Philly Council approves bills for ‘Fair Workweek’ and $15/hr wage hike
Philly Council approves bills for ‘Fair Workweek’ and $15/hr wage hike
Philadelphia’s Fair Workweek bill is stronger in some ways than those across the country, but weaker in others, said...
Philadelphia’s Fair Workweek bill is stronger in some ways than those across the country, but weaker in others, said Rachel Deutsch, an attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy, a main organizer of the national Fair Workweek movement.
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“Neoliberalism” isn’t an empty epithet. It’s a real, powerful set of ideas.
“Neoliberalism” isn’t an empty epithet. It’s a real, powerful set of ideas.
It’s hard to think of a term that causes more confusion, yet is more frequently used in political debate, than “...
It’s hard to think of a term that causes more confusion, yet is more frequently used in political debate, than “neoliberalism.” It’s one thing to argue that the term should be discouraged or retired from public discussions, because it generates heat instead of light, but it is another to say that it doesn’t have any meaning or use. Jonathan Chait makes the second case in New York magazine.
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Young Women of Color Are Running to Win
Young Women of Color Are Running to Win
In the Senate, Kerri Evelyn Harris is challenging centrist Senator Tom Carper, one of the few Democrats in the Senate...
In the Senate, Kerri Evelyn Harris is challenging centrist Senator Tom Carper, one of the few Democrats in the Senate who supports Social Security cuts and who recently voted to roll back Dodd-Frank. According to my analysis of American National Election Studies 2016 survey data, 92 percent of Democratic primary voters support more, not less, government regulation of banks, and a mere 3 percent support cuts to Social Security. Given her decade as an organizer, most recently with the Center for Popular Democracy, Harris is approaching the race the way a community organizer would.
Read the full article here.
Fed Raises Key Interest Rate, Citing Strengthening Economy
Fed Raises Key Interest Rate, Citing Strengthening Economy
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate Wednesday for just the second time since the...
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate Wednesday for just the second time since the financial crisis of 2008, saying the American economy is expanding at a healthy pace and setting itself up as a counterweight to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s push for considerably faster growth.
The Fed cited the steady growth of employment and other economic measures, and signaled that it expects to raise rates more quickly next year to prevent the economy from growing too quickly.
“My colleagues and I are recognizing the considerable progress the economy has made,” Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, said at a news conference after the announcement. “We expect the economy will continue to perform well.”
The widely expected decision moves the Fed’s benchmark rate to a range of 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent, still very low by historical standards. Low rates support economic growth by encouraging borrowing and risk-taking.
The American economy has expanded by about 2 percent a year over the last six years, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.6 percent. The Fed’s assessment that the economy is growing at a healthy pace — not too hot, not too cold — is starkly at odds with Mr. Trump, who has promised 4 percent growth and has described job creation as “terrible” and economic growth as anemic.
Already on Wednesday, one Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee, Representative Roger Williams of Texas, criticized the Fed’s move.
“Today’s decision by the Fed to raise the interest rate is entirely premature and will be burdensome to a nation already struggling to pull itself out of this slow-growth Obama economy,” Mr. Williams said in a statement. “By making rates even higher, the Fed is effectively making our hardships even harder.”
Mr. Williams did not object when the Fed raised rates last December.
In announcing the decision after a two-day meeting of the Fed’s policy-making committee, the central bank gave little indication that Mr. Trump’s election had altered its economic outlook. The Fed said it still expected a slow economic expansion and a steady march toward higher rates. In separate forecasts also published Wednesday, Fed officials predicted three rate increases in 2017.
Rising Rate
The Federal Reserve raised its target rate for only the second time in more than a decade.
Note: Graphic shows the Federal Funds Target Rate previous to the December 2008 rate change; since then it is the upper limit of the Federal Funds Target Range.
By The New York Times | Source: Federal Reserve
For the first time in recent years, however, there is a real possibility of significant changes in fiscal policy. Republicans will control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and Mr. Trump has promised to increase economic growth and job creation through tax cuts and infrastructure spending.
Those measures could spur faster growth after a presidential campaign in which Mr. Trump regularly disparaged the economy’s performance under President Obama. But the Fed reiterated Wednesday that the economy is already expanding at roughly the maximum sustainable pace.
Fed officials also see evidence that the labor market is tightening. Several Fed districts reported labor shortages in the central bank’s most recent compilation of economic reports. In the Philadelphia district, construction workers are hard to find. Atlanta reported a shortage of nurses; Kansas City, truck drivers; Dallas, tech workers.
Faster growth, in the Fed’s judgment, would probably lead to higher inflation. As a result, if Republicans succeed in invigorating growth, the Fed is likely to raise rates more quickly. The greater the stimulus, the faster interest rates are likely to rise.
“Your expectation should depend very little on what you think that the F.O.M.C. is thinking and very much on your view of Trump policies and their macro effects,” said Jon Faust, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University and a former adviser to Ms. Yellen, referring to the Federal Open Market Committee. “Don’t focus on the Fed. As James Carville regularly reminded the other Clinton on the campaign trail: It’s the economy, stupid.”
Ms. Yellen emphasized that the Fed was not prejudging the likely course of events. She declined several times to comment on the merits of Mr. Trump’s plans or to predict their consequences for the economy.
“We’re operating under a cloud of uncertainty at the moment,” Ms. Yellen said.
Fed officials predicted that they would raise the Fed’s benchmark rate a little more quickly in the coming years, reaching 2.1 percent by the end of 2018. In September, they had predicted that it would reach 1.9 percent by the end of 2018. The new projections, however, reflect a significantly slower pace of increase than last December, when they expected the rate to reach 3.3 percent by 2018.
The combination of steady growth and faster rate increases indicates that some Fed officials expect the central bank to end up offsetting a modest increase in fiscal stimulus. But Ms. Yellen said most Fed officials were reserving judgment.
“Changes in fiscal policy or other economic policies could affect the economic outlook,” she said. “Of course, it is far too early to know how those changes will unfold.”
What Happens When the Fed Raises Rates, in One Rube Goldberg Machine
Exactly seven years ago, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to almost zero in order to nurse the ailing economy back to health. Recently it changed direction. This is how it works.
The tensions between monetary and fiscal policy will develop slowly. Legislation takes time to write, and any economic impact would generally be felt in coming years. Political pressures, however, may build more quickly.
Mr. Trump has made clear in the past that he likes low interest rates — and some of his plans, like infrastructure investment, will be much easier to fund if rates remain low.
“The Fed is in a tricky place,” said Michael Feroli, chief United States economist at JPMorgan Chase. “They’re trying not to prejudge how Congress and the administration duke it out, but once they see that, I think they will respond.”
There is also uncertainty about the Fed’s leadership. Ms. Yellen’s term as chairwoman ends in February 2018, and Mr. Trump has said he would prefer a Republican.
Ms. Yellen could remain on the board, a possibility she said Wednesday she had not ruled out. But the Fed, under different leadership, might well choose a different path forward. Some conservative economists, notably John Taylor of Stanford University, argue that the bank should already have raised rates above 1 percent.
The economy, for now, keeps plodding along. Steady job growth has reduced the unemployment rate to a level the Fed considers healthy. A little unemployment is natural as people change jobs and businesses close. Ms. Yellen and other Fed officials have said they see some signs of stronger wage growth. Inflation, too, has picked up a little in recent months, although both wages and inflation continue to rise more slowly than the Fed would like to see.
Ms. Yellen described the rate increase as “a vote of confidence in the economy.”
The decision was made by a unanimous vote of the 10 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the first time in recent months the Fed has acted by consensus.
Some economists argue that the Fed should wait until inflation strengthens before raising rates, to test whether a stronger economy would persuade some people sidelined during the downturn to start looking for jobs. That would expand the labor force. Unemployment remains particularly high among minorities.
That view, however, has found little support among Fed officials, who worry that interest rates will have to be raised more quickly if they wait too long, increasing the chances of pushing the economy into recession.
“Apparently, Fed officials think the economy is growing too quickly,” said Ady Barkan, the director of Fed Up, a coalition of liberal groups that has pressed the Fed to continue its stimulus campaign. “I doubt you can find many other Americans who share that opinion. And it’s a strange conclusion to draw in the wake of an election that was so heavily impacted by voters’ economic discontent.”
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
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It Takes a Village: Educators, Unions Rally for Continued Funding of Community Schools
Baltimore City Paper - November 4, 2014, by Evan Serpick - Administrators, teachers, union organizers, community...
Baltimore City Paper - November 4, 2014, by Evan Serpick - Administrators, teachers, union organizers, community leaders, politicians, and students—including cheerleading squads and step teams—were among those gathered in front of City Hall on Oct. 21 to sing the praises of community schools, some literally.
“We are gentle, angry people,” The Charm City Labor Chorus sang from the dais. “And we are singing for our lives.”
The effort, organized by the Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU), Maryland Communities United, Center for Popular Democracy, and AFT-Maryland, aims to press the city government to continue funding the city’s 48 community schools and to ultimately expand the program to include all 210 city schools. (Disclosure: My wife is a teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools.) Community schools work to help students and their families access non-academic services such as health care and food assistance. One key element of the advocates’ efforts, many of those assembled acknowledged, was to inform the public and key officials of exactly what community schools are and how they’re beneficial to students and families.
“People hear ‘community schools’ and they don’t know what that means,” said Councilman Carl Stokes (D, 12th District), who spoke to the crowd “on behalf of [his] colleagues” in support of the effort.
The $10 million in municipal funding for the city’s 48 community schools pays for each school to employ a site coordinator to connect students and families in need with existing services, both public and private. The funding does not, organizers emphasize, pay for the services themselves.
Christopher Gaither, who has been principal of Upper Fells Point’s Wolfe Street Academy for nine years, spoke to the assembled group in Spanish and English. He said when Wolfe Street became a community school in 2006, the school, which had a 72 percent English language learner (ELL) population and 94 percent reduced-price lunch population, ranked 77th among city elementary schools. Eight years later, the ELL rate has gone up to 78 and reduced-lunch rate up to 96, but the school is now ranked second in the city academically, behind only Roland Park Elementary-Middle (which, as Gaither estimated, has an 18 percent reduced-price lunch population). Gaither gives much of the credit to being a community school.
“It sets up systems to identify partnerships to help families to take on challenges,” he said, before adding, more colloquially, “It gives people fish and teaches them how to fish.”
Gaither said his site coordinator helps families apply for food stamps and Medicaid, and also helps find mental health and housing services when needed, in addition to establishing after-school and recreational programs.
“No parent at Roland Park would think it’s acceptable if their child had to go to school hungry or without sleeping because of bedbugs,” he said. “Why should our parents?”
He added that, while community school funding doesn’t pay directly for social services, it does make that funding more effective, since site coordinators are able to link social-service providers directly with families in need so those providers spend less time and money on outreach.
Among those speaking at the rally were Chelsea Gilmer, a seventh-grader at City Springs Elementary/Middle School downtown who is active in Baltimore Urban Debate League, and Yolanda Pernell, a parent of children at Callaway Elementary, a community school in Northwest Baltimore where the site coordinator created an after-school program with the Boys and Girls Club of Metropolitan Baltimore.
Fred D. Mason, president of the Maryland and D.C. AFL-CIO, was on hand to explain why unions support community schools. “It provides a better, safer, more productive community for teachers to work in,” he said. “When the community organizations are coming into the school, interacting with the students, it just make a better overall environment for everybody.”
But BTU president Marietta English, who has been pushing City Hall hard on the issue, worries that funding for community schools will be cut. “We’re looking at how we can get the funding for next year,” she said. “Right now, it’s all about the budget deficit. Everybody I talk to is like, ‘Well you know we got a budget deficit.’ I hear their support but in the end, it’s ‘Where do we get the money?’”
Speaking to City Paper after the rally, Stokes said funding community schools was imperative.
“The city government needs to put it in the budget in this coming budget year—they should pass it so that it goes into the budget for July and can apply to next year,” he said. “This works. The schools that have the full funding for the coordinator, it works for them. A lot of kids come from environments that aren’t as strong as they could be, should be, and to make that environment in the school helps kids all around.”
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What working moms really need for Mother's Day this year
What working moms really need for Mother's Day this year
When Mother's Day became a national holiday in the U.S. more than a century ago, women were a relative rarity in the...
When Mother's Day became a national holiday in the U.S. more than a century ago, women were a relative rarity in the workforce. Today's mom, by contrast, is largely a working mom.
In half of American households, women are either the primary breadwinner or contribute more than 40 percent of the income. For most families, the added income from women going to work is the only thing that's kept family income steady, as individual worker wages have stagnated for the better part of four decades.
Read full article here.
Federal Government Continues To Feed Charter School Beast Despite Auditor's Warning
Federal Government Continues To Feed Charter School Beast Despite Auditor's Warning
Politicians always promise they will rid government of "waste, fraud, and abuse," so let's hope at least one political...
Politicians always promise they will rid government of "waste, fraud, and abuse," so let's hope at least one political leader or policy maker will denounce our federal government's new gift of nearly a quarter-billion dollars to charter schools.
The cash dump to charters, courtesy of taxpayers, is from the U.S. Department of Education. As Education Week reports, the money is going to eight states and 15 charter school networks from the Charter Schools Program, a federal government operation that doles out millions every year to start new charter schools.
This money is the latest installment of an over $3 billion gravy train the federal government has funded to help launch over 2,500 charter schools across the nation.
Regardless of how you feel about these schools, you should be concerned about how this new government outlay to charters will be used, based on the extensive track record of financial malfeasance in these schools.
Indeed, shortly after the USDE announcement, the Department's own auditor warned that the money is very much at risk of ending up in the pockets of fraudsters and con artists rather than in the classrooms of diligent students and dedicated teachers.
Again Education Week reports, the audit by the agency's inspector general's office examined 33 schools in six states and concluded that because of a general lack of oversight of charters there was a "risk that federal programs are not being implemented correctly and are wasting public money."
The risk stems from the "cozy relationships," the EdWeek reporter's words, between charter schools and companies that operate them, called Charter Management Organizations (CMOs).
Of the 33 charter schools the audit examined, 22 had examples, sometimes multiple examples, of how CMOs take advantage of the unusual business relationship they have with their client charters to exploit federal education funds and redirect precious taxpayer dollars to private interests that have nothing to do with education.
In one of the more egregious examples the audit round, "the CEO of one CMO in Pennsylvania had the authority to write and issue checks without charter school board approval and wrote checks to himself from the charter school's accounts totaling about $11 million."
At another Pennsylvania charter, a vendor that supplied services to the school was owned by the charter school's CMO and received $485,000 in payments from the school without charter school board approval.
In Florida, a charter and a CMO that shared the same board entered into an expensive lease agreement for the school building, then expanded the facility, extended the lease, and increased the rental payments to the CMO.
One CMO the audit examined, which operated three charters in Michigan and one in New York, required the charter schools to remit all federal, state, and local funds to the CMO and gave the CMO total responsibility, with no oversight by the charter board, for paying school expenditures.
The auditor's report doesn't provide the names of these schools, so we don't know if they have received federal grant money in the past or are some of the ones getting the new money.
However, three of the six states the audit looked at – California, Texas, and Florida – are the same states the Department of Education just decided to send more money to. The other three – Michigan Pennsylvania, and New York – have received federal money for charters in the past, either sent to the state or to charter organizations operating in the state.
These states, and presumably many others the feds send charter money to, often don't sufficiently track how the money is used, according to the audit. Of the six states examined, half could not provide consistent funding data on charter schools with CMOs, a third could not identify which charter schools used CMOs, and a third that tracked whether charter schools used CMOs had unreliable information because charter schools self-reported their operations.
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The federal auditor's revelations on charter school waste, fraud, and abuse is yet another dose of reality in a long line of factual reporting about these schools.
A study released last year by the Center for Media and Democracy found "charter spending is largely a black hole." That's because the "flexibility" charters have been granted by the government is often being used not to create education innovations but to "allow an epidemic of fraud, waste, and mismanagement that would not be tolerated in public schools," the CMD report found.
Based on its extensive research on charters, CMD examined the list of new award grantees and noted Florida, that's getting a grant of $58,454,516, has closed over 120 charter schools in a little over a decade. Texas, which is getting $30,498,392, has "an unknown number" of charter schools "housed in churches" and "closely tied to, religious groups."
Tennessee, which is getting $15,172,732, is famous for having a statewide online charter school that is so bad, the state education chief tried to get rid of it but couldn't because of political maneuvering by the charter lobby and lack of regulatory accountability.
California, which is getting $27,329,904, has some of the worst charter school scandals in the nation, according to a report from the Center for Popular Democracy, which uncovered over $81,400,000 in fraud, waste, and abuse in the state. CPD call the alarming figure "likely just the tip of the iceberg."
Louisiana, another grantee getting $4,836,766 from the feds, has been ripped off by "tens of millions of dollars in undiscovered losses" from charter schools in the 2013-14 school year, according to another CPD analysis. "The state has insufficiently resourced financial oversight," CPD contends, and has yet to put into place adequate reporting, staffing, and auditing.
Three other states – Georgia, Massachusetts, and Washington – are getting the money just when they are deeply embroiled in heated controversies over charter schools.
Georgia has a ballot initiative in November on whether to allow the state to operate an Opportunity School District that would summarily take over local schools and hand them over to charter operators. Massachusetts also has a November ballot initiative, called Question 2, that would allow the state to lift the cap on the number of charters allowed to operate in the state. And in Washington, a charter school battleground for over 20 years, court rulings, legislative shenanigans, lawsuits, and counter lawsuits related to charter schools continue to rage across the state.
No doubt, this new money – over $41 million altogether for these three states – may now sweeten the pot if pro charter forces get their way.
Regarding the individual CMOs the Department is sending money to, one of them, Uncommon Schools, is a charter chain which used to be led in part by the current head of USDE, Secretary John King. Uncommon is getting $8,004,576. No conflict of interest there.
Another recipient – the Denver School of Science and Technology charter chain in Colorado, with a grant of $4,043,361 – has paid out between $20 to $50 million to a for-profit corporation owned by two of the charter chain's director, according to another CPD analysis.
A charter school chain in Indiana getting $1,923,866 is plagued with financial problems, low enrollment, and controversy over how the CEO spends money. No doubt the infusion of federal cash will help.
The federal auditor's report recommends the convening of a formal oversight group to look into charter school financial malfeasance, more rigorous review of charter school operations by federal agencies, and legislative changes in Congress to firm up government oversight.
Here's another recommendation: Stop federal funding to expand these schools.
By Jeff Bryant
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How Can We Combat Wage Theft And Protect Immigrant Workers?
How Can We Combat Wage Theft And Protect Immigrant Workers?
Every year, millions of workers suffer from wage theft when employers or companies do not pay them what they are owed...
Every year, millions of workers suffer from wage theft when employers or companies do not pay them what they are owed.
Read the full article here.
Fed Officials Push Back Against Calls to Overhaul Central Bank’s Structure
Fed Officials Push Back Against Calls to Overhaul Central Bank’s Structure
Federal Reserve bank presidents are pushing back against a rising chorus of voices saying the central bank’s century-...
Federal Reserve bank presidents are pushing back against a rising chorus of voices saying the central bank’s century-old structure needs to be overhauled to reduce bankers’ influence over its operations and policies.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the party’s draft platform have echoed calls for change by left-leaning activists, a drive that could gain new attention this week during the party’s convention in Philadelphia.
At issue is the role played by private banks in the Fed’s 12 regional reserve banks, which supervise financial institutions, provide financial services and participate in the central bank’s monetary policy-making.
By law, private banks elect six of the nine members of each Fed bank’s board of directors, choosing three to represent the banks and three to represent the public. The other three are appointed by the Washington-based Fed Board of Governors to represent the public.
Critics say the setup creates an inherent conflict of interest, akin to the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse, and has resulted in too little diversity among the leadership of the Fed system.
“Common sense reforms—like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve Banks—are long overdue,” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said in May.
Fed leaders in recent public comments and interviews have defended the status quo as effective, though Chairwoman Janet Yellen said during congressional testimony in February “it is of course up to Congress to consider what the appropriate structure is of the Fed.”
Meanwhile, regional Fed bank officials have played down the potential for conflict of interest, noting that the directors aren't involved in bank supervision, and the directors who represent private banks don’t participate in choosing the Fed bank presidents. The officials also see value in having close ties to the banking community. Patrick Harker, president of the Philadelphia Fed, said most of the bankers in his district are from small firms, not the big financial institutions that can worry regulators.
“The banker from a small town in Pennsylvania provides incredibly important insight” about local conditions, and “I worry about losing that insight,” Mr. Harker said. He agreed bankers could provide input through advisory groups, but he said having them on his board, meeting every 15 days, provides a level of instant insight into the economy and financial system that would be hard to replace.
William Dudley, president of the New York Fed, told reporters in May, “The current arrangements are actually working quite well, both in terms of preserving the Federal Reserve’s independence with respect to the conduct of monetary policy and actually leading to pretty, you know, successful outcomes” in terms of hitting the Fed’s goals of maximum employment and low, steady inflation.
Another issue for some advocates of change is the regional Fed banks’ status as quasi-public, quasi-private institutions. The Fed board in Washington is a wholly government entity that ultimately oversees the regional Fed banks. But when private banks become members of the Federal Reserve system, they are required to buy stock, and in turn receive dividends from the Fed. So the private banks in a sense own the regional Fed banks, though they can’t transfer or sell the stock.
“It’s pretty indefensible for the Fed to be the only regulatory institution” in the U.S. “that’s owned by the industry it regulates,” said Ady Barkan, of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up Campaign.
Fed officials say the critics misunderstand the Fed’s ownership structure. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said in an interview the quasi-private status of the regional Fed banks helps ensure the independence that is needed for good policy-making in an economically diverse nation. If the regional banks were made fully part of government, she worried, Washington’s power would grow, raising the risk of politics influencing the policy debate.
Ms. Mester said “yes, the banks have stock” in the Fed. “But that’s not owning the Fed in the sense of a corporation, right? It’s making sure that there’s representation from the district as part of the Fed structure,” she said.
Richmond Fed leader Jeffrey Lacker also worried making the regional Fed banks pure governmental entities might promote short-term thinking that would lead to bad policy outcomes.
Fed Up worked with former senior Fed staffer Andrew Levin, now a professor at Dartmouth College, on a proposal to make the Fed banks wholly government institutions, as are the central banks in all the major economies. His proposal also would eliminate the regional Fed board director slots reserved for bankers and have all the directors selected in a public process involving the Washington governors and local elected officials.
Mr. Levin said he’s somewhat mystified Fed officials appear to be rejecting almost all the major reform ideas now being debated. They “might not have much influence on the outcome if they wait too long to engage in the debate,” he warned.
Mr. Harker, the Philadelphia Fed president, worried “there are always unintended consequences anytime you make a change.”
But Mr. Barkan countered “it’s true the system could be made worse than it is now, but we think it could be made better.”
By MICHAEL S. DERBY
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Trump Picks Monetary Expert for No. 2 Job at Federal Reserve
Trump Picks Monetary Expert for No. 2 Job at Federal Reserve
President Trump continued a sweeping remake of the Federal Reserve’s leadership on Monday by nominating Richard...
President Trump continued a sweeping remake of the Federal Reserve’s leadership on Monday by nominating Richard Clarida, a Treasury official in the administration of President George W. Bush, for the Fed’s second-ranking job.
Read the full article here.
3 days ago
3 days ago