Surprise - Corporations Win Again

While the media focused on preparations for the royal wedding in Great Britain and Donald Frump's birther brouhaha, corporations won a major victory against American citizens yesterday.

The U. S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that corporations can use arbitration clauses to prevent consumers from banding together for class action lawsuits. According to the Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-court-class-action-20110428,0,4701430.story) the decision (5-4 along party lines) ruled that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 "trumps state laws and court rulings in California and about half the states that limit arbitration clauses deemed to be "unfair" to consumers."

Soooo, when your telephone company charges questionable fees, I guess you'll just have to grin and bear it. When your employer discriminates against you, even if it is part of corporate policy with widespread effects, if you signed an arbitration clause, you are on your own. The ruling said arbitration clauses must be enforced even if they are unfair.

This ruling comes at a time when conservatives in Congress are working to defund or eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and all regulatory agencies are under the gun.

So much for "government of the people, for the people and by the people."

Because you loved them continued...information your family will need

I begin with the date the information was last updated or compiled, along with legal names and social security numbers.

1: Cash, checking and savings accounts, certificates of deposit, money market funds. Include the names of financial institutions, account numbers and amounts.

2. Bonds and Marketable Securities - Non-Retirement: number of shares, description, owner, account number or location of certificates, brokerage account information, recent market value.

3. Retirement Accounts: Break down by type (IRA, Annuity, Pension, 401K), include description, managing institution, recent market value, beneficiaries.

4. Life Insurance Policies: issuing company, owner of policy, beneficiaries, face amount, account number, cash value and death benefit.

5. Real Estate Owned: description (e.g. personal residence, second home, investment property), address, mortgage holder and balance of mortgage or date paid off, current market value.

6. Liabilities - loans owing to banks, brokers, finance companies, credit card companies, others. List the institution or individual owed, date of origination, description, security given for the loan (if any), monthly payment and principle balance.

7. Other Assets: list automobiles, jewelry, furniture, artwork, etc.

8. Important names and addresses - close relatives, attorney, accountant, insurance agents.

9. Location of Important Documents - describe the documents and their locations. If there is a safety deposit box, give its location, number and a detailed list of its contents.

Because you loved them... important records to leave behind

Coping with a loved one's death is traumatic enough without the inevitable scramble for information - Is there a cemetery plot? What kind of service did the departed one want? How do we pay the mortgage/rent/insurance until the estate is settled? Is there a will? What kind of bank and brokerage accounts, life insurance policies, health care policies, annuities are there?

Most of us do not want to discuss these subjects or have difficulty doing so. But, if you love your families, you will do them a big favor if you compile this information and make sure it is available to them. Leaving it all in a safety deposit box can be a problem. If probate is required, it could take weeks, even a month or more to access the box. Not a good place for the cemetery deed, pre-paid funeral arrangements or the only copy of a will.

Many years ago I began compiling my own information into a spreadsheet when I had to complete a loan application and had a difficult time finding all the requested information. Over the years I tweaked it as I realized this was a valuable record if anything happened to me. For security, this spreadsheet is never kept on my hard drive, but always "on disk" stored in a safe place. I have repeatedly reminded my closest family of its existence.

For some, a simple word processing file might work better. I will summarize the records you need in a future blog.

Online Poker

Just about everything we do online entails risk. There are lots and lots of bad guys out there preying upon Internet users. Credit card and bank companies files are repeatedly raided for nefarious purpose. Government agency files are hacked. Brigands, sexual predators, stalkers and extortionists have developed highly sophisticated tools for finding prey.

This does not deter us from using the net from everything from grocery shopping to social networking, from banking and investing to pursuing our favorite hobbies. It has become our preferred source of information and and entertainment.

Until this week, online poker was one of my favorite Internet activities. I knew its legal status was under fire, but believed that sane heads would rule and the issue would be decided in favor of the game. At PokerStars I could enter tournaments for as little as a dime and spend several hours testing my wits and luck against total strangers. I could play a few hands of 7-card Stud, a game now hard to find at the casinos for penny ante players like myself, or 5-card Draw.

Like craps, poker is a game designed for gambling. It is a game of wits, strategy, luck, bluffing and trying to get a "read" on your opponents. Playing for real money and playing free games are two completely different animals. The free games just don't provide the same level of play because the size of the bets does not matter.

Online poker has been proven to be a wonderful training ground for players, many of whom have gone on to win major poker championships (as witnessed on ESPN). Like any other Internet venture the major online poker sites have experienced trouble with hackers and cheats, but the top-rated sites have good reputations for monitoring their security.

Now the FBI has not only shut down the major online Poker sites for U.S. players, it has laid criminal charges on the operators, arrested some of them and has warrants out on many more. The charge? Bank fraud. This is so bogus.

This is Policy?

Every time a major political figure begins a supposedly earth-shaking policy speech, the opening sentence attacks the positions of the opposite side of the political aisle. Double-Speak rules the day. Neither side is serious. Both Democrats and Republicans continue to play to the galleries holding their base constituency while never actually challenging their real base - their corporate sponsors. Until Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Boehmer and Nancy Pelosi stand at the podium together and inform the American people that "this is the best solution we could forge together," I will continue to watch their antics with cynicism and disgust.

What the Triangle Fire Teaches Us about Regulation

I just watched the CNN documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911. When our industries and corporations chaff under the burden of government regulation and while Congress fights to roll regulation back, we might do well to remember this ugly episode.

It was in the aftermath of this horrific fire that many of the fire safety regulations we take for granted were instituted. It was as a result of this tragedy that many of our on-the-job safety regulations were enacted into law.

Death did not come easy to the fire's victims. It was not pretty. Not unlike the 9/11 victims in the twin towers, they faced the cruel choice of burning alive or jumping to their deaths. Many of the victims were burnt beyond recognition and were identified by the charred remains of their clothing, the way their hair was braided or the possessions they clutched as they died. Most of the dead were women, many of them barely adults, some of them still children. They were poor, hardworking members of immigrant families and worked 12-14 hour days for less than a living wage. Their deaths shattered the lives of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, husbands and friends. Many died because one of the exit doors had been locked, forcing workers to use one exit as they came off shift so management could make sure they were not stealing material from the factory.

They died because there were no fire escapes. They died because the fire truck ladders could not reach to the ninth floor. They died because they had never practised fire drills. They died because they were crowded into the factory as thick as could be to maximize production.

The factory owners collected insurance for the damage. The families of the dead workers went on as best they could without their loved ones. The factory owners were acquitted of manslaughter (for that locked exit door) by a jury of their peers. The last, unidentifiable bodies of the victims were buried without fanfare by the city, despite protests by the unions.

As we witness the sickness striking down workers who tried to control the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico; as we watch the utility employees in Japan desperately attempting to avert a nuclear catastrophe and suffering from radiation poisoning; as we listen to accounts of one coal mining disaster after another in mines owned by corporations that have been cited for safety violations over and over again, only to receive a mere slap on the wrist for those violations, let us not forget that without regulation, corporations adopt a risk/reward scenario that DOES NOT include human cost but only monetary return.

Abandoning regulation of our food, drugs, occupational safety, environmental safety, water safety is a RECIPE for DISASTER.

Congress's Responsibility to Fund Public Radio and TV

Congress has a responsibility to insure public radio and television are funded. Why? Because, by permitting the global media giants to swallow up the rest of the market between them through mergers and acquisitions, Congress has had a direct hand in eliminating competition and diversity in media.

Does anyone else remember when Bravo broadcast creative, original programming? Now it's all about rich, self-absorbed, spoiled, shallow housewives of various geographic locations - perhaps the most misogynistic programming on television today. A&E used to be innovative; TLC, Discovery and Nat Geo used to be educational. Now much of their programming is pseudo educational pap sporting cheap production values and questionable science, with a few quality programs providing weak lip service to their original missions.

The excuse that public funding is inappropriate does not hold water. The for-profit media have repeatedly been given advantages of bandwidth and permitted to spread their tentacles across local markets in direct violation of anti-trust laws. Independent for-profits are rapidly disappearing as they are consumed by the media oligarchy, resulting in homogenized, mediocre fare.

Public radio and television consistently provide quality programming. Their news coverage tends to be more comprehensive and more impartial than the for-profit media, despite what their detractors claim. They frequently provide the only source for solid local and regional news coverage. Programs like "The American Experience" and "The National Parks" are excellent examples of American history made interesting as well as educational. The loss of these resources would further the dumbing down of the American public.

Hey, I have a great idea. Instead of funding public radio and public television out of the general fund, why not levy a specific tax on for-profit media conglomerates to fund them? I can hear the squeals of protest already. But why shouldn't those media monopolies pay a bit back for the tremendous corporate advantages they have received?

The playing field is not level. There is no true competition in the for-profit media. Let's not pretend there is.