A Letter to Members of the United States Congress from Church Leaders, Non-Governmental Organizations, Citizen Groups, and Academics Regarding the Human Rights Crisis in the Philippines

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.ILRF_Letter_to_US_Congress_from_Ecumenical_Advocacy_Network.pdf: 438 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Bringing to Heel the Elephants in the Economy: The Case for Ending “Too Big To Fail”

[Excerpt] “Financial institutions labeled “Too Big To Fail” (TBTF) are those whose insolvency could shake the foundations of the U.S. financial system and our economy. The term “too big to fail” became part of our popular vocabulary in the wake of federal bank regulatory intervention to prevent the failure of Continental Illinois National Bank in 1984. After the banking and savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, the pros and cons of the TBTF policy were extensively debated. Despite Congressional efforts to limit application of TBTF, the doctrine has returned with renewed vigor during the current crisis. Responding on an ad hoc basis, federal banking regulators have employed a TBTF policy to prevent what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke saw as potential for the “second Great Depression.” Once the floodgates opened, Sunday announcements concerning bailout deals became the new business-as-usual. … Size is not the sole criterion for TBTF. The institutions marked for government bailout to prevent failure are described as “too big to liquidate” and “too interconnected to fail.” The Obama administration’s plan for regulatory reform calls these institutions “Tier 1 Financial Holding Companies” or “Tier 1 FHCs,” defined as “[a]ny financial firm whose combination of size, leverage, and interconnectedness could pose a threat to financial stability if it failed.” Internationally, these institutions have been referred to as “large complex financial institutions” or “LCFIs.”

Party Conventions Are a Free-For-All for Influence Peddling: The Soft Money Loophole for Lobbyists

The Democratic and Republican national conventions are supposed to be publicly financed electoral events with reasonable ethics restrictions on influence-peddling by lobbyists. However, the conventions have become mostly privately financed soirees funded by corporations and lobbying firms that seek favors from the federal government. The unlimited soft money donations from special interests to pay for the conventions, and the lavish parties and wining and dining at the conventions, run counter to the federal election law and congressional ethics rules

Special Libraries, September 1966

Volume 57, Issue 7https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1966/1006/thumbnail.jp

Passenger Air Service in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula: Overview and Analysis

[Excerpt] Rural America needs safe, efficient, reliable, and accessible passenger air service. Federal government subsidies have long been necessary to assure that residents in smaller, less profitable markets have access to the nation’s transportation network. That access is necessary for a community’s economic health, is arguably a right of all taxpayers and residents, and is in public interest. But market forces within the aviation industry are today driving a restructuring that may curtail or eliminate service to many communities in the nation. And the present political climate raises a serious question about the federal government’s continued commitment to the nation’s rural air transportation system. This report focuses on the state of passenger air service in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [U.P.]. The U.P. is among the most geographically remote areas in the eastern half of the United States. The region’s economic, social, and cultural institutions are increasingly related to a global marketplace. These depend, in varying degrees, on access to the national and global transportation network. Scheduled, commercial passenger air service is especially critical for this area too distant from passenger rail, without adequate commercial bus service, with few four-lane highways and very limited connection to the Interstate Highway system

US Economic Competitiveness At Risk: A Midwest Call to Action on Immigration Reform

For too long the Midwest has waited for Washington to produce meaningful reform of the nation's immigration laws. Bills have come and gone through the years, but often end in political gridlock. The Midwestern economy needs high-skilled, educated workers with long-term visas to create the companies and innovations that will power it in the future. Midwestern businesses need low-skilled immigrants with visas to sustain their industries. Midwestern schools insist that their students get the legal status that will lead to higher education and jobs. Midwestern farms seek a legal way to hire the seasonal help they need. Throughout the Midwest, cities and towns cope imaginatively with the social and economic challenges of immigration. Yet there is only so much the region can do until the federal government acts.That time has come. As economic recovery proceeds and political alignments shift, our region's leaders are thinking strategically about long-term economic competitiveness and the role played by immigrants at all levels. Midwest leaders want to ensure sustainable growth, jobs, population stability, and quality of life. Immigrants are an essential ingredient for this future. America's heartland can wait no longer.A diverse and bipartisan group of civic and business leaders, aware of the urgency of immigration reform and frustrated with delays, began convening in December 2011 to produce this report. Their priority was to state what the region needs from immigration reform to ensure its economic competitiveness. If 53 Republican and Democratic leaders -- drawn from companies, law enforcement, schools, hospitals, nonprofits, foundations, advocacy groups, and communities of faith -- from the 12-state Midwest can support these recommendations, then surely our representatives in Washington can act on them

Special Libraries, May-June 1951

Volume 42, Issue 5https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1951/1004/thumbnail.jp

The War Against Chinese Restaurants

Chinese restaurants are a cultural fixture—as American as cherry pie. Startlingly, however, there was once a national movement to eliminate Chinese restaurants, using innovative legal methods to drive them out. Chinese restaurants were objectionable for two reasons. First, Chinese restaurants competed with “American” restaurants, thus threatening the livelihoods of white owners, cooks, and servers and motivating unions to fight them. Second, Chinese restaurants threatened white women, who were subject to seduction by Chinese men taking advantage of intrinsic female weakness and nefarious techniques such as opium addiction. The efforts were creative. Chicago used anti-Chinese zoning, Los Angeles restricted restaurant jobs to citizens, Boston authorities denied Chinese restaurants licenses, and the New York Police Department simply ordered whites out of Chinatown. Perhaps the most interesting technique was a law, endorsed by the American Federation of Labor for adoption in all jurisdictions, prohibiting white women from working in Asian restaurants. Most measures failed or were struck down. The unions, of course, did not eliminate Chinese restaurants, but Asians still lost because unions achieved their more important goal by extending the federal immigration policy of excluding Chinese immigrants to all Asian immigrants. The campaign is of more than historical interest today. As current anti-immigration sentiments and efforts show, even now the idea that white Americans should have a privileged place in the economy, or that nonwhites are culturally incongruous, persists among some