Cost-cutting plan targets hundreds of US Mail processing facilities
The U.S. Postal Service could close or merge with nearby locations in the next year as part of a three-year, $15 billion cost-cutting plan. The consolidations would affect four processing centers in Maryland: Cumberland, Easton, Gaithersburg and Waldorf. The Virginia sites are Lynchburg, Norfolk and Roanoke. 1Gallery
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service has announced plans to eliminate dozens of processing centers.If the plan is enacted, parts of some states would have their mail sorted in another state. That possibility rattled Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin, both Maryland Democrats, who blasted plans to move some sorting responsibilities from Eastern Maryland to Delaware.“There is absolutely no statistical or empirical data to justify consideration of this idea,” they said in a letter sent Thursday to Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe.
But in an interview, Donahoe said his advisers spent the past few months studying the feasibility of shuttering as many as 264 sites by reviewing network delivery models. The study determined that six sites would require further review, 35 would remain open and the affected sites would start closing or merging at some point after a moratorium on closures ends in mid-May. Donahoe said the consolidation plans remain “very fluid.” “None of this is set in stone,” he said. Making the announcement this week, he said, would permit affected workers to begin weighing their options.“Some people will retire, some may become letter carriers, some maintenance employees may be vehicle mechanics, depending on how things work,” he said. “We are still awaiting some decisions from a legislative perspective that may lead to some changes. But if we don’t get legislation, we would have to start closing locations.”
Legislative action is expected next month when the Senate begins consideration of a bipartisan reform plan that would permit the Postal Service to close thousands of post offices, end Saturday mail delivery and recoup billions of dollars paid into federal and postal retirement accounts.Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), who led a push to delay any further postal consolidations until May, called the new plans “deeply flawed” because closing processing centers would further slow mail delivery.
“Slowing down mail delivery service will result in less business and less revenue,” Sanders said. The Postal Service hopes to eventually operate a delivery network with fewer than 200 processing facilities, and closing the 223 sites could mean the loss of as many as 35,000 mail processing jobs, mostly through attrition, as part of a broader goal of trimming 150,000 positions by next year. The cutbacks also mean the Postal Service would no longer be able to guarantee overnight delivery of some first-class mail....(edited)
Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, encouraged his members to continue pressing lawmakers and customers to voice their opposition to the changes.“We face an uphill battle, so it is crucial that union members continue to make their voices heard,” Guffey said
ed.okeefe@washingtonpost.com
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
12 Major Faults With Mortgage Settlement
The Top Twelve Reasons Why You
Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement
by Eve Smith "Naked Capitalism"
1. We’ve now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It’s $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It’s a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law.
2. That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. The mortgage principal writedowns are guaranteed to come almost entirely from securitized loans, which means from investors, which in turn means taxpayers via Fannie and Freddie, pension funds, insurers, and 401 (k)s. Refis of performing loans also reduce income to those very same investors.
3. That $5 billion divided among the big banks wouldn’t even represent a significant quarterly hit. Freddie and Fannie putbacks to the major banks have been running at that level each quarter.
4. That $20 billion actually makes bank second liens sounder, so this deal is a stealth bailout that strengthens bank balance sheets at the expense of the broader public.
5. The enforcement is a joke. The first layer of supervision is the banks reporting on themselves. The framework is similar to that of the OCC consent decrees implemented last year, which Adam Levitin and yours truly, among others, decried as regulatory theater.
6. The past history of servicer consent decrees shows the servicers all fail to comply. Why? Servicer records and systems are terrible in the best of times, and their systems and fee structures aren’t set up to handle much in the way of delinquencies. As Tom Adams has pointed out in earlier posts, servicer behavior is predictable when their portfolios are hit with a high level of delinquencies and defaults: they cheat in all sorts of ways to reduce their losses.
7. The cave-in Nevada and Arizona on the Countrywide settlement suit is a special gift for Bank of America, who is by far the worst offender in the chain of title disaster (since, according to sworn testimony of its own employee in Kemp v. Countrywide, Countrywide failed to comply with trust delivery requirements). This move proves that failing to comply with a consent degree has no consequences but will merely be rolled into a new consent degree which will also fail to be enforced. These cases also alleged HAMP violations as consumer fraud violations and could have gotten costly and emboldened other states to file similar suits not just against Countrywide but other servicers, so it was useful to the other banks as well.
8. If the new Federal task force were intended to be serious, this deal would have not have been settled. You never settle before investigating. It’s a bad idea to settle obvious, widespread wrongdoing on the cheap. You use the stuff that is easy to prove to gather information and secure cooperation on the stuff that is harder to prove. In Missouri and Nevada, the robosigning investigation led to criminal charges against agents of the servicers. But even though these companies were acting at the express direction and approval of the services, no individuals or entities higher up the food chain will face any sort of meaningful charges.
9. There is plenty of evidence of widespread abuses that appear not to be on the attorney generals’ or media’s radar, such as servicer driven foreclosures and looting of investors’ funds via impermissible and inflated charges. While no serious probe was undertaken, even the limited or peripheral investigations show massive failures (60% of documents had errors in AGs/Fed’s pathetically small sample). Similarly, the US Trustee’s office found widespread evidence of significant servicer errors in bankruptcy-related filings, such as inflated and bogus fees, and even substantial, completely made up charges. Yet the services and banks will suffer no real consequences for these abuses.
10. A deal on robo-siginging serves to cover up the much deeper chain of title problem. And don’t get too excited about the New York, Massachusetts, and Delaware MERS suits. They put pressure on banks to clean up this monstrous mess only if the AGs go through to trial and get tough penalties. The banks will want to settle their way out of that too. And even if these cases do go to trial and produce significant victories for the AGs, they still do not address the problem of failures to transfer notes correctly.
11. Don’t bet on a deus ex machina in terms of the new Federal Foreclosure Task Force to improve this picture much. If you think Schneiderman, as a co-chairman who already has a full time day job in New York, is going to outfox a bunch of DC insiders who are part of the problem, I have a bridge I’d like to sell to you.
12. We’ll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Investors in mortgage-backed securities, who know that services have been screwing them for years, will be hung out to dry and will likely never return to a private MBS market, since the problems won’t ever be fixed. This settlement has not only revealed the residential mortgage market to be too big to fail, but puts it on long term, perhaps permanent, government life support.
As we’ve said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn’t you and me. It’s bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners.
Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement
by Eve Smith "Naked Capitalism"
1. We’ve now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It’s $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It’s a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law.
2. That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. The mortgage principal writedowns are guaranteed to come almost entirely from securitized loans, which means from investors, which in turn means taxpayers via Fannie and Freddie, pension funds, insurers, and 401 (k)s. Refis of performing loans also reduce income to those very same investors.
3. That $5 billion divided among the big banks wouldn’t even represent a significant quarterly hit. Freddie and Fannie putbacks to the major banks have been running at that level each quarter.
4. That $20 billion actually makes bank second liens sounder, so this deal is a stealth bailout that strengthens bank balance sheets at the expense of the broader public.
5. The enforcement is a joke. The first layer of supervision is the banks reporting on themselves. The framework is similar to that of the OCC consent decrees implemented last year, which Adam Levitin and yours truly, among others, decried as regulatory theater.
6. The past history of servicer consent decrees shows the servicers all fail to comply. Why? Servicer records and systems are terrible in the best of times, and their systems and fee structures aren’t set up to handle much in the way of delinquencies. As Tom Adams has pointed out in earlier posts, servicer behavior is predictable when their portfolios are hit with a high level of delinquencies and defaults: they cheat in all sorts of ways to reduce their losses.
7. The cave-in Nevada and Arizona on the Countrywide settlement suit is a special gift for Bank of America, who is by far the worst offender in the chain of title disaster (since, according to sworn testimony of its own employee in Kemp v. Countrywide, Countrywide failed to comply with trust delivery requirements). This move proves that failing to comply with a consent degree has no consequences but will merely be rolled into a new consent degree which will also fail to be enforced. These cases also alleged HAMP violations as consumer fraud violations and could have gotten costly and emboldened other states to file similar suits not just against Countrywide but other servicers, so it was useful to the other banks as well.
8. If the new Federal task force were intended to be serious, this deal would have not have been settled. You never settle before investigating. It’s a bad idea to settle obvious, widespread wrongdoing on the cheap. You use the stuff that is easy to prove to gather information and secure cooperation on the stuff that is harder to prove. In Missouri and Nevada, the robosigning investigation led to criminal charges against agents of the servicers. But even though these companies were acting at the express direction and approval of the services, no individuals or entities higher up the food chain will face any sort of meaningful charges.
9. There is plenty of evidence of widespread abuses that appear not to be on the attorney generals’ or media’s radar, such as servicer driven foreclosures and looting of investors’ funds via impermissible and inflated charges. While no serious probe was undertaken, even the limited or peripheral investigations show massive failures (60% of documents had errors in AGs/Fed’s pathetically small sample). Similarly, the US Trustee’s office found widespread evidence of significant servicer errors in bankruptcy-related filings, such as inflated and bogus fees, and even substantial, completely made up charges. Yet the services and banks will suffer no real consequences for these abuses.
10. A deal on robo-siginging serves to cover up the much deeper chain of title problem. And don’t get too excited about the New York, Massachusetts, and Delaware MERS suits. They put pressure on banks to clean up this monstrous mess only if the AGs go through to trial and get tough penalties. The banks will want to settle their way out of that too. And even if these cases do go to trial and produce significant victories for the AGs, they still do not address the problem of failures to transfer notes correctly.
11. Don’t bet on a deus ex machina in terms of the new Federal Foreclosure Task Force to improve this picture much. If you think Schneiderman, as a co-chairman who already has a full time day job in New York, is going to outfox a bunch of DC insiders who are part of the problem, I have a bridge I’d like to sell to you.
12. We’ll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Investors in mortgage-backed securities, who know that services have been screwing them for years, will be hung out to dry and will likely never return to a private MBS market, since the problems won’t ever be fixed. This settlement has not only revealed the residential mortgage market to be too big to fail, but puts it on long term, perhaps permanent, government life support.
As we’ve said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn’t you and me. It’s bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Millionaires Tax in CA
AFSCME
Others Endorse Millionaire's Tax http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=9856#more
SACRAMENTO, CA – Restoring California, the coalition of educators and community leaders sponsoring the Millionaires Tax initiative for the November ballot, announced it has attracted new support from organizations representing clergy and laity, 10,000 community college faculty and 25,000 public workers.
The campaign also announced that the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) has contributed $500,000 towards the signature-gathering campaign. The veteran firm of Masterton & Wright has been hired to manage the signature-gathering effort.
“We are excited that our initiative to provide permanent funding for public education and vital services has won the support of AFSCME District Council 57, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC), and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE),” said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and a spokesperson for the coalition.
Rev. Dr. Art Cribbs, executive director of CLUE California, said his organization endorsed the Millionaires Tax because, “We are seeking a more equitable means to raise revenue in California to meet the needs of our children in public schools, elders on fixed incomes, and disabled residents who require vital services.
The Millionaires Tax offers the brightest prospect of getting voters' approval and making our state's economy more stable. It is not too much to ask the most prosperous citizens in California to pay a few pennies on each dollar over $1 million earnings. It is fair and long over due.”
“California schools need new revenue and the Millionaires Tax is the initiative that would provide permanent revenue without parents and students digging deeper into their pockets,” said FACCC Vice President Dean Murakami, a Sacramento-area community college professor.
AFSCME District Council 57 represents workers in schools and community colleges, transit agencies, public works and services, clinics and hospitals, and water and wastewater facilities throughout Northern California and the Central Valley. The Council also represents the health and social service professionals in corrections facilities across California.
Restoring California is a broad coalition of educators, unions and community groups looking to restore critical funding to schools and universities, essential services for children, seniors, and public safety, as well as start rebuilding the state’s crumbling roads and bridges. It asks the wealthiest Californians — people who earn over a million dollars per year — to pay their fair share to help rebuild the state. For more info, www.millionairestaxca.com.
Others Endorse Millionaire's Tax http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=9856#more
SACRAMENTO, CA – Restoring California, the coalition of educators and community leaders sponsoring the Millionaires Tax initiative for the November ballot, announced it has attracted new support from organizations representing clergy and laity, 10,000 community college faculty and 25,000 public workers.
The campaign also announced that the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) has contributed $500,000 towards the signature-gathering campaign. The veteran firm of Masterton & Wright has been hired to manage the signature-gathering effort.
“We are excited that our initiative to provide permanent funding for public education and vital services has won the support of AFSCME District Council 57, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC), and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE),” said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and a spokesperson for the coalition.
Rev. Dr. Art Cribbs, executive director of CLUE California, said his organization endorsed the Millionaires Tax because, “We are seeking a more equitable means to raise revenue in California to meet the needs of our children in public schools, elders on fixed incomes, and disabled residents who require vital services.
The Millionaires Tax offers the brightest prospect of getting voters' approval and making our state's economy more stable. It is not too much to ask the most prosperous citizens in California to pay a few pennies on each dollar over $1 million earnings. It is fair and long over due.”
“California schools need new revenue and the Millionaires Tax is the initiative that would provide permanent revenue without parents and students digging deeper into their pockets,” said FACCC Vice President Dean Murakami, a Sacramento-area community college professor.
AFSCME District Council 57 represents workers in schools and community colleges, transit agencies, public works and services, clinics and hospitals, and water and wastewater facilities throughout Northern California and the Central Valley. The Council also represents the health and social service professionals in corrections facilities across California.
Restoring California is a broad coalition of educators, unions and community groups looking to restore critical funding to schools and universities, essential services for children, seniors, and public safety, as well as start rebuilding the state’s crumbling roads and bridges. It asks the wealthiest Californians — people who earn over a million dollars per year — to pay their fair share to help rebuild the state. For more info, www.millionairestaxca.com.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
AFL-CIO Chief Rejects Jobs Council
AFL-CIO chief Trumka rejects White House jobs council report
By Kevin Bogardus - 01/18/12 01:42 PM ET
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/204861-afl-cio-chief-dissents-from-white-house-jobs-council-report
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Wednesday offered a stinging rebuke of the the White House jobs Council’s latest report. Trumka, one of two union leaders on the council, said the body is too narrow to provide recommendations to President Obama that are balanced between the interests of business and other groups such as labor.
Trumka specifically took issue with the report’s calls for lower corporate taxes and fewer regulations, saying they would not lead to more jobs.“Overall, I disagree that reforming our regulatory system and reducing the statutory corporate tax rate are crucial elements of ‘competitiveness’ for the United States going forward, nor does empirical evidence support the claim that significant net new job creation would result from such ‘reforms,’” he said.
The 22-member council consists mainly of chief executives from major companies, including Intel, Procter & Gamble and Southwest Airlines. Trumka and Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and chairman of the Change to Win Federation, are the council’s only two labor members.
Trumka adopted the rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street movement in his statement.“The answer lies in the view that we share with so many of our fellow Americans: that our country has become dominated by the interests of the wealthiest 1 percent at the expense of the remaining 99 percent,” Trumka said.
“It turns out that a country run in the interests of the wealthiest 1 percent systematically under-invests in public goods; systematically silences, disempowers, and under-invests in its workers; and in the end is less competitive and creates fewer jobs than a country that focuses on the interests of the 99 percent.”
By Kevin Bogardus - 01/18/12 01:42 PM ET
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/204861-afl-cio-chief-dissents-from-white-house-jobs-council-report
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Wednesday offered a stinging rebuke of the the White House jobs Council’s latest report. Trumka, one of two union leaders on the council, said the body is too narrow to provide recommendations to President Obama that are balanced between the interests of business and other groups such as labor.
Trumka specifically took issue with the report’s calls for lower corporate taxes and fewer regulations, saying they would not lead to more jobs.“Overall, I disagree that reforming our regulatory system and reducing the statutory corporate tax rate are crucial elements of ‘competitiveness’ for the United States going forward, nor does empirical evidence support the claim that significant net new job creation would result from such ‘reforms,’” he said.
The 22-member council consists mainly of chief executives from major companies, including Intel, Procter & Gamble and Southwest Airlines. Trumka and Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and chairman of the Change to Win Federation, are the council’s only two labor members.
Trumka adopted the rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street movement in his statement.“The answer lies in the view that we share with so many of our fellow Americans: that our country has become dominated by the interests of the wealthiest 1 percent at the expense of the remaining 99 percent,” Trumka said.
“It turns out that a country run in the interests of the wealthiest 1 percent systematically under-invests in public goods; systematically silences, disempowers, and under-invests in its workers; and in the end is less competitive and creates fewer jobs than a country that focuses on the interests of the 99 percent.”
Thursday, December 15, 2011
CO-OPS SPREADING in USA
Worker-Owners of America, Unite!
THE Occupy Wall Street protests have come and mostly gone, and whether they continue to have an impact or not, they have brought an astounding fact to the public’s attention: a mere 1 percent of Americans own just under half of the country’s financial assets and other investments. America, it would seem, is less equitable than ever, thanks to our no-holds-barred capitalist system.
But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.
Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.
And worker-owned companies make a difference. In Cleveland, for instance, an integrated group of worker-owned companies, supported in part by the purchasing power of large hospitals and universities, has taken the lead in local solar-panel installation, “green” institutional laundry services and a commercial hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing more than three million heads of lettuce a year.
Local and state governments are likewise changing the nature of American capitalism. Almost half the states manage venture capital efforts, taking partial ownership in new businesses. Calpers, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local development projects; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each resident with dividends from public investment strategies as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.
Moreover, this year some 14 states began to consider legislation to create public Banks similar to the longstanding Bank of North Dakota; 15 more began to consider some form of single-payer or public-option health care plan.
Some of these developments, like rural co-ops and credit unions, have their origins in the New Deal era; some go back even further, to the Grange movement of the 1880s. The most widespread form of worker ownership stems from 1970s legislation that provided tax benefits to owners of small businesses who sold to their employees when they retired. Reagan-era domestic-spending cuts spurred nonprofits to form social enterprises that used profits to help finance their missions.
Recently, growing economic pain has provided a further catalyst. The Cleveland cooperatives are an answer to urban decay that traditional job training, small-business and other development strategies simply do not touch. They also build on a 30-year history of Ohio employee-ownership experiments traceable to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s.
Further policy changes are likely. In Indiana, the Republican state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, is using state deposits to lower interest costs to employee-owned companies, a precedent others states could easily follow. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is developing legislation to support worker-owned strategies like that of Cleveland in other cities. And several policy analysts have proposed expanding existing government “set aside” procurement programs for small businesses to include co-ops and other democratized enterprises.
If such cooperative efforts continue to increase in number, scale and sophistication, they may suggest the outlines, however tentative, of something very different from both traditional, corporate-dominated capitalism and traditional socialism.
It’s easy to overestimate the possibilities of a new system. These efforts are minor compared with the power of Wall Street banks and the other giants of the American economy. On the other hand, it is precisely these institutions that have created enormous economic problems and fueled public anger.
During the Populist and Progressive eras, a decades-long buildup of public anger led to major policy shifts, many of which simply took existing ideas from local and state efforts to the national stage. Furthermore, we have already seen how, in moments of crisis, the nationalization of auto giants like General Motors and Chrysler can suddenly become a reality. When the next financial breakdown occurs, huge injections of public money may well lead to de facto takeovers of major banks.
And while the American public has long supported the capitalist model, that, too, may be changing. In 2009 a Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under 30 years old were “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism.”
A long era of economic stagnation could well lead to a profound national debate about an America that is dominated neither by giant corporations nor by socialist bureaucrats. It would be a fitting next direction for a troubled nation that has long styled itself as of, by and for the people.
By GAR ALPEROVITZ
Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland and a founder of the Democracy Collaborative, is the author of “America Beyond Capitalism.”
THE Occupy Wall Street protests have come and mostly gone, and whether they continue to have an impact or not, they have brought an astounding fact to the public’s attention: a mere 1 percent of Americans own just under half of the country’s financial assets and other investments. America, it would seem, is less equitable than ever, thanks to our no-holds-barred capitalist system.
But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.
Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.
And worker-owned companies make a difference. In Cleveland, for instance, an integrated group of worker-owned companies, supported in part by the purchasing power of large hospitals and universities, has taken the lead in local solar-panel installation, “green” institutional laundry services and a commercial hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing more than three million heads of lettuce a year.
Local and state governments are likewise changing the nature of American capitalism. Almost half the states manage venture capital efforts, taking partial ownership in new businesses. Calpers, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local development projects; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each resident with dividends from public investment strategies as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.
Moreover, this year some 14 states began to consider legislation to create public Banks similar to the longstanding Bank of North Dakota; 15 more began to consider some form of single-payer or public-option health care plan.
Some of these developments, like rural co-ops and credit unions, have their origins in the New Deal era; some go back even further, to the Grange movement of the 1880s. The most widespread form of worker ownership stems from 1970s legislation that provided tax benefits to owners of small businesses who sold to their employees when they retired. Reagan-era domestic-spending cuts spurred nonprofits to form social enterprises that used profits to help finance their missions.
Recently, growing economic pain has provided a further catalyst. The Cleveland cooperatives are an answer to urban decay that traditional job training, small-business and other development strategies simply do not touch. They also build on a 30-year history of Ohio employee-ownership experiments traceable to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s.
Further policy changes are likely. In Indiana, the Republican state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, is using state deposits to lower interest costs to employee-owned companies, a precedent others states could easily follow. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is developing legislation to support worker-owned strategies like that of Cleveland in other cities. And several policy analysts have proposed expanding existing government “set aside” procurement programs for small businesses to include co-ops and other democratized enterprises.
If such cooperative efforts continue to increase in number, scale and sophistication, they may suggest the outlines, however tentative, of something very different from both traditional, corporate-dominated capitalism and traditional socialism.
It’s easy to overestimate the possibilities of a new system. These efforts are minor compared with the power of Wall Street banks and the other giants of the American economy. On the other hand, it is precisely these institutions that have created enormous economic problems and fueled public anger.
During the Populist and Progressive eras, a decades-long buildup of public anger led to major policy shifts, many of which simply took existing ideas from local and state efforts to the national stage. Furthermore, we have already seen how, in moments of crisis, the nationalization of auto giants like General Motors and Chrysler can suddenly become a reality. When the next financial breakdown occurs, huge injections of public money may well lead to de facto takeovers of major banks.
And while the American public has long supported the capitalist model, that, too, may be changing. In 2009 a Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under 30 years old were “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism.”
A long era of economic stagnation could well lead to a profound national debate about an America that is dominated neither by giant corporations nor by socialist bureaucrats. It would be a fitting next direction for a troubled nation that has long styled itself as of, by and for the people.
By GAR ALPEROVITZ
Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland and a founder of the Democracy Collaborative, is the author of “America Beyond Capitalism.”
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Oakland OWS Port Action Dec. 12th, 2011
Occupy Members Swarm Oakland Port
"I am getting tired of seeing my neighbors getting hurt and I am fighting the good fight." Says UPWA Leader Charles Smith
(12-12) 11:58 PST OAKLAND -- Almost half the berths at the Port of Oakland have temporarily ceased operations today after hundreds of protesters spent the morning blocking intersections in the port.
Roughly 150 longshoremen on the dayshift were sent home with little to no pay after they were either unable to get to work or the big rigs used to haul containers couldn't reach the berths, said Craig Merrilees, spokesman for the International Longshore Worker's Union (ILWU). Fifty longshoremen are still working today, Merrilees said.
The employees were sent home after the companies that own the different berths in the port decided to shut down and send workers home. "There have been disruptions, there have been distractions, but we are not shut down," said Isaac Kos-Read, spokesman for the port.
The next shift of workers is expected to start later this afternoon and demonstrators have pledged to again disrupt operations.
"We have a lot to be proud of today," said Clarence Thomas, a Longshoreman after getting the text alert from protest organizers saying they had successfully closed the port and were pulling out. Thomas said he supported the movement.
"We're very very happy," added Judy Greenspan, 59, a public school teacher in Richmond. "Despite all the premonitions of violence, this has been peaceful throughout. I hope we can redouble our efforts again this afternoon."
The group of protesters succeeded in stopping a line of big-rigs from entering the Port of Oakland for nearly five hours this morning during their march to shut down the busy cargo terminal.
Organizers have pledged to march to the port and shut down the terminal, one of the busiest on the West Coast. Some unions, including the one representing Oakland teachers, are supporting the day-long strike while others, like the Longshoremen's union, say shutting down the port will harm hard-working stevedores and truck drivers.
Carrying signs saying "Shutdown Wall St. on the Waterfront" about 200 protesters marched the three blocks from the West Oakland BART Station to the port entrances before sunrise today.
The group marchers were met by a line of police officers in riot gear near the intersection of Seventh Street and Middle Harbor Road. Protesters began marching in a circle, preventing trucks from getting through. At least one demonstrator set up a tent in the intersection.
Around 8:45 a.m. two lines of 50 police officers in riot gear marched toward the group and formed a line on one side of the group for 15 minutes. About 25 officers then walked away, seeming to suggest the standoff would continue into the late morning.
Before dawn, one trucker, clearly frustrated, blew his air horn and tried to drive through the crowd.
Some Longshoremen scheduled to begin work at 8 a.m. decided they didn't want to cross a picket line and went home. Others, though, said they needed the money.
"I am here because I am a union member. Unions have been decimated," Charles Smith, 68, a retired wastewater treatment plant worker said as he trudged to the port. "I am getting tired of seeing my neighbors getting hurt and I am fighting the good fight."
Demonstrators are trying to close ports up and down the West Coast. "It's necessary. It is a way to strike back, to show our numbers and show what the people can do," said William Lovell, 44, who said he participated in the now-dismantled Occupy SF camp. "We are politely breaking the rules as gently as we can."
At a news conference this morning, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said while she agrees with the concerns of the Occupy movement in general, she did not want to see the port closed.
"We're working hard today to keep the port operations going with minimal disruption," Quan said. "We urge the demonstrators who are coming to the port to respect the rights of the 99 percent who are trying to work today and to keep their protest peaceful. So far, it seems to be going well and operations are minimally disrupted. We hope that this will continue for the day."
Dan Siegel, Quan's legal adviser who quit when she supported a raid of the downtown Occupy camp, spent the morning at the protest. He said the mood was almost "festive."
"It started out kind of tense, there were a lot of threats from police and politicians," he said. "I think ultimately we had large enough numbers (that) police decided to pull back and allow us to picket."
Chronicle staff writers Will Kane and Henry K. Lee contributed to this report.
Edited and emphasis by Bloggger
"I am getting tired of seeing my neighbors getting hurt and I am fighting the good fight." Says UPWA Leader Charles Smith
(12-12) 11:58 PST OAKLAND -- Almost half the berths at the Port of Oakland have temporarily ceased operations today after hundreds of protesters spent the morning blocking intersections in the port.
Roughly 150 longshoremen on the dayshift were sent home with little to no pay after they were either unable to get to work or the big rigs used to haul containers couldn't reach the berths, said Craig Merrilees, spokesman for the International Longshore Worker's Union (ILWU). Fifty longshoremen are still working today, Merrilees said.
The employees were sent home after the companies that own the different berths in the port decided to shut down and send workers home. "There have been disruptions, there have been distractions, but we are not shut down," said Isaac Kos-Read, spokesman for the port.
The next shift of workers is expected to start later this afternoon and demonstrators have pledged to again disrupt operations.
"We have a lot to be proud of today," said Clarence Thomas, a Longshoreman after getting the text alert from protest organizers saying they had successfully closed the port and were pulling out. Thomas said he supported the movement.
"We're very very happy," added Judy Greenspan, 59, a public school teacher in Richmond. "Despite all the premonitions of violence, this has been peaceful throughout. I hope we can redouble our efforts again this afternoon."
The group of protesters succeeded in stopping a line of big-rigs from entering the Port of Oakland for nearly five hours this morning during their march to shut down the busy cargo terminal.
Organizers have pledged to march to the port and shut down the terminal, one of the busiest on the West Coast. Some unions, including the one representing Oakland teachers, are supporting the day-long strike while others, like the Longshoremen's union, say shutting down the port will harm hard-working stevedores and truck drivers.
Carrying signs saying "Shutdown Wall St. on the Waterfront" about 200 protesters marched the three blocks from the West Oakland BART Station to the port entrances before sunrise today.
The group marchers were met by a line of police officers in riot gear near the intersection of Seventh Street and Middle Harbor Road. Protesters began marching in a circle, preventing trucks from getting through. At least one demonstrator set up a tent in the intersection.
Around 8:45 a.m. two lines of 50 police officers in riot gear marched toward the group and formed a line on one side of the group for 15 minutes. About 25 officers then walked away, seeming to suggest the standoff would continue into the late morning.
Before dawn, one trucker, clearly frustrated, blew his air horn and tried to drive through the crowd.
Some Longshoremen scheduled to begin work at 8 a.m. decided they didn't want to cross a picket line and went home. Others, though, said they needed the money.
"I am here because I am a union member. Unions have been decimated," Charles Smith, 68, a retired wastewater treatment plant worker said as he trudged to the port. "I am getting tired of seeing my neighbors getting hurt and I am fighting the good fight."
Demonstrators are trying to close ports up and down the West Coast. "It's necessary. It is a way to strike back, to show our numbers and show what the people can do," said William Lovell, 44, who said he participated in the now-dismantled Occupy SF camp. "We are politely breaking the rules as gently as we can."
At a news conference this morning, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said while she agrees with the concerns of the Occupy movement in general, she did not want to see the port closed.
"We're working hard today to keep the port operations going with minimal disruption," Quan said. "We urge the demonstrators who are coming to the port to respect the rights of the 99 percent who are trying to work today and to keep their protest peaceful. So far, it seems to be going well and operations are minimally disrupted. We hope that this will continue for the day."
Dan Siegel, Quan's legal adviser who quit when she supported a raid of the downtown Occupy camp, spent the morning at the protest. He said the mood was almost "festive."
"It started out kind of tense, there were a lot of threats from police and politicians," he said. "I think ultimately we had large enough numbers (that) police decided to pull back and allow us to picket."
Chronicle staff writers Will Kane and Henry K. Lee contributed to this report.
Edited and emphasis by Bloggger
Thursday, December 8, 2011
1% Attack on Labor Unions (via NLRB)
The Republican war on unions continues apace. On a near-party-line vote Wednesday, the House passed a bill crafted to thwart a National Labor Relations Board decision, made earlier Wednesday, that would entitle workers to a timely vote on unionization once they’ve petitioned for it. By ruling that employers’ legal challenges can be entertained only after a vote, the board effectively denied employers the ability to hold up a vote for weeks, months or even years. Elections delayed, the NLRB essentially said, are elections denied.
The House legislation, by contrast, stipulated that such legal challenges can go forward before the vote. The bill will almost surely go nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but then, it’s just one foray in the Republicans’ battle to extirpate worker-controlled organizations in America.
E.J. Dionne Jr.
A New Square Deal
In the run-up to Wednesday’s NLRB vote, there was considerable doubt as to whether a vote could even be held. The five-seat board is down to three members. Republicans have vowed not to confirm any more of President Obama’s appointees, and the Supreme Court ruled last year that if the board’s membership fell to just two, it would no longer have the power to issue rulings. In recent weeks a number of Republicans have urged the board’s remaining GOP member, Brian Hayes, to resign, stripping the board of its rule-setting ability. After NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce scaled back the proposed reform, Hayes decided to stay on, though he did vote against Pearce’s modified proposal.
Also Wednesday, one ostensible casus belli for the GOP war on the board was removed when Boeing and the Machinists Union agreed on a new contract, under which the company committed to expand production at its unionized Washington-state factories. In return, the union agreed to drop its complaint to the NLRB against Boeing’s new factory in non-union South Carolina. When the NLRB’s general counsel took up the case, Republicans pounced: The board, they said, was threatening to kill jobs. This week, the general counsel indicated that if the machinists dropped the case, so would he.
But that won’t stop the GOP’s jihad. The term of NLRB member Craig Becker expires this month, which will winnow board membership down to a powerless two. GOP legislators won’t confirm more members as long as Obama is president, nor will they permit a congressional recess during which Obama could make recess appointments. Throughout 2012, then, the organization that governs labor relations in the United States will govern no more: Lower-level labor-board judges can issue rulings, but the board to which such rulings can be appealed will be MIA. Labor disputes will enter a terra incognita: Can they be heard by a court absent a board ruling? Can employers or unions willfully violate labor law with the assurance that the referees are no longer on the field? Conundrums loom.
Some might reasonably wonder why the GOP war persists when union power has already been so greatly reduced. In the mid-20th century, 40 percent of private-sector workers belonged to unions; today, just 7 percent do. But the Republican struggle continues for two reasons. When it comes to elections, unions are still the most potent mobilizers of the Democratic vote — getting minorities to the polls and persuading members of the white working class to vote Democratic. Indeed, Republican gains among working-class whites (whom they carried by an unprecedented 63 percent to 33 percent in 2010) are, above all, the result of the deunionization of that class. An analysis of exit polling over the past 30 years shows that unionized white working-class men vote Democratic at a rate 20 percent higher than their non-union counterparts. For political reasons, Republicans are determined to de-unionize workers even more.
There’s another reason, too. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that in the third quarter, wages as a share of gross domestic product were the lowest they’ve been since 1929, and compensation (that includes health insurance) as a share of GDP was at its lowest point since 1955. Corporate profits as a share of GDP, by contrast, are the highest they’ve been since 1929. The destruction of private-sector unions has redistributed income to the rich, which is the Republican Party’s raison d’etre.
Which is why the Republican war on unions — which is also the Republican war on the 99 percent — rolls on.
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