May 2009 Archives
May Is Older Americans Month
May 29, 2009 - Posted by Clarissa Peterson
 May is Older Americans Month, a time to acknowledge the contributions older people have made and continue to make to our country, and to highlight our work to ensure that older Americans are able to live with dignity and security.
This year's theme for Older Americans Month is health care. Although Medicare provides health insurance coverage for people 65 or older, many seniors have difficulty getting the health care that they need.
One particular concern is prescription drugs, for which Medicare covers only part of the cost. A recent survey by The Senior Citizens League found that in the past year, 42 percent of respondents had postponed filling prescriptions or took less than the prescribed amount of a drug because of financial hardship.
Some states have programs that help low-income seniors and people with disabilities afford their prescription drugs, but the current financial crisis is causing some states to consider cutting funding to those programs.
Another concern for many seniors is being able to find a primary care doctor that will accept Medicare. Doctors are not required to accept Medicare insurance, and some choose not to because of low payments and complex paperwork requirements.
Combined with a nationwide shortage of primary care doctors, many seniors are faced with making dozens of phone calls before finding a doctor who will see them - or sometimes not finding one at all. A 2007 survey by The Commonwealth Foundation found that about a third of Medicare patients had trouble finding a doctor who would take Medicare.
Categories: Health Care, Seniors/Social Security
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New Mortgage Data Shows Recession Hitting Homeowners Hard, Even Those with Good Credit
May 29, 2009 - Posted by Tyler Lewis
New Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) data released yesterday shows that foreclosure rates and delinquency rates, or the rate of people who are at least one payment behind in their mortgages but not in foreclosure, increased in the first three months of 2009, even for homeowners with prime loans.
According to the MBA, there are more prime fixed-rate loans than other types of loans among new foreclosures for the first time since the rise in subprime lending. Generally, only borrowers with good credit qualify for prime loans.
The delinquency rate for homeowners with prime loans increased to a little more than 6 percent. In addition, the percentage of loans in the foreclosure process doubled in the last year. The combined percentage of delinquent loans and loans in foreclosure was about 12 percent, the highest ever recorded by the MBA.
Despite rising delinquency and foreclosure rates, the MBA lobbied aggressively to block an amendment to a foreclosure prevention bill in Congress that would have given bankruptcy judges the ability to rework defaulted home mortgages on family homes to an affordable value.
Without the amendment, the bill that was passed last week will not help as many homeowners as it could have. According to estimates by the Center for Responsible Lending and the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, the change to bankruptcy law could have prevented up to 1.7 million mortgages from falling into foreclosure.
Categories: Housing & Lending
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Soft Test Gets People Ready for the DTV Transition
May 28, 2009 - Posted by Marcus-Alexander Neil
 Last Thursday, local broadcasters conducted "soft tests" of the nation's switch to digital television signals to remind the 3.3 million unprepared households to get ready for the transition on June 12th.
During the tests, viewers who were receiving analog over-the-air TV signals stopped getting their signals for a few minutes and were told to take action before June 12, the date when all analog signals will switch to digital. Calls to the FCC nearly quadrupled with people asking about the government coupon process, reception issues and problems with installing their converter box, showing that even people who had converter boxes still faced problems getting their TVs to work correctly.
"This soft test did exactly what it was supposed to do," said acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps. "It was a wake-up call for consumers who are unprepared, alerting them to the fact that they need to take the necessary steps before the June 12 DTV transition."
If you don't yet have a converter box for your analog TV, you can still apply for the government's $40 coupons toward the cost of a converter box by applying online or calling 1-888-388-2009 (voice) or 1-877-530-2634 (TTY).
If you have any spare coupons, send them to LCCREF's national coupon exchange program so that we may get them to people in need.
Make sure your TV sets are DTV ready!
Categories: Digital Television Transition
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Coalition for Constitutional Values Launches Ad Introducing Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor
May 27, 2009 - Posted by Tyler Lewis
In a new spot, The Coalition for Constitutional Values explains why Judge Sonia Sotomayor – who has experience in nearly every aspect of the law, having served as a big-city prosecutor and a corporate litigator, a federal trial judge, and an appellate judge – is a terrific nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Categories: Judiciary
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New Foreclosure Protection for Renters
May 27, 2009 - Posted by Clarissa Peterson
You may think that not owning a home will protect you from foreclosure - but an estimated 40 percent of households facing eviction due to foreclosure are renters, not homeowners. Many renters have been evicted from their homes with little or no notice - sometimes with no idea that a foreclosure was pending - after their landlords were unable to pay their mortgages.
But renters now have some protection against eviction under the foreclosure prevention bill signed by President Obama last week. The new law, which took effect immediately, requires the new owners of a property to allow tenants to remain in the home, as long as the tenants pay their rent on time. Renters will be able to stay until the end of their lease, or will get at least 90 days notice if they do not have a lease or if the new owner intends to reside in the home.
Categories: Housing & Lending, Poverty & Welfare
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State Department to Provide Equal Benefits to Same-Sex Foreign Service Workers
May 27, 2009 - Posted by Lauren McGlothlin
Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the State Department will guarantee equal benefits and protections to same-sex partners of American foreign service workers.
Many benefits provided to married couples have been long denied to same-sex partners, such as life insurance, health insurance, diplomatic passports, transportation expenses to overseas posts, and emergency evacuation of high danger posts.
Gay and lesbian diplomats and heterosexual diplomats have called upon the State Department to provide these benefits for several years. In February, Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affair Agencies (GLIFAA) sent Clinton a letter signed by 2,200 foreign service workers, calling for equal benefits for same-sex partners.
The State Department has not said when the new policy will take effect.
Categories: LGBT Rights
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President Obama Names Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court
May 26, 2009 - Posted by Tyler Lewis
Today, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace the retiring Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sotomayor is currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where she has served since 1998. Prior to her federal judgeship, Sotomayor was a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.
With experience as a prosecutor, litigator, and trial and appellate judge, Sotomayor brings more federal and overall judicial experience to the Court than any justice in the past several decades.
"Besides her superb intellectual ability and a distinguished three-decade judicial career, she brings a quality of common sense understanding of how laws affect the realities of people's daily lives," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of LCCR. "Judge Sotomayor is also the first Latino to be nominated to the high court. She is a first generation American and grew up in the South Bronx – fulfilling another of President Obama's promises to add diversity of background to the Supreme Court."
Sotomayor is expected to be confirmed by the Senate in time for the next term of the Court in October.
Categories: Judiciary
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Memorial Day: Honoring the Service of Citizen and Immigrant Soldiers
May 25, 2009 - Posted by Lauren McGlothlin
Today, LCCR honors the service of soldiers serving in the U.S. military – citizens and immigrants alike.
Legal permanent residents have long served in the U.S. military – and gotten citizenship in return. But loopholes in U.S. immigration policy often hinder legal permanent residents' ability to achieve citizenship even in this case. Approximately 8,000 legal, permanent immigrants join the military each year, and nearly 29,000 foreign-born people currently serve but are not American citizens.
In this video, Rene of Atlanta shares his struggle of obtaining U.S. citizenship despite his years of service in the U.S. Marine Corps. While Rene fortunately became a permanent citizen after filming the video, his story represents the great struggle of so many immigrant servicemen and women who continue to experience difficulties with achieving citizenship within our broken immigration system.
Categories: Immigration
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New Report Finds Increase in Union-Busting Tactics
May 22, 2009 - Posted by Antoine Morris
An increasing number of private sector employers are adopting union-busting tactics that include coercion, intimidation, and retaliation to discourage workers from forming union, according to a new report by American Rights at Work and the Economic Policy Institute that analyses data of employer behavior during union elections from 1999 to 2003.
During this period, employers threatened to fire workers 57 percent of the time, compared to 29 percent during the mid-1980s, and actually fired employees 29 percent of the time, up from 18 percent in the mid-1980s. Employers also threatened to cut wages and benefits 47 percent of the time to delay elections.
In addition, 60 percent of employers compelled their workers to attend one-on-one sessions with supervisors, where workers are often harassed because of their involvement in union campaigns.
Immigrant workers are particularly vulnerable to union busting. In about half of all the cases studied where a majority of the workers were undocumented immigrants, employers threatened to notify Immigration Customs and Enforcement of their status. Employers used this threat in 41 percent of cases with recent legal immigrants as well.
To help strengthen the right to organize, the report says, Congress should pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which requires employers to recognize a union once a majority of workers sign a card authorizing its creation and imposes stiff penalties and fines for employers that repeatedly violate the law. The Employee Free Choice Act is currently pending in Congress.
Categories: Workers' Rights
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Report Calls Upon Congress to Provide Fairer Treatment for Latino Youth in Justice System
May 21, 2009 - Posted by Lauren McGlothlin
 A new report released by the National Council of La Raza and the Campaign for Youth Justice yesterday finds that the U.S. justice system incarcerates more Latino youth than white youth and treats them more harshly for similar offenses.
The justice system incarcerates nearly 18,000 Latino youth each day and holds nearly one in four in an adult jail or prison. The report shows that holding Latino youth in adult facilities subjects them to significant dangers, such as suicide and rape, and causes severe emotional damage due to unjust treatment and the lack of therapeutic care.
The report calls on Congress to provide funds for community-based programs and alternative treatments to incarceration that effectively promote educational and emotional development among Latino youth and to reauthorize and update the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act this year to reduce racial disparities in the justice system and ban youth from being housed in adult jails. It also recommends that state and local policymakers stop housing Latino youth in adult jails and transfer resources from incarceration to effective, community-based programs.
Categories: Criminal Justice System
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MALDEF Urges the Department of Justice to Bring Hate Crime Charges against Shenandoah Teenagers
May 20, 2009 - Posted by Cathy Montoya
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has launched a petition calling for the Department of Justice to file federal hate crime charges against the teenagers responsible for the brutal murder of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pa.
On July 14, 2008, Ramirez died of injuries he suffered during an attack by a group of teenagers. The teenagers reportedly yelled racial epithets at Ramirez as they beat him. On May 1, 2009, a jury found two of the defendants accused of beating Ramirez guilty of simple assault, but acquitted the defendants of third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation, despite evidence showing that the attack was racially motivated.
Under current law, the Department of Justice has the authority to bring federal charges on hate crimes motivated by the victim's race, color, religion, and national origin.
Categories: Hate Crimes & LLEHCPA
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Women's Rights Groups Respond to Supreme Court Decision on Pregnancy Discrimination
May 19, 2009 - Posted by Tyler Lewis
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court voted (7-2) to reject a pregnancy discrimination claim in AT&T; v. Hulteen. In the case, four female AT&T; workers and retirees said that the system used by AT&T; to calculate pension benefits should give women who took pregnancy leave before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed in 1978 the same credit for time not at work as employees with other types of disabilities received.
Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, called the Court's decision "disgraceful, unfair, and a terrible blow to the equal opportunity laws women and people of color have long relied on."
"This ruling ... undermines Congress’s intent in passing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to ensure that women would never again be adversely affected by their pregnancies, and denies Ms. Hulteen and her colleagues the equal compensation to which they are entitled," said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center.
Categories: Judiciary, Women's Rights, Workers' Rights
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Award-Winning Performers Support Employee Free Choice Act in New Video
May 19, 2009 - Posted by Tyler Lewis
In this video by Artists for Workers Choice, 47 performers who work in film, television, and theater explain why unions are important and why the Employee Free Choice Act will be good for American workers. The video was developed by some of the major unions for American artists, and features stars like Jerry Stiller, Amy Brenneman, and James Cromwell.
All 47 performers are members of a union.
Categories: Workers' Rights
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It Costs More to Be Poor
May 18, 2009 - Posted by Clarissa Peterson
 A payday loan store in Henrico County, VA. Photo credit: Andrew Bain. Today's Washington Post article, Poor? Pay Up, details how low-income people often end up paying more for basic goods and services - both in money and time - than middle-class people pay for the same items.
For example, in Washington, D.C., where LCCR/EF's office is located, some low-income neighborhoods don't have a supermarket. If you don't have a car, you can either go to a corner store, where you would pay $3.79 for a loaf of wheat bread, or you could take the bus to a supermarket in another part of the city, where you would get that loaf of bread for only $1.19 - but you've wasted hours waiting for and taking the bus to get to the store.
The article also details the problems caused by payday lenders, to whom low-income people often turn if they need money quickly for unplanned expenses such as car repairs, prescriptions, or higher-than-usual utility bills. It's fairly easy to get a short-term loan, but you may end up paying fees and interest that add up to an annual percentage rate of more than 400 percent. In contrast, the average rate for credit cards in the United States is less than 15 percent. Payday lending is currently legal in 37 states.
Categories: Housing & Lending, Poverty & Welfare
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May Is National Foster Care Month
May 18, 2009 - Posted by Clarissa Peterson
Nationally, nearly 500,000 children are currently in foster care. Children from families in crisis are some of the most vulnerable members of our society, and the foster care system gives many of these children a safe place to stay, whether it be for a few days or many years.
National Foster Care Month recognizes all the people who serve as foster parents, relative caregivers, mentors, advocates, social workers, and volunteers.
However, the foster care system faces a lot of challenges, such as a lack of available foster parents, and a shortage of funding for child protection agencies that don't have the resources and staff they need to make sure that all foster homes are safe homes.
Another challenge is helping the more than 25,000 young people who age out of the foster care system each year - at anywhere between age 18 and age 21, depending on the state. The first years of adulthood are a challenge to all young people, but especially for those without family support. States provide some assistance to youth who are making the transition from foster care to living on their own, but many of these young people still face an increased risk of homelessness, poverty, health problems, and unemployment.
Visit the National Foster Care Month website to find out ways you can help children and teens in foster care by volunteering, by advocating for laws and policies that help foster children, or by becoming a mentor, respite care provider, or foster parent.
Categories: Poverty & Welfare
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This Week in Civil Rights: The Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education
May 15, 2009 - Posted by Tyler Lewis
This Sunday will mark the 55th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the case that ruled that "separate but equal" schools were unconstitutional, striking down legal segregation in the U.S.
Fifty-five years after Brown, most American children still go to segregated schools, with students of color more likely to attend schools in poorer districts that lack resources, such as highly trained teachers and advanced placement classes. In addition, a disproportionate number of the 1.2 million students that drop out of high school each year are students of color.
In this video recorded for the 50th anniversary of Brown, civil rights icon and LCCR Chairperson Dorothy I. Height discusses the importance of Brown and the challenges that we still face in realizing the dream of a high-quality education for all American children.
Categories: Civil Rights History
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U.S. Wins Seat on U.N. Human Rights Council
May 15, 2009 - Posted by Antoine Morris
On Tuesday, the United States won a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Each of the 47 members of the council is not only responsible for promoting human rights abroad, but they are also responsible for setting a high standard for human rights in their own countries. In support of its candidacy, the U.S. pledged to promote "human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons within the United States."
Civil and human rights advocates saw the U.S.' decision to join the council as an opportunity for the Obama administration to embrace human rights principles and address certain issues, like racial profiling, life sentences without parole for juveniles, Katrina recovery. Many of those same recommendations were echoed in a recent U.N. report on U.S. race relations and human rights (PDF).
In 2008, human rights scholar Catherine Powell recommended that the incoming administration put together a working group of experts and senior officials from various federal agencies including the departments of Justice, State, Defense, Homeland Security and others to ensure greater integration of human rights principles in domestic policy. Such a group could be created by an executive order by the president.
Earlier this year, LCCREF issued a report calling for Congress to broaden the mandate of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights so that it could monitor compliance with international human rights treaties on the federal, state, and local level.
Categories: Human Rights
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New Coalition Urges Congress to Improve Conditions for Low-Income Workers
May 14, 2009 - Posted by Lauren McGlothlin
 Rep. John Conyers, D. Mich., speaking on a panel with representatives from the Inter-Alliance Dialogue at an ad-hoc hearing sponsored by the Congressional Progressive Caucus on May 12, 2009. Organizations that advocate for working-class Americans, such as the Institute for Policy Studies and Jobs with Justice, recently formed a coalition called the Inter-Alliance Dialogue to address the needs of low-income workers, minorities, domestic workers, day laborers, and other groups most affected by the recession.
In recent months, employers have been eliminating jobs at a rate of about half a million per month, causing many people to lose their homes and healthcare, especially low-income workers and minorities.
The groups that make up the Inter-Alliance Dialogue are urging Congress to address the needs of low-wage workers, by:
- passing the Employee Free Choice Act to expand workers' right to organize and improve working conditions;
- enhancing worker protection laws to prevent wage theft and workplace abuses;
- preventing the lending and credit industries from taking advantage of minorities and low-income people;
- implementing fair immigration reform that protects workers and their families; and
- providing equal opportunities for jobs for all workers in the emerging green economy.
Categories: Poverty & Welfare, Workers' Rights
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New Poll Reveals Challenges and Successes of Immigrant Women in the U.S.
May 14, 2009 - Posted by Corrine Yu
A new poll surveying the views of immigrant women who were born in Latin American, Asian, African, and Arab countries highlights the barriers they face and the challenges they must overcome once settling in the United States.
The women who were surveyed said that the main reason they came to the U.S. was to join family members who were already here. When asked to name the biggest challenge they faced as immigrant women in the U.S., "helping my children achieve success" and "being able to hold my family together" were the top answers – underscoring the importance of family to these women.
Read more >>
Categories: Immigration
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