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For Americans today – particularly for bloggers, Senators, reporters and activists — it’s pretty much always a definitive rebuke to accuse someone of “acting politically.” Reflexive disdain for political motives is deeply rooted in our popular culture, which so often assumes that ethics is one thing, politics quite another. “You quit a profession you love for ethical reasons,” the President tells the main character on CBS’s Madam Secretary. “That makes you the least political person I know.”
But however culturally pervasive and recognizable this kind of disparagement may be – however tempting it is to call out someone for their political motives — there are reasons to do so sparingly.
To see why, it’s worth reflecting on two of the most striking recent instances in which base political motives have been alleged. Both the right and left agreed that Barack Obama’s decision to postpone executive action to reduce deportation of undocumented immigrants was unprincipled and political.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tried to erase the name of Stanley Levison from civil rights history in the 1960s. Now historian Ben Kamin is putting Levison firmly back into the historic record with his new book, Dangerous Friendship: Stanley Levison, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Kennedy Brothers.
Levison was a successful Jewish businessman and member of the American Communist Party until 1956, when the Soviet invasion of Hungary left him disillusioned. He refocused his organizing skills, business and labor contacts, energy and intelligence to support the work of Martin Luther King Jr., helping to found, manage and fund King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In the process, Levison became an intimate friend of King and part of the tight circle of confidants who helped develop King’s campaigns and sustain him emotionally.
What drew Levison, and hundreds of other American Jews like me,
» Read more about: Book Review: MLK’s Dangerous Friendship »
When charter schools first appeared in the ’90s, they aimed to experiment with innovative educational strategies to later implement in all public schools. Fast forward to today, when charters have grown into a national industry with 2.5 million students, 6,000 schools and a growing market of management services, vendors, policy shops and advocacy organizations – an industry that has its sights set on the nearly $750 billion spent each year on public education in the U.S.
A new report by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, however, shows that state charter laws, regulations and oversight have not kept up with the rapid growth of charters. The lack of effective oversight has resulted in far too many cases of fraud and abuse, too little attention to equity, wasted taxpayer money and eroded public trust.
Far too many charters have been plagued by scandals, abuses and poor educational standards. For example,
» Read more about: Study Calls for New Charter School Standards »
To the five members of the Long Beach Harbor Commission, the decision to renew an old lease for a coal-export terminal was an easy one. Metropolitan Stevedore has operated a dry-bulk terminal at the Port of Long Beach since 1962, from which it moves everything from soda ash to coal to petroleum coke (“petcoke”), a carbon-intensive refinery byproduct. Oxbow Carbon and Minerals, run by William Koch, brother to Charles and David, has long subleased a coal shed from Metro, where it stores petcoke and coal for export. Under the new contracts, Metro will continue its lease for the next 20 years, and Oxbow will now lease directly from the Port for 15. Beyond that, not much has changed.
“The amount of coal exported is going to be roughly the same,” says Port spokesman Art Wong. “The facility’s going to operate as it always has.” For the Port,
» Read more about: Coal Is Still King at the Port of Long Beach »
Cashing in on Kids, a joint project of In the Public Interest and the American Federation of Teachers, is working to ensure that parents, teachers, students and taxpayers continue to have a strong voice in how we run our schools and educate our nation’s children. Below is an action that needs your attention.
The FBI is currently investigating Concept Schools, Inc., a charter management company, which operates 19 schools in the state of Ohio. The federal investigation is for “white-collar crime,” self-dealing, and misusing federal money meant for the neediest students.
Given the seriousness of the allegations, it is likely that all 19 Concept charter schools will be shut down, but too often this puts taxpayers on the hook for the schools’ liabilities and debts.
Can you sign our petition today and help us protect taxpayers from any more grief and costs created by Concept Schools?
» Read more about: Make Charters — Not Taxpayers — Pay for Closed Schools »
Sunday’s extreme heat didn’t prevent some 200-plus Angelenos from gathering in the Ann and John Nickoll Family Sanctuary at Temple Isaiah for an informal economic summit. The audience for this Westside event, partly sponsored by Bend the Arc, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, included District 5 Councilman Paul Koretz.
The crowd saw a screening of economist Robert Reich’s 2013 film Inequality for All. Narrated by Reich, this documentary provides some of the most incisive analyses of the causes of the income gap yet found in the popular media. The film is recommended viewing for anyone wanting to learn how the American middle class has become an endangered species.
But many in the audience had already seen the film and after the lights came up emcee Serena Zeise brought out the guest speaker and Reich friend, Harold Meyerson. The affable yet acerbic Myerson is a native son of Los Angeles who years ago moved east to become a Washington Post columnist and American Prospect editor-at-large.
» Read more about: Harold Meyerson on Economic Inequality’s Tipping Point »
On September 10 Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1522 into law. The landmark legislation dramatically expands labor benefits for an estimated 6.5 million private-sector workers (including seasonal, part- and full-time employees), mandating they earn at least three paid sick leave days a year from their employers, effective July 1, 2015.
“AB 1522 is transformative,” the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), told Capital & Main. Gonzalez, who chairs the Assembly’s Select Committee on Women in the Workplace, added: “If you look back in history California has always led the way in furthering workers’ rights, from the minimum wage to an eight-hour workday.”
Before Governor Brown signed AB 1522, about 39 percent of the state’s labor force earned no paid sick leave benefits. As a result many workers faced two undesirable options when ill: Stay home and lose pay, or show up to work and expose others,
Politics is the art of compromise. On this note, Capital & Main asked Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) about the removal of 365,000 In Home Support Service (IHSS) workers from Assembly Bill 1522, the paid sick leave bill she authored. (See “Landmark Sick Leave Law Signed.”) The measure, signed into law September 10, grants this employment benefit to 6.5 million private-sector workers statewide. It takes effect on July 1, 2015. IHSS workers help the disabled and elderly with their daily household and medical needs. According to the Economic Policy Institute, nationally 93 percent of such workers are female, with 27 percent of them Hispanic and 18 percent African American.
“At the end of the day,” Assemblywoman Gonzalez said, “we were forced to take that specific group out. “It was a condition of having the bill signed by Governor Brown. His view is that IHSS workers are in the middle of statewide bargaining,
» Read more about: Paid Sick Leave Law Excludes Homecare Workers »
Over a span of 20 summer days truck driver Daniel Linares had moved some 110 cargo containers at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for Pacific 9, a drayage company based in Carson.
Linares’ August 15, 2014 check showed his gross earnings to be $3191.87. But another line item on the check stub offered a nasty payday shock: By Pac 9’s calculations Linares owed the company $296.47. In other words, he had received a “negative” paycheck.
Pac 9, a company whose “180-plus independent drivers” annually deliver more than 100,000 containers from Southern California’s ports and whose “customer list includes many of the most recognizable Fortune 100 companies,” according to the company website, had handed Linares the bill for the insurance, registration and other expenses incurred for the truck he leases from the company. He had already paid up-front for its fuel.
» Read more about: Port Truck Drivers Receive “Negative” Paychecks »
There has been increased attention recently paid to America’s vast infrastructure needs. The White House, in conjunction with the Treasury and Transportation Departments, even held a summit this week to bring together key leaders from state and local governments, as well as private sector investors, to discuss best practices for increasing investment in infrastructure projects in our communities.
We know that rebuilding America can be an effective way to rebuild our economy as well, but only if the deals are designed in a way that truly reflects the needs of our neighbors and our neighborhoods. That’s why we at In the Public Interest developed the Infrastructure Justice framework, a useful document for anyone who wants to ensure the investments that fund infrastructure projects meet the true infrastructure needs of our communities and help build the middle class.
By carefully evaluating public-private partnerships (P3s), and negotiating to include best practices for transparency,
In this uncertain post-recession era, economic inequality seems to be the only thing you can count on being in full supply. It’s certainly a subject that’s increasingly on people’s lips – thanks in no small part to Jacob Kornbluth’s 2013 documentary, Inequality for All. The film, wryly narrated by economist Robert Reich, lays out Reich’s astute perspective on how our country has arrived at the point where 400 Americans own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the country combined.
Sunday the Southern California Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union will screen Inequality for All, an event that will serve as a refresher course for some and an eye-opener for others who have not seen the film. Afterwards, Harold Meyerson, American Prospect editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist, will offer his always lively insights into what’s happened since the documentary’s premier, along with a discussion of commercial property tax reform.
» Read more about: Harold Meyerson Speaks on ‘Inequality for All’ »
Among the puffier news stories making the rounds today has been Monday’s unveiling of a portrait of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger by painter/photographer Gottfried Helnwein. (The artist’s other subjects have included singer Marilyn Manson and Schwarzenegger’s fellow Austrian, Adolf Hitler.) The portrait is a giant, hyper-realistic yearbook image of a smiling Schwarzenegger, backgrounded by a ghostly outline of California’s state seal. It will hang in the Capitol next to a wildflower landscape occupied by a more modestly proportioned Gray Davis, the man Schwarzenegger replaced after the 2003 recall election.
It’s worth remembering that Davis didn’t lose his job because he was some corrupt autocrat along the lines of Louisiana’s Huey Long. Instead, he was the collateral damage from a Texas-sized conspiracy led by energy trader Enron to hike up the cost of electricity for Californians. The resulting budget crisis and public backlash led to a celebrity coup in which frustrated citizens were allowed,
Today is a big day for Lionsgate Entertainment, and we want to help celebrate. That’s why on the occasion of the annual shareholder’s meeting of this hugely successful film company (taking place right now in Toronto), AFM musicians are proud to present a musical tribute to Lionsgate and its executive leadership – a little number we call “Right Here at the Top.”
AFM musicians created the song as part of our efforts to draw attention to Lionsgate’s destructive offshoring of musical scoring work, even as it simultaneously takes millions in tax dollars — moneys intended to enrich our communities. Of course the story told by the CEO in our song may not be exactly the story told by Lionsgate’s executives to their shareholders. But wait –– what’s that? The executives at Lionsgate fail to provide important information to their beloved shareholders?
August 28th marked the 51st anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On that sweltering day in 1963, amidst an atmosphere of racial tension stoked by political indecisiveness, as well as acts of violent Southern resistance defined by bombings and bloody protests, 250,000 Americans converged on the National Mall. There, facing the Lincoln Memorial, educators, clergymen, entertainers, civil rights leaders, politicians and ordinary citizens listened to a day of speeches, prayers and song. They had gathered so that their voices could be heard throughout the nation, but one voice on that day would be heard above all others.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the last speaker when he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. That historic oration is the subject of The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream, by Chicago-based journalist Gary Younge. Its four chapters brim with key insights and revelations about those troubled times,
» Read more about: Gary Younge on MLK’s Most Famous Speech »
Readers of Capital & Main are all too familiar with wage theft and job misclassification – twin plagues that afflict American workers, especially truck drivers at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. Employers use wage theft to shortchange employees out of their wages and benefits by shaving hours off time cards; job misclassification, on the other hand, allows companies to deny that the people working for them are even employees at all, but freelancers who are ineligible for government-provided benefits such as unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation. By misclassifying their workers, employers do not pay the kinds of payroll taxes that provide these and other services to workers.
Now, thanks to an epic investigative series published yesterday by the McClatchy news syndicate (publisher of the Sacramento Bee), in partnership with ProPublica, these two issues have been pushed before a national audience.
» Read more about: News Series Exposes Massive Employer Fraud in Construction »
In 2012 California’s construction industry took in a respectable $152 billion, employed nearly a million workers and is now projected to grow 26 percent by 2020. But according to a recently released report, a pall is threatening to settle over this otherwise bright horizon. Sinking Underground: The Growing Informal Economy in California Construction identifies an ever-expanding segment of workers in the industry who are not reported by their employers or are misclassified as independent contractors—characteristics of the “informal economy,” or what is more commonly referred to as an underground economy.
The study’s disturbing research suggests that informal construction, which benefits the state’s unscrupulous labor brokers and contractors, and the real estate developers who hire them, is partly responsible for the hollowing out of California’s middle class.
Sinking Underground was conducted by the Economic Roundtable and tracked labor statistics from 1972 to 2012.
» Read more about: Study: Cheaters Prosper in State’s Informal Construction Economy »
Whenever the subject of raising hourly pay to a livable level comes up in Los Angeles, you can expect two stalwart foes: The Chamber of Commerce and the Central City Association. They both represent business and they always argue that paying working people a wage they can live on will hurt business owners. I cannot recall a time they ever claimed anything else.
But now a new voice from the business community has surveyed the field of low-wage work and come up with a conclusion quite opposite the Chamber’s and the Association’s. A member of the faculty at MIT’s Sloan School of Management (named after a former president of General Motors, no less) compared wages and company results among sales people and check-out clerks. These jobs happen to rank one and two in the number of employees in the country, and they are notorious for low pay, part-time hours and oppressive working environments.
For many, the legacy of Labor Day has been forgotten. We forget about the struggle that so many fought and even died for to achieve decent working conditions. We take for granted that children no longer have to slave away in American factories for 17 hours a day, six days a week. We undervalue what it took to get the weekend. After all, that’s what makes Labor Day such a treat in the first place–we get a three-day weekend instead of the boring old two. And for those of us still lucky enough, the 40-hour work week is just the standard.
Longtime president and founder of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers said:
“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man,
35th Annual Labor Day Parade: Join the L.A. labor movement as we celebrate Labor Day weekend!
Monday, September 1
Parade begins 10 a.m., Broad Ave. and E Street
Rally and picnic start noon, Banning Park
Wilmington, CA
Download Flyer
For more information, contact the Labor Day Committee at (562) 595-1891
Labor Day Concert with Sheila E, Eric Benet and Irvin Mayfield Quintet
Monday, September 1
Doors open 4 p.m., concert starts 5 p.m.
Conga Room at L.A. Live
Download Concert Flyer. For more information or to purchase tickets, contact Todd Hawkins at todd@thetoddgroup.net or (213) 300-9342.
Assembly Bill 1522, created to give all California workers at least three days of paid sick leave, passed the legislature Friday, but with a key change: In-home health-care workers who assist disabled and elderly Californians will now be excluded from coverage. The compromise resulted in two important union backers of the bill, authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), to withdraw their support.
According to the Sacramento Bee, “The Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees abandoned the bill after it was rewritten to exempt home health-care workers.”
Another closely watched measure, Senate Bill 270, also passed its final hurdle Friday, the Los Angeles Times reports. The bill, authored by senators Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) and Ricardo Lara (D-Huntington Park/Long Beach), will ban single-use plastic bags in grocery stores and other retail outlets.