Author: The Opportunity Agenda

The Opportunity Agenda was founded with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America, a reflection of the core American belief that where we start out in life should not determine where we end up.  The vision that we will have a country in which your possibilities are determined by you is central to the American self-concept.

The Economic Policy Institute recently reported that the income of the top 1% in this country grew 214% between 1979 and 2007.  During that same time period, the income of the lowest quintile grew only 4%.  Income inequality has not improved during our fragile recovery, either.  This is reflected in the picture emerging from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in general at the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  As the Washington Post describes it, we see a “tale of two recoveries.”  Roberta Avila, Executive Director of the STEPS Coalition in Mississippi, describes her work post-Katrina: 

“In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I became the Director for the MS Coast Interfaith Disaster Task Force and was thrown headlong into disaster recovery work. Church World Service’s manual on Faith-Based Disaster Long Term Recovery became my guide. I read the entire manual in one sitting and I recall being struck by these words in the first chapter: ‘The poor and less powerful are often ignored even when they are visible and loud. Even when they are seen and heard, they still may get a smaller portion of assistance than the rich and powerful.’ I was determined that night to prevent this sad prophecy. Nevertheless, five years post Katrina these words ring true.”

In other economic news, the recent release of the unemployment numbers for August is notable primarily because the data show very little change from the month before.  Again, the numbers hover between nine and ten percent, the rate for African Americans is more than 150% of the rate for the total population, and there are still distinct disparities based on educational attainment.

What do these two points have in common?  The underlying, but difficult-to-accept truth, that significant structural change is going to be required for the American economy to begin to achieve stability, growth, and equity.  Many of the jobs that existed before the recession began are gone and are unlikely to come back.  Although this seems like a dispiriting truth – and it does mean difficult economic times for all of us – it also opens us to the possibility of transformative thinking.  Now is the time to be responsive to American ingenuity in our drive to put Americans back to work.

It’s in all of our interest to define common-sense solutions to jump-start our economic recovery and to push for innovative ideas that leave aside partisan politics.

For those of us who can still even stomach it, the first Friday of the month—the usual day for the release of the previous month’s federal Employment Situation Summary, known informally as the jobs report—has become a fairly pathetic ritual, particularly for optimists.  We hope for some proof, any proof, that a real recovery is underway.  If jobs were shed across the board, but the unemployment rate trended lightly downward, we try to pretend that it wasn’t because still more people have pulled themselves out of the formal count by giving up looking for work entirely.  If private sector job growth and public sector job loss cancel each other out, we put on our market fundamentalist wishful thinking caps and talk about how private sector jobs are somehow more sustainable than their public sector equivalents.  And when modest job growth does occur, even when it’s below even the basic replacement rate needed to accommodate a growing workforce, well, that’s when we bring out the champagne.
I’ve spent less time obsessing over these numbers recently, not simply because self-delusion is bad for the soul.  No, I’ve mostly been eschewing this sad little mental exercise for two different reasons.  First, I’m trying to remember that the Great Recession was a long time in the making, and it will take a long time to recover from.  I, like all of us, desperately want to see a jobs resurgence, and now, but that type of short-term thinking was a major driver of the crash.  Second, I’m trying to remember that there are more important indicators than simple job growth, and specifically that we’re better off building a broad foundation of quality, family-sustaining jobs, rather than simply piling another shaky layer of low-wage jobs onto the existing rubble.

While creating not simply any jobs but jobs that afford a middle class existence sounds like common sense, it would indeed be a break with recent history.  As Slate’s highly engrossing Great Divergence series chronicles, the last three decades have seen the gutting of the American middle class.  As of 2007, the wealthiest 20% of Americans were earning 14 times as much as the poorest 20% and four times the middle 20%, as compared to eight times and three times, respectively, in 1979.  And, while inflation adjusted hourly wage growth from 1973-2007 was nearly 40% for the 5% of highest earners, it was less than 10% for median earners or the lowest 10% of earners.   Put simply, in the last thirty-plus years, the very wealthy have done very well.  Everyone else has essentially treaded water.

Changing the course of these trends will be even more difficult than jump-starting the economy in the short-term, itself a major challenge.  But, if we are to truly rebuild the U.S. economy, as opposed to simply slapping a fresh coat of paint on a lemon, we have no choice.

Read more at The Opportunity Agenda website

Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is known for housing inmates in tent cities in the desert and making them wear pink clothes as humiliation, but also for allegations of racial profiling and abusive treatment of Latinos, inside and outside of his jailhouse.

On September 2, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office, challenging Arpaio’s refusal to demonstrate that his office is complying with federal civil rights laws. Specifically, the suit alleges that the Sheriff’s Office has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race or ethnicity by institutions, like the Sheriff’s Office, that receive federal funds, and requires them to document their compliance.

The litigation is unprecedented in modern times, and recalls the bad old days of the segregated South, when the Justice Department had to sue such bullies and obstructionists as Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who literally blocked the schoolhouse door to African American students seeking to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School.  (In a poignant coincidence, Jefferson Thomas, one of the Little Rock Nine, passed away the same week in an Ohio care facility).

At present the Arpaio situation is far less dramatic than the Little Rock case, in which President Eisenhower federalized Arkansas National Guard troops to enforce the Constitution and protect nine brave African American students from a violent mob.  But, ultimately, the showdown in Maricopa County is about the same basic principles: Equal Justice and Accountability.

Maricopa County chose to receive federal funds to help support its programs and services. And like every other county, city, or state that receives those funds, it agreed to ensure equal justice and equal opportunity in its programs and activities, and to keep and provide records that it is doing so. The Sheriff’s Office must now abide by the law, and by the agreement it made, to show that it is accountable for those funds and to the Constitution of the United States.

Today’s dispute is about information and documentation.  But those mundane mechanisms are part of an early warning system developed precisely to avoid the traumatic conflicts of the 1950s and ‘60s.  If, among other allegations, Arpaio is violating the human rights of Maricopa’s Latino residents and others, then he and his office must be brought to justice.  If he is not, then the documents sought by the Justice Department will help to vindicate him.  Either way, he and his office must be accountable—for the use of public funds, to the Constitution and laws of our land, and to the American values of equal justice for all.

Read more at The Opportunity Agenda website.

The sheer amount of perseverance shown by New Orleans residents in the face of disasters – first Hurricane Katrina, then the great economic recession, and now the Gulf of Mexico’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill – demonstrates how unique and precious this city is to the greater United States.  No other US city has known such repeated devastation, or has demonstrated such noble resistance to defeat, such an immense capacity to endure.  Although the city and its residents have not been broken by the continued assaults, many are still picking up the pieces.  

In the midst of recovery, NOLA residents are hopeful but scars from the hurricane are still visible, according to a new survey by Kaiser Family Foundation, “New Orleans Five Years After the Storm.”  Read more in the August Public Opinion Monthly.

Highlights of immigration news this week:

• A Washington Post blog takes a look how immigration affects the financial health of Social Security.

• Advocates of the DREAM Act—a bill that would help thousands of young, undocumented, high school graduates attain citizenship—are writing personal letters to President Obama to encourage its passage.

• Some Latino Republicans are beginning to speak out against the recent anti-immigrant laws and posturing.

And finally, The Opportunity Agenda released tools to help protect the 14th Amendment. For more, visit here.

Public opinion on comprehensive immigration reform is quite clear, Americans want workable solutions in order for us to move forward as a nation. Polls by major news stations, both national and local, show that the American public supports providing a way for illegal immigrants already living in the United States to stay here and apply to legally remain in this country, provided they have a job and pay back taxes.

Most Americans favor comprehensive immigration reform, but instead policymakers focus on border security and the 14th Amendment. A recent nationwide telephone survey by Public Religion Research (PRR) points out a clear set of values that 8-in-10 Americans agree should guide immigration reform policy: 

•enforcing the rule of law and promoting national security (88%),

•ensuring fairness to taxpayers (84%);

•protecting the dignity of every person (82%);

•keeping families together (80%)

Policymakers and the media have so far only focused on the first two, but the overwhelming support for providing a legal way for illegal immigrants already in the United States to become U.S. citizens demonstrates that the latter two values are just as important. A strong majority (71%) supports “providing immigrants the same opportunity that I would want if my family were immigrating to the U.S.”

In order for us to move forward as a nation, we need to focus on fixing our immigration system. According to the PRR survey, Americans already know this:

•More than two-thirds of the public say the inability of the immigration system to deal with illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. and the inability to properly secure the border are very serious or extremely serious problems (68% and 67% respectively).

•A majority (56%) of Americans say the immigration system is completely or mostly broken. Only 7% say the system is generally working, and about one-third (34%) say the system is working but with some major problems.

•Six-in-ten Americans believe that it is somewhat (43%) or very difficult (17%) for immigrants to come to the U.S. legally today.

“Tunnel vision” on border security and birth-right citizenship does little to encourage the kind of broad, systemic solutions that Americans clearly want.  Further, this misguided focus detracts from the human element in immigration by ignoring the nation’s values of honoring human dignity, keeping families intact, and promoting opportunity.  Now is the time for real solutions that echo these values and reflect the public desire to repair and improve the immigration system. 

Read more at The Opportunity Agenda website.

Promoted by Steven D

The edges are fraying.  While xenophobia is nothing new in American life, the use of particularly rancorous and fear-inspiring rhetoric by prominent spokespeople, affiliated with mainstream institutions that have real power to shape our dialogue, is surely on the rise, and ideas that were once whispered (or grumbled under the breath, perhaps after one too many drinks) are becoming increasingly mainstream.  These ideas not only demean us all, but they are also one of the surest harbingers of those dark events in our nation’s history—the Red Scare, the Chinese Exclusion and Geary Acts, Executive Order 9066—that most fundamentally undermine our founding values.
The protests of the Cordoba House—a Mosque and Islamic community center planned for a private site two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center—are ramping up, and what was initially a fringe idea is now endorsed by such high-profile political leaders and opinion makers as Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Charles Krauthammer.   Parallel to the mainstreaming of this message is an onrush of overtly anti-Muslim sentiment which extends across the country, from Tennessee to Wisconsin to California, and includes protests over the building of new mosques as well as a particularly stomach-turning plan by a Florida church to hold a mass burning of Qur’ans on this coming September 11th.

To be sure, many brave voices have spoken out, in spite of less than encouraging public opinion research, to support the Cordoba House and defend religious freedom.  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented perhaps the firmest repudiation of the protestors, in a press conference in which he—flanked by religious leaders of all stripes and standing in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty—boiled the debate down to a single, essential question:  “Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.”

In this point, Bloomberg presents the great hypocrisy of these so-called patriots, who wrap themselves in the American flag while attempting to undermine the closest thing we have to a unitary founding principle.  Mayor Bloomberg understands that the free exercise clause is not simply an amendment to the Constitution, but the first amendment to the Constitution.  He remembers that the early settlers of Plymouth colony, captured in the American imagination as the first European inhabitants of what would become the United States, were seeking, in large part, a place to practice their faith and preserve their cultural identity.  And he understands that, in contrast to Gingrich’s point that “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” the United States is strongest not when it seeks the lowest possible standard, but when it lifts up a vision of openness that has largely driven its economic and cultural leadership.

Bloomberg’s voice, and the voices of hundreds of elected officials, faith leaders, and everyday Americans who embrace the pluralism of our nation’s roots, are our greatest resource in efforts to forestall a new dark era in our history.  The issues that we face as a nation, from economic recovery to energy security to health care to immigration, can be complex, but this one is not.  If you believe in America, you have no choice but to respect the rights of the builders of the Cordoba House.

Read more at The Opportunity Agenda website.

Just a day before Senate Bill 1070 was set to become law in Arizona, District Judge Susan Bolton stepped in and made the critical decision to put an injunction, or temporary hold, on the most contentious portions of the bill.

The injunction request came straight from the United States, who filed a complaint against Arizona earlier this month challenging the constitutionality of SB 1070. The United States’ primary argument is that immigration law falls under federal, not state, authority. Therefore, Arizona doesn’t have the constitutional right to enforce SB 1070 since federal law preempts state law, and immigration is a federal issue.
Judge Susan Bolton’s decision is monumental in the debate over SB 1070, because the injunction implies that not only does the U.S. have a solid case against the constitutionality of SB 1070, but moreover that the U.S. actually has a very good chance at winning this case.

From Judge Bolton’s ruling alone, it’s clear that the U.S. proved its burden and has a strong chance of winning the overarching lawsuit. But what’s even more telling is Judge Bolton’s explanation of her decision, and why SB 1070, if passed into law in its entirety, would be a legal detriment to our nation.

A prime example of Judge Bolton’s reaction to SB 1070 is her summary of why she granted an injunction on one of the most controversial portions of SB 1070 – the requirement that Arizona officers must determine the immigration status of anyone they detain, arrest, or even pull over.

Judge Bolton agrees that federal law would preempt such a requirement, and even adds that verifying the immigration status of every person reported would be a huge strain on federal resources and agencies that have other priorities.

However, Judge Bolton took the issue a step further when she wrote that legal immigrants would be unfairly affected by this requirement, and that their liberties would be restricted.

Previous court cases have established that the U.S. has a responsibility to protect the personal liberties of legal immigrants, and to keep them from unnecessary examination. Judge Bolton was quick to point out that this immigration verification requirement would unfairly “increase the intrusion of police presence” in the lives of legal immigrants.

She frankly concluded, “The Court finds that this requirement imposes an unacceptable burden on lawfully-present aliens.”

Let this injunction remind us that SB 1070 raises questions beyond racial profiling – this bill is rightfully forcing us to question our nation’s immigration strategy and take a hard look at how we treat the thousands who have left their homes to become Americans.

For those interested in learning how to better frame your message on why SB 1070 is an unjust bill, check out the Opportunity Agenda’s Talking Points. The most effective way to combat SB 1070 in the public discourse is to unite our voices and create a core narrative.

“We are all in it together” was the sentiment portrayed in last week’s opinion polls on the extension of the unemployment benefits. The passing of the bill last week Tuesday was a decision supported by the majority of Americans across the board, regardless of income, race or political orientation.

•    According to the CBS News poll, 52% of respondents said Congress should extend unemployment benefits for people currently out of work, even if it meant increasing the budget deficit.
•    According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll 62 percent of respondents said Congress should approve another extension.
Not surprisingly, the economy still drives the news agenda, and last week coverage of the extension of unemployment benefits spurred a number of polls on what is more important: creating jobs or reducing the deficit.

•    According to the CBS News poll, the most important problem facing the country today was the economy/jobs (38%) followed by the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (7%). The deficit was the most important problem according to only 5%.
•    A CNN/Opinion research poll, the most important issue facing the country today was the economy (47%), followed by the federal deficit (13%).

However, when contrasting job creation against deficit reduction, the result turned out quite different.

•    According to the CBS News poll, 46% want to the federal government to spend money on jobs and 47% wants to federal government not to spend money on jobs and instead focus on reducing the deficit.
•    According to Pew research/ National Journal poll, 40% would place a higher priority on spending more to help the economy recover, while 51% prioritizes the budget deficit.

Last week’s polling was a clear example of how polling results can have varying outcomes given the question context and wording. When Americans are forced to choose or prioritize, it will have an impact on their opinion. As is visible, the forced choice question provided a different lens of what Americans want than the priorities question.

Varying the format of the questions provides us with valuable knowledge, but headlines that handpick certain public opinion data without analyzing it are at risk of misrepresenting public opinion.

Although all polls represented the American spirit of “we are all in it together,” each outcome has the potential to create a different headline. The best example is to look at the results of the CBS News poll in bold: THREE different stories, ONE poll.

Luckily, we’re all in it together to figure it out.

For more about these polls and their interpretation, I recommend reading Mark Blumenthal’s blog.

For more from The Opportunity Agenda, visit our website.

“We are all in it together” was the sentiment portrayed in last week’s opinion polls on the extension of the unemployment benefits. The passing of the bill last week Tuesday was a decision supported by the majority of Americans across the board, regardless of income, race or political orientation.

•    According to the CBS News poll, 52% of respondents said Congress should extend unemployment benefits for people currently out of work, even if it meant increasing the budget deficit.
•    According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll 62 percent of respondents said Congress should approve another extension.
Not surprisingly, the economy still drives the news agenda, and last week coverage of the extension of unemployment benefits spurred a number of polls on what is more important: creating jobs or reducing the deficit.

•    According to the CBS News poll, the most important problem facing the country today was the economy/jobs (38%) followed by the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (7%). The deficit was the most important problem according to only 5%.
•    A CNN/Opinion research poll, the most important issue facing the country today was the economy (47%), followed by the federal deficit (13%).

However, when contrasting job creation against deficit reduction, the result turned out quite different.

•    According to the CBS News poll, 46% want to the federal government to spend money on jobs and 47% wants to federal government not to spend money on jobs and instead focus on reducing the deficit.
•    According to Pew research/ National Journal poll, 40% would place a higher priority on spending more to help the economy recover, while 51% prioritizes the budget deficit.

Last week’s polling was a clear example of how polling results can have varying outcomes given the question context and wording. When Americans are forced to choose or prioritize, it will have an impact on their opinion. As is visible, the forced choice question provided a different lens of what Americans want than the priorities question.

Varying the format of the questions provides us with valuable knowledge, but headlines that handpick certain public opinion data without analyzing it are at risk of misrepresenting public opinion.

Although all polls represented the American spirit of “we are all in it together,” each outcome has the potential to create a different headline. The best example is to look at the results of the CBS News poll in bold: THREE different stories, ONE poll.

Luckily, we’re all in it together to figure it out.

For more about these polls and their interpretation, I recommend reading Mark Blumenthal’s blog.

For more from The Opoprtunity Agenda, visit our website.