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Affordable housing and small business in NYC under attack

From TimeOut NY:

If it wasn’t already, the term affordable housing became an oxymoron in NYC last month, when the Rent Guidelines Board voted for increases of 4.5 percent on one-year leases and 8.5 percent on two-year leases for rent-stabilized apartments, the biggest hike since 1989. But activist organizations such as Housing Here and Now, a coalition of community and social-justice groups, have not given up the fight for that and other tenants’-rights issues.

Here are ways you can help!

Spend an hour at a rally. The Met Council (metcouncil.net) protects and promotes tenants’ rights and sends news of upcoming protests, press conferences and public hearings to its members. The Real Rent Reform Campaign meets on Wednesday 23 (check metcouncil.net for time and location). Got a few more hours? Volunteer with Housing Here and Now (housinghereandnow.org) or one of its affiliated groups. For example, the Met Council needs help manning its hot line and weekly walk-in clinic for anyone with tenants’-rights questions. And the Tenants Political Action Committee (tenantspac.org), which works to get sympathetic candidates elected to public office, is always looking for door knockers, phone-bankers and fund-raisers.

It's not just affordable housing that being destroyed in Manhattan and New York City as a whole. Small businesses are also being destroyed. As the relentless Westchester-ization of Manhattan continues to make the borough a surprisingly sterile gated community for the ultra-rich, it is increasingly devoid of socio-economic diversity, but also increasingly dominated by swarming corporate-branded, corporation-owned, corporation-sponsored and chain operations destroying neighborhood small businesses and crushing the entrepreneurial spirit.

Women in NY worse off than in 1989

According to Crain's New York Business (subscription),

Women in New York state are now worse off economically than they were in 1989, according to a new report issued Thursday.

The state is ranked 10th worst in the nation by the percentage of women living in poverty, down compared to 20th in 1989, according to the report, The Economic Status of Women in New York, which was researched by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

However, New York also ranked in the top 10 "for its share of women aged 25 and over with four-year college degrees and...ninth in the nation for its percentage of women employed in managerial and professional jobs."

Henry Kravis tax loophole to help the ultra-rich

NYCers fall behind on paying energy bills

From Crain's New York Business:

[T]he number of Consolidated Edison and National Grid customers who were behind on their payments went up by 5% last month compared with April 2007. They are also falling further behind than before, as the amount city residents owe on their utility bill has gone up by 19%.

Con Ed alone says more than 187,756 people were behind on their bills last month, a 9% increase over the year-ago month. The company turned off service to over 9,321 customers last month....

Current trends in the price of oil heat do not bode well for the winter heating season, either.... [T]he price of home heating oil has gone up nearly 6% since the end of April....

Heating oil prices typically stay flat or go down as temperatures go up. But that seasonal dip won’t occur this year because of the sharp increase in crude oil prices....

NYC Comptroller pushes more US corporations to protect LGBT workers

Six companies already adopt City’s request . . .

From my friend Jeff Simpson in the Comptoller's office:

New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. and the New York City Pension Funds...called on two dozen of America’s largest companies to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity – nearly twice as many proposals as in the previous proxy season.
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The resolutions [can be viewed at] www.comptroller.nyc.gov  ....

The resolutions call for companies that have not already done so to revise their policies to forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This is the second proxy season in which all new measures include gender identity.

This season’s resolutions focus on 24 companies, most of which are in the discrimination(all are within the Fortune 1000). The companies are: HCC Insurance Holdings of Houston, TX; Timken Company of Canton, OH; ExxonMobil Corp. of Irving, TX; AK Steel Corp. of Middletown, OH; Fidelity National Financial, Inc. of Jacksonville, FL; Brink’s Company of Richmond, VA; Liberty Global, Inc. of Englewood, CO; Lyondell Chemical Company of Houston, TX; Eastman Chemical Co. of Kingsport, TN; Tesoro Corp. of San Antonio, TX; Apache Corp. of Houston, TX; Murphy Oil Corp. of El Dorado, AR; Kelly Services, Inc. of Troy, MI; EchoStar Communications Corp. of Englewood, CO; Huntsman Corp. of Salt Lake City, UT; Marshall & Ilsley Corp. of Milwaukee, WI; Frontier Oil Corp. of Houston, TX; Borg Warner. Inc. of Auburn Hills, MI; Anadarko Petroleum Corp. of The Woodlands, TX; Synovus Financial Corp. of Columbus, GA; Erie Indemnity Company (Erie Insurance) of Erie, PA; SPX Corporation of Charlotte, NC; American Financial Group, Inc. of Cincinnati, OH; and, Leggett & Pratt, Inc. of Carthage, MO.

Currently, the five Pension Funds have more than $110 billion in holdings. The Funds hold nearly 30 million shares worth nearly $2.2 billion in the companies announced today.

Already, management at Erie Indemnity, SPX Corp., The Brink’s Company, Synovus Financial Corp., AK Steel Corp. and Marshall & Ilsley Corp has agreed to adopt the changes. The Comptroller’s Office has since withdrawn those resolutions.

This is the eighth time that the Funds have filed a measure with ExxonMobil, with each year bringing stronger support from its shareholders. The measure calls for ExxonMobil to amend its Equal Employment Opportunity policy to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. (It does not include gender identify because it originated prior to the resolutions expanding to include gender identity.)

Shareholder support for the proposal has increased in each subsequent year it has been filed: in 2007, it was supported by 37.7 percent of shares voted; in 2006, it was supported by 34.6 percent of shares voted; and in 2005, it was supported by 29.4 percent.

“We must remain steadfast in our efforts to bring about change and urge ExxonMobil to establish equal rights in the workplace,” Thompson said. “While it is heartening that a number of shareholders agree that ExxonMobil must take steps to provide equal protections for all employees, it is extremely troubling and downright unacceptable that ExxonMobil has strongly resisted the call...."

To date, 50 companies have amended their policies to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity. During the last proxy season alone, eight companies agreed to adopt explicit prohibitions against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity: Robert Half, International; Advance Auto Parts; Wesco International, First Horizon Financial, Cleveland-Cliffs, Armor Holdings, Sky West, Inc., and Family Dollar Stores.

Additionally, the measure won a majority vote of 52.2 percent at HCC Insurance, making it the fourth management-opposed, social proposal ever to win majority support.

Strategy of vultures

Devilstower on Daily Kos contrasts Mitt Romney's awkward kowtowing to religion-based Republican leaders with John F. Kennedy's braver stand against those of an earlier time (only just) who would subject politicians and government policies to religious tests. In so doing, Devilstower also calls on Democrats to abandon a "strategy of vultures" relative to progressive goals, such as fighting poverty.

[T]here is a war over the place of religion in American life.... And if you believe in the separation of church and state, you won't be surprised to find that you're losing.
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If you listen to the media, it was forty-seven years ago that John Kennedy gave a speech to reassure majority Protestants about his Catholic faith. That's completely untrue  Kennedy never made such a speech. 

Instead, John Kennedy stepped in front of a suspicious, openly hostile audience of protestant religious leaders and delivered a speech in which he adamantly maintained that faith of any sort should not be in an issue. His speech was not an apology for being Catholic. It was a bold demand to hold fast to an "absolute separation of church and state."
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We've reached the sorry state where the Republican Party officially and vocally support everything that John Kennedy stood up against in his 1960 speech. The Democratic Party has adopted a strategy on this and many other issues, in which they either stand aside or lend half-hearted support to Republicans. They do this in the hopes that when Republicans push too far, Democrats can pick up the pieces without having offended anyone. That's the strategy of hyenas. The strategy of vultures.
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Forgotten in all this are the issues that Kennedy wanted to address in that long ago speech.  The issues that Kennedy called the "real issues" of the campaign. Issues like poverty.

"the hungry children I saw in West Virginia"

Health care.

"the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills"

Inequality and education.

"an America with too many slums, with too few schools"

And the loss of respect the nation was suffering in international affairs.

"the humiliating treatment of our president and vice president by those who no longer respect our power"

What the Democrats needs is a strategy of lions, not vultures: the work of the hunting pride on behalf of those who need to be fed. Instead, it has those who bury their heads into long-dead meat. That's not leadership on anyone's behalf. It's simple weakness and opportunism. Alas, for the "Party of the People."

NYC Comptroller: NYC economy would gain $142 million after legalization of same-sex marriage

The Office of NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson has issued the below press release:

New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. (photo) today issued a study finding that the legalization of marriage for same-sex partners could yield $142 million in economic benefits to New York City.

The report, Love Counts: The Economic Benefits of Marriage Equality for New York, concluded that the $142 million largely would be generated in the three years immediately following enactment of legislation, and would be derived from the spending of residents and visitors on their weddings, along with the spending of their out-of-town guests.

“Legalizing marriage for same-sex couples in New York would have impacts beyond allowing individuals to make the full legal commitments to their partners that opposite-sex couples take for granted,” Comptroller Thompson said in the report.

The report – which can be viewed at www.comptroller.nyc.gov - analyzed both the economic effects on the state and the fiscal impacts on government.

Thompson concluded that enacting marriage equality would entail costs to businesses and in particular those that offer health insurance to employee spouses. However, the report notes that any additional costs would be partly offset by the fact that many firms already provide domestic partner coverage. Among the Comptroller’s findings:

·       The economic impact of legalizing marriage for same-sex couples would add, on a net basis, about $184 million in spending to the State’s economy for the three years after legislative approval.

·       The $142 million benefit to New York City’s economy would include spending on weddings by New York State residents who live outside the City but choose to marry there.

·       The fiscal benefits would be over $117 million for New York State and about $7 million for New York City.

The rest of the release is here: http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/, including a 3-year economic and fiscal benefits table for NY State and NYC.

This caught my eye:

In 2005, there were 50,854 same-sex couples living together and residing in New York State who can be identified as partners, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That same year, there were 23,321 such couples in New York City. Nationally, the Census Bureau reported there were an estimated 777,000 same-sex couples at that time.

Using Massachusetts’ experience as a guidepost, the Comptroller’s Office study reasoned that 51 percent of same-sex couples identified through the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey would marry if given the opportunity. The Comptroller’s Office adopted a conservative approach to produce the estimates in the report.

Globalization and outsourcing

Dan Silverman's essay on Salon, "You Can't Stop A Tidal Wave With A Fork," is an interesting example of relentless optimism in the face of the destruction of the author's business due to consolidations in the publishing industry. However, the letters/comments in response I found to be far more interesting, frankly, and compelling. Globalization is a frightening and complex phenomenon. Silverman, I think, understands that. I think his writing style is very approachable, gentle--he has great talent and potential demonstrated by this first-person narrative of his. However, I would urge him to inject a bit more hesitancy, circumspection, into his relatively unqualified pronouncements touching on global economics and business.

Here are some of the comments I found interesting for one reason or another:

Lack of regulation and a step anyone can take?

Mr. Silverman...needs to understand that we are simply being looted.... The tool being used to do this looting is multi-national corporations...unregulated, ungoverned and completely immoral in their activities. They are not just destroying our jobs, but our environment, our culture, our children’s futures, and our very souls. Mr. Silverman, get a spine.... There are plenty of things that can be done if we, collectively, insisted our government do its regulatory job. But primary first step that any of us (all of us) can take, right now, is to treat each purchase we make as a moral choice.

Regulation and regulation enforcement should be tied into international labor practice and environmental polices (emphasis mine):

You want to outsource this job overseas? Manufacturing or service? I have no problems with that. Go for it. As long as there's a level playing field. America went through a labor revolution to get where we are today; revolutions that have little chance of happening overseas. It's different when the government really doesn't care if you don't work and would just as soon shoot you if you go on strike. Let's export our labor revolution. [Any American company] sending work overseas gets an additional 10% tax on any money sent to another country for a product or service, unless said country allows free and fair access to union organizing. Another 5% if they don't have reasonable pollution controls in place. Give me that, and I think we'll have a self-correcting mechanism. No more 13-year-olds making Nike's for $0.50/day....

Skills training, re-education, etc.

Let's put a stop to this insulting "education and retraining will cure all ills" pap.... We've outsourced manufacturing, and we're outsourcing services as fast as we can from typesetting to programming to architecture to radiology to paralegals. What, pray tell, are we supposed to reeducate people in?

And on tariffs:

The biggest difference between today and one hundred years ago is TARIFFS. In the 19th century, and the early 20th the US government nearly totally funded itself on tariffs - today there are no tariffs. Tariffs equalized competition between nations making local labor and overseas labor equivalent. With tariffs there may be good reasons to outsource overseas: superior technology or higher [craftsmanship], but not lower wages.

But, I choose to give commenter "JimPharo" the last word--about faith in each other tempered by realism about imperfect economic models, and about leaders' roles in promoting that faith, and government's role in using regulations when necessary, too:-

The so-called "race to the bottom" is a fact of our market-based economy. In fact, the process of seeking ever cheaper production is what drives our economy and always has. It's why Europeans invested in North America in the 17th century. It's why [Philadelphia] is crowded with office buildings built for companies who have long ago moved out or closed. It's why India is finding that it's ability to attract jobs is being undercut by lower cost providers in [Manila] and Malaysia.

The lesson to be learned from all this one that David is just beginning to grasp. Our market-based system has been one of the great creations of humankind. Of course it has limits, and it must be carefully regulated to work to society's advantage. What's missing now is not market mechanisms, or tariffs, or a soul. What's missing now is the simple faith that the future will bring us new opportunities and new rewards. And this faith is, in my experience, largely a product of a society's leaders.

It's what endeared FDR to a couple of generations of Americans. It's what made JFK seem cool. It's what makes Obama seem cool. It's even, God help my immortal soul, what made people like Reagan (the evil bastard!).... The future's like globalization: there's no stopping it.

We would do well not only to recognize that but to embrace it. One of the posters commented that the government has robbed us to give money to defense contractors, etc. I think this is right. What we should be doing instead is investing that same money in our future. We should be saying to David and everyone else who is trying make their way, "we've got your back. Your healthcare is on us. Your kids' education is on us. You won't starve or become homeless." And we should do that not because we're interested in creating a class of people addicted to a nanny-state. We should do that because we believe in David and in each other.

If David were a stock, I'd be ready to invest (if I had any money, that is!). Our future can be a great and wonderful thing, but only if we let go of the past and start to invest in it by investing in ourselves.

Tax season: distraction and disenfranchisement.

Under Bush, the rich got tax breaks far beyond what commonsense calls for. If you're middle-class, you probably really feel the rising costs for health care, energy/fuel, education, and services, and your real income may very well have remained stagnant. If you're part of the working poor...forget it. Actually, Rev. Bu$h&Co., Inc. actually hopes you will forget...and therefore not vote.

In such a season, it's fitting to revisit this Krugman op-ed column (emphases mine; click images to enlarge) --

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In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
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But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. [The GOP] can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential distraction; until [9/11] the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t the moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the voting booth.

Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.

Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with “voting while black.” Former staff members of the Justice Department’s civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.

The good news is that all the G.O.P.’s abuses of power weren’t enough to win the 2006 elections. And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans, because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich people and corporations that they weren’t really populists — seem to be realizing that times have changed.

[Recently,] Republican candidates trooped to Palm Beach to declare their allegiance to tax cuts, the Democrats met to declare their commitment to universal health care. And it’s hard to see what the G.O.P. can offer in response.

"Selling the American Way"

"Most European countries spend about half the percentage of GDP on advertising that the US does."

from John Brewer's review in The New York Review of Books, "Selling the American Way," of Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe, by Victoria de Grazia.