Who qualifies as a journalist? The failures of the new DOJ guidelines.

Free Press reports on the new DOJ guidelines:

Last Friday, the Justice Department released revised guidelines governing the Department’s interactions with the press. President Obama had ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct the review in response to the news earlier this year that the DoJ had obtained the phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors and the emails of a Fox News reporter.
One of the main issues is whether citizen journalists (e.g., many serious writers/reporters/investigators who run their own websites to report the new) will have any protection at all. This article warns that the federal government is moving in the direction of declaring an "official press," deeming who is a journalist and who is not. This, in the digital age where citizen journalists are making a tremendous impact on news gathering.

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Time to ban predatory lenders and rent-to-own shops

David Ray Papke has recently published "Perpetuating Poverty: Exploitative Businesses, the Urban Poor, and the Failure of Liberal Reform," suggesting that it's time to pull the plug entirely on predatory lenders and rent-to-own outlets. If only legislators would base their decisions on what is just rather than the flow of money to their re-election campaigns. Why ban them rather than regulate them? Because it's been attempted for a long time, unsuccessfully. These business are great at evading the spirit of regulation.

In the end, the urban poor who shop and borrow at rent-to-own outlets, payday lenders, and title pawns do in fact pay exorbitant amounts that are much higher than what they would pay for goods at Walmart or loans at the local bank. As scholars have argued for almost fifty years, it is routinely the case that the poor pay more than middle and upper-class Americans for comparable goods and services.1 This includes food, housing, transportation, insurance, mortgages, and health care,2 and it certainly includes goods and loans from rent-to-own outlets, payday lenders, and title pawns. This article has four major sections. The first three examine the business models of, in order, the rent-to-own outlets, payday lenders, and title pawns. Each of these business models features a highly-crafted, standardized contractual agreement that does not merely support the business but rather is central to it. The fourth section of the article reviews reformist efforts related to these businesses and also argues that these liberal efforts at reform have been ineffective. The business models and concomitant contractual agreements of rent-to-own outlets, payday lenders, and title pawns are so sophisticated and adjustable as to make them virtually impervious to regulation. As a result, rent-to-own outlets, payday lenders, and title pawns continue not only to exploit the urban poor but also to socio-economically subjugate the urban poor by trapping them into a ceaseless debt cycle. A blanket proscription of these tawdry businesses might be the only way to drive them from our midst and to eliminate their active role in the perpetuation of urban poverty. . . . Some practices so fundamentally affront our shared values that they should quite simply be prohibited. It is one thing to exploit the urban poor, but it is another thing to systematically worsen their socio-economic condition and to thereby subject them to greater control and subservience. Exploitation, in other words, might be tolerable in our market economy, but subjugation should not be. You can take people’s money and the value of their labor, but you not should be able to yoke them permanently or even semi-permanently to subordination. By actively making the urban poor even poorer, the rent-to-own, payday lending, and title pawn businesses do just that and should be banned.
Papke's article can be found here. It is published by Marquette University Law School. For more on payday loans, see various articles at this site with the word "payday," including this look at how the battle between reformers and the industry wages on the ground.

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How Hugo Chavez pissed off the United States

Fascinating article by Greg Palast. Basically, he stood up to the one percent:

Elected presidents who annoy Big Oil have ended up in exile - or coffins: Mossadegh of Iran after he nationalized BP's fields (1953), Elchibey, president of Azerbaijan, after he refused demands of BP for his Caspian fields (1993), President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador after he terminated Occidental's drilling concession (2005). "It's a chess game, Mr. Palast," Chavez told me. He was showing me a very long and very sharp sword once owned by Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator. "And I am," Chavez said, "a very good chess player."
For a limited time, the Palast Investigative Fund is offering the film, "The Assassination of Hugo Chavez," as a free download here.

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Flags

There are many people out there who want to believe that the American flag is being honored no matter how it is displayed at government sanctioned Fourth of July celebrations. I'm not one of them. IMG_2797 My problem is that only a couple hundred feet from this above huge flag hoisted on by use of firetruck ladders, one sees many smaller American flags waving side by side with the corporate flags of businesses who essentially own Congress and who often call the shots contrary to the wishes of the People of the United States. American Flagf If I had my way, corporate influence would be eradicated and thus invisible at Fourth of July festivities. If it means giving up air shows and big fireworks displays, so be it. The number one priority for the People of the United States should be to take back their country. It needs to be actually run by the People. Kicking the corporations out of Fourth of July celebrations would be a powerful first step.

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