Economic and Social Justice Robin Hood Tax Campaign
- If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they ...
- Update: Barbara Parramore was taken into police custody Monday evening. T...
- The Florida teenager who was arrested two weeks ago for causing a small exp...
- As some of you might know already, Nuns on the Bus will be making a pass th...
- As the shutdown of LSU’s Earl K. Long Medical Center in northern Baton Ro...
- Neither soaking rain nor the lack of permit from the City of Atlanta preven...
- Spokane City Councilman Jon Snyder and President of Aging and Long Term Car...
- One of the consequences of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s policy of shrinking state ...
- The Boston Marathon bombings happened more than 2,700 miles away, but fo...
- On Saturday, as Texas hosted the National Rifle Association’s annual conv...
- Clean energy opponents turned to dirty tactics this week at the North Carol...
- Last week, an exchange between Jeff Flake, Janet Napolitano, and Chuck S...
Chris Martin (Coldplay), Mark Ruffalo (Avengers, The Kids Are Alright), Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) and economist Jeffrey Sachs star alongside ordinary Americans in calling for a Robin Hood Tax.
The Robin Hood Tax campaign is calling for a tax of less than half of 1% on Wall Street transactions that could generate hundreds of billions of dollars each year.
A Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street will provide funding to kickstart the economy and get America back on its feet by creating jobs and strengthening public services like health care, education and infrastructure at home while tackling AIDS, global health, poverty and climate challenges around the world.
The link to original article and video on Common Dreams
Economic and Social Justice - ESJ Articles
IOT-ESJ Articles
Housing Crisis on the Rez: Why Haul a Run-Down Shack From the Plains to DC?
Tribal leaders trucked the battered old home to Washington to show the nation’s leaders what the housing crisis on reservations looks like in person. Last month, a new building joined the Washington Monument and the Capitol building on the National Mall. The small, run-down shack had previously housed 13 people, and it was brought to Washington, D.C., from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to raise awareness about the critical need for housing on reservations around the country. "It's very difficult to get anybody to leave Washington to see it...
Mark Andrew Boyer | Yes Magazine 20 May 2013 Hits:24 ESJ Articles
Read moreForeclosure Fraud Failures Come To A Head In Justice Department Protest
Frustration with the failed execution of various weakly-constructed legal settlements stemming from widespread foreclosure fraud bubbled over today into a protest at Justice Department headquarters that culminated in homeowners being arrested. Using tactics and rhetoric familiar from 2011’s Occupy Wall Street demonstration, a group of activists and foreclosed homeowners marched on the Justice building in downtown Washington, D.C. According to tweets and photographs from activists on the scene, protesters moved past a police barricade and attempted to establish a sit-in, at which point police began arresting homeowners and activists. Why the renewed...
Alan Pyke | ThinkProgress 20 May 2013 Hits:26 ESJ Articles
Read moreLarge Corporations Seek U.S.–European 'Free Trade Agreement' to Further Global Dominance
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is the latest plan of conglomerates to strengthen their grip over the planet. A corporate world order is emerging, and like any parasite, it is slowly killing off its host. Unfortunately, the "host" happens to be the planet, and all life upon and within it. So, while the extinction of the species will be the end result of passively accepting a corporate-driven world, on the other hand, it’s very profitable for those corporations and their shareholders. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is the latest...
Andrew Gavin Marshall | AlterNet 12 May 2013 Hits:141 ESJ Articles
Read moreHow Two Secretive Global Trade Deals Will Further Enrich the American Elite
The US-EU free trade pact and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are about securing regulatory gains for major corporate interests. In polite circles in the United States, support for free trade is a bit like proper bathing habits: It is taken for granted. Only the hopelessly crude and unwashed would not support free trade. There is some ground for this attitude. Certainly, the US has benefited enormously by being able to buy a wide range of items at lower cost from other countries. However, this does not mean that most people in the country...
Dean Baker 02 May 2013 Hits:151 ESJ Articles
Read moreWhen Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic That’s Sweeping America
Wage theft is fast becoming a top trend of the 21st-century labor market. Imagine you’ve just landed a job with a big-time retailer. Your task is to load and unload boxes from trucks and containers. It’s back-breaking work. You toil 12 to 16 hours a day, often without a lunch break. Sweat drenches your clothes in the 90-degree heat, but you keep going: your kids need their dinner. One day, your supervisor tells you that instead of being paid an hourly wage, you will now get paid for the number of...
Lynn Stuart Parramore | AlterNet 28 Apr 2013 Hits:792 ESJ Articles
Read more"We Deserve Better": Striking NYC Fast Food Workers Demand Higher Pay
Hundreds of New York City's lowest-paid workers walked off the job Thursday at over 60 of the city's fast food restaurants to say, "We deserve better." In what people are calling the largest ever protest of its kind, over 400 workers from the country's biggest corporate "food" chains—including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, and KFC among others—took part in the action. “We deserve better," said Glenda Soto, a McDonald's worker. "I work very hard. I’m a single mom, I have 3 kids, and on $7.25 an hour I can’t support them, and I...
Lauren McCauley | Common Dreams 04 Apr 2013 Hits:286 ESJ Articles
Read moreGutting Social Security: It Isn't Just an Issue for Old Folks
The proposed cuts now on the table could be seriously bad news for young people planning to enter the workforce in coming years. For most teens and twentysomethings, the raging debate in Washington over Social Security reform probably seems as relevant and engaging as PBS’s Friday night lineup of Antiques Roadshow and Jerry Lewis: Live from Las Vegas. But the proposals on the table could be seriously bad news for young people planning to enter the workforce in coming years. President Obama has offered to break the sequester gridlock by recalculating inflation in a way...
Scott Klinger | AlterNet 24 Mar 2013 Hits:445 ESJ Articles
Read moreHow Student Loans Are Keeping You Out Of The Middle Class
Millennials have accumulated less wealth since entering the workforce than their parents did at the same age, even as the economy has grown and the average wealth of Americans has doubled. When Vernardo and Claire Simmons-Valenzuela married, they imagined all the trappings of a middle-class life. Soon enough, they had kids. Claire finished a master's degree. They held jobs as an Army medic and a physician's assistant. They dreamed of next steps: owning a home, taking their first vacation in years. Vernardo would return to school for a bachelor’s in nursing....
Zach Duffy | Campus Progress 23 Mar 2013 Hits:484 ESJ Articles
Read moreHome Is Where the Fight Is
Ramon Suero fell behind on his mortgage payments after he got fired for organizing a union. Suero, a hotel worker and UNITE HERE Local 26 member in Boston, got his job back after a year. But then his wife had to quit hers and travel to the Dominican Republic to care for her sick mother—and they fell further behind. They applied to modify their home loan, but federally sponsored mortgage company Freddie Mac said no, foreclosed, and demanded the family get out by February 1. The Sueros aren’t...
Alexandra Bradbury | Labor Notes 18 Mar 2013 Hits:305 ESJ Articles
Read moreRaising 5 Kids in a Tiny Camper? The Atrocious Ways America Treats Poor Women and Children
Leaving her husband became the only option for "Stacy" after he became violent with the children. She returned to her hometown, Las Cruces, NM, with her 5 little boys in tow. Other than lacking an emergency family shelter, this is a pleasant mid-sized city. The family stayed for a while at the domestic violence shelter. Her time there ended without her finding housing, and she scrambled for a desperate, stopgap solution: her mother’s old, tiny camper. For $300 a month, including utilities, the family could park their leaky camper in a park in her town. She...
Diane Nilan | AlterNet 18 Mar 2013 Hits:524 ESJ Articles
Read moreIn the South and West, a Tax on Being Poor
Debates over the fairness of the tax code are as old as the federal income tax itself. A cornerstone of the tax — established a century ago, by the 16th Amendment — has been the principle that those who make more should pay more, while lower tax rates help the poor to support their families and depend less on government benefits. That social compact shifted into high gear during the Nixon administration, which tried to incentivize work by rewarding low-income households with a tax break that became the nation’s most successful...
KATHERINE S. NEWMAN | The New York Times 13 Mar 2013 Hits:397 ESJ Articles
Read moreJobs Report: More Bad News Calls for Change
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported a large increase in jobs in February as compared to January. At the same time the January jobs data was revised lower, which gave a boost to the February number. Let’s look at what happened to the people behind the numbers. This graph shows two sets of data: the Employment to Population ratio and the Labor Force Participation rate. These are updated with February data. They show that the percent of the population employed has not changed in February....
Randy Shannon | PDA Pennsylvania 10 Mar 2013 Hits:204 ESJ Articles
Read more'They're Just Hurting Kids': Philadelphia Shutters 23 Public Schools
AFT President: "This is not about how to fix public schools, but to close them." Philadelphia is going to shutter 23 public schools following a vote Thursday night by the School Reform Commission, despite an emotional protest and numerous arrests, exemplifying the city's continued embrace of privatized school reform at the mercy of the public school system. Critics of the closures point to the disproportionate number of minority children impacted, arguing that the move would further discourage students from enrolling in public schools, fueling a growing push towards...
Lauren McCauley | Common Dreams 08 Mar 2013 Hits:563 ESJ Articles
Read moreIt's Time to Overturn DOMA
In 1996, I signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Although that was only 17 years ago, it was a very different time. In no state in the union was same-sex marriage recognized, much less available as a legal right, but some were moving in that direction. Washington, as a result, was swirling with all manner of possible responses, some quite draconian. As a bipartisan group of former senators stated in their March 1 amicus brief to the Supreme Court, many supporters of the bill known as DOMA believed that its...
Bill Clinton | The Washington Post 08 Mar 2013 Hits:389 ESJ Articles
Read moreWhy There’s a Bull Market for Stocks And Bear Market for Workers
Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 14,270 – completely erasing its 54 percent loss between 2007 and 2009. The stock market is basically back to where it was in 2000, while corporate earnings have doubled since then. Yet the real median wage is now 8 percent below what it was in 2000, and unemployment remains sky-high. Why is the stock market doing so well, while most Americans are doing so poorly? Four reasons: First, productivity gains. Corporations have been investing in technology rather than their workers. They get tax credits and deductions...
ROBERT B. REICH | ROBERT REICH 06 Mar 2013 Hits:387 ESJ Articles
Read morePowerful Interests Oppose Strengthening of Disabilities Law
When the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law almost 23 years ago, the idea of inclusion for people with disabilities was legally born. Ramps were built, infrastructure was redesigned and, for the first time, the law backed people with disabilities who demanded their right not to be blocked from physical access to facilities. But more than two decades the ADA became law, the ideal of inclusion has yet to be fully realized. Because enforcement of the statute is largely complaint-based, many public businesses are still inaccessible for people in...
Reid Davenport | Open Secrets Blog 06 Mar 2013 Hits:341 ESJ Articles
Read moreWorkers pay to lose their jobs, companies get rewarded for firing them in Calif. Twilight …
California Teamsters are paying to lose their jobs because of a scheme called the California Twilight Enterprise Zone Program.The program allows businesses to receive tax breaks of $37,500 for each new employee they hire in one of California's 40 Enterprise Zones. The program encouraged two Teamster employers to dump their union workers, move to an Enterprise Zone, hire cheaper workers and get tax breaks in the bargain.One employer, Atlanta-based Blue Linx, is a building products distributor. And get this: it lists "safety, respect and learning" as its values for "People." VWR is...
Teamster Nation Blog 06 Mar 2013 Hits:395 ESJ Articles
Read moreSpeak Out on TPP and Fast Track
Thank you for being among the over 400 organizations, representing more than 15 million Americans, that co-signed the letter to Congress expressing deep concerns about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and opposition to the outdated "Fast Track" trade negotiating and approval process. Your joint letter was submitted to Congress today, and it couldn't have been more timely. The letter comes just one business day after the President included Fast Track in his 2013 Trade Policy Agenda, and the same day as negotiators from 11...
Arthur Stamoulis | Citizens Trade 04 Mar 2013 Hits:409 ESJ Articles
Read moreThe Wealth Gap Between Whites And African-Americans Tripled Over The Last 25 Years
During the Great Recession, the wealth gap between whites and African-Americans nearly doubled, leaving white with nearly 22 times as much in household wealth. According to a new study from Brandeis University’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy, this merely exacerbated a much longer trend during which the wealth of whites exploded while that of African-Americans stagnated: In 2009, a representative survey of American households revealed that the median wealth of white families was $113,149 compared with $6,325 for Latino families and $5,677 for black families. Looking at the same set of families over a...
Pat Garofalo | Think Progress 03 Mar 2013 Hits:436 ESJ Articles
Read moreThe Arcane Rules That Keep Low-Income Kids Out of College
One spring afternoon, O. Perry Walker High School Principal Mary Laurie made her way to the school's courtyard, where a lone student sat at a picnic table with a large stack of papers in front of him and a frustrated look on his face. Laurie recognized the student as a shy senior with one of the highest GPAs in his class. The documents, it turned out, were all from Tuskegee University. Tuskegee had accepted the 18-year-old, offering him a full scholarship. But they required a $500 deposit within the next few...
SARAH CARR | The Atlantic 02 Mar 2013 Hits:387 ESJ Articles
Read moreThis Supreme Court Case Could Give Corporations Even More Power to Screw Consumers
On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court will hear a case that has the potential to give big corporations free rein to write contracts that prevent consumers from ever holding them accountable for fraud, antitrust violations, or any other abuses of consumer and worker protection laws now on the books. It's a case that hasn't gotten much attention, but should. The case, Italian Color v. American Express,was brought by a California Italian restaurant and a group of other small businesses that tried to sue the credit card behemoth for antitrust violations. They allege...
Stephanie Mencimer | Mother Jones 02 Mar 2013 Hits:620 ESJ Articles
Read moreThree-Quarters of Pr…
For the social compact of the United States, most of the Congressional Progressive Caucus has gone missing. While still on the caucus roster, three-quarters of the 70-member caucus seem lost in…
Minimum Wage For Res…
Rebecca Williams has waited tables, on and off, for 30 years. A lot has changed since her first stint in the business ended in the early 1990s. Restaurants now tout…
Panera Bakers Battle…
Kathleen VonEitzen heads into work at 10 p.m. with a long night ahead of her. A trained baker, VonEitzen spends the evening and early morning hours cutting and shaping trays…
40% of Americans Now…
You may have seen charts like the one to the right from theEconomic Policy Institute, showing how working people’s wages stopped going up along with productivity gains. This means the gains…
Capital Gains Tax Cu…
Changes in tax law that reduced the federal tax rate on capital gains income is “by far the largest contributor” to rising income inequality in the United States, according to…
Filipinos lured into…
CHICAGO - "Their story of enslavement and their escape started in the slums of Manila. Sleazy 'recruiters' scoured the streets and lured the workers here with assurances of plenty of…
The Wage Theft Epide…
Last October, Anthony M. Van Buren drove 135 miles south from his home in Charlottesville, Va., to the small town of Moneta in search of his former boss, Robert Brown,…
Work is Becoming Mor…
The human body, with its need for rest, nutrition and hydration, is such an inefficient tool for capitalist production. But while machines are unlikely to replacehuman workers anytime soon, new technologies…
Nine Bucks an Hour? …
How could Barack Obama say, in his State of the Union speech, “let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth no one who works full-time should have to live…
Team Leader - Economic and Social Justice
Randy Shannon
Pennsylvania
Contact us at:
econ-justice@pdamerica.org
Take Action
Issue Team Calls
| Tue May 21, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Healthcare for All Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 733525# |
| Wed May 22, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM End Corporate Rule IOT Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 754227# |
| Mon May 27, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM PDA ERA 3 State Strategy Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 787085# |
| Tue May 28, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections IOT Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 314363# |
| Wed Jun 05, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Economic and Social Justice Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 781761# |
| Mon Jun 10, 2013 @ 8:30PM - 09:30PM End Mass Criminalizations IOT Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 331473# |
| Tue Jun 11, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM End Wars and Occupations Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 952870# |
| Tue Jun 18, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Healthcare for All Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 733525# |
| Wed Jun 19, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Stop Global Warming Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 661274# |
| Mon Jun 24, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM PDA ERA 3 State Strategy Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 787085# |
PDA Issues
PDA is organized around several core issues. These issues include:
- End Corporate Rule
- Healthcare for All/Single Payer
- ERA 3 State Strategy
- Economic and Social Justice
- End Wars and Occupations
- Stop Global Warming
- End Mass Criminalization
- Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections
- Stop Voter Suppression
Each team hosts a monthly conference call. Calls feature legislators, staffers and other policy experts. On these calls we determine PDA legislation to support as well as actions and future events.
Economic and Social Justice Chat Room
113th Congress ESJ - Legislation
Audio Recordings of Recent Economic & Social Justice Calls
05-01-2013 Economic and Social Justice
Our special guest this month is Marc Armstrong, the Executive Director of the Public Banking Institute in California. Marc will be discussing the problems with our banking system and the possibility of public state-owned banks as a potential...
04-03-2013 Economic and Social Justice
Monthly call with special guest, Cathy L. Hurwit, Chief of Staff for US Representative Jan Schakowsky (IL-09). Cathy will be discussing Rep. Schakowsky's Emergency Jobs Act, the CPC 'Back to Work Budget,' and other jobs legislation.
03-06-13 Economic and Social Justice
Special guest Arthur Stamoulis, the Executive Director of the Citizens Trade Campaign will discuss the urgent proximate issue in Congress of Fast Track legislation. He will review highlights of the Trans Pacific Partnership and how Fast Track...
02-06-13 Economic and Social Justice
CALL AGENDA: Lori Wallach provided background on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)--who's involved with it, who's opposing it--with special focus on Trade Unions. She'll also identify the key issues and timeline, and finally discuss next steps...
01-02-13 Economic and Social Justice
Featured Speakers: Logan Martinez, member of the National Jobs for All Coalition Executive Committee Mike Hersh, PDA Staff Member We will discuss: how the fight for jobs is connected to the fight for equality, the connection between...
10-03-12 Economic and Social Justice
Featured Guest - Mel Rothenberg from the Chicago Political Economy Group Since the 2010 election PDA has worked to build a movement for economic and social justice around key legislation introduced by members of the Congressional Progressive...
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