Monday, June 9, 2014

great story on homeless on long island

Sharing a vodka bottle of “holy water” while mourning their friend who they say froze to death, six homeless people in the Hicksville train station waiting room ponder their fate on a recent snowy Saturday. One, a Syosset native who thinks a warm jail may be better than calling the so-called hotbox his living room, openly considers suicide before his fellow “skids,” as they prefer to be called, shout him down. The oldest among them, a 71-year-old ex-plumber named Irving, who says he’s been homeless 25 years, jokes about being murdered. The grim talk turns to the average life expectancy for those living on the streets, which is between 42 and 52—decades younger than most Americans. “Why ain’t I dead yet?” a member of the group jokingly asks the others, most of whom are middle-aged. Playing off their morbid, self-deprecating sense of humor hardened by years of being treated like trash, another replies: “Because only the good die young!” They all share a laugh, forgetting their misery, if only for the moment. Dim florescent lighting, faded-yellow brick walls and urine-scented metal benches are the only other respite from gray skies, subzero wind chills and the frozen ground outside. They may not have much, but they’ve got each other. “Queen Maria,” as the five homeless men who protect her from being raped a third time call her, sits in a blue plastic shopping cart to keep raised the ankle she sprained after slipping on the ice. The group makes up just six of likely hundreds of undercounted, unsheltered homeless who refuse to stay in one of the more than roughly 100 shelters on Long Island despite the threat of frostbite, hypothermia and gangs. “If you tell them you’re safer on the street, they look at you like you have three heads,” says Maria, a 41-year-old mother of two whose husband kicked her out when her drinking got out of control six years ago. “After a while you get used to this lifestyle and you learn survival skills.” With the recent loss of their friend, “Mineola Tommy,” who they say was a Korean War veteran, the group is fully aware of the risk their “lifestyle” poses. Especially during a string of rare, extra-cold arctic blasts that led the Long Island Rail Road to keep the waiting rooms open 24 hours for a change. “Most important right now is to stay warm,” says Bobby Angell, a 56-year-old former MTA worker who’s been homeless on and off for two decades since losing his job and family to crack. “This is killer weather.” Local news outlets have reported the recent deaths of Tommy, another homeless man in East Meadow called “Wild Bill,” and an unidentified man in Medford, but confirming their cause of death—exposure or otherwise—with Nassau or Suffolk medical examiners is impossible without their full names and the consent of their likely estranged family. Tommy, the vet, wasn’t claimed right away at the morgue, an LIRR spokesman says. The population of people who are homeless on LI is by estimates up 18 percent in the five years following the 2008 Wall Street crash that caused the Great Recession—from 2,639 in ’09 to 3,123 last year, the latter nearly the population of Southampton village—according to latest annual homeless surveys, which a Press analysis found are lower than reality. The rise has caused tension in Nassau, where residents worry about aggressive panhandlers, and in Suffolk, where two new “mega-shelters” galvanized their neighbors to protest against the unwelcome additions to their community. Attempts to address the issue have had mixed results. LI’s rise comes as total homelessness fell 7 percent to 610,000 nationally last year with a 23 percent decrease in unsheltered homeless people (those not in shelters, living on the streets) since 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Housing an Urban Development (HUD), which counted more than one-third of those as unsheltered. Although homelessness on LI was down seven percent as the stats show that growth reversed from ’12 to last year, New York State bucked the nation’s downward trend with the largest increase in homelessness—11 percent—from ’12 to ’13 with 7,864 people and a 23 percent hike since ’07, according to HUD’s 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. Leading causes are still mental illness and substance abuse, with an increasing amount of aid emphasized for a subset of these sufferers, LI’s homeless veterans. Others who lost their homes in Sandy—both directly from storm damage or during its ensuing housing crunch—are still struggling, too, although it’s unclear how many of the 17 superstorm survivors the federal government was reimbursing for staying in hotels in New York as of December are from LI. Smaller subsets include people with HIV/AIDS, victims of domestic violence and runaway children. Homeless people may remain largely invisible—aside from the occasional panhandler or garbage picker—but more are teetering on the edge of joining their ranks, experts warn. “Working people are one check away from being homeless,” says Johnola Morales, managing director of the Hempstead-based Interfaith Nutrition Network, which has seen more clients at their soup kitchens across LI and three shelters in Nassau. “It would take a very small emergency for people to not pay their rent and wind up in the same situation.” THE FORGOTTEN Footprints in a foot of snow lead up to a graffiti-covered abandoned house in Wyandanch. Following them with a flashlight before dawn last month, Greta Guarton peers into a busted-out window and shouts: “Hello?” A voice from behind an upstairs window blocked by junk yells back, asking what she wants. After a back-and-forth, she gets what she’s after: information. The man tells her that he spends time at the train station, has been on the streets for two years and isn’t alone—three others are in the boarded-up house, too. OUR HOUSE: A group of homeless people who refuse to stay in local shelters, including a woman who rides in a shopping cart after injuring her foot, warm up in the Hicksville train station’s platform-level waiting room. OUR HOUSE: A group of homeless people who refuse to stay in local shelters, including a woman who rides in a shopping cart after injuring her foot, warm up in the Hicksville train station’s platform-level waiting room. Guarton, executive director of the Long Island Coalition for the Homeless, makes such vacant house calls for HUD’s Homeless Point-in-Time Count, held one day each January, a census of those in shelters and on the street. She coordinates volunteers who count the unsheltered. The local tally is then rolled into national stats to be released later this year. In the broken window, she leaves four donated sweatshirts and paperwork with phone numbers for social service agencies that those inside can call. Then she trudges back through the freshly fallen flakes to her SUV. It’s more productive than when she follows tracks in the snow up to two other nearby vacant homes. No one answers at the second. At the third, she calls out in Spanish—she’s met undocumented immigrants staying there before—but again, there’s no answer, which she suspects is because they’re afraid she’s law enforcement looking to deport them. “We heard people in a lot of [vacant] houses that wouldn’t come out,” says Guarton, recalling surveys going back a decade. “They’re terrified to talk to us. “If they don’t have documents of being here legally, they’re not eligible for most services, including emergency housing,” she adds. Monica Diez, administrative director at the Workplace Project, a Hempstead-based nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, says many of those she works with avoid the shelters. “Shelter-wise, they’re basically left on their own to fend for themselves,” Diez says. “They don’t know exactly where they stand with the immigration issue with sheltering and who’s eligible at least for a night, so they don’t really go through that resource.” Complicating the survey further is that everyone tends to look homeless bundled up in the dead of winter. Guarton stops a man on the street, then another, to ask if they know where the homeless are. One points to a vacant house she checked where nobody answered. She heads to a bodega where the homeless are said to congregate. A group of men eating breakfast inside point her to another bodega across the street, where a man in a camouflage jacket leaves upon hearing Guarton’s query. The rest claim ignorance. After sun-up an hour later, Guarton’s questioned more than a dozen around the downtown and only found the one vacant house dweller with three apparent friends. Other volunteers take over the search for the area after she leaves. “There are tons of people who are obviously homeless and they say, ‘No, I’m not homeless, but I know where they are,’” Guarton says, noting that she can’t count those who appear to be, but deny being homeless. Nassau, Suffolk and the shelter operators send her their stats tallying how many homeless are staying in emergency and transitional housing while she relies on volunteers to count those on the streets all day and night for the survey. But the margin of error for polling such a transient group is incalculable. For one, “The Hicksville Crew,” as the sextet at the train station call themselves, say they weren’t counted. Guarton expects the stats for LI’s unsheltered to be lower than reality. Especially since only about 50 volunteers—half of those last year—were available when the survey came the day after an average of 14.5 inches of snow covered parts of LI. Shelters may serve more clients on such snowy nights, which compensates for some of the unsheltered that could be missed, but there are many more homeless that aren’t counted at all, such as those temporarily in jail, rehab and psychiatric wards. Statistics for how many homeless are jailed, committed or in rehab were not available. Suburban sprawl also makes the homeless census harder than in New York City, where counters scour the metropolis in grids. Volunteers on the Island mostly target known homeless hangouts for their leg of the national survey—but those living in cars, for example, tend to go uncounted, advocates say. Volunteers counted 207 unsheltered in ’09—8 percent of LI’s homeless that year—and less than 100 every year since, except last year, when 117 were tallied. Results of this year’s street count were not available as of press time. “I think it’s a useful exercise, but I would have questions about its absolute accuracy,” says Joel Blau, professor of social policy at the School of Social Welfare at Stony Brook University. He likens the homeless stats to the unemployment rate, which is estimated to be twice as high as reported since it doesn’t count those whose benefits ran out. “The problem with that is homeless people often try to be elusive,” he says. “You never know if you missed the person under the bridge, or whether somebody’s in the basement of the abandoned house or whether they’re in the woods at the end of a dead-end street.” SKID ROW In the easier-to-count segment of the homeless population, Suffolk officials report a more than 62-percent increase in individuals seeking temporary housing assistance over the past five years—from 1,405 in ’09 to 2,260, about the population of Shelter Island, last year. That includes a 30-percent increase since May in homeless families—totaling 535—consisting of 684 adults and 1,282 children, as of December. To meet demand, the county last year contracted two new family shelters, each fitting nearly 100 families, in converted hotels two miles apart from one another in Hauppauge and Brentwood. Neighboring school officials have complained that the added homeless children overwhelm classrooms; outraged neighbors say the mega-shelters ruin their communities and the facilities’ legality has been debated in the county legislature. And there’s still not enough shelters, advocates and officials say. “The wintertime is the time when demand for homelessness goes up,” Suffolk Social Services Commissioner John O’Neill told the legislature’s human services committee in December while being pressured to cut the number of families at the two controversial shelters. “I’m not going to commit to shifting families out of some place that I may need to place homeless families.” Legis. John Kennedy Jr. (R-Nesconset), the legislature’s Republican minority leader, had proposed a bill that would cancel the contract with the new shelters, but the measure was tabled. He maintains the county should abide by its law limiting shelter size to 12 families, but the county attorney says state law trumps county limits on shelter sizes in these cases. “There are many, many, many shelters throughout Suffolk County, but only three of them that go to this size and really nothing that eclipses this facility in the center of Hauppauge,” Kennedy said at the same meeting. “So right there we go to what is clearly an equity issue.” Dozens of residents, arguing they’ve absorbed more homeless than other communities, packed the meeting to sound off in support of the bill, and are expected to do the same when the legislature holds its first full meeting of the year this month. “What Suffolk County wants to do to the Hauppauge community is an outright disgrace,” Joanne Garramone, a longtime resident of the area, told the panel. “Concentrating all the homeless into our community…to save money for the county will in the long run severely hurt our residents’ safety, finances, taxes and value of their home.” Legis. Kate Browning (WF-Shirley) said at the same meeting that she received some “disturbing” emails with comments “derogatory” toward homeless families after she previously said that the anti-mega-shelter crowd are arging NIMBY—not-in-my-backyard. Aside from the size and school aspects of the issue—officials say many of the children in shelters are bused to their hometown schools—some mega-shelter opponents’ comments suggest the fear is that all homeless are alcoholics or drug abusers, like the Hicksville Crew. That isn’t necessarily the case. “A large portion of our homeless are the result of a slow-recovering economy coupled with the high number of bank foreclosures on Long Island,” says John Nieves, spokesman for the Suffolk Department of Social Services (DSS). “Another contributing factor is the high cost of living on Long Island.” While the federal government defines poverty for a family of four as a total income of $24,343 a year, the poverty level for LI is $46,000 a year, due to the higher cost of living, according to the Long Island Federation of Labor. And since much of the county’s homeless population and shelters are in western Suffolk, the safety net has holes on the ritzier East End. DSS officials say they’re planning to open more shelters around the Twin Forks, but it’s doubtful any new beds will open up before spring. “We cannot take everyone who comes walking through the door, we don’t have the capacity,” says Tracey Lutz, executive director of Maureen’s Haven, a network of 18 houses of worship that host up to 60 homeless nightly more than 100 times annually. “The system that we have in place right now doesn’t work, particularly on Long Island for long-term solutions… We have to give people opportunities to earn a living wage.” She also takes issue with DSS requiring eviction notices for clients to qualify for their shelters. “This is particularly concerning because many of the people that are looking for shelter have not lived in a traditional environment where they would easily have access to an eviction notice,” she says. “There doesn’t seem to be any wiggle room.” Nieves says DSS will except informal eviction notices as proof of homelessness, or conduct evaluations to corroborate an applicant in fact has no place to go. GIMME SHELTER Asked how many homeless people Nassau sheltered in recent years, Dr. John Imhoff, the social services commissioner for that county, provided stats for how many homeless people his agency placed in permanent housing and got out of motels. LI’s homeless coalition reports a 42-percent hike in sheltered people in the county from ’09 to ’12—595 to 847, about the population of Quioque. Survey results broken down by county were only available for that four-year span. Starting last year, LI’s homeless stats are lumped together. Imhoff says he has no plans to open any mega-shelters in Nassau, but he didn’t need to for sentiment rivaling that of Suffolk’s mega-shelter neighbors to rear its head in East Meadow, home to Eisenhower Park, historically a hotspot for the homeless. That is, until last year, when Nassau police, tired of summonsing homeless people that ignore the tickets, stepped up arresting them for quality-of-life crimes. Especially after finding out that some had obtained keys to the bathrooms, where they made themselves at home. “They’ve made it very unpleasant for people who sign up to use the barbeque areas,” Third Precinct Inspector Sean McCarthy told an East Meadow community meeting last spring. “We’ve made it less hospitable for them in Eisenhower Park. That’s a ship that doesn’t turn around right away. But, instead of writing appearance tickets at the scene, we usually bring them into the precinct and process them in a regular arrest fashion, not just write them a ticket that they’re never gonna answer anyway.” McCarthy was not available to provide an update on how this tactic has fared. A large homeless tent city tucked in the woods just west of the park that authorities shut down following a murder there a decade ago had one tent on a recent visit. Another camp along the Meadowbrook State Parkway, farther south near a Freeport day laborer hiring site, has seen two men living in those woods die in as many years, including a Hispanic man in his 20s found dead there last May. “He lived over there all winter,” Fernando, who declined to give his last name, told the Press following the March 2012 death of 33-year-old Jose Garrido-Lobo, a father of four who they nicknamed “El Cantante,” Spanish for “The Singer,” because he would sing when he drank. “He’s a good guy.” As for the progress on solving the overall problem of homelessness in the county, Imhoff touts reducing the number of families in motels from 44 to 16 in the past three years and 142 to 112 in shelters for the same time span. He also says the county found homes for 328 people in ‘12 and 629 last year. “I don’t think the economic conditions for many families have changed that radically, but I think that our aggressive policy of working with our housing specialists and helping families acquire the means and support to get out of shelters and motels [is] beginning to see a difference,” Imhoff says. Rev. Daphne Haynes, president of nonprofit Peace Valley Haven, which operates a men’s shelter in Roosevelt and does outreach to the unsheltered, says she’s noticed fewer people on the streets, but convincing the chronically homeless to seek help is still an uphill battle. “‘If I’m going to die, I’m going to die right here,’” one homeless person told Haynes, she says. “If every person was accepting, I could bring in…20 people a night. We can’t turn our eyes and say the need is not there.” Blau, the Stony Brook professor, notes that Nassau’s homeless arrest policy is likely to be as ineffective as Suffolk’s mega-shelters—he favors smaller facilities—but notes that the issue needs a fresh look from local leaders. “We have to figure our some way of addressing this so we don’t come to accept the fact that when you go to a local supermarket some guy’s gonna be outside collecting cans and possibly begging,” he says. “Thirty or 40 years ago it was shocking to see people in the street, and I think what’s happened is we got used to it and not only have we gotten used to it, but we’ve gotten used to it in the suburbs, which was supposed to be immune to the city’s problems.” STAND YOUR GROUND Aside from warmer weather on the horizon, silver linings are seen in new alliances formed to help tackle homelessness on LI, including veterans groups and the LIRR partnering with advocates. Railroad workers have begun sharing information on where the homeless are staying with the LI homeless coalition, says Guarton, the group’s director, who adds that Services for the Underserved, a large New York City-based homeless veterans group, set up an LI outpost in Farmingdale for the first time last year. “We thought it was time to expand our operation,” says Brett Morash, a retired U.S. Navy veteran who’s director of veterans’ services at the nonprofit, which partnered with several LI vets groups’ goal of helping 500 families. “The idea of the program is to prevent veterans from becoming homeless.” Guarton is as thankful for the reinforcements on the veteran front as she is for backup from the LIRR, where advocates say an average of half dozen homeless of all types are often found in waiting rooms, sometimes twice that. “This joint effort was prompted by a noticeable uptick in complaints about the homeless from our customers as we increased the hours of waiting room availability at many LIRR stations,” Salvatore Arena, an LIRR spokesman, tells the Press. “We are also working closely with the MTA Police on this issue.” For those homeless folks that take the advocates up on the offer to stay in one of their shelters, their odds increase for getting back on their feet with the help of social services. The mega-shelters offer even more programs because of their size, Suffolk officials say. “As long as there is life, there is hope,” says Haynes, of Peace Valley Haven. There’s another saying common in this line of work, too, repeated by Lutz at Maureen’s Haven: “There, but for the grace of God, go any of us.” Back at the Hicksville train station, Angell recalls making $40 hourly as a track worker. Now he’s lucky if he makes $40 a day recycling cans. Between swigs from a can of cheap beer, he says, “I wish I knew then what I know now.” -With additional reporting by Samuel J. Paul Important Numbers: Suffolk County Department of Social Services Central Housing Unit hotline: 631- 854-9517 between 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. For emergencies during non-business hours, weekends and holidays, call 631-854-9100. Nassau County Warm Bed Homeless Hotline: 1-866-927-6233 Nassau Homeless Help Line: 516-572-2711 Nassau Department of Social Services: 516-227-8395. After hours: 516-572-3143 Long Island Crisis Counseling & Referral Center: 516-679-1111 Nassau County Coalition Against Domestic Violence: 516-542-0404 Thoughts? Your reaction LOL 0% Cool 0% What!? 0% Meh... 100% Sad 0% RAGE! 0% Featured News, Investigations, Island Issues, Main Feature, News, The Issue, The Latest from the issueHomelessHUDJohn KennedyKate BrowningLIRRLong Island Coalition for the HomelessMaureen's HavenMust ReadNassau CountyPace Valley HavenServices for the UnderservedsliderSuffolk CountySuffolk Social ServicestickerWorkplace Project About the Author Timothy Bolger Timothy Bolger Timothy Bolger is the Managing Editor for the Long Island Press who’s been working to uncover unreported stories since shortly after it launched in 2003. When he’s not editing, getting hassled by The Man or fielding cold calls to the newsroom, he covers crime, general interest and political news in addition to reporting longer, sometimes investigative features. He won’t be happy until everyone is as pissed off as he is about how screwed up Lawn Guyland is.

Friday, June 6, 2014

seattle is right by robert reich

Seattle is Right Thursday, June 5, 2014 By raising its minimum wage to $15, Seattle is leading a long-overdue movement toward a living wage. Most minimum wage workers aren’t teenagers these days. They’re major breadwinners who need a higher minimum wage in order to keep their families out of poverty. Across America, the ranks of the working poor are growing. While low-paying industries such as retail and food preparation accounted for 22 percent of the jobs lost in the Great Recession, they’ve generated 44 percent of the jobs added since then, according to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project. Last February, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that raising the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 would lift 900,000 people out of poverty. Seattle estimates almost a fourth of its workers now earn below $15 an hour. That translates into about $31,000 a year for a full-time worker. In a high-cost city like Seattle, that’s barely enough to support a family. The gains from a higher minimum wage extend beyond those who receive it. More money in the pockets of low-wage workers means more sales, especially in the locales they live in – which in turn creates faster growth and more jobs. A major reason the current economic recovery is anemic is that so many Americans lack the purchasing power to get the economy moving again. With a higher minimum wage, moreover, we’d all end up paying less for Medicaid, food stamps and other assistance the working poor now need in order to have a minimally decent standard of living. Some worry about job losses accompanying a higher minimum wage. I wouldn’t advise any place to raise its minimum wage immediately from the current federal minimum of $7.25 an hour to $15. That would be too big a leap all at once. Employers – especially small ones – need time to adapt. But this isn’t what Seattle is doing. It’s raising its minimum from $9.32 (Washington State’s current statewide minimum) to $15 incrementally over several years. Large employers (with over 500 workers) that don’t offer employer-sponsored health insurance have three years to comply; those that offer health insurance have four; smaller employers, up to seven. (That may be too long a phase-in.) My guess is Seattle’s businesses will adapt without any net loss of employment. Seattle’s employers will also have more employees to choose from – as the $15 minimum attracts into the labor force some people who otherwise haven’t been interested. That means they’ll end up with workers who are highly reliable and likely to stay longer, resulting in real savings. Research by Michael Reich (no relation) and Arindrajit Dube confirms these results. They examined employment in several hundred pairs of adjacent counties lying on opposite sides of state borders, each with different minimum wages, and found no statistically significant increase in unemployment in the higher-minimum counties, even after four years. (Other researchers who found contrary results failed to control for counties where unemployment was already growing before the minimum wage was increased.) They also found that employee turnover was lower where the minimum was higher. Not every city or state can meet the bar Seattle has just set. But many can – and should.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

this poem was and is used a lot by peter

travels and life: love this poem: The Paradoxial C:omandments : by Dr. Kent M. Keith                                                                                          ...

travels and life: Commencement Speech by peter barnett at st joseph ...

travels and life: Commencement Speech by peter barnett at st joseph ...:     Graduates you made it.  After much work, study, books read, papers done, miles traveled, missed meals and events, you have made it. Give...

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

$15/an hour minimum wage in seattle good bold move lets all follow the lead!!!!

Seattle Mayor Details Plan for $15 Minimum Wage By KIRK JOHNSONMAY 1, 2014 Photo Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle on Thursday announced a plan to increase the city’s minimum wage in stages. Washington already has the highest statewide minimum wage in the nation, at $9.32. Credit Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times, via Associated Press SEATTLE — Mayor Ed Murray presented on Thursday what he described as an imperfect but workable plan to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice the federal minimum wage and one of the highest anywhere in the nation, through a series of complex and phased-in stages. Just as crucially, he said, the plan has broad political support, with a coalition of labor and business groups ready to push hard for it at the City Council, starting with the first hearings next week. But the plan, which in many other cities might be seen as a liberal Democratic agenda at the frontier of social and economic engineering, was immediately attacked not from the mayor’s right, but from his left. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Kshama Sawant, a Socialist Alternative Party member who was elected to the Seattle City Council last year on a single-minded drive to raise wages, said the plan had been “watered down” by business interests on the mayor’s 24-member committee on income inequality, of which she was also a member. In a packed news conference at City Hall right after Mr. Murray’s, she called on her supporters to continue their effort to gather signatures for a possible ballot initiative on wages this fall. The campaign might also put pressure on the Council to make the mayor’s plan better for workers, she suggested. “Every year of a phase-in means yet another year in poverty for a worker,” Ms. Sawant said. “Our work is far from done.” Mr. Murray, a Democrat and former state senator, formed his special committee on income inequality this year — headed by a labor union leader and a business executive — and gave them three months to find common ground. While running for mayor last fall, he, like Ms. Sawant, pledged to support a $15 minimum wage. The result, in an agreement reached late Wednesday, with 21 of the 24 members supporting the plan, he said, was a two-tiered minimum-wage structure. Employers with more than 500 workers — no matter where those workers are around the nation — would move on a faster track toward $15 than smaller employers. Tips and employer-paid health care benefits also would be factored in getting to the $15 level for smaller companies, at least in the earlier years of the plan. The result is a disparity, at least in the rate of pay increases, if not the final destination: Some workers would get to $15 an hour as early as 2017, with a cost-of-living adjustment after that tied to the Consumer Price Index, while other workers, at smaller companies, would not see $15 until 2021. Washington already has the highest statewide minimum wage in the nation, at $9.32. “It is complicated, but the situation is complicated,” Mr. Murray said. The end result, he said, would be historic and important, solidly built on the common ground found by business and leaders. Compromise, with no one getting everything they wanted, he said, was the key. “We are going to decrease the poverty rate in the city by raising the minimum wage. We are going to improve lives of workers who can barely afford to live in the city,” Mr. Murray said. “At the same time we’re going to do it in a way that doesn’t harm those folks who are the great job creators of the city — the entrepreneurs, the homegrown businesses.” One of the chairmen of the mayor’s committee, David Rolf, the president of a Seattle chapter of the Service Employees International Union, said the package of compromises in the deal was delicate and could unravel if too much is tinkered with by the nine-member City Council. But he said he thought the chances were good that the plan would pass quickly, possibly deflating the forces led by Ms. Sawant who are trying to take the issue to the voters. All nine members of the Council, Mr. Rolf said, have pledged support in principle to a $15 minimum wage, and two who were members of the income inequality committee supported the package that emerged. “I believe that if the Council passes this agreement within the next few weeks that the public won’t support a ballot measure fight,” Mr. Rolf said. “And certainly the labor movement is not going to support a ballot measure fight.” A version of this article appears in print on May 2, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Seattle Mayor Details Plan for $15 Minimum Wage. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe Next in U.S. Republicans Weigh Odds in Primaries in Iowa and Mississippi Seattle Mayor Details Plan for $15 Minimum Wage By KIRK JOHNSONMAY 1, 2014

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

ceo can get huge raises but the workers can not have a decent wage ,how does that make sense???

Big Story Top News Special Coverage Archive ESPAÑOL Video May 27, 5:42 Captains of industry: Comparing CEO pay and performance by Ken Sweet NEW YORK (AP) -- They're the $10 million men and women. Propelled by a soaring stock market, the median pay package for a CEO rose above eight figures for the first time last year. The head of a Standard & Poor's 500 company earned a record $10.5 million, an increase of 8.8 percent from $9.6 million in 2012, according to an Associated Press/Equilar pay study. Last year was the fourth straight that CEO compensation rose following a decline during the Great Recession. The median CEO pay package climbed more than 50 percent over that stretch. A chief executive now makes about 257 times the average worker's salary, up sharply from 181 times in 2009. The best paid CEO last year led an oilfield-services company. The highest paid female CEO was Carol Meyrowitz of discount retail giant TJX, owner of TJ Maxx and Marshall's. And the head of Monster Beverage got a monster of a raise. Over the last several years, companies' boards of directors have tweaked executive compensation to answer critics' calls for CEO pay to be more attuned to performance. They've cut back on stock options and cash bonuses, which were criticized for rewarding executives even when a company did poorly. Boards of directors have placed more emphasis on paying CEOs in stock instead of cash and stock options. The change became a boon for CEOs last year because of a surge in stocks that drove the S&P 500 index up 30 percent. The stock component of pay packages rose 17 percent to $4.5 million. "Companies have been happy with their CEOs' performance and the stock market has provided a big boost," says Gary Hewitt, director of research at GMI Ratings, a corporate governance research firm. "But we are still dealing with a situation where CEO compensation has spun out of control and CEOs are being paid extraordinary levels for their work." The highest paid CEO was Anthony Petrello of oilfield-services company Nabors Industries, who made $68.3 million in 2013. Petrello's pay ballooned as a result of a $60 million lump sum that the company paid him to buy out his old contract. Nabors Industries did not respond to calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. Petrello was one of a handful of chief executives who received a one-time boost in pay because boards of directors decided to re-negotiate CEO contracts under pressure from shareholders. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold CEO Richard Adkerson also received a one-time payment of $36.7 million to renegotiate his contract. His total pay, $55.3 million, made him the third-highest paid CEO last year. The second-highest paid CEO among companies in the S&P 500 was Leslie Moonves of CBS. Moonves' total compensation rose 9 percent to $65.6 million in 2013, a year when the company's stock rose nearly 70 percent. "CBS's share appreciation was not only the highest among major media companies, it was near the top of the entire S&P 500," CBS said in a statement. "Mr. Moonves' compensation is reflective of his continued strong leadership." Media industry CEOs were, once again, paid handsomely. Viacom's Philippe Dauman made $37.2 million while Walt Disney's Robert Iger made $34.3 million. Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes earned $32.5 million. The industry with the biggest pay bump was banking. The median pay of a Wall Street CEO rose by 22 percent last year, on top of a 22 percent increase the year before. BlackRock chief Larry Fink made the most, $22.9 million. Kenneth Chenault of American Express ranked second with earnings of $21.7 million. Like stock compensation, performance cash bonuses jumped last year as a result of the surging stock market and higher corporate profits. Earnings per share of the S&P 500 rose 5.3 percent in 2013, according to FactSet. That resulted in a median cash bonus of $1.9 million, a jump of 12.6 percent from the prior year. More than two-thirds of CEOs at S&P 500 companies received a raise last year, according to the AP/Equilar study, because of the bigger profits and higher stock prices. CEO pay remains a divisive issue in the U.S. Large investors and boards of directors argue that they need to offer big pay packages to attract talented men and women who can run multibillion-dollar businesses. "If you have a good CEO at a company, the wealth he might generate for shareholders could be in the billions," says Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "It might be worth paying these guys millions for doing this type of work." CEOs are still getting much bigger raises than the average U.S. worker. The 8.8 percent increase in total pay that CEOs got last year dwarfed the average raise U.S. workers received. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said average weekly wages for U.S. workers rose 1.3 percent in 2013. At that rate an employee would have to work 257 years to make what a typical S&P 500 CEO makes in a year. "There's this unbalanced approach, where there's all this energy put into how to reward executives, but little energy being put into ensuring the rest of the workforce is engaged, productive and paid appropriately," says Richard Clayton, research director at Change to Win Investment Group, which works with labor union-affiliated pension funds. Investors have become increasingly vocal about executive pay since the recession. This has led to an increasing number of public spats between boards of directors, who propose pay packages, and shareholders, who own the company. These fights become public during "say on pay" votes, when shareholders have an opportunity to show they approve or don't approve of pay packages. Votes are non-binding, but companies sometimes act when there is clear disapproval from shareholders. Petrello was the best-paid CEO largely because the board of directors of Nabors Industries' wanted to end his previous contract. Under that contract, Petrello could have been owed huge cash bonuses, and the company could have paid out tens of millions of dollars if he were to die or become disabled. The board changed his contract following "say on pay" votes in 2012 and 2013 that showed shareholders were unhappy with how Nabors paid its executives. There have been other signs of shareholder concern about CEO pay. This month, 75 percent of Chipotle Mexican Grill shareholders voted against a proposed pay package for co-CEOs Steve Ells and Montgomery Moran. Ells earned $25.1 million in 2013 while Moran earned $24.3 million, a 27 percent rise in compensation for each. Chipotle spent $49.5 million on CEO pay last year, the fourth highest in the S&P 500. "Companies are now taking the time to think through their pay practices and are talking more with shareholders," says Hewitt of GMI Ratings. "There's still a long way to go but pay practices are getting better." To calculate a CEO's pay package, the AP and Equilar looked at salary as well as perks, bonuses and stock and option awards, using the regulatory filings that companies file each year. Equilar looked at data from 337 companies that had filed their proxies by April 30. It includes CEOs who have been at the company for two years. One prominent name not included in the data was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who is typically one of the best paid CEOs in the country. Oracle files its salary paperwork later in the year, so Ellison was excluded in the 2013 survey data. He was awarded $76.9 million in stock options for Oracle's fiscal year ending May 2013, according to proxy filings. Among other findings: - Female CEOs had a median pay package worth more than their male counterparts, $11.7 million versus $10.5 million for males. However, there were only 12 female CEOs in the AP/Equilar study compared with 325 male CEOs that were polled. TJX's Meyrowitz was the best-paid female CEO in the AP/Equilar study. She earned $20.7 million last year. - The CEO who got the biggest bump in compensation from 2012 to 2013 was Rodney Sacks, the CEO of Monster Beverage. Sacks earned $6.22 million last year, an increase of 679 percent. Monster's board of directors awarded Sacks $5.3 million in stock options to supplement his $550,000 salary and $300,000 cash bonus.

Friday, May 23, 2014

more on the minimum wage

WASHINGTON — With the Republican-led filibuster of a Senate proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 on Wednesday, Democrats moved swiftly to frame the vote as an example of the gulf that exists between the two parties on matters of economic fairness and upward mobility. The question is not just one of money, they said, but of morality. And in doing so the Democrats returned to the themes that were successful for their party and President Obama in 2012 when they convinced swing voters that Democrats were mindful of the best interests of all Americans — not just those who are powerful and wealthy. Continue reading the main story Speaking from the White House shortly after the measure was defeated 54 to 42, with 60 votes needed to advance, Mr. Obama admonished Republicans and called on voters to punish them at the polls in November. “If there’s any good news here, it’s that Republicans in Congress don’t get the last word on this issue, or any issue,” Mr. Obama said. “You do, the American people, the voters.” Photo At the White House on Wednesday, President Obama said it was important to pass the measure to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10. After the measure was defeated, he called on voters to punish Republicans at the polls in November. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “If your member of Congress doesn’t support raising the minimum wage,” he added, “you have to let them know they’re out of step, and that if they keep putting politics ahead of working Americans, you’ll put them out of office.” But if Democrats thought that the defeat of the minimum wage increase gave them the opportunity to remind voters why they should remain in control of the Senate, Republicans felt just as strongly that Wednesday’s vote was the latest sign that Democratic policies and politics are failing. Senator John Cornyn, the Republican whip from Texas, argued from the Senate floor that raising the minimum wage would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and damage the fragile economy, which is going through such a slow recovery that it grew at only 0.1 percent from January through March, new figures released Wednesday showed. “Let’s talk about the 800-pound gorilla here in the Senate chamber,” Mr. Cornyn said. “This is all about politics. This is all about trying to make this side of the aisle look bad and hardhearted.” A Republican-led filibuster prevented the minimum wage bill from moving forward to a full debate in the Senate. Just one Republican voted with the Democrats who supported the measure. Democrats said Wednesday that it was their intent to bring up the bill again when they had the Republican support to break a filibuster. But they added that they had no qualms about forcing a vote again even if Republicans seemed likely to reject it. That, they believe, would further underscore the Republican resistance to increasing the minimum wage from $7.25, a rate that has been unchanged since 2009. “We’ll be back again and again, and we’ll keep trying until we get this to the president’s desk,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, whose retirement this year has left an open seat that Republicans hope to capture. “I’m confident that if we don’t raise the minimum wage in Congress before the election,” he added, “the American people are going to speak about this at the ballot box in November.” Continue reading the main story Video Play Video|1:22 Times Minute | Minimum Wage Politics Times Minute | Minimum Wage Politics Harry Reid, the majority leader, said after the vote: “This is a moral issue. It’s not who’s going to vote for whom. It’s about whether or not it is right that people who are working 40 hours a week get a fair shot at being able to provide for their families.” Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Advertisement The minimum wage plan is an underpinning of both the president’s economic agenda and the plan drawn up by Senate Democrats to force Republicans to take votes on a variety of pocketbook issues. One of those, a bill that Democrats said would help close the pay gap between men and women, was defeated in a Republican filibuster a few weeks ago. Continue reading the main story Recent Comments Gary 21 days ago I am a small business owner who has conservative values. The Republicans have repeatedly let me down because they truly are in lock step... koonie 21 days ago This is not a Federal government issue, this is a state by state issue and the BIG GOVERMENT HAND'S should keep out! Each state has it's own... FastGuy 21 days ago It seems to me that due to the great joy the Republicans derive from keeping money from the poor, they are blinded to the obvious next step... The Democrats’ plan, called “A Fair Shot for Everyone,” also includes a bill to help make college more affordable, the next one that is likely to come to a vote, and other measures that would close tax loopholes that benefit corporations with business overseas and provide family and medical leave for workers. Polling shows that Americans overwhelmingly agree that the minimum wage should go up; 62 percent favor an increase to $10.10, a New York Times/CBS News poll found in February. Yet it is unclear whether this will become a voting issue for most Americans in November. The Times/CBS News poll tested the impact that six issues would have on voting, and the minimum wage provoked the least reaction. A majority of registered voters, 52 percent, said they were willing to vote for someone who disagreed with them on raising the minimum wage. The hot-button issue was health care. Some Democrats from more conservative, rural states have expressed reservations about going as high as $10.10. Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, a Democrat who is locked in one of the tightest re-election fights, has said he does not support the plan voted on Wednesday. But he was not present for the vote. The one Republican who voted to allow the bill to move forward, Bob Corker of Tennessee, said that he disagreed with the policy but favored having a robust debate. But most Republicans said they felt boxed in by Democrats who would not consider a smaller increase. “There’s no interest, apparently, on their side in having that conversation,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio. “This is more of a political exercise.” Correction: April 30, 2014 An earlier version of this article misstated when voters in Alaska will address raising the minimum wage. It will be in November, not August