Tag: Financial Literacy

[ECP] K12Newsletters 3.11.18

► @YALE  #YALE What losers !!!!!!
These people are supposed to be smart right?
Why did it take  UNTIL 2019 to have their #1st FIRST discussion about the intersection of #AI #ETHICS AND #SOCIETY?

Definition of Boodle Boys

Everyone else in America has had #AI #ETHICS and #SOCIETY on the front burner for years while #yale wall street money makers could care less.

Yale is are so slow coming to this party that whatever they had to say is just to late.

1st Yale Workshop on AI, Ethics, and Society Friday, April 5, 2019
8:00am to 4:30pm
Yale on York
150 York Street New Haven, CT 06511

The goal of this workshop is to identify and discuss challenges that arise as AI systems are increasingly deployed to control various aspects of modern society and initiate a Yale-wide effort towards an inter-disciplinary approach to problems arising at the interface of AI, ethics, and society.

How slow was this academic institution in their concern for the welfare of the public – so slow that anything they would have to say is is already known from all the other conferences.

The Proper Bostonians ~ Cleveland Amory

Destroy Public Education

► Federal Judge Vacates Betsy DeVos’ Special Education Regulation “Delay” thrown out !!! charter industry supports

► Excellent explanation of how #charter-school expansion harms public schools by ⁦@MGardnerKelly⁩. If 20 students across 6 grades leave a public school, it still needs exact same number of teachers, but budget can shrink by over $300,000.

► “Portfolio Model” is just a scheme to kill teacher unions, and another way for private company ownership taking away money from the commons into for profit business pockets.  Brought to you by City Fund Organization

Destroy Public Education, Version 2.0: The City Fund

Billionaire Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has joined with billionaire former Enron executive, John Arnold, to launch an aggressive destroy public education (DPE) initiative. They claim to have invested $100 million each to start The City Fund.

Badassteachers Blog In January of 2016, Philanthropy News Digest reported, “Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings has announced that he has created a $100 million fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) that will be focused on education.”
SVCF is a donor directed fund, so Hastings’s fund is dark money with no way of tracking where its tax-free spending is directed. The SVCF 2016 tax form shows Neerav Kingsland earning $253,846 as a Managing Director of the Hastings fund. He was also simultaneously serving as Senior Education Fellow at the Arnold Foundation and was on the board at the California Charter Schools Association.

 

► The Arizona Republic recently won a Polk Award for its outstanding coverage of charter corruption. Reach the reporter at cr**********@*************ic.com or 602-444-8478 or on Twitter @charrisazrep

Part 1
https://www.azcentral.com/in-depth/news/local/arizona-investigations/2019/03/05/arizona-charter-schools-parents-complaints-objections-find-nowhere-turn-american-leadership-academy/2871812002/

► Accountabaloney Remember, train bills are used when the contents cannot withstand public scrutiny #SB7070
Killing Ed Movie: Real public schools don’t have “wait lists” and don’t use “lotteries”. Real public schools educate all students. Stop rampant expansion of charter schools and let’s focus on funding schools that teach all kids. The ‘wait list’ for #charterschools is a LIE. Used for years to lobby the state for MORE #charterschools (and money) by pro-charter industry. Self-reported. the Turkish Gulen Movement in America has 173 tax payer funded US charter schools. It is run by a cult group originally from Turkey. They are tied to the 2016 coup attempt there. operated by the Sky Foundation Inc. EIN 73-1578930 tax returns

► Charter High Schools, Graduation Odds Are Slim

An analysis of federal data by the Education Week Research Center identified 935 public high schools with four-year graduation rates of less than 50 percent in 2016-17

Only 10% of the students in the state of California attend charter schools.Why do their representatives get to police themselves?
The Task force charged with reviewing the charter law and the fiscal impact of charters on public schools has Six members of the 11-member panel are directly connected to the charter industry, including two from the lobbying organization CCSA. Why does the charter industry get to decide whether it is okay for them to drain funds and impose budget cuts on public schools?

  • Cristina de Jesus, president and chief executive officer, Green Dot Public Schools California (charter chain);
  • Dolores Duran, California School Employees Association;
  • Margaret Fortune, California Charter Schools Association board chair; Fortune School of Education, president & CEO;
  • Lester Garcia, political director, SEIU Local 99 (Local 99 took $100,000 from Eli Broad to oppose Jackie Goldberg, a critic of charters);
  • Alia Griffing, political director, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57;
  • Beth Hunkapiller, educator and administrator, Aspire Public Schools (charter chain);
  • Erika Jones, board of directors, California Teachers Association;
  • Ed Manansala, superintendent, El Dorado County; board president, California County Superintendents Educational Services Association; the El Dorado County Office set up a Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) specifically to service students with disabilities in charter schools and wooed charter students away from their local districts; El Dorado supposedly offers services to disabled students enrolled in charter schools who live hundreds of miles away;  
  • Cindy Marten,  superintendent, San Diego Unified School District;
  • Gina Plate, vice president of special education, California Charter Schools Association (charter lobby);
  • Edgar Zazueta, senior director, policy & governmental relations, Association of California School Administrators (ACSA endorsed Marshall Tuck against Tony Thurmond). 

► CNN: Powerful House Judiciary committee sends document requests to #Facebook. “Facebook could soon have another headache on Capitol Hill: Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have requested documents from the company spanning multiple issues, two sources familiar with the committee’s efforts tell CNN.” #DELETEFACEBOOK

► Joseph J. Simons is running the F.T.C.  has urged Congress to expand the F.T.C.’s privacy-enforcement powers and allow it to impose fines more easily, write new rules and hire more experts. He also says the agency should police how all companies and nonprofits — not just technology companies — collect and handle people’s digital data. The Facebook investigation is focused on whether the social network violated a 2011 consent decree in which it promised to protect user data and inform users of changes in how their data was used. #DeleteFacebook.
Support Elizabeth Warren Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon and Facebook.

Facebook’s So-Called Pivot to Privacy Is a Diversion
Zuckerberg’s new pledge to create a “privacy-focused platform” sure seems to take a self-servingly narrow view of privacy. Slate

► Free audio editing software

► Meme: Medium is the writing platform of choice for billionaires, billionaire politicians, and anti-billionaire politicians alike.

@ewarren Big Tech spent almost $50 million on lobbying last year. They know they have a lot to lose if Washington starts putting the interests of consumers first. That’s why I’m proposing to break up Facebook, Amazon, and Google to protect consumers and competition. Are you with me?

► Closing the gender gap in the tech industry
Despite efforts from companies and universities, the number of women majoring in computer science is declining. A non-profit is trying to change that by offering coding lessons to girls as early as kindergarten
Did you know that there are professional learning workshops for teachers  in North Dakota? Applications are currently open for middle and high school teachers. Apply today!

► Mercedes Schneider is a master at tracking down financial records.
She shows the direct connections between the Sackler’s billions–derived from the sale of OxyContin–and the growth of the charter movement.
The Sacklers rank as the 19th richest family in the United States according to Business Insider. Jonathan Sackler, who has been a board member of Purdue Pharma, and his wife Mary Corson, are significant donors to Governor Gina Raimondo. Raimondo, who has said in the past she supports the Rhode Island lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, has refused to donate or return the donations from the Sacklers. Reuters

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

#Mercer revelation in Paradise Papers #ParadisePapers

Leaked documents … show how the billionaire Mercer family built a $60m war chest for conservative causes inside their family foundation by using an offshore investment vehicle to avoid US tax,” The Guardian reports:“The offshore vehicle was part of a network of companies in the Atlantic tax haven of Bermuda led by Robert Mercer, the wealthy hedge-fund executive and Bannon patron whose spending helped put Trump in the White House and aided a resurgence of the Republican right.”

“Mercer, 71, appears as a director of eight Bermuda companies in the Paradise Papers

a trove of millions of leaked documents on offshore finance reviewed by the Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other partners.”
Paradise Papers

“The files include a copy of Mercer’s US passport and other private data.”

POLITICIANS PASS ANOTHER TAX LOOPHOLE FOR THE .01%

Mercer has personally donated $41m to federal election campaigns over the past decade, according to public filings.

Mercer was  a major investor in Breitbart  rightwing propaganda website that Bannon led before joining Trump’s campaign.

You take retirement plans or foundations, you invest them in a hedge fund, and even if the value rises 100%, you can sell off the investments with no tax consequences. ~ Bill Parish

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been pursuing Renaissance for $6.8bn in federal taxes that it was accused of improperly avoiding through practices described as “abuses” in a 2014 investigation by a Senate committee.

► Mercer Family Foundation nonprofit led  daughter Rebekah gave out $62m to conservative  republican “research” propaganda  thinktanks  including the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the Media Research Center.

$4.7m to Bannon’s Government Accountability Institute
Bannon founded GAI in Florida in 2012 with Peter Schweizer, the conservative author of Clinton Cash. Since then, the GAI has paid Bannon $379,000 and Schweizer $781,000. Rebekah Mercer was a director of the group until 2014.

$3.8m to the nonprofit arm of Citizens United, best known for the deregulation of political spending it won in a 2010 supreme court ruling.

$1.2m to the Young America’s Foundation, another conservative nonprofit, which paid Bannon more than $577,000 between 2010 and 2012 for filmmaking service

Resources

Secrets of the Global Elite

Offshore leaks database
Find out who’s behind almost 500,000 offshore companies, foundations and trusts from the Panama Papers, the Offshore Leaks and the Bahamas Leaks investigations.

An ICIJ Investigation The Panama Papers:
Exposing the Rogue Offshore Finance Industry

July 4 2015 London is now the global money-laundering centre for the drug trade, says crime expert Gomorrah author Roberto Saviano says ‘the British treat it as not their problem’ ~ James Hanning, David Connett

Individual 1 Trump Organization, Trump Tower Moscow Project

Individual 1 Trump Organization and his Family involved with the Trump Tower Moscow Project

Trump Knew and directed the negotiation during the presidential campaign.

The American population needs to know what happened.

Laurence Tribe: President Donald Trump Can Be Indicted For Federal Crimes

The get out of jail free card.

If no indictment then Trump can be pardoned by Pence and get to keep all the profits!!!

Harvard’s Laurence Tribe: Impeach Donald Trump Now
Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe explains why it is critically important to put the impeachment process in motion now, before it is too late.

President Donald Trump, Ivanka Deny Special Treatment For Jared Kushner

White House announces Kushner met with Saudi crown prince as Cohen testifies

FEBRUARY 27, 2019
Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner met with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Tuesday in their first face-to-face encounter since the October 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who sources have told CNN the CIA assesses with high confidence ordered Khashoggi’s murder, met Kushner along with his father King Salman
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/world/middleeast/kushner-Mohammed-bin-Salman.html

House panel demands Kushner clearance details from White House
A Democratic-led congressional panel on Friday demanded that the White House comply with requests for documents and witnesses for a probe into alleged security clearance abuses involving President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and others.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-kushner/house-panel-demands-kushner-clearance-details-from-white-house-idUSKCN1QI5CU

I’ll take venal hypocrites for $1,000 please Alex.