The Washington Post reports on Obama's willingness to address issues that afflict many African American communities: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is delivering pointed critiques of the African American community as he campaigns for its votes, lamenting that many of his generation are "disenfranchising" themselves because they don't vote, taking rappers…
I recently had the opportunity to view “Maxed Out,” a feature-length documentary directed by James Scurlock.
The movie is one-sided, in that it gives scant recognition that some debtors have brought their financial problems crashing down upon themselves with no one else to blame. On the other hand, this movie presents a point of view that is not generally considered by the media. Not all debtors are irresponsible. There are many debtors who are generally innocent, who got tripped into debt by sophisticated and despicable measures used by disreputable creditors, with Congress turning the blind eye.
On the issue of irresponsible creditors, Exhibit A, featured in the movie, was a severely disabled woman who lived in a nursing home. She had no income, but was offered $30,000 in credit through the mail.
Here’s what else I learned from Scurlock’s movie:
1. Credit card companies make 4 billion offers of credit cards every year. Fees for these cards have risen 160% over the past five years. The average household now bears over $9,000 in credit card debt, costing the average household $1300 in interest every year. One analysis of people going through bankruptcy showed that for each dollar in principle borrowed, the average person going through bankruptcy owed two dollars in interest and fees.
2. What is overall problem? According to Elizabeth Warren (a professor at Harvard Law School and a recognized expert on the issue of consumer debt) we are in great danger of turning our nation into a two-tiered …
A Jesuit college in St. Louis just won a Missouri Supreme Court case allowing them to get public money, $8 million of it, for their college. Not being one that believes public money should be spent in support of religion, I was aghast. "How could that possibly happen?" you might say. The answer…
Howard Zinn recently spoke on patriotism on DemocracyNow: Patriotism to me means doing what you think you're country should be doing. Patriotism means supporting your government when you think it's doing right, opposing your government when you think it's doing wrong. Patriotism to me means really what the Declaration of…
My wife and I adopted our two wonderful daughters from China on two separate occasions, in 1999 and 2001. We very much appreciated the way that the Chinese orphanages took good care of our daughters. When we traveled to China to meet our daughters, we were treated well by the many Chinese people we met who ran China’s adoption program. Everything was straight-forward and as we expected. I also cannot say enough good things about Children’s Hope International, the American adoption agency we used.
Throughout the adoption process one bit of irony repeatedly occurred to my wife and I: We had to be highly scrutinized before being allowed to adopt. The Chinese government (and our own agency) wanted to make certain that we were going to be good parents. My wife and I sometimes commented to each other that absolutely anyone is qualified to have a biological child, whereas people trying to adopt were treated with suspicion. To be approved for adoption, we had to produce our arrest records, medical records, recommendation letters and a home study.
We periodically get newsletters from Children’s Hope. This month’s letter includes the current requirements for adopting a child from China. Interesting stuff. In fact, the requirements are much stricter than they were a few years ago:
Families are not eligible to adopt if any of the following …