[ECP] @K12Newslstters: 3-10-19

LOC K12 teacher primary sources

Deadline to Apply for 2019 Summer Teacher institutes is March 10th!

The Library of Congress is continues to accept applications for our 2019 Summer Teacher Institutes for educators interested in using primary sources with their students.  Interested applicants are invited to apply by the deadline of March 10, 2019.  More information on this free professional development opportunity for educators of all disciplines, interested in using primary sources with their students, follows: 2019 Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institutes

Immerse yourself in the practice of teaching with primary sources from the unparalleled collections of Library of Congress. Held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., our Summer Teacher Institutes provide educators of all disciplines with resources and strategies to effectively integrate primary sources into K-12 classroom teaching. Each session will focus on pedagogy, with an emphasis on supporting student engagement, critical thinking, and construction of knowledge. While practicing these teaching strategies, attendees will explore some of the millions of digitized historical artifacts and documents available in the Library’s collections. They will also conduct research to identify primary sources and develop an activity related to their classroom content.

The Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institutes are appropriate for K-12 educators across many disciplines, including: Social Studies/History, English Language Arts, Science, Art, Music, or any other educators who feel that primary sources could be used with their curricula. Librarians and Curriculum/Professional Development specialists are also encouraged to apply.

Three week-long Summer Teacher Institute sessions will be offered this summer:

General Focus – open to K-12 educators across all content areas:

  • July 8-July 12, 2019
  • July 29-August 2, 2019

Science, Technology, and Engineering Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach science, technology, or engineering, or collaborate with those who do:

  • July 15-July 19, 2019

Institute and instructional materials are provided at no cost. Participants will be responsible for transportation to and from Washington, D.C., and any required overnight accommodations.

Applications for the Summer Teacher Institutes are due March 10, 2019 and require a letter of recommendation. Read more and apply now

IN THE NEWS

► Mapping Student Debt – Map 1: An Introduction
https://mappingstudentdebt.org/#/map-1-an-introduction

Senators ask #Facebook why it tricked kids into spending parents’ money

►250 pages of internal #Facebook emails, presentations and internal API documentation published by UK parliament pdf

► #DeleteFacebook #facebook Revolving Door https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/facebook-just-hired-a-handful-of-its-toughest-privacy-critics/

► UC engaged in necessary fight for open access to research-based knowledge https://dailybruin.com/2019/01/22/uc-engaged-in-necessary-fight-for-open-access-to-research-based-knowledge/

► Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/26/us/politics/trump-contacts-russians-wikileaks.html

Using information security to explain why disinformation makes autocracies stronger and democracies weaker By Cory Doctorow
Nov 27 2018

@K12NEWSLETTERS

ED Review http://www2.ed.gov/news/newsletters/edreview/
EDUCATION FREEDOM SCHOLARSHIPS
https://sites.ed.gov/freedom/

Association for Career and Technical Education ACTE
https://www.ed.gov/news/media-advisories/secretary-devos-celebrate-cte-month-career-and-technical-education-leaders-virginia

Secretary announced Mark Brown as Chief Operating Officer of Federal Student Aid (FSA).

March is Women’s History Month.

NASA Education EXPRESS mailing list.
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/current-opps-index.html

NASA Email Sign-up

NASA EXPRESS your STEM connection
The NASA EXPRESS message features updates from NASA and STEM associates about workshops, internships, and fellowships; applications for grants or collaborations; promotions for student and educator opportunities; online professional development; and other announcements.
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/Express_Landing.html

 

WHERE IS THE ANTITRUST LAW IMMUNE RESPONSE TO PARTRIMONAL CAPITALISM?

It’s so out of control

THE MONOPLY
Trends in governing have eroded the beliefs, norms and processes by which we learn to be accommodating citizens in a pluralistic, deliberative democracy. By manufacturing rights that limit democratic decision-making, centralizing power in Washington far from citizens’ lives, and empowering unelected bureaucrats in federal regulatory agencies, we’ve obstructed Americans’ practice of self-government.

WHERE IS THE ANTITRUST LAW IMMUNE RESPONSE TO PARTRIMONAL CAPITALISM?
Is law in the hands of the consumer or big business or the presidents colleagues?

Jerry Nadler is demanding information on Trump’s business and ties to Russia as well as the administration’s activities.
Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has hired Daniel Goldman, who served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 2007 to 2017, as the committee’s senior adviser and director of investigations. He is a  veteran prosecutor with experience fighting Russian organized crime to lead his investigation of the Trump Administration.

Predatory Monoply Control
What the 1% Knows and you don’t
Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
Moyers & Company
Economist Paul Krugman explains how the United States is becoming an oligarchy – the very system our founders revolted against.
Patrimonial Capitalism Oligarchy Wealth – inherited wealth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQYA9Qjsi0

!!!!!! Documenting all the places personal data goes.
https://thedatamap.org/

►Top MultiState Buyers of Personal Health Information
https://thedatamap.org/map2013/statebuyers.php

HIBP Have I Been Pawned?
https://pastebin.com/search?q=%40aol.com

►Rich Uncle Penny Bags trolls Equifax Hearing
https://cyberplayground.org/2019/03/03/monoply-mr-moneybags-russia-graphic/

► The words “common” and “predominate” spell out the problem with 50-state cybersecurity class actions
A Congresswoman gave Equifax data breach lawsuits a gift
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-congresswoman-gave-equifax-data-breach-plaintiffs-a-gift-190737413.html

► The 50-State Cybersecurity Class Action Is Here to Stay. How to Defend Against It!
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/50-state-cybersecurity-class-action-033054371.html

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hates when he is spied on but loves to spy on everyone else.

How the National Enquirer obtained the intimate photos exchanged between Bezos and his mistress. Jeff Bezos new girlfriend, says she ‘loved being on camera’ sending Lauren Sanchez text messages.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/amazon-google-and-microsoft-are-odds-dangers-face

The world’s richest billionaire and a notorious labor abuser, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Builds a Sprawling Surveillance State for Everyone Else but doesn’t like it when his girlfriends phone gets hacked showing his sexting sexy texts of the adulterous affair via sms. It’s easy to trick cellular providers into essentially giving them access to the person’s phone number. Hackers just call up.

  • Verizon, impersonate you, and convince the company to redirect his text messages to a different SIM card, intercepting your one-time login codes.
  • Comcast set Xfinity mobile phone set pins to “0000,” for all it’s customers and no way for them to change it — helping attackers steal phone numbers Xfinity Mobile deploys fix after weak PIN system fueled number-porting attacks. Comcast help page was edited this week 3/1/19 to remove any references to the account PIN. xfinity Mobile does not allow adding a PIN to your number and the PIN is 0000 for all numbers.
  • Kanye West’s iPhone X password was 000000
  • Zuckerberg’s password across multiple accounts dadada

SO HEY YOU SHOULD STOP USING TEXTS FOR TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION
sexting / text messages are easily hacked / sms insecure
SMS text messages are often the weakest link in two-step logins

Hack Someone’s Phone to View Text Messages
Reddit Hacked, Despite SMS Two-Factor Authentication The hacker gained access to Reddit’s internal systems by circumventing SMS-based two-factor authentication on employee accounts. “We learned that SMS-based authentication is not nearly as secure as we would hope,” a website engineer said.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/362871/reddit-hacked-despite-sms-two-factor-authentication

Push is an application level service, sitting on the top of existing WAP stack. The server does not simply send push content to the phone, the user would surely not accept, for instance, interrupting of a voice call.

SMS services are content services initiated by SMS message to certain (usually short) phone number, which then answers with requested content, if available. It can also be used to send regular text as well as advanced content like operator logos, ringing tones, business cards and phone configurations. Lastly… SMS, short messaging service, is a way to send short (160 character) messages from one GSM phone to another. Push over GPRS can only simplify matters. BUT QUITE SIMPLY, PHONES CURRENTLY OPERATE THIS WAY. Using two bearers seems to be an unnecessary complication. Because Push Proxy Gateway tokenizes SI and SL documents, it may fit one SMS message (if not, it is segmented for transfer). The push content is sent to the phones over SMS, but the content is fetched by the phone over IP bearer, for instance CSD or GPRS. Then the user can decide does he accept push or not. It contains an URL specifying the service and a text for user describing the content. These inform the user about the content become available, and it is displayed only when it is not interrupting anything. Instead it sends a specific XML document, either Service Indication or Service Loading. It defines three kind of XML documents, one for the push data itself and another for protocol purposes (these are called pap document or push control documents). OTA is a lightweight protocol speaking with WAP stack (to be more specific, with WSP), PAP speaks with the push initiator. It defines two protocols, OTA and PAP. For this purpose WAP Forum defined WAP Push. There is, however, situations when the server (called in this context a push initiator) should be the initiator, for instance, when it must send a mail notification or a stock quote. ^ explains pull mode of operation: the phone initiates the transaction. Therefore, Kannel (Twitter) functions simultaneously as both a WAP and an SMS gateway. Although WAP is the hot and technically superior technology, SMS phones exist in huge numbers and SMS services are thus quite useful.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_Proxy_Gateway

Turn on the service Text “on” to 40404
Turn off mobile updates but keeep an active account on the web you can test “off” to 40404 or visit Twitter.com and trun off phone alerts. To delete your account text “delete me” to 40404 or visit your settings page and click “Delete your account.”

ALL THIS SPYING ON YOU !!!! is just fine with Jeff he just doesn’t like it when it happens to him.

2017, Amazon’s Rekognition AI face-recognition software used by governments and police forces around the world to spy on crowds.

Amazon is vying for a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense to consolidate and host its data on the cloud.
Google is no longer competing for the $10 billion contract, and it decided not to renew an AI contract with the Pentagon after employees signed a petition.

Jeff Bezos says his companies will continue to do business with the US Department of Defense, despite internal and external criticism.
“If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the DoD, this country is going to be in trouble,” said Bezos on stage at the Wired25 conference in San Francisco on Monday.
The billionaire has faced backlash from Amazon (AMZN) employees over its business deals with government agencies.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos acknowledged his company’s Amazon’s AI Rekognition face-recognition software might be put to “bad uses,” buh he said the solution was to wait for society’s eventual “immune response” to take care of the problems.

REPEAT THIS TO YOUR FRIENDS

► ► “When they substitute their knowledge for ours, we grow angry because they have robbed us of our agency.”

Trends in governing have eroded the beliefs, norms and processes by which we learn to be accommodating citizens in a pluralistic, deliberative democracy. By manufacturing rights that limit democratic decision-making, centralizing power in Washington far from citizens’ lives, and empowering unelected bureaucrats in federal regulatory agencies, we’ve obstructed Americans’ practice of self-government.
https://cyberplayground.org/2018/12/04/when-they-substitute-their-knowledge-for-ours-we-grow-angry-because-they-have-robbed-us-of-our-agency/

► Google employees walked out for the right to sue their bosses.
“This is just the beginning of a movement for more employee control of what gets built and for whom.”
https://cyberplayground.org/2019/03/01/google-employees-walked-out-for-the-right-to-sue-their-bosses/

► Amazon worker pushes Bezos to stop selling facial recognition tech to law enforcement
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/411622-amazon-workers-push-bezos-to-stop-selling-facial-recognition-tech-to-law

I’m an Amazon Employee. My Company Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police.
Amazon’s ‘Rekognition’ program shouldn’t be used as a tool for mass surveillance
https://medium.com/s/powertrip/im-an-amazon-employee-my-company-shouldn-t-sell-facial-recognition-tech-to-police-36b5fde934ac

A couple weeks ago, my co-workers delivered a letter to this effect, signed by over 450 employees, to Jeff Bezos and other executives. The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that powers much of ICE’s deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services and to institute employee oversight for ethical decisions.
https://medium.com/s/oversight/shock-anger-disappointment-an-amazon-employee-speaks-out-88d927792950

►ACLU, “Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image.
It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces.” “Amazon’s Rekognition raises profound civil liberties and civil rights concerns.” “Amazon’s Rekognition raises profound civil liberties and civil rights concerns.”
https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/amazon-google-and-microsoft-are-odds-dangers-face

► Kent Walker, google’s general counsel and senior vice president of global affairs, made it clear that Google — unlike Amazon and Microsoft — will not sell a face recognition product until the technology’s potential for abuse is addressed.

Amazon encourages governments to use its technology to track “persons of interest” and monitor public spaces, comparing everyone to databases with tens of millions of faces.
Amazon even suggested pairing face recognition with police body cameras, a move that would transform devices meant for police accountability into roving mass-surveillance devices.

► Amazon’s Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress against a mugshot database. Tellingly, congressional members of color were disproportionately misidentified, including civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. And that test wasn’t based on a hypothetical: Law enforcement has already been using Rekognition to match pictures against arrest-photo databases.

► We’re All Spies, Now—And Not Even Trump Can Hide From Our Prying Eyes
“Loose tweets destroy fleets,” the U.S. Air Force advised in 2015.
Amateur plane-spotters tracked Air Force One as it secretly made its way to Iraq, demonstrating the power of readily-available tools to reveal covert military operations. Taking advantage of plane- and ship-tracking websites, commercial satellite imagery, internet forums for aviation photographers and other social media, these amateurs have become a new kind of hybrid journalist and spy. They call their practice “open-source intelligence,” or OSINT and claim they’re keeping people informed and holding government accountable.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-all-spies-nowand-not-even-trump-can-hide-from-our-prying-eyes
► Compromised supply chain attacks are a well-established, if underappreciated, method of surveillance — and much work remains to be done to secure computing devices from this type of compromise.
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/24/computer-supply-chain-attacks/
https://theintercept.com/document/2019/01/23/dod-2011-strategy-for-operating-in-cyberspace-supply-chain-excerpts/

►Federal lobbying law:
If the Saudis or any other foreign government did direct or pay any company to produce such a magazine, that company would be required to register with the government under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

These revelations give rise to serious concerns about abuse.
“It’s important to remember that the NSA’s surveillance activities are anything but narrowly focused — the agency is collecting massive amounts of sensitive information about virtually everyone.” “A U.S. person is entitled to greater legal protections against NSA surveillance than foreigners are.” ~Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union

The Associated Press show that a Pro Saudi digital copy of the magazine, produced by American Media Inc., was quietly shared with officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington almost three weeks before its publication. Trump administration has aggressively courted the Saudis and found a willing partner on a range of issues, including Iran, counterterrorism and Middle East peace, in the kingdom’s royal family.

►Metadata embedded in the PDF file, obtained by the AP from two different individuals, show it was produced by an AMI production employee at 8:41 p.m. on Feb. 19. By the next day — Feb. 20 — Saudi officials had started forwarding it to Washington foreign policy contacts, giving them an early look.
► Pecker dined at the White House with Trump and a French businessman with close business ties to the Saudis, and later traveled to Riyadh to pitch Saudi investors on helping AMI acquire Time magazine, The New York Times reported.
► Kushner’s family real estate firm, The Kushner Cos., once sought money from a Saudi investor to buy out its partner in a Manhattan skyscraper that had been losing money for years.
► “Catch and Kill” AMI paid $30,000 8 months earlier to a former doorman at a Trump building requiring him to sign a contract that  prevented him from going public. AMI said it paid the doorman not for his silence, but for exclusive rights to the story
https://www.apnews.com/d293d282a9ec4d0c83fe0a25ff5f285c
►The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target’s credibility, reputation and authority.
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/08/jeff-bezos-protests-the-invasion-of-his-privacy-as-amazon-builds-a-sprawling-surveillance-state-for-everyone-else/
►Wherever you are, the NSA’s databases store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online,” he added. “The NSA says this personal information won’t be abused, but these documents show that the NSA probably defines ‘abuse’ very narrowly.
►The NSA possesses embarrassing sexually explicit information about at least two of the targets by virtue of electronic surveillance of their online activity. The report states that some of the data was gleaned through FBI surveillance programs carried out under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act.
► James Bamford, a journalist who has been covering the NSA since the early 1980s, said the use of surveillance to exploit embarrassing private behavior is precisely what led to past U.S. surveillance scandals
<https://www.huffpostbrasil.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html?ec_carp=8743119989930048067>
► Trump Ordered Officials to Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner-security-clearance.html

SCIENCE SAYS CHILDREN SHOULD BE VACCINATED

Unvaccinated Oregon boy, 6,  Spends 47 Days in ICU With Tetanus nearly dies of tetanus, racks up $1 million in bills. His parents still refuse to get him vaccinated!!!!!!

SCIENCE SAYS CHILDREN SHOULD BE VACCINATED

ADULTS ARE GETTING AND BELIEVING STUPID LIES FROM THE INTERNET AND THEY WON’T BELIEVE THE TRUTH OF SCIENCE
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctor-fed-up-with-measles-outbreak-takes-controversial-stance/

It’s mostly THE RICH who don’t get vaccinated

Northern California’s Marin County has a high rate of people claiming personal belief exemptions. In 2012, Dr. Nelson Branco and his partners at a Marin County practice started turning away toddlers whose parents refused to make sure they received the measles vaccine.

https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2019/03/unvaccinated-oregon-boy-6-nearly-dies-of-tetanus-racks-up-1-million-in-bills.html

 

Pediatrician Charles Goodman at his practice in Northridge, Calif. Doctor will not treat patients who refuse to vaccinate their kids.
https://nypost.com/2015/01/30/doctor-fires-patients-who-refuse-to-vaccinate-their-kids/

His practice will no longer see children whose parents won’t get them vaccinated.
“Parents who choose not to give measles shots, they’re not just putting their kids at risk, but they’re also putting other kids at risk — especially kids in my waiting room,” the Los Angeles pediatrician said.

Most of the measles cases have been traced directly or indirectly to Disneyland in Southern California.

The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, or MMR, is 97 percent effective at preventing measles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Measles spreads easily through the air and in enclosed spaces.

Humor / Not Humor THREAD
https://twitter.com/nyapru1/status/1103533368816345093

There is an outbreak of measles in the USA. Fellow Ugandans, 1 shilling a day could save these dying kids.

“Poor infrastructure and backward cultural practices have led them to endanger their lives. 1 shilling a day could help bring clean drinking water to a village named Flint, in a province called Michigan. For 5 shillings we’ll let you take a photo in your ghetto of choice.”

Federal watchdog issues scathing report on ed department’s handling of student loans

2019 STUDENT DEBT IS NOW 1.5 TRILLION DOLLARS

HISTORY – HOW DID WE GET HERE

Why did the U.S. get into the college loan business in the first place?  Tax Dollars, came from the people, to be spent for the people to protect the  welfare of the United States.

To Protect the Welfare of the United States.

In 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik. Student loans tied to help the U.S. compete technologically and scientifically with the Soviet Union.
President Dwight Eisenhower heeded calls to improve science and technical education by establishing a low-interest college-loan program through the National Defense Education Act of 1958 – with loan dollars coming straight from the government.

That name comes from the original name back in the ’70s, Student Loan Marketing Association. Sallie Mae (official name: SLM Corporation) was born as a government-sponsored enterprise.

PRIVATIZED PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS

Rethuglican Gorden Gecko greed is good  wanted all that loan sharking revenue from public money put in their pocket.

It was no longer about the welfare of the United States it is now all about Gorden Gecko greed is good profit taking for the public sector. That is why politicians allow it to continue. It’s great for wall street GGs they want their returns made from enslaving the American Public.

Go to College – Get a Loan – JUST DON’T GO!

GET VOCATIONAL TRAINING IN HIGH SCHOOL!!

‘I don’t want to be the forbearer of bad news, but forbearance actually increases your interest over time. An income-based repayment plan would be more fiscally responsible.’
—Comedian John Hodgman on his fictional student-loan game show

THIS SPINS OFF TO BECOME NAVIENT  press release

2014 The president and CEO of Sallie Mae BECAME Navient’s CEO. Sallie Mae  kept the company’s consumer banking operations, and new private student loans will originate from and be serviced by a private corporation.
Navient originates federally guaranteed student loans. It will also service private student loans that Sallie Mae currently holds.

Navient CEO Jack Remondi, Warren audited by the Department of Education. The program includes multiple loan types and over 50 different repayment statuses. It is safe to say that the federal student loan program is the most complex consumer loan program in the world.

PROBLEM SOLVED: WHAT YOU CAN DO

IN SOLIDARITY THERE IS POWER, ORGANIZE, TAKE ACTION.

You are not a loan. https://debtcollective.org/

Join the Debt Collective to fight economic exploitation! Here you can dispute your debts, challenge creditors, and join others to organize campaigns, direct actions, and financial disobedience. Together we can build a new economy where no one has to go into debt to meet their basic needs.

  • Dispute Errors on Your Credit Report
  • Dispute Your Wages Being Taken
  • Dispute Any Debt in Collections (except a student loan) that has been sent to collections. Make them prove it! (All debt types except private student loans)

A bailout of the people by the people

Student debt has surpassed $1.5 trillion partly because it is one of the most protected forms of debt by federal law. Student debtors can rarely discharge their loans in bankruptcy and lenders have rights to garnish wages and social security payments. The vast majority of student loans have these federal guarantees. We cannot buy these loans because there is no secondary market. However, we believe it may be possible to buy private tuition debt of some sort that is not guaranteed by the federal government.

 CALL YOUR STATE AG Attorney General

The five states suing Navient — Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, California and Mississippi for breaking their laws regarding consumer protection.

A 2017 study by the Government Accountability Office estimates that a typical borrower of a $30,000 student loan who places their loan into forbearance for three years — the maximum allowed for economic-hardship forbearance — would pay an additional $6,742 in interest on that loan.

The largest contributor to student loan defaults, however, is not over-borrowing. It’s not graduating. Despite the perception that student loan defaults are driven by excessive debt, in fact, two-thirds of all defaults are from those who borrowed less than $10,000. Only 4 percent of defaults are from those who borrowed more than $40,000.

Federal watchdog issues scathing report on ed department’s handling of student loans

Betsy Devos  rewarded as Head of the Department of Education  Charter School Business owner after giving  the largest campaign Trump donation.

A critical new report from the

U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General finds the department’s student loan unit failed to adequately supervise the companies it pays to manage the nation’s trillion-dollar portfolio of federal student loans.

The report also rebukes the department’s office of Federal Student Aid for rarely penalizing companies that failed to follow the rules.

Navient is a publicly traded company. The fewer customer-service agents Navient employs, the more money Navient puts in its pocket. If the Department of Education chose to require all servicers to discuss income-driven repayment plans with all borrowers, the Department of Education needs to redo its contract with Navient.

The department’s own inspector general says student loan companies aren’t following the rules, and that the government isn’t doing enough to hold them accountable.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/14/694477547/federal-watchdog-issues-scathing-report-on-ed-departments-handling-of-student-lo

Failures by the servicers, among them, not telling borrowers about all of their repayment options, or miscalculating what borrowers should have to pay through an income-driven repayment plan.

According to the review, two loan servicing companies,

Navient and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, better known as FedLoan, repeatedly placed borrowers into costly forbearance without offering them other, more beneficial options.

SAY NO TO FORBEARANCE
REMEMBER: IT’S A BEAR
THAT WILL EAT YOU FOR LIFE

Instead of safeguarding borrowers’ interests, the report says, FSA’s inconsistent oversight allowed these companies, known as loan servicers, to potentially hurt borrowers and pocket government dollars that should have been refunded because servicers weren’t meeting federal requirements.

“By not holding servicers accountable,” the report says, “FSA could give its servicers the impression that it is not concerned with servicer noncompliance with Federal loan servicing requirements, including protecting borrowers’ rights.”
“It’s hard to look at this as anything other than completely damning,” says Seth Frotman, a consumer advocate and former government, student loan watchdog who is now executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center.

the “unsophisticated consumer” doesn’t generally understand his or her legal rights.

“This is the most damaging in a long line of investigations, audits, and reports that show the Department of Education is asleep at the switch when it is responsible for over a trillion dollars of student loan debt.”

And remember, the people around Trump (and presumably the person who took the picture) are probably paying customers. Trump benefits personally from their membership dues, and they get access to the president of the United States.

  • Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, 2/16/19 omelette bar
  • Millions of borrowers are suffering under the weight of student debt. It’s time to take a stand.
  • Protect yourself from Betsy Devos. These defaults will destroy their credit and jeopardize their financial future. It may even cost them their job.

PROTECT BORROWERS blog It’s Time to Fight Back
By Seth Frotman | November 28, 2018
Seth Frotman is the Executive Director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. He previously served as Assistant Director and Student Loan Ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he led a government-wide effort to crack down on abuses by the student loan industry and protect borrowers.

TAKE DOWN NAVIENT

John Oliver 15 million one-time giveaway in television show history

Corruption and sleaziness in the under-regulated industry were disturbing and grim. At one point, he had footage of a Debt Buyers Association conference that featured panelists sneering at how the “unsophisticated consumer” doesn’t generally understand his or her legal rights.

In what he called “the largest one-time giveaway in television show history,” he forgave some $15 million in medical debt for some 9,000 Texans.

The stunt came at the end of his brilliantly scathing 20-minute takedown of the debt-buying industry.

For $50, he set up a debt-buying company and named it Central Asset Recovery Professionals, or CARP, “after a bottom-feeding fish,” he explained. Then he made himself the chairman of the board, and bought a portfolio of nearly $15 million in debt for $60,000. Rather than ruthlessly harass the people who owed the money — “I could legally have CARP take possession of that debt and have employees start calling people, turning their lives upside down over medical debt” — he said he was forgiving it all.

the five states suing Navient — Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, California and Mississippi — say the behavior breaks their laws regarding consumer protection.Navient Corp., the nation’s third-largest student loan servicing company.

MORE ARTICLES

The Department of Justice and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. accused Sallie Mae and its loan unit, now called Navient, of intentionally violating the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act by overcharging active-duty troops beginning in 2005