March of Washington Anniversary Re-Energizes Progressive Agenda
50 years later, blacks lag behind whites "by almost every measure" reports Bloomberg: "Since the June 2009 end of the recession, median income for black households has dropped 10.9 percent, compared with a 3.6 percent fall for white households ... while the poverty rate for blacks has improved over the last five decades, it’s still greater than one in four -- and almost three times worse than for whites ... While the nation’s 44.5 million blacks made up 14.2 percent of the population in 2012, they were only 8.9 percent of college graduates and held 8.2 percent of management and professional jobs..."
Saturday march connected MLK to range of current issues. Politico: "They also focused on recent political issues including voting laws, labor rights, immigration and gun violence — in particular the Supreme Court ruling that diminished the power of the seminal Voting Rights Act of 1964.
AP reminds that the original March propelled immigration reform: "...signing into law a replacement system that established a uniform number of people allowed entry to the United States despite national origin, President Lyndon B. Johnson said it would correct 'a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation.' Stephen Klineberg, sociology professor at Rice University in Houston, said the civil rights movement 'was the main force that made that viciously racist law come to be perceived as intolerable,' precisely because it raised questions about fairness and equality."
Business groups "optimistic" on immigration reform, reports The Hill: "The Chamber has approximately 70 meetings scheduled over recess and has gotten state and local chambers involved. The community-by-community approach is generating blanket optimism among the business groups that Congress has the drive to scale the challenges on the immigration front."
Banks Fight To Protect Status Quo
Banks try to block Richmond, CA plan to seize mortgages and stop foreclosures. AP: "The banks have filed two lawsuits alleging that the plan is an illegal abuse of eminent domain ... So far, Richmond has sent out more than 600 offers, but has not yet begun any eminent domain proceedings. Newark, N.J., North Las Vegas, Nev., El Monte, Calif., and Seattle are considering similar plans ... 'The city is stepping in where Wall Street and where the federal government have been unable or unwilling to do so,' [Mayor Gayle McLaughlin] said."
High levels of borrowing by banks perpetuates too-big-to-fail, argues Prof. Anat R. Admati in NYT oped: "Basel III [international regulations] would permit banks to borrow up to 97 percent of their assets. The proposed regulations in the United States — which Wall Street is fighting — would still allow even the largest bank holding companies to borrow up to 95 percent ... [But if] equity (the bank’s own money) is only 5 percent of assets, even a tiny loss of 2 percent of its assets could prompt, in essence, a run on the bank ... Nothing suggests that banks couldn’t do what they do if they financed, for example, 30 percent of their assets with equity ... a level considered perfectly normal, or even low, for healthy corporations. Yet this simple idea is considered radical..."
GOP Infighting Intensifies
Republicans turn on each other over ObamaCare. The Hill: "[Senate Conservatives Fund] is running ads criticizing a half-dozen Senate Republicans, including two they may target in primaries this year: Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.). [The] group plans to go after two more Republican senators starting next week ... Heritage Action, another powerful group strongly in favor of the defund movement, is spending more than a half-million dollars on ads targeting the 100 House Republicans who haven’t yet signed on to the defunding effort ... That strategy has some Republicans seething."
SC conservatives seek to oust Sen. Lindsey Graham. NYT: "At least 40 groups align themselves along Tea Party and Libertarian lines, and trying to unify them to topple the state’s senior senator will be no easy task. So far, three people have stepped forward to challenge Mr. Graham in the June primary: State Senator Lee Bright; Richard Cash, a former Congressional candidate; and Nancy Mace, the first woman to graduate from the Citadel and, at the moment, the challenger whose political star is rising the fastest."
