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Mar. 11th, 2005 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumA week, or so's, worth of referrals and comments.
Bankruptcy, after eight years of trying the Credit Card lobby has gotten it's wet-dream anti-bankruptcy legislation passed. Rivka, at Welcome To The New Economy does a better job than I could of using the LA Times series as a platform for discussing the problem in concrete terms.
Me, I keep seeing parallels to the Reserve Clause, where the owners in Baseball said they needed to be able to hold the players as indentured servants because if the players could ask what they were worth the owners would overspend, trying to buy them, and go out of business.
Frek Clark points out Moral Bankruptcy that, among other things, the Senate wouldn't agree to making more than 30 percent, annual interest illegal.
Is "evil" too strong a word? Consider another failed amendment to the bill. The title of this AP report (via Dr. Alterman) puts it plainly: "Senate refuses to limit interest rates at 30%."
Orrin Hatch (that paragon of looking out for the little guy) argued that putting a limit (even one so high as 30 percent) would interfere with States' Rights, by preventing them from having a lower cap. This is why so many credit cards are from South Dakota.
An example (which Fred quotes) of the way the business of credit cards is being run, In Cleveland, a municipal court judge tossed out a case that Discover Bank brought against one of its cardholders after examining the woman's credit card bill.
According to court papers, Ruth M. Owens, a 53-year-old disabled woman, paid the company $3,492 over six years on a $1,963 debt only to find that late fees and finance charges had more than doubled the size of her remaining balance to $5,564. ...
Yep. She paid them almost twice what she was lent, and they were trying to bill her for another 5,500 dollars. In this case the judge tossed it out. In another a judge didn't, because the person admitted to borrowing the money.
The Decembrist talks about a related issue Tax Codes As I was writing this I started to look into Refund Anticipation Loans, which I knew were not a good thing, but I didn't know the half of it. According to the National Consumer Law Center, 12.15 million taxpayers took these 7-14 day loans in 2003, paying effective interest rates that ranged from 70% to over 700%. Half of the people who took these loans were recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Almost 80% had household incomes below $35,000. A majority didn't realize it was a loan. Tax preparation fees combined with RAL fees average about $250. When you consider the big deal that was made about a $600 child credit, you can see how much is lost through this scam.
H&R Block, et al, don't even have the fig leaf the credit card companies have, because these are zero risk loans, the refund is signed over to the company before the check gets cut.
His bigger point is that the tax code has been screwed, by making those at the bottom subject to the most difficult figuring, making it more needful for them to pay someone else to figure their taxes.
With the US pulling out of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, we see how things have turned. We wrote this, back in '63. We lobbied like hell to get it agreed to, and now we don't like it. Why? because it has been used as it was intended, to protect a nations citizens. It has been used to overturn death sentences, because we denied the accused the chance to speak with consular officials. I suspect there is more to it than that. You see all we need to do, if what we want is to preserve the option of serving non-citizens with capital charges, is to let them speak with their consular representatives.
No, me I think it's to prevent the people we charge with terrorism from being able to do that, or at least from being able to appeal the sentence. But I'm getting cynical on that subject, the moreso when I see things like Unintended Consequences [NYT] where we find that the relaxing of the definition of torture means we are sending people to places where any reasonable person would say they were going to be subjected to torturous treatment.
No one disputes that for ex-convicts like Mr. Auguste, 28, who completed a 10-month jail sentence for the attempted sale of cocaine, deportation to Haiti is a grim prospect. Under Haitian policy, federal and immigration courts have found, deportees with a criminal record are placed in indefinite preventive detention, without food, water or toilets, in cells so crowded that they cannot lie down; prisoners are subjected to police beatings, and sometimes are burned with cigarettes, choked, hooded and given electric shocks. Some have died in custody.
But is that tantamount to torture under the law? The answers have varied in the last four years. The Third Circuit panel, while likening the conditions to "a slave ship," ruled in January that indefinite detention in Haiti did not constitute torture because Haitian officials intended the detention to prevent crime, not specifically to inflict severe pain and suffering amounting to torture.
bellatrys has a nice piece on safety versus risk/freedom versus protection or, losing all sense of proportion Over the Water where she looks at how Britain is dealing with things.
I happen to find lots of this amusing,Sleeper cells in a wry sort of way, because one of the truths of the Cold War is being proven true about the conflict with Al Queda... (I have no idea why this was in the sports section). The reason I find it amusing is because I have been saying (to Maia's annoyance when I yell at some fathead on the radio) there are no sleeper cells. My basis for this is the Cold War. After the Kremlin archives were opened, after the Stasi's files were released (well dragged out into the cold light of day) after all was said and done the boys at Langley had to admit something. All the money we spent trying to find the Soviet's sleeper cells, was pointless. They were laughing themselves sick because there wasn't a single one. Not one. Not in more than 40 years of the Cold War.
To close (and this was probably too long) I offer this piece on Moral Virtue, vs. Moral Values An extract In the recent past, we have heard a lot of talk about "moral values". It's clear that in many cases, the term "moral value" was used as a way of judging others, as a way of sizing people up to see if they measured up to a certain standard. Instead, we might choose to think about "moral virtues". As such, a contemplation of virtue calls us not to judge others, but to examine ourselves. This examination is crucial to the future direction of the GLBT community. To establish credibility, to integrate ourselves into society, we must be disciples of virtue....
It might be argued: "Why should we embrace a life of virtues and morals? The Ultra-Right--the self-proclaimed defenders of American Values and American Morals--don't!" This is, in the end, a childish argument. When we advance such an argument, we risk becoming like the very people we are fight against: intolerant, inflexible, and self-serving."
Bankruptcy, after eight years of trying the Credit Card lobby has gotten it's wet-dream anti-bankruptcy legislation passed. Rivka, at Welcome To The New Economy does a better job than I could of using the LA Times series as a platform for discussing the problem in concrete terms.
Me, I keep seeing parallels to the Reserve Clause, where the owners in Baseball said they needed to be able to hold the players as indentured servants because if the players could ask what they were worth the owners would overspend, trying to buy them, and go out of business.
Frek Clark points out Moral Bankruptcy that, among other things, the Senate wouldn't agree to making more than 30 percent, annual interest illegal.
Is "evil" too strong a word? Consider another failed amendment to the bill. The title of this AP report (via Dr. Alterman) puts it plainly: "Senate refuses to limit interest rates at 30%."
Orrin Hatch (that paragon of looking out for the little guy) argued that putting a limit (even one so high as 30 percent) would interfere with States' Rights, by preventing them from having a lower cap. This is why so many credit cards are from South Dakota.
An example (which Fred quotes) of the way the business of credit cards is being run, In Cleveland, a municipal court judge tossed out a case that Discover Bank brought against one of its cardholders after examining the woman's credit card bill.
According to court papers, Ruth M. Owens, a 53-year-old disabled woman, paid the company $3,492 over six years on a $1,963 debt only to find that late fees and finance charges had more than doubled the size of her remaining balance to $5,564. ...
Yep. She paid them almost twice what she was lent, and they were trying to bill her for another 5,500 dollars. In this case the judge tossed it out. In another a judge didn't, because the person admitted to borrowing the money.
The Decembrist talks about a related issue Tax Codes As I was writing this I started to look into Refund Anticipation Loans, which I knew were not a good thing, but I didn't know the half of it. According to the National Consumer Law Center, 12.15 million taxpayers took these 7-14 day loans in 2003, paying effective interest rates that ranged from 70% to over 700%. Half of the people who took these loans were recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Almost 80% had household incomes below $35,000. A majority didn't realize it was a loan. Tax preparation fees combined with RAL fees average about $250. When you consider the big deal that was made about a $600 child credit, you can see how much is lost through this scam.
H&R Block, et al, don't even have the fig leaf the credit card companies have, because these are zero risk loans, the refund is signed over to the company before the check gets cut.
His bigger point is that the tax code has been screwed, by making those at the bottom subject to the most difficult figuring, making it more needful for them to pay someone else to figure their taxes.
With the US pulling out of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, we see how things have turned. We wrote this, back in '63. We lobbied like hell to get it agreed to, and now we don't like it. Why? because it has been used as it was intended, to protect a nations citizens. It has been used to overturn death sentences, because we denied the accused the chance to speak with consular officials. I suspect there is more to it than that. You see all we need to do, if what we want is to preserve the option of serving non-citizens with capital charges, is to let them speak with their consular representatives.
No, me I think it's to prevent the people we charge with terrorism from being able to do that, or at least from being able to appeal the sentence. But I'm getting cynical on that subject, the moreso when I see things like Unintended Consequences [NYT] where we find that the relaxing of the definition of torture means we are sending people to places where any reasonable person would say they were going to be subjected to torturous treatment.
No one disputes that for ex-convicts like Mr. Auguste, 28, who completed a 10-month jail sentence for the attempted sale of cocaine, deportation to Haiti is a grim prospect. Under Haitian policy, federal and immigration courts have found, deportees with a criminal record are placed in indefinite preventive detention, without food, water or toilets, in cells so crowded that they cannot lie down; prisoners are subjected to police beatings, and sometimes are burned with cigarettes, choked, hooded and given electric shocks. Some have died in custody.
But is that tantamount to torture under the law? The answers have varied in the last four years. The Third Circuit panel, while likening the conditions to "a slave ship," ruled in January that indefinite detention in Haiti did not constitute torture because Haitian officials intended the detention to prevent crime, not specifically to inflict severe pain and suffering amounting to torture.
bellatrys has a nice piece on safety versus risk/freedom versus protection or, losing all sense of proportion Over the Water where she looks at how Britain is dealing with things.I happen to find lots of this amusing,Sleeper cells in a wry sort of way, because one of the truths of the Cold War is being proven true about the conflict with Al Queda... (I have no idea why this was in the sports section). The reason I find it amusing is because I have been saying (to Maia's annoyance when I yell at some fathead on the radio) there are no sleeper cells. My basis for this is the Cold War. After the Kremlin archives were opened, after the Stasi's files were released (well dragged out into the cold light of day) after all was said and done the boys at Langley had to admit something. All the money we spent trying to find the Soviet's sleeper cells, was pointless. They were laughing themselves sick because there wasn't a single one. Not one. Not in more than 40 years of the Cold War.
To close (and this was probably too long) I offer this piece on Moral Virtue, vs. Moral Values An extract In the recent past, we have heard a lot of talk about "moral values". It's clear that in many cases, the term "moral value" was used as a way of judging others, as a way of sizing people up to see if they measured up to a certain standard. Instead, we might choose to think about "moral virtues". As such, a contemplation of virtue calls us not to judge others, but to examine ourselves. This examination is crucial to the future direction of the GLBT community. To establish credibility, to integrate ourselves into society, we must be disciples of virtue....
It might be argued: "Why should we embrace a life of virtues and morals? The Ultra-Right--the self-proclaimed defenders of American Values and American Morals--don't!" This is, in the end, a childish argument. When we advance such an argument, we risk becoming like the very people we are fight against: intolerant, inflexible, and self-serving."
