labor abuses are rampant. [Establish] a Mayor's Office of Labor Standards to ensure that employment laws are enforced. [Urge] the State to allow NYC to set a minimum wage higher than the State minimum--due to the higher cost of living in the City.The report pays close attention to the need for City Council to pass the paid sick-leave bill, and increase the minimum wage in the city to $10/hour--a salary that would net a worker with regular hours about $20,000/year in earnings.
"We can't continue to be a Tale of Two Cities, where the path to the middle class keeps fading for thousands of New Yorkers," said New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. "We must break the logjam and pass paid sick leave in the City Council. We have to protect low-wage workers fighting union busting employers. We can't tolerate inaction any longer. It's time for real action to fight for working families."
During one of the symposium workshops, a panel of labor experts discussed the obstacles facing low-wage workers in their fight to obtain such rights.
"[We've] shifted from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy," Dorian Warren, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University, said during the discussion. "[The job market is filled with] part-time jobs, low wages, no benefits, no social contract, no ability to move up in the job the way 20th century workers were able to."
Warren says that the quality of jobs in the American economy will only decline if something isn't done. He noted that 24 percent of jobs were low-wage in 2009. By 2020, that number is expected to nearly double and hit 40 percent. To make matters worse, technological "advances" are expected to increase unemployment rates by 3-5 percent moving forward.
"We're looking at an economy only of low-wage work in the future, but also of high and permanent levels of unemployment," Warren said.
The panel was moderated by acclaimed labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse of the N.Y. Times and included Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, Deborah Axt, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, M. Patricia Smith, the solicitor of labor for U.S. Department of Labor and Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO.
Several panelists stressed the need to combat attacks from right-minded forces seeking to erode worker wage and benefit rights. Falcon says that those fighting for worker rights must correct popular narratives, many of which categorize wage and benefit increases for workers as business-killers.
"When we talk about the minimum wage, the immediate response from business is, we're going to lose jobs because, we're only going to be able to hire a few people. We have to have an answer to that objection," Falcon said. "Through raising the minimum wage, you create job growth in terms of people being able to put more money into the economy. You're [putting] less pressure on social welfare systems...the system is still subsidizing business [when the public provides] welfare and other social services."
Warren* argued a similar point.
"I think we have to be much more explicit about targeting the right the way that they've targeted us. There's a reason why the right has gone after public sector unionism," Warren* said. "They know that's where the heart of the labor movement is in terms of funding and in terms of membership. We have to get smarter about which parts of the right do we target to destroy ideologically, organizationally so that we can advance further our movements. "
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Activist Group Takes Out TV Ad Calling for Trump to Keep Yellen
The Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign broadcast a 30-second TV spot urging Mr. Trump to offer Fed...
The Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign broadcast a 30-second TV spot urging Mr. Trump to offer Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen a second term. The ad ran during "Fox & Friends," a morning show the president watches and often reacts to on Twitter.
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Hillary Clinton to support Federal Reserve change sought by liberals
Hillary Clinton to support Federal Reserve change sought by liberals
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said she would support changes to the top ranks of the Federal...
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said she would support changes to the top ranks of the Federal Reserve, an issue recently championed by progressive groups amid debate over how long the central bank should keep supporting the American economy.
The Fed is led by a seven-member board of governors based in Washington and a dozen regional bank presidents based across the country, from New York to Kansas City to San Francisco. The governors are nominated by the White House and approved by the Senate, but regional bank presidents are selected by their boards of directors, whose occupants are chosen by the banking industry and by the Fed governors in Washington.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Clinton’s campaign said she supports removing bankers from the boards of directors and increasing diversity within the Fed.
"The Federal Reserve is a vital institution for our economy and the well-being of our middle class, and the American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest,” spokesman Jesse Ferguson said. “That's why Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue.”
The statement puts Clinton on the same page as her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. In an op-ed in the New York Times in December, he said removing bankers from the Fed’s governance would mean “the foxes would no longer guard the henhouse.”
On Thursday, Sanders and top Democratic lawmakers called on the Fed to increase the number of minorities in leadership positions. They also urged the central bank to consider the high unemployment rate among some racial groups as it debates whether to keep pulling back its support for the American economy.
In a letter to Fed Chair Janet Yellen, the lawmakers argued that more minority representation would help broaden the Fed’s internal discussions about the health of the economy. In addition to Sanders, 10 senators signed the letter, including banking committee members Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. More than 100 congressmen joined the effort, which was led in the House by Michigan Rep. John Conyers and gained support from California Rep. Maxine Waters, ranking member of the House financial services committee.
“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,” the letter states. “When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected.”
Donald Trump, the GOP’s presumptive nominee, did not return a request for comment.
The leaders of the Fed are responsible for steering the ship of the American economy, setting a benchmark interest rate that can influence the cost of borrowing money for everything from a car, to a home to a factory. They also regulate the country’s biggest banks and help ensure the nation's financial system can withstand another crisis, making them among the most influential policymakers in the world.
Those officials tend to be white males. Yellen is the first woman to serve as chair in the central bank’s 101-year history. Only three Fed governors have been African American, and there have been no black regional bank presidents. No one now in the top brass is Hispanic.
In addition, an analysis by the progressive Center for Popular Democracy found that 83 percent of the boards of directors are white and three-fourths are male. The group also found that 39 percent of directors come from the financial industry, while 11 percent are from community groups, labor organizations or academia.
There are nine seats on the boards of directors. Under current law, three are required to be filled by representatives of the banking industry. However, they are not allowed to participate in choosing reserve bank presidents — the officials who would be responsible for setting the nation’s monetary policy. The bank president must also win approval from the Fed's politically appointed board of governors, based in Washington.
In a statement, a spokesman for the Fed’s board of governors said it is committed to fostering diversity of all types within its leadership and that its track record has improved.
“To bring a variety of perspectives to Federal Reserve Bank and Branch boards, we have focused considerable attention in recent years on recruiting directors with diverse backgrounds and experience,” the statement said. “By law, we consider the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers. We also are aiming to increase ethnic and gender diversity.”
The criticism comes in the midst of a controversial debate within the central bank. The Fed hiked interest rates in December for the first time since the Great Recession, citing the strength in the U.S. recovery. It had anticipated increasing rates four more times this year but has since downgraded that expectation amid weakness in the global economy. Investors around the world are now carefully watching to see what the Fed will do when it meets again in June.
Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen was joined by her three predecessors Ben Bernanke Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan at a discussion in New York City on the global economy. (Reuters)
The Center for Popular Democracy and its activist coalition, Fed Up, are pressuring the central bank not to raise its benchmark interest rate until the unemployment rate falls to 4 percent. Sanders has endorsed that target in the past, though the letter released Thursday said only that the central bank should give “due consideration” to the unevenness of the recovery.
“It is unacceptable that discussion of the job market for these populations would be an afterthought, or worse, ignored entirely, and we are concerned that the lack of balanced representation may be a significant cause of this oversight,” Democratic lawmakers said in their letter to Yellen.
Democrats have generally supported the central bank’s aggressive stimulus efforts following the 2008 financial crisis, but the prospect of higher interest rates is prompting some to question the Fed’s stance. In congressional testimony earlier this year, Yellen said there are limits to the central bank’s ability to help disadvantaged communities.
"It’s important to recognize that our powers, which involve setting interest rates, affecting financial conditions, are not targeted and can't be targeted at the experience of particular groups,” she said. “I think it always has been true and continues to be true that when the labor market improves, the experience of all groups does improve."
The Fed established an internal diversity office in 2011 as part of sweeping congressional reforms of the country’s financial system. The latest annual report for the Washington-based board of governors found minorities made up just 18 percent of top management in 2015, down from 21 percent the previous year. However, more than half of mid-level managers and administrative and support workers are minorities.
The report outlines several steps the Fed is taking to improve the recruitment and promotion of minority employees, such as a teaching and mentoring partnership with Howard University, a prestigious historically black college in the District.
By Ylan Q. Mui
Source
May Day Protesters Gather Outside JP Morgan Chase HQ in Manhattan
May Day Protesters Gather Outside JP Morgan Chase HQ in Manhattan
New Yorkers kicked off May Day protests early on May 1, marching from Bryant Park to the JP Morgan Chase headquarters...
New Yorkers kicked off May Day protests early on May 1, marching from Bryant Park to the JP Morgan Chase headquarters in Manhattan, where they attempted to block the entrance. Over a dozen arrests were made, according to local reports.
The protesters outside JP Morgan were joined by others outside the Wells Fargo building as part of a larger Take on Corporate Backers of Hate March, targeting the corporate entities for financing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers and private prisons across the country.
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Let’s Be Real Episode 6: We’re Fed Up!
Let’s Be Real Episode 6: We’re Fed Up!
This episode, we take a look at a campaign that focuses on the Federal Reserve System and its impact on working people...
This episode, we take a look at a campaign that focuses on the Federal Reserve System and its impact on working people and people of color. We take you to a rally in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where we spoke with two protesters about how the Fed impacts their communities. Then, we sit down with the Director of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up! Campaign to hear about the fight to put working people and communities of color at the center of the Fed’s decision-making process.
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Transcript: Netroots Annual ConfeCPD and Local Progress Mentioned in C-Span during Netroots Conventionrence
Transcript: Netroots Annual ConfeCPD and Local Progress Mentioned in C-Span during Netroots Conventionrence
...codirector of Local Progress, a national group that unites progressive local officials and allied organizations. It...
...codirector of Local Progress, a national group that unites progressive local officials and allied organizations. It is run by the Center for popular Democracy...
Read the transcript here.
Activists Deliver Climate Plan for Just Transition to EPA Offices Nationwide
On January 19, activists at each of the Environmental Protection Agency's 10 regional offices issued their own...
On January 19, activists at each of the Environmental Protection Agency's 10 regional offices issued their own corrective on the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan. Days before the end of the federal comment period, the Climate Justice Alliance's Our Power Campaign - comprised of 41 climate and environmental justice organizations - presented its Our Power Plan, which identifies "clear and specific strategies for implementing the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, in a way that will truly benefit our families' health and our country's economy."
Introduced last summer, the CPP looks to bring down power plants' carbon emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels within 15 years. The plan was made possible by Massachusetts vs. EPA, a 2007 Supreme Court ruling which mandates that the agency regulate greenhouse gases as it has other toxins and pollutants under the Clean Air Act of 1963. Under the CPP, states are each required to draft their own implementation plans by September of this year, or by 2018 if granted an extension. If they fail to do so, state governments will be placed by default into an interstate carbon trading, or "Cap and Trade," system to bring down emissions.
Michael Leon Guerrero, the Climate Justice Alliance's interim coordinator, was in Paris for the most recent round of UN climate talks as part of the It Takes Roots Delegation, which brought together over 100 organizers from North American communities on the frontlines of both climate change and fossil fuel extraction. He sees the Our Power Plan as a logical next step for the group coming out of COP21, especially as the onus for implementing and improving the Paris agreement now falls to individual nations.
"Fundamentally," he said, "we need to transform our economy and rebuild our communities. We can't address the climate crisis in a cave without addressing issues of equity."
The Our Power Plan, or OPP, is intended as a blueprint for governments and EPA administrators to address the needs of frontline communities as they draft their state-level plans over the next several months. (People living within three miles of a coal plant have incomes averaging 15 percent lower than average, and are eight percent more likely to be communities of color.) Included in the OPP are calls to bolster what CJA sees as the CPP's more promising aspects, like renewable energy provisions, while eliminating proposed programs they see as more harmful. The CPP's carbon trading scheme, CJA argues, allows polluters to buy "permissions to pollute," or carbon credits, rather than actually stemming emissions.
The OPP further outlines ways that the EPA can ensure a "just transition" away from fossil fuels, encouraging states to invest in job creation, conduct equity analyses and "work with frontlines communities to develop definitions, indicators, and tracking and response systems that really account for impacts like health, energy use, cost of energy, climate vulnerability [and] cumulative risk."
Lacking support from Congress, the Obama administration has relied on executive action to push through everything from environmental action to comprehensive immigration reform. The Clean Power Plan was central to the package Obama brought to Paris. Also central to COP21 was US negotiators' insistence on keeping its results non-binding, citing Republican lawmakers' unwillingness to pass legislation.
Predictably, the CPP has faced legal challenges from the same forces, who decry the president for having overstepped the bounds of his authority. Republican state governments, utility companies, and fossil fuel industry groups have all filed suit against the CPP, with many asking for expedited hearings. Leading up the anti-CPP charge in Congress has been Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who hascalled the plan a "regulatory assault," pitting fossil fuel industry workers against the EPA. "Here's what is lost in this administration's crusade for ideological purity," he wrote in a November statement, "the livelihoods of our coal miners and their families."
Organizers of Tuesday's actions, however, were quick to point out that the Our Power Plan is aimed at strengthening - not defeating - the CPP as it stands. Denise Abdul-Rahman, of NAACP Indiana, helped organize an OPP delivery at the EPA's Region 5 headquarters in Chicago, bringing out representatives from Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, National People's Action and National Nurses United.
"We appreciate the integrity of the Clean Power Plan," she said. "However, we believe it needs to be improved - from eliminating carbon trading to ensuring that there's equity. We want to improve CPP by adding our voices and our plan, and we encourage the EPA to make it better." Four of the six states in that region - which includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin - are suing the EPA.
Endorsed by the National Domestic Workers' Alliance, Greenpeace and the Center for Popular Democracy, among other organizations, yesterday's national day of action on the EPA came as new details emerged in Flint, Michigan's ongoing water crisis - along with calls for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation and arrest. The EPA has also admitted fault for its slow response to Flint residents' complaints, writing in a statement this week that "necessary [EPA] actions were not taken as quickly as they should have been."
Abdul-Rahman connected the water crisis with the need for a justly-implemented CPP. "The Flint government let their community down by not protecting our most precious asset, which is water," she said. "The same is true of air: we need the highest standard of protecting human beings' air, water, land."
Source: Truthout
29 days ago
30 days ago