March 27, 2012

Sleazeball debt collectors used by federal government to get student loan payments

(Bloomberg) The debt collector on the other end of the phone gave Oswaldo Campos an ultimatum:

Pay $219 a month toward his more than $20,000 in defaulted student loans, or Pioneer Credit Recovery, a contractor with the U.S. Education Department, would confiscate his pay. Campos, disabled from liver disease, makes about $20,000 a year.

“We’re not playing here,” Campos recalled the collector telling him in December. “You’re dealing with the federal government. You have no other options.”

Campos agreed to have the money deducted each month from his bank account, even though federal student-loan rules would let him pay less and become eligible for a plan -- approved by Congress and touted by President Barack Obama -- requiring him to lay out about $50 a month. To satisfy Pioneer, Campos borrowed from friends, cut meat from his diet and stopped buying gas to drive his 82-year-old mother to doctor’s visits for her Parkinson’s Disease. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-26/obama-relies-on-debt-collectors-profiting-from-student-loan-woe.html

March 27, 2012

Quelle Surprise !!!: Austerity doesn't work !!!!

via truthdig:



Ireland Is Pushed Back Into Recession
Posted on Mar 24, 2012


A 0.2 percent dip in GDP at the end of 2011, which followed a drastic decline in the third quarter, has thrown Ireland back into recession, alongside Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal and Greece, and begs the question of whether austerity is the answer to Europe’s economic woes. —ARK




http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/austerity_fails_an_ireland_back_in_recession_20120324/

March 27, 2012

Can the Reason Rally resonate in this most religious of democracies?

Can the Reason Rally resonate in this most religious of democracies?
In the US, where just one member of Congress is openly atheist, the secular movement needs to 'come out'. And now is the time

Sarah Posner
guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 March 2012



[font size="1"]Religionists and atheists debate at the Reason Rally on the National Mall, 24 March 2012 in Washington, DC. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images[/font]

Despite the growing number of Americans who identify their religion as "none", our politics are still dominated by supercharged religious talk. But this past weekend, in a sort of coming out party, atheists and other non-believers gathered on the National Mall last Saturday for the first-ever Reason Rally. It was their way of saying, "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!"

The Reason Rally was modeled, in part, on gay rights activism that urged people to personalize someone they'd always thought of as an "other". That strategy – recognizing your cousin, your neighbor, your classmate, your sibling isn't straight – has fueled greater acceptance of gays and lesbians, and advances in civil rights. Everyone knows an atheist, the Reason Rally reasoning goes, and knowing an atheist goes a long way to accepting atheism.

While the analogy is imperfect (LGBT people face far more daily overt discrimination and deprivation of rights than do atheists), secularism remains the third rail of politics, and atheists still face hostility from some religious believers. Religious right activists say atheists and secularists discriminate against them – witness the supposed "war on religion" – but on the flip side, witness the antagonism toward Jessica Ahlquist, the Rhode Island student who successfully sued to have a prayer banner removed from the wall of her high school's auditorium. At the Reason Rally, Ahlquist was introduced as the "Joan of Arc of secularism" and presented with a check for college tuition, collected from supporters by the American Humanist Association.

As secularists are fond of pointing out, there is only one open non-believer in Congress (California Democrat Pete Stark) and politicians of both political parties are allergic to acknowledging the role of secularism in a democracy. On the Republican side, secularism is vilified as un-American, and is the target of conspiratorial propaganda claiming that anti-religious forces aim to subvert God and country. The Republicans, to be sure, have cornered the market on faith-based pandering, coupled with antagonism toward church-state separation. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/26/reason-rally-resonate-religious-democracy

March 27, 2012

Ben Bernanke warns jobs recovery may be 'out of sync' with economic picture

from the Guardian UK:


Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that the recovery in the job market remained fragile – but said he believed cyclical, not structural, problems were to blame.

The US economy has added an average 245,000 jobs over the past three months, and the number of people applying for initial unemployment benefits slipped to a four-year low last week.

The recovery has been seen as a major boost to president Barack Obama's re-election campaign. But Bernanke warned there may be trouble ahead.

.......(snip).......

He said the recent positive jobs numbers seemed "somewhat out of sync" with the overall pace of economic expansion, and that a close look revealed some worrying trends. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/mar/26/ben-bernanke-jobs-recovery-economy

March 27, 2012

Cell phone companies try to devise new shakedown tactics to deal with 'disloyal' customers

(CNNMoney) -- The average cell phone customer now switches carriers as soon as his or her second two-year contract is up. That startling decline in loyalty is causing wireless companies to rethink the way they do business, according to a new study released Monday.

The average length of relationships between carriers and their under-contract customers fell to an all-time low of 48 months last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers' found in the latest edition of its North American wireless industry survey. The comprehensive annual study includes data from all of the region's major carriers.

The trend has building for a few years. What's shocking is how quickly it accelerated. In 2010, the average customer-carrier relationship was 59 months -- nearly a full year longer.

The most precipitous decline came among smaller cell phone companies, but large carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint didn't fare much better. Their average relationships with customers under contract lasted just 51 months. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.todaysthv.com/news/article/203862/288/Cell-phone-customers-ditch-carriers-faster-than-ever

March 27, 2012

Trayvon's killing and Florida's tragic past

(CNN) -- Isolated in the moment, the shooting death of Trayvon Martin may seem a singular tragedy: a teenager mistaken for a criminal by an overzealous neighborhood watchman armed with a gun and backed by a state law that gives greater latitude to people to defend themselves when they feel threatened.

But that moment in February in the central Florida town of Sanford was steeped in a history that has haunted the state, the South and the country for generations.

No matter the state, the circumstances are eerily familiar: a slaying. Minimal police investigation. A suspect known to authorities. No arrest. Protests and outrage in a racially charged atmosphere. Florida is known for its amusement parks, beaches and pensioners from the North. But history bears out that Florida has been as much a part of the South and its vigilante-enforced racial caste system as Georgia and Alabama.

In 1920, a white mob burned down the black section of Ocoee, Florida, 30 miles west of Sanford, when two "colored" men tried to vote. The two black men were killed for having gone to the polls. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/26/opinion/wilkerson-trayvon/index.html

March 27, 2012

Chicago: At $4.51, gas prices hit all-time high

By Julie Wernau Tribune reporter
5:07 p.m. CDT, March 26, 2012


Filling the tank today? Prepare yourself: It’s gonna hurt.

Gas prices in Chicago and the metro area hit a record high Monday, according to AAA, with the average price of regular unleaded gasoline at $4.67 in the city and $4.51 in the suburbs. Those prices compare to $3.95 one year ago in Chicago and $3.77 at the same time last year in the Chicago metro area.

Beth Mosher, a spokeswoman for AAA, said the spike can be attributed to a seasonal change over to a summer blend of gasoline.

“The prices have been high for a very long time and this is where seasonality comes in,” Mosher said. “Every year the country switches over to a summer blend of gasoline. It’s a gasoline that produces fewer emissions and it is more expensive to make and refine.” ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-at-251-gas-prices-hit-alltime-high-here-20120326,0,844664.story

March 27, 2012

Dept. of Education uses shady debt collectors to hunt down student borrowers

We know that over 20% of student borrowers are in default thanks to a recent report from the New York Fed.

But a chilling new report from Bloomberg now details exactly what those defaulting borrowers are facing--at the hands of the government.



These are private, for-profit debt collectors, pocketing a chunk of change from the Department of Education to harass, hound, and browbeat student borrowers into forking over the cash, ASAP. Bloomberg notes, too, that several of them have gotten in trouble for their slightly-less-than-ethical business practices: "Within the past 17 months, three companies working for the Education Department -- including one that is majority owned by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s private-equity arm -- settled federal or state allegations of abusive debt collections." .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/872887/obama%27s_dept._of_education_using_shady_debt_collectors_to_hunt_down_student_borrowers/

March 27, 2012

The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste

from TomDispatch:



The New Jim Crow
How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste

By Michelle Alexander


Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.

Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.

.........(snip).........

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades -- they are currently at historical lows -- but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. The main driver has been the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone accounted for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population, and more than half of the increase in the state prison population between 1985 and 2000, the period of our prison system’s most dramatic expansion. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175520/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_michelle_alexander%2C_the_age_of_obama_as_a_racial_nightmare/#more

March 26, 2012

Chris Hedges: The Polite Conference Rooms Where Liberties Are Saved and Lost

from truthdig:



The Polite Conference Rooms Where Liberties Are Saved and Lost

Posted on Mar 26, 2012
By Chris Hedges


I spent four hours in a third-floor conference room at 86 Chambers St. in Manhattan on Friday as I underwent a government deposition. Benjamin H. Torrance, an assistant U.S. attorney, carried out the questioning as part of the government’s effort to decide whether it will challenge my standing as a plaintiff in the lawsuit I have brought with others against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), also known as the Homeland Battlefield Bill.

The NDAA implodes our most cherished constitutional protections. It permits the military to function on U.S. soil as a civilian law enforcement agency. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to selectively suspend due process and habeas corpus for citizens. The law can be used to detain people deemed threats to national security, including dissidents whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, and hold them until what is termed “the end of the hostilities.” Even the name itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian concept that endless war has to be waged within “the homeland” against internal enemies as well as foreign enemies.

Judge Katherine B. Forrest, in a session starting at 9 a.m. Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, will determine if I have standing and if the case can go forward. The attorneys handling my case, Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, will ask, if I am granted standing, for a temporary injunction against the Homeland Battlefield Bill. An injunction would, in effect, nullify the law and set into motion a fierce duel between two very unequal adversaries—on the one hand, the U.S. government and, on the other, myself, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, the Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir and three other activists and journalists. All have joined me as plaintiffs and begun to mobilize resistance to the law through groups such as Stop NDAA.

The deposition was, as these things go, conducted civilly. Afran and Mayer, the attorneys bringing the suit on my behalf, were present. I was asked detailed questions by Torrance about my interpretation of Section 1021 and Section 1022 of the NDAA. I was asked about my relationships and contacts with groups on the U.S. State Department terrorism list. I was asked about my specific conflicts with the U.S. government when I was a foreign correspondent, a period in which I reported from El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Middle East, the Balkans and other places. And I was asked how the NDAA law had impeded my work. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_polite_conference_rooms_where_liberties_are_saved_and_lost_20120326/