Why U.S. Cities Are Fighting to Attract Immigrants
Why U.S. Cities Are Fighting to Attract Immigrants
Backyard barbecues. Fireworks. A day off work. Among these traditions we look forward to on the Fourth of July, there is an even more patriotic rite of passage: the oath immigrants take to become...
Backyard barbecues. Fireworks. A day off work. Among these traditions we look forward to on the Fourth of July, there is an even more patriotic rite of passage: the oath immigrants take to become American citizens.
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Here and Now
Here and Now
At noon, members of the Hedge Clippers campaign, New York Communities for Change and The Center for Popular Democracy protest Blackstone, a company behind foreclosures in Puerto Rico, 345 Park Ave...
At noon, members of the Hedge Clippers campaign, New York Communities for Change and The Center for Popular Democracy protest Blackstone, a company behind foreclosures in Puerto Rico, 345 Park Ave., Manhattan.
Read the full article here.
Housing advocates: FHFA won’t reduce principal, offers discounted NPLs
Two liberal advocacy groups have published a provocative study accusing the Department of Housing & Urban Development and the Federal Housing Finance Agencyof...
Two liberal advocacy groups have published a provocative study accusing the Department of Housing & Urban Development and the Federal Housing Finance Agencyof helping Wall Street at the expense of low-income communities by selling non-performing loans to investors.
The Center for Popular Democracy and the ACCE Institute’s report “Do Hedge Funds Make Good Neighbors?: How Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD are Selling Off Our Neighborhoods to Wall Street” is lengthy and accusatory.
The study looks at how HUD has since 2012 auctioned off, at a discount, some 120,000 Non-Performing Loans that they want to get off their books.
They also take into account similar actions by the FHFA through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have sold over 10,000 mortgages already this year.
The study, which can be read here, notes that nearly all of the roughly 130,000 mortgages have been sold to Wall Street hedge funds and private equities firms, leading to what they call the rise of a new phenomenon in this country – Wall Street as major landlord and neighbor in communities across the country.
“An initial examination into four of the largest purchasers of HUD and FHFA loans has unearthed an array of disturbing business practices, ranging from those that clearly run counter to the goals of homeownership preservation and neighborhood stability to those that break laws, deceive homeowners, and harm taxpayers more generally,” the study claims.
The authors argue that HUD and FHFA should sell these troubled mortgages to entities working to preserve homeownership and create affordable housing, not to Wall Street speculators with a history of defrauding taxpayers and harming homeowners, tenants and neighborhoods.
“Nearly eight years after the start of the global financial crisis, hedge funds and private equity firms have found yet another way to make big profits: distressed housing assets. Often, the very same corporate actors that precipitated the housing crash in the first place are buying and selling off delinquent mortgages and vacant houses that are a product of the crash,” the study says. “Together, these Wall Street entities have raised over $20 billion to buy the notes for as many as 200,000 homes in the United States. The newly consolidated single-family rental market is a lucrative business. A 2014 study estimated that the four largest holders of these assets have seen as much as a 23% rate of return on the properties they purchased in the last three years.”
However, HUD has been making changes to how it deals with distressed assets and NPL sales.
Just two months ago, HUD announced significant changes to its Distressed Asset Stabilization Program. HUD also announced additional improvements to the Neighborhood Stabilization Outcome sales portion of DASP which are aimed at increasing non-profit participation.
Updates include giving non-profits a first look at vacant properties, allowing purchasers to re-sell notes to non-profits, and offering a non-profit only pool.
Previously, loan servicers could foreclose 6 months after they received the loan and were encouraged, though not required to assess a borrower’s qualifications for loss mitigation programs. Purchasers of the geographically targeted neighborhood stabilization pools have always been required to ensure that at least 50% of the loans in a pool achieve outcomes that help areas hardest hit by foreclosure avoid the neighborhood decline associated with numerous vacant properties.
“These changes reflect our desire to make improvements that encourage investors to work with delinquent borrowers to find the right solutions for dealing with the potential loss of their home and encourage greater non-profit participation in our sales,” said Genger Charles, Acting General Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Housing, when it was announced. “The improvements not only strengthen the program but help to ensure it continues to serve its intended purposes of supporting the MMI Fund and offering borrowers a second chance at avoiding foreclosure.”
The groups are calling on HUD and FHFA to “establish much higher standards and criteria for the kind of companies that are eligible to purchase delinquent mortgages” and to “prioritize companies that have a clearly defined program to offer permanent modifications with principal reduction and to create affordable housing with vacant properties.” ?
They also want FHFA to “immediately begin to offer principal reduction in their own modification process.”
“Two distinct paths forward are available: the abuses of the biggest purchasers to date of the HUD and FHFA non-performing loans; or, the approach of community development financial institutions with both the ability and the commitment to create affordable housing to better local communities. The status quo benefits the very actors that hastened the financial crisis and actively created the conditions that sucked over half the wealth from millions of American families. These companies profit from new predatory practices and speculative business models that once again take advantage of ordinary people,” the study concludes.
Source: HousingWire
Cities, states seek to protect immigrants' data from federal officials
Cities, states seek to protect immigrants' data from federal officials
Fear is growing in immigrant communities that the federal government might try to obtain the information from local governments, said Emily Tucker, a senior staff attorney at the Center for...
Fear is growing in immigrant communities that the federal government might try to obtain the information from local governments, said Emily Tucker, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy, which backs the expansion of municipal ID programs and seeks to help unauthorized immigrants facing deportation.
Read the full story here.
As Wells Fargo is Accused of Fabricating Foreclosure Papers, Will Banks Keep Escaping Prosecution?
Democracy Now - March 21, 2014 - A new internal report says the Justice Department massively overstated its successes in targeting mortgage fraud while in fact ranking it as a low priority for...
Democracy Now - March 21, 2014 - A new internal report says the Justice Department massively overstated its successes in targeting mortgage fraud while in fact ranking it as a low priority for investigation. The Justice Department’s inspector general says despite playing a central role in the nation’s financial crisis, mortgage fraud was deemed either a low priority or not a priority at all. This comes as a recently revealed internal Wells Fargo document appears to guide lawyers step by step on how to fabricate missing documents to foreclose on homeowners. Wells Fargo is the country’s largest mortgage servicer and services some nine million home loans.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A new internal report says the Justice Department massively overstated its successes in targeting mortgage fraud while in fact ranking it as a low priority for investigation. The Justice Department’s inspector general says despite playing a central role in the nation’s financial crisis, mortgage fraud was deemed either a low priority or not a priority at all. In one instance, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed to have filed lawsuits on behalf of homeowner victims for losses totaling more than $1 billion, but the actual amount was 91 percent less, around $95 million.
This comes as a recently revealed internal Wells Fargo document appears to guide lawyers step by step on how to fabricate missing documents to foreclose on homeowners. Wells Fargo is the country’s largest mortgage servicer and services some nine million home loans.
AMY GOODMAN: State and federal regulators are now focusing on the allegations in the lawsuit brought by Linda Tirelli, who joins us now. She’s an attorney representing clients being foreclosed on by Wells Fargo. Earlier this month, she discovered the Wells Fargo manual on how to produce missing documents to foreclose on homeowners. She’s a partner at the Garvey, Tirelli & Cushner law firm in White Plains, New York.
In Minneapolis, we’re joined by Kevin Whelan, campaign director for the Home Defenders League, a national movement of underwater homeowners and allies who organize to keep people in their homes and demand accountability.
Wells Fargo declined Democracy Now!'s interview request, saying they're in a, quote, "quiet period" pending the announcement of their quarterly earnings.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Linda Tirelli, let’s begin with you.
LINDA TIRELLI: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe this manual, how you got it and what it reveals?
LINDA TIRELLI: Absolutely. The manual that I have, it’s actually entitled the "Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Foreclosure Attorney [Procedure] Manual, Version 1." And it says on it that it’s last published 2/24/2012. Mind you, the national mortgage settlement agreement was announced a week prior, on 2/19/2012.
The way I obtained it, it was actually sitting right there on the Internet, of all things. A colleague of mine, through a Max Gardner’s Bankruptcy Boot Camp, which I am a member, an active member, gave it to me and said, "Hey, I found this online, and I know you’re doing a lot of Wells Fargo cases. Maybe you can use this."
Reading it, my jaw just dropped. As I see it, it’s clearly outlining procedures, not just for the $12-an-hour robo-signers that we’ve heard about all these years, but for the lawyers, who need to be held accountable to a much higher degree. It’s the manual for the lawyers to actually fabricate documents, as I see it, and request that documents that are lacking be fabricated by Wells Fargo. It’s absolutely appalling.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you know, we’ve had on Democracy Now! a couple of times the Brooklyn Supreme Court judge, Arthur Schack, who raised a campaign over—not only over the robo-signers in many cases that he had before his court, but also over the bank officials and the attorneys who participated in this fraud. And there have been several judges in different parts of the country who have raised these issues. How do you think this advances the whole issue of going after—of having the smoking gun to go after these companies?
LINDA TIRELLI: Well, I think that judges cannot make determinations based on suspicion. OK? This is the first and only internal document that I’m aware of that clearly outlines the fraud. And that’s how I put it in my allegations to the court. And we are very, very fortunate in New York to have a number of proactive judges who get it, but unfortunately, they’re few and far between across the country. My hope is that judges as wonderful as Arthur Schack and as great as many of our federal judges—I do appear mostly in federal courts—that they will be proactive, they will take this seriously and start to question Wells Fargo on their procedures.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to read a bit from the Wells Fargo document. In this section called Note Endorsement, it says, quote, "If the blank endorsement is in the file for an original state, execute the endorsement, send the original document to the attorney, and complete the Z02 step." Can you explain what this means?
LINDA TIRELLI: Sure. I take that to mean that if there is actually an endorsement that exists, they need to endorse it. But as the party in—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And by "endorsement," you mean?
LINDA TIRELLI: Sign it over.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oh.
LINDA TIRELLI: OK. But the question is: Do they have the authority to sign it over? Is it an authorized endorsement? Who’s signing it over? As the lawyer, I would need to know that before proceeding with a foreclosure. If it’s a document that needs to—if it was a note that needed to be endorsed, under a pooling and servicing agreement, which is followed by every securitized trust—and most of these loans, let’s face it, are owned by securitized trusts in some form or another—they should have been endorsed long before the foreclosure was ever started, at the time that it was actually acquired by the trust, or allegedly acquired by the trust.
AMY GOODMAN: So this manual talks about how to fabricate a document—
LINDA TIRELLI: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: —that you don’t have, that you need.
LINDA TIRELLI: That’s how I’m reading it.
AMY GOODMAN: That Wells Fargo would need.
LINDA TIRELLI: Exactly. That’s—
AMY GOODMAN: To foreclose on the house.
LINDA TIRELLI: Exactly right. That’s exactly how I’m reading it. I’m reading it to say that it’s not just, when there is a blank endorsement, fill in the blank. But sometimes when there—there’s actually a procedure in here, as I read it, for when there’s no endorsement, OK? Go ahead and endorse the note. Just request that the note be endorsed. And that’s what we call, in our area of law, a "tada endorsement." The bank produces a copy of a note, just for example, that has no endorsement on it, and then when we ask about it and say, "Gee, this note is not endorsed to your client. How is it that you’re—you know, you’re bringing foreclosure?" and they say, "Oh, here, use this version. Tada! Now we have an endorsement." And it’s always a rubber stamp, that you or I could go to Staples and purchase for $9.95.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You also, one of your cases, came across a document which was purportedly from an official of Washington Mutual Bank in 2010, but Washington Mutual didn’t exist in 2010, because it had collapsed back in 2008.
LINDA TIRELLI: 2008, that’s right. That document was signed by Mr. John Kennerty in—who works for Wells Fargo, or worked for Wells Fargo at the time. And in this procedure manual, there’s actually a procedure for obtaining what’s called an assignment of mortgage, OK? So, basically, as I’m reading this procedure, it’s saying, "Gee, if you need an assignment, the attorney should request it through the document department, and then, magically, one will appear for you." And that’s exactly what we’re seeing. The people that work for Wells Fargo in these various departments, when they receive a request from an attorney, they take that as permission to actually sign something, without doing any research whatsoever. How is it, as you point out, we had anything assigned from in a company that ceased to exist two years prior? It just simply makes no sense. That document’s fabricated. And in that particular case, I will point out, the judge actually deemed that document to be a fraudulent document on record.
AMY GOODMAN: I remember when Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur was standing on the floor of the House and telling homeowners, "Stay in their homes and demand that they produce the note. Produce the note." I wanted to go to Eric Schneiderman. Last May, the New York attorney—the New York attorney general announced plans to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo for violating the terms of a settlement aimed at curbing foreclosure abuses. The $26 billion settlement was reached in 2012 between five major banks and 49 attorneys general. It provided basic protections for homeowners, such as requiring banks to notify them about missing documents within a certain time period. But Schneiderman said the banks had violated the terms of the settlement with impunity. At the news conference in May, he lifted a massive sheaf of papers to show the hundreds of complaints issued by homeowners against the banks.
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Two of the participating servicers, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have flagrantly violated their obligations under the settlement. I’ve sent a letter to the monitoring committee, the body that oversees the implementation of the national mortgage servicing settlement, notifying them of my intention to sue both Wells Fargo and Bank of America for noncompliance with servicing standards spelled out in the settlement. This enforcement action, which is the first taken under the settlement, is based on 339 individual complaints from New Yorkers against these two banks in just the last six months
AMY GOODMAN: Linda Tirelli, can you explain what happened with this case?
LINDA TIRELLI: Yes. Well, first of all, I want to point out, and very much to Mr. Schneiderman’s credit, within four hours of the New York Post writing the article exposing this documents, within four hours, I received not only a phone call, but an email from Attorney Schneiderman’s office, and we had a long discussion about it. I also received the phone call and an email from the New York State Division of Financial Services. So I’m hoping that they are now launching new investigations.
Basically, to put—as I understand Mr. Schneiderman’s point, Wells Fargo was signing off on the national mortgage settlement agreement out of one side of its mouth. Out of the other side, they were republishing their manual to say, "Hey, we’re going to continue business as usual. All right? Throw some money at it. It’s done. Quiet down the homeowners. We’ll just continue business as usual." And that’s what we’re seeing. That’s exactly what we’re seeing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Kevin Whelan, from the Home Defenders League, can you put this in a national context of the mortgage crisis? Here we are now, six years into the home mortgage crisis that crashed the entire economy.
KEVIN WHELAN: Absolutely. Thanks you for having me, very much, today. We hear, every time there is an uptick in real estate prices in some parts of the country, that the foreclosure crisis or the mortgage crisis is over. And certainly, Wells Fargo and the big banks are back to making record profits and feel like everything is great. But foreclosures are still tearing apart many communities, particularly communities of color that were targeted for predatory and subprime lending. And one in five American homeowners is still underwater, meaning they owe more on their house than the house is currently worth.
So we’ve made the banks whole without effectively curbing their abusive practices to give homeowners the runaround, to use falsified documents and to rush toward foreclosure when there’s a perfectly good way to reach a different settlement. And they’ve not done enough to make homeowners whole, including doing principal reduction that they promised to do under settlements.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you respond to this latest news about the attorney general—the office making a low priority or no priority at all going after these mortgage lenders?
KEVIN WHELAN: Yeah, absolutely. The news is no surprise to people that have been fighting foreclosure in communities around the country. We work with 25 community groups in our at-large organization, so people can come find us at HomeDefendersLeague.org and get on a phone call and learn how to start a petition and fight for their homes. And people have been, you know, in cases all over the place, trying to stave off foreclosure.
We had a family in New Jersey last month, Paulette McQueen and her 86-year-old mom, who had missed one mortgage payment in 2010, went to Wells Fargo the next month with both checks in hand, and Wells Fargo wouldn’t take their money and started a three-year campaign to take their house. That was only resolved when people in 13 cities delivered petitions to Wells Fargo’s offices around the country. And they finally got a call back and are going to work out a solution to be able to stay in their home. It was a whole week before a sheriff’s sale.
So, it’s—you know, families that are facing this know both that the housing crisis isn’t over and that nothing has happened that’s on a deep enough or broad enough scale to make the banks fearful or sorry for either the harm they’ve done, or change their behavior in fundamental ways.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, there are some localities, some local governments, that have tried—intervened themselves in trying to beat back the crisis of people being kicked out of their homes. Could you talk about some of those examples?
KEVIN WHELAN: Yeah, there—one thing that’s—we know there’s something to it, because the banks, led by Wells Fargo, are especially panicked and angry about the solution. But in Richmond, California—I think you had the mayor of Richmond, Gayle McLaughlin, on the show before—has been a city that’s led the way—and many more are going to follow—to enact principal reduction, meaning resetting loans to their current market value on the local level. And this is exciting because, while these federal agencies, like the Justice Department, are too often captive of the big banks, people can use democracy and win on the local level sometimes.
The concept for this particular program is that cities would work with other investors to buy the loans at their fair market value on the secondary market, which is pennies on the dollar of what these underwater loans are worth, and help refinance homeowners into new loans that have equity. And this is a concept that has gotten started in Richmond, but people are meeting even today in different cities around the country to spread this. And I think, not so much because it would cost them money as because it’s a chance for people to use the rule of law and democracy to impact the economy and impact banks’ behavior, banks like Wells Fargo have sued, unsuccessfully, and made all kinds of threats about redlining communities in order to try to stop it. People can go to FightingForeclosures.org and learn more about that particular plan and get involved in that campaign.
AMY GOODMAN: Kevin Whelan, you’ve been arrested outside of Attorney General Eric Holder—outside the Justice Department, demanding more action. And yet, Linda Tirelli, we have this latest news that as—that the attorney general claimed to have filed lawsuits on behalf of homeowner victims for losses totaling more than a billion dollars. In fact, it was 91 percent less than this, at $95 million. What do you think should happen? Who gets prosecuted here, and who is let go free?
LINDA TIRELLI: I think that at this point, let’s face it, we’re never going to see a perp walk, as much as we’d like to see one, because this is illegal activity that we’re talking about. At the very least, I think now this document gives the New York attorney general free access to every attorney who’s ever followed this manual and hold them accountable, because it is illegal. And we are held, as attorneys, to a much higher standard. We have to do a certain amount of due diligence, and we cannot knowingly produce false documents and submit them into a court of law. Our entire judicial process is based on integrity. This document, as I read it, OK, is going to bypass the integrity of the entire system, and it becomes now the civil procedure rules according to Wells Fargo. And that’s the rules they’re willing to play by.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And more importantly, the author of that document, right, who approved that document for all these lawyers to use.
LINDA TIRELLI: Exactly right, exactly right. And I want to point out that I actually introduced this document—
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
LINDA TIRELLI: —in a motion to reopen discovery after a trial, and my hope is that we will get discovery and get someone to a deposition table and get the answer to that.
AMY GOODMAN: Before Eric Holder was attorney general, he was a senior partner at Covington & Burling. Among the banks they represented, the four largest: Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
LINDA TIRELLI: No shock there.
AMY GOODMAN: Linda Tirelli, attorney representing clients being foreclosed on; Kevin Whelan of Home Defenders League, thanks so much for joining us.
Source
As Federal Reserve Selects New Top Officials, Coalition Calls for Public Input
New York Times - November 10, 2014, by Binyamin Appelbaum - A coalition of community...
New York Times - November 10, 2014, by Binyamin Appelbaum - A coalition of community groups and labor unions wants the Federal Reserve to change the way some Fed officials are appointed, criticizing the existing process as secretive, undemocratic and dominated by banks and other large corporations.
In letters sent to Fed officials last week, the coalition called for the central bank to let the public participate in choosing new presidents for the regional reserve banks in Philadelphia and Dallas. The current heads of both banks plan to step down in the first half of 2015.
The Fed’s chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, has agreed to meet on Friday with about three dozen representatives of the groups to hear their concerns.
“The Federal Reserve has huge influence over the number of people who have jobs, over our wages, over the number of hours that we get to work, and yet we don’t have discussion and engagement over what Fed policy should be,” said Ady Barkan, a lawyer with the Center for Popular Democracy, a Brooklyn-based advocacy group that is orchestrating the campaigns. “More people’s voices need to be heard.”
A spokeswoman for Ms. Yellen confirmed the meeting but declined to comment on the issues raised by the groups.
The Philadelphia Fed said in an email that the institution “is conducting a broad search for its next president and will consider a diverse group of candidates from inside and outside the Federal Reserve System.”
James Hoard, a spokesman for the Dallas Fed, said the bank’s board would meet on Thursday to discuss the search process.
The campaign is part of a broader increase in political pressure on the Fed, which is engaged in a long-running campaign to stimulate the economy that some liberals regard as insufficient and some conservatives see as both ineffective and dangerous. Mr. Barkan led a picket line in support of the Fed’s efforts in August outside the annual monetary policy conference at Jackson Hole, Wyo.
House Republicans, meanwhile, have passed legislation that seeks to reduce the Fed’s flexibility in responding to economic downturns, arguing that such efforts are destabilizing.
The Fed acts like a monolith, but it has a complicated skeleton. Most power rests with a board of governors in Washington, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But operations are conducted through 12 regional banks, each of which selects its own president. And those presidents rotate among themselves five of the 12 seats on the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy.
The two presidents who have said they plan to step down are, by coincidence, among the most outspoken internal critics of the Fed’s campaign to stimulate the economy. Charles I. Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Fed since 2006, plans to retire at the end of March. Richard W. Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed since 2005, is required to step down by the end of April, though he has not set a date.
Their replacements will be selected by the board of each reserve bank. Each board has nine members, including three bankers, but under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, only the nonbank members can participate in the process. The banks in each reserve district, however, still elect three of those six nonbank members. The other three, including the chairman and vice chairman, are appointed by the Fed board in Washington.
By law, the boards are supposed to represent a diverse set of viewpoints, including “labor and consumers.” But the 72 nonbank board members are predominantly corporate executives. Just eight are leaders of community groups; two more are leaders of labor groups.
Corporate executives exclusively make up the boards of the St. Louis and Richmond regional banks. The Dallas Fed’s board includes the presidents of the Houston Endowment — a charitable organization — and the University of Houston. The Philadelphia Fed has five executives and the president of the University of Delaware.
“I look at that list and it doesn’t strike me that most of those folks are representing the public,” Kati Sipp, director of Pennsylvania Working Families, a nonprofit advocacy group that is one of the signatories of the recent letter, said of the Philadelphia Fed’s board. “We believe it is important for the people who are making economic policy to hear from the regular folks on the ground who are being affected by those decisions.”
The two dozen signatories also include the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, New Jersey Communities United and W. Wilson Goode Jr., a Philadelphia city councilman. The letter asks for the Fed to disclose basic information about the selection process, including the timetable, criteria and, eventually, names of candidates. It also seeks search committee seats and opportunities to question the candidates publicly.
The selection process is secretive, but control has increasingly shifted from the regional banks to the board of governors. Beginning under the leadership of Alan Greenspan, a former Fed chairman, the central bank has sought presidents who can contribute to making monetary policy. The board provides informal guidance during the winnowing process, and candidates travel to Washington to meet with the governors.
As a result of that trend, 10 of the 12 sitting presidents are former Fed staffers, economists or both. Mr. Fisher, a former investor, is one exception. The other is Dennis P. Lockhart, a former banker who leads the Atlanta Fed — and is the next president who will reach retirement age.
Source
The John Gore Organization & Scarlett Johansson's Our Town Benefit Raises $500,000 for Hurricane Maria Community Relief Fund
The event played to a full house and a very enthusiastic crowd. With more than 3,500 tickets sold, it was one of the largest audiences the play has ever been presented to in one night. Johansson...
The event played to a full house and a very enthusiastic crowd. With more than 3,500 tickets sold, it was one of the largest audiences the play has ever been presented to in one night. Johansson was joined on stage for opening remarks by director Leon and Xiomara Caro, Director of New Organizing Projects for the Center of Popular Democracy and coordinator for The Maria Fund, sharing an inspiring message about the purpose of the event and the relief effort. They brought the crowd to their feet when they revealed that the evening’s efforts resulted in half of a million dollars raised to help Puerto Rico in their hour of need.
Read the full article here.
Starbucks Employees Treated Badly
While Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) CEO and founder Howard Schultz barnstorms America with one new program to help Americans after another, a new report shows his company continues to treat many...
While Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) CEO and founder Howard Schultz barnstorms America with one new program to help Americans after another, a new report shows his company continues to treat many of its employees badly.
According to research released by experts at the Center for Popular Democracy:
A 2015 nationwide survey of Starbucks workers reveals that the company is not living up to its commitment to provide predictable, sustainable schedules to its workforce. Starbucks’ frontline employees bear the brunt of the management imperative to minimize store labor costs, which takes precedence over attempts to stabilize work hours, provide healthy schedules, and to ensure employees have real input into their working conditions.
Also:
Many Starbucks scheduling policies fail to reflect the company’s human-focused values, while other policies designed to promote sustainable schedules have been implemented inconsistently.
According to a recent report from 24/7 Wall St. titled Companies Paying Americans the Least:
Coffee giant Starbucks employs roughly 141,000 people in the United States at more than 7,300 locations. Because the coffee chain offers some benefits not commonly offered in low-paying jobs, it has long been considered the ideal job for young students supporting themselves or even single parents. However, an increasing number of reports suggest the famous Seattle company makes life difficult for its employees. Of particular note is the company’s increasing use of complicated and inconsistent scheduling, a practice also used by many other major retailers. This practice means that baristas’ hours may be posted with little notice, preventing them from making other plans, and therefore nearly denying them the ability to earn extra income from other sources.
The work hours, benefit problems and low pay challenges face many employees at large food chains and major retailers, but none of those places has a chief executive who publicly advocates the right of many of America’s most economically challenged people. Among the most recent was Schultz’s effort to support hiring the underprivileged in Phoenix:
“Chicago marked an important milestone in our efforts to put America’s underserved youth on a pathway to employment,” said Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks and co-founder of the Schultz Family Foundation. “As we look ahead to Phoenix, where one in five youth is not in school or employed, we have a critical opportunity to accelerate our collective hiring efforts and create meaningful lifelong opportunities for all. I truly believe that these young men and women represent the most significant untapped source of productivity and talent for our economy, and America’s leading companies are ready to hire them.”
If one of these young people gets a job at Starbucks, the “meaningful lifelong opportunities” may not be much of an opportunity at all.
Source: 247WallSt.com
Report: Black Unemployment in Bay Area More Than Three Times the Average
SF Examiner - March 6, 2014, by Chris Roberts - After 200 unanswered job applications, Ebony Eisler finally landed a $15 an hour position as a medical assistant in Mission Bay. But since she's a...
SF Examiner - March 6, 2014, by Chris Roberts - After 200 unanswered job applications, Ebony Eisler finally landed a $15 an hour position as a medical assistant in Mission Bay. But since she's a temp worker, she earns less than her co-workers, who make $20 to $25 per hour for the same work.
Still, as a black woman in San Francisco, she is fortunate. The unemployment rate for black people in the Bay Area is 19 percent, according to 2013 U.S. Census Bureau data crunched by the Economic Policy Institute.
Blacks are unemployed at more than three times the rate of workers of other races, according to this data. The Bay Area finished 2013 with a 6 percent total unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In San Francisco, unemployment has dropped rapidly since Mayor Ed Lee took office in January 2011, when the jobless rate was 9.5 percent. The most recent figures from the state Employment Development Department — which does not publish jobless rates by race — pegged The City's unemployment rate at 3.8 percent, by far the rosiest employment figures since the first dot-com boom at the turn of the millennium.
The wide gulf in the jobless rate between ethnic groups living in the same city belies the idea that The City and state have fully recovered from the Great Recession, according to advocates with the leftist Center for Popular Democracy.
The group released the unemployment figures by ethnicity Thursday as part of a national campaign to convince the Federal Reserve Bank to keep interest rates low in order for the economic recovery to trickle down to all workers.
So far, "the recovery is based on white America alone," said Eisler, 36, a Bayview resident who holds an associates degree and a certified nursing assistant license. Her current job, the best she could find, does not cover her $1,800 a month rent, she said.
Statewide, the jobless rate for black people is 14 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute, compared to 6.1 percent for whites, 8.5 percent for Latinos and 5.9 percent for Asians.
Source
Walter Isaacson to sit on City Planning Commission, and other area political news
Walter Isaacson to sit on City Planning Commission, and other area political news
Isaacson to sit on City Planning Commission
Author and former CNN CEO Walter Isaacson may be only a part-time resident of New Orleans, but Mayor Mitch Landrieu has appointed him to the City...
Isaacson to sit on City Planning Commission
Author and former CNN CEO Walter Isaacson may be only a part-time resident of New Orleans, but Mayor Mitch Landrieu has appointed him to the City Planning Commission.
Isaacson, 64, who now heads the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., will replace lawyer Alexandra Mora in January.
The City Council approved the appointment Thursday.
“I'm deeply honored and excited about the prospect of helping to protect the city and plan for its future,” said Isaacson, who splits his time between New Orleans and Washington.
Isaacson, a New Orleans native, is also a former editor of Time magazine and the author of books about Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger and the "group of hackers, geniuses and geeks (who) created the digital revolution."
He was vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the agency that oversaw the state’s rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. He is also on the boards of Tulane University and the New Orleans Tricentennial Commission.
Landrieu also appointed Jason Hughes to the commission to fill the unexpired term of Nolan Marshall III, who left New Orleans in October for a job in Dallas.
Hughes’ tenure will end in 2021, while Isaacson's will end in 2023.
City Council condemns anti-Muslim rhetoric
At the end of a heated election season that has included calls from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to ban Muslims from entering the country, the New Orleans City Council approved a resolution Thursday condemning anti-Muslim rhetoric.
The resolution is part of a national effort by the liberal group Local Progress to get similar measures passed across the country
"We have seen dangerous levels of anti-Muslim and racist rhetoric as well as a rise in hate crimes," said Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, a board member of Local Progress. "This rhetoric and violence is not only a threat to our communities but also a direct threat to us as U.S. citizens."
The resolution passed 6-0, with Councilman Jason Williams absent.
"Love really does trump hate," Cantrell said, echoing a slogan used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The resolution says the council "condemns all hateful speech and violent action directed at Muslims, those perceived to be Muslims, immigrants and people of color," "categorically rejects political tactics that use fear to manipulate voters or to gain power or influence" and "reaffirms the value of a pluralistic society, the beauty of a culture composed of multiple cultures, and the inalienable right of every person to live and practice their faith without fear."
Clinton is expected to easily carry New Orleans in Tuesday's election.
Jeff council backtracks, OKs disputed contract
The Jefferson Parish Council on Wednesday suspended a disputed ordinance in order to keep the parish's Carnival parades rolling in 2017, hiring a company owned by a local political consultant to build the grandstands from which revelers will cheer on the annual spectacle.
The council voted 7-0 to suspend a ban passed a year ago that would prevent parish contracts from being awarded to any firm partially owned by a consultant who had represented an elected official during a prior election.
That ordinance, which was proposed by Councilman Chris Roberts last November, is under challenge in federal court.
Buisson Creative, a firm owned by political consultant Greg Buisson, was the only firm to respond to the most recent request for proposals to provide the grandstands for the upcoming Carnival season.
Because of the pending legal challenge and the fact that no other proposals for the work were submitted, the council suspended the ban and also voted 6-0 to negotiate a contract with Buisson Creative. Roberts abstained from that vote.
The ordinance was controversial because some saw it as being aimed specifically at Buisson, who had just worked for Roberts’ political opponent in the prior election cycle.
Roberts dismissed the criticism, saying the ordinance was a good-government measure designed to prevent conflicts of interest by making sure those who worked on political campaigns did not then get contracts with parish government.
BGR: Its report to save taxpayers millions
The Bureau of Governmental Research put out a release last week taking credit for uncovering an issue that it said is "expected to yield millions in savings to taxpayers."
On Oct. 27, an Orleans Parish Civil District Court judge ruled in the city's favor on how to apply the formula for calculating pension benefits for city firefighters. The BGR release said the "matter stemmed from a 2013 report in which BGR revealed that the New Orleans Firefighters' Pension and Relief Fund was applying the benefits formula on more generous terms than those spelled out in state law."
The court order directs the fund "to apply the formula as set forth in law," the research group said.
"According to a pension consultant's estimate, if the formula were properly applied to current employees alone, taxpayers would save roughly $1.3 million per year. But under the judgment, the formula is to apply to current retirees as well, increasing the potential savings," BGR said.
By Jessica Williams, Jeff Adelson, Chad Calder and Bruce Eggler
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6 days ago
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