by Yashar Ali

The shocking and tragic events at Penn State that have unfolded over the past two weeks, which exposed former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky as a sexual predator, have (yet again) brought the issue of child sex abuse to the forefront of our collective consciousness.

In light of recent events, I want to discuss an issue, a behavior, that has bothered me for some time. It’s about how we encourage our kids to abandon their sense of self-trust –– their instinct and intuition –– in order to be polite by showing physical affection to adults.

How often, especially during the holidays, are children confronted with moments like this one: a relative comes to visit and the child’s parents say something like, “Now, give your uncle a hug and kiss.”


And when the child refuses to provide physical affection, or hesitates at the request, they sometimes hear things like, “You’re hurting your uncle’s feelings. It’s not polite. Now, go give him a hug and kiss.”

Some of us even remember our relatives asking us (some may say pleading or begging) for affection, “Aren’t you going to give me a hug and kiss? Please?!”

I think insisting and cajoling a child into showing physical affection towards an adult in this manner is incredibly dangerous. Whether it’s a relationship between a child and his/her relatives or one between a kid and an adult who is an acquaintance, family friend, or mentor, this type of behavior, in which children are expected to show physical affection as a sign of respect, is something I think we all need to be careful about.

When a child gives us the sense that they don’t want to be physically affectionate with someone, our tendency is to encourage the child, at that particular moment, to abandon their intuition and instinct –– it’s a small step towards the erosion of that child’s sense of self-trust. At that moment, we are telling them, “Forget about how you feel. Do something that makes you feel uncertain and uncomfortable, so that someone else (an adult) can feel acknowledged and respected.”

We are all built with a natural, innate sense of what feels right and wrong. Every species of animal is born with an instinctual drive. Unfortunately, the human species is the only one that is continually taught to ignore their instincts by their elders.

There is, however, a difference between intuition and instinct. Even though the words are often confused as synonyms for each other, there is a simple way to separate the two. We are all born with instinct, but intuition is built through education, living, and practice. Our intuition is linked to a keen and quick insight.

These two internal senses, intuition and instinct, make up my idea of self-trust. I see self-trust as related to trusting your reactions, your feelings about people, circumstances, and decisions. I see self-trust as the most authentic reactions and feelings.

I acknowledge that some kids are just being difficult, but it’s not about their motivation so much as it is about our reaction. When we initiate a process where we require boys and girls to have physical interaction even if they don’t want to, we’re also telling them to ignore their sense of self-trust. We are teaching kids that adults are in charge of who they should be and are affectionate with. We are telling them that they don’t have the right, or power to make their own decisions about human, physical interaction.

Again, it’s the little moments that create a big collective weight over time.

But my point is, no one has the right to demand affection, or an innate right to receive it, especially from a child. It’s not merely part of normal, polite interactions. It’s extra.

Insisting on a hug or a kiss may seem innocuous enough to us, as adults, but can you imagine asking, or expecting an adult to hug and kiss another adult as a way to show acknowledgement or respect?

Normally, we wouldn’t encourage two adults to have that sort of interaction because we all have a sense of what kinds of physical affection are appropriate in a given circumstance. We have a sense of what we feel comfortable with and we react according to our gut.

Why can’t we allow children to tap into this same instinctive, internal sense?

This doesn’t mean I think we should live in a society without affection. To the contrary.

But the idea that a child can be forced, guilt-tripped or cajoled into affection is disgusting to me. It’s not a light-hearted or funny moment, it’s sad. In that instance, we are telling that child to give up their physical selves in order to appease us adults, for reasons that they don’t fully understand or appreciate. Our motivation, whether it’s social embarrassment or a desire to connect with the child, puts us first, rather than thinking of them first…as it should be.

When it comes to acknowledging other people, the most we can expect from children is for them to politely and verbally greet adults. As far as I’m concerned, anything beyond that is expecting too much and is patently unfair.

Some may say that this way of handling interaction between adults and children will build up cynicism in kids, will rob them of their innocence, and will make them overly cautious of adults – or even teach them to be aloof.

Well, our childhoods have never been innocent (now or ever). One out of every four girls and one of out of every six boys will face sexual abuse before their 18th birthday. We only have to look at the numbers to understand that for many kids, there have never been bright, sunny childhoods.

For much too long, they have been filled with silent moments of sexual abuse, we just haven’t discussed them. They have been hidden away, just like the victims of Jerry Sandusky. It’s only when we shatter this myth of a childhood era of innocence that we can begin to understand what children truly face.

Sexual abuse completely revamps the blueprint of the victim’s life. Their worldview shifts, the way they process trust, how they build relationships, their sense of safety, are all permanently altered.

So, I think I’d much rather have our children be slightly cynical and aware, to encourage them to follow their sense of self-trust, and, as a result, give them a better chance of protecting themselves, than to insist that kids must show physical affection regardless of whether they feel comfortable doing so.

After all, it’s not like we’ve done our part to protect our kids, not at all. And if we have any doubt about that, all we have to do is think about Mike McQueary, looking on as that poor boy was raped in the locker room shower at Penn State.

Yashar Ali is a Los Angeles-based columnist, commentator, and political veteran whose writings about women, gender inequality, political heroism, and society are showcased on his website, The Current Conscience. Please follow him on Twitter and join him on Facebook. 

He will be soon releasing our first short e-book, entitled, A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not Crazy — How We Teach Men That Women Are Crazy and How We Convince Women To Ignore Their Instincts. If you are interested and want to be notified when the book is released, please click here to sign-up.

Related Posts:
The Modern Day Version of “Just The Tip”
Men Who E-Maintain Women
He Doesn’t Deserve Your Validation: Putting The Fake Orgasm Out of Business
A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not Crazy

Electric power and political power are two sides of the same doubloon. There is no way to separate the power you get through a wire so you can burn your morning toast, from the political power needed to overcharge you for it. – Greg Palast, Vultures’ Picnic

Greg Palast’s latest book contains more stinking shit per page than there is in the tanks at your local sewage works. A detective story that’s all too true, in Vultures’ Picnic, Palast, a forensic accountant and PI turned author and investigative journalist, uncovers the power and money hungry elite who take a big fat dump on our environment and democracy as a matter of course – common decency merely being the cost of doing business for these “high living” scum.

Over the course of the book’s 400+ pages, Palast, a honey-dipper* extraordinaire (who is perhaps best known for being the first to figure out exactly how Bush stole the 2000 election), chases the “turds around the planet” who are responsible for some of the biggest steaming piles of shit to hit newspaper headlines in recent memory.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico and the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor meltdown and radiation leak in Japan may have been conveniently excused under the polite euphemism of “accident” by the companies responsible — and the media that kowtows to them — but it turns out the incidents were entirely foreseeable, cost assessed, and cynically calculated as a risk worth taking by those who care more about the bottom line than they do about the health of our planet and/or human life.

But before Deepwater Horizon, the company in part responsible for the ultra-deepwater blowout, BP, was also to-the-neck deep in an earlier record-breaking oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Palast had spent some quality time on the scene there doing what he does best, uncovering shit, but this time the shit got the better of him. Burnt out and disillusioned by his investigations into the Exxon Valdez “accident” (despite the name on the tanker, there were many fingers, including BP’s big fat one, in that poop pie), and our press and lawmakers apathetic (at best) response when confronted by the truth, he sought out pastures new.

Palast turned to England and The Guardian newspaper in the hopes of finding a culture that still had some semblance of a sense of justice and an outlet that vaguely understood the meaning of journalistic integrity. As this except from Vultures’ Picnic reveals, Palast soon found himself knee deep in some excrement partly of his own making, with his pants literally and metaphorically down by his ankles…

Vultures’ Picnic: We Figured Out Who Murdered Jake

by Greg Palast

Blackpool, England, 1998

Now, if this were a movie, you would hear the audience screaming, DON’T TAKE THE KEY! DON’T GO UP THOSE STAIRS!

The reporter part of my brain was screaming THIS SMELLS BAD, but I couldn’t hear a thing because, while I was out for the story, the memory of Ms. Jamaica’s hand in my pocket had drained the blood from my cerebellum.

So I took the key she left for me at the desk with the message to meet her up in her room. I went up the stairs. Knock-knock. No answer.

DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR!

I opened the door.

FOR GOD’S SAKE, DON’T TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES!

I took off my clothes. I needed to change my shirt and pants for the New Statesman party, though if she walked in, hey, we could start the party early.

The door opened. I smiled . . . at the desk clerk and Ms. Jamaica’s husband.

Husband! This bitch has a HUSBAND? The poor pudgy schmuck had a face like the map of Liverpool, lost and pathetic and pugnacious at the same time.

The clerk, turning red, stuttered, “I explained the circumstance, sir. . . .” But I got the impression from the husband’s look that this wasn’t the first time Ms. Jamaica had handed some guy her hotel room key.

Thank god the Lord told me to pull up the pants a moment before the door opened. I babbled. ”How’s the vote count looking for our gal?” She was running for the Labour Party’s leadership council, the hand-picked candidate of the Prince of Darkness. To get the shit on the Prince was the reason I went “undercover” (so to speak).

This was not a nice moment. I fell all over my own words. ”Been trying to, to, trying to call her. Guess I’ll meet up — say, are you coming? — catch up with her at the New Statesman ‘do.’ Guess I’ll get going.”

Guess I will.

[..]

by Yashar Ali

Three weeks ago, Christopher Chaney, a thirty-five year old man from Florida, was arrested by the FBI and charged with 26 counts of identity theft, unauthorized access to a protected computer, and wire-tapping. For days, Mr. Chaney’s case was splashed across the media because the victims of his illegal acts were famous women like actresses Scarlett Johannson and Mila Kunis. Mr. Chaney readily confessed to his crime and said that he had become addicted to hacking the email accounts of celebrities.

About a month earlier, Ms. Johannson had been working closely with the FBI to find the perpetrator and block the dissemination of nude and provocative photos that Christopher Chaney hacked from her cell phone/email account. These photos were personal in nature, taken in privacy, saved on her cell phone, and intended for her then-husband.

In the last few years, with the advent of social media and cellphone cameras, we have become all too familiar with the concept of hacked, leaked photos of public figures in provocative poses or in the nude. However, with the exception of the rare article, mainly in men’s magazines, we don’t often discuss how the taking of nude pictures plays out with people in everyday life. Instead, we focus on the politicians and entertainers who do it; obviously, their notoriety makes the photos much more interesting.

But it’s not just celebrities who are engaged in taking and sending sexy/nude pictures over phone and email. We, as society, are doing it. A recent survey conducted by the University of Rhode Island shows that 56 percent of college students report having received sexually explicit images via text message. That’s a sizable number.

I am talking about the idea of “sexting,” which is defined as sending explicit messages via text message and also sending nude photos through the same technology. For purposes of this column, I am specifically writing about the widespread phenomena of sharing nude pictures via text message and email.

When I asked my friend Michelle, who is 31, about whether she has ever been asked to send provocative images by her boyfriend, she replied in the affirmative: “Most of the men I’ve dated or hung out with have asked me to text them a sexy pic. And there’s no way I would do it, I wouldn’t even do for the man I marry, I don’t know where those pics are gonna end up.”

But that’s not the end of it. These men don’t just respectfully give up on the asking. As soon as Michelle would say “no,” these men would start a campaign to convince her that they deserved or needed a provocative or nude photo.

“It was kind of pathetic, they would do something nice and claim they deserved a reward (a nude picture), or they would beg repeatedly multiple times a day, hoping I would just give up.”

Of course, these men had more courage because they texted her requests for nude pictures, rather than asking her for these pictures or any other sexual act, in person.

Most of us, men and women, remember the saying, “just the tip.” Google it. And most teen-aged girls, or hell, even adult women, have heard phrases like, “Come on baby, let me just put the tip in.”

Like those requests for “just the tip,” where asking for one thing eventually leads to the full-blown act of sex, is the act of sexting images, the new or electronic version of “just the tip?”
And by the modern version of “just the tip,” I mean a process where men end up getting what they want by repeatedly begging, pressuring, and starting out small, i.e. “just the tip” or in this case, “just a quick pic.” The first picture, like “just the tip,” is merely a gateway to the whole damn thing.

While the electronic idea of “just the tip” is something women of all ages deal with, I believe, ultimately, that we should focus on how this patterning of sexting is related to the sexualization and exploitation of under-age girls — even if it’s done by underage guys. In a study conducted by Hearst Digital Media, 22 percent of teen girls (keep in mind this is girls who are willing to admit to it) say that they’ve sent sexually explicit photos to another person.

Zoe, the 20 year-old daughter of a friend, experienced the modern day version of “just the tip” with a guy she started dating when she was 18 years old (he was 22). A month after dating, her boyfriend requested a nude picture of Zoe. When she demurred, he started to beg “Come on, it would make me so happy. I want you so bad.”

The requests went on and on and on and on, so she finally sent him a provocative, but clothed photo, and he was satisfied…for an hour.

And then he said, “That was so hot, send me a picture of your tits.”

When she said no, he started to negotiate, “Okay, just one of your tits.”

She finally gave in, which initiated a negotiating process that went on for six months, in which Zoe regularly sent her boyfriend nude photos.

“It definitely made him happy, for that moment. But when I would say no, he would text me ten times, begging. It just got to be exhausting.”

Two weeks after she broke up with this guy, Zoe logged onto her Facebook to find six of the provocative (but not nude) photos she had previously sent him, posted on her profile page. It was a devastating moment for her. Zoe’s privacy was violated, she was ashamed, and of course, was subjected to ridicule by “friends” online.

According to the online ABC News article, “Study Shows Many Teens, Young Adults Share Nude Images,” over 80 percent of teens (13 and up) and over 93 percent of young adults (18-24), use cell phones. This means that millions of women, of all ages, are put in a position of being pressured and exploited in a way that we don’t seem to be concerned about: via text.

The statistics bear more problematic news. In the same survey conducted by Hearst Digital Media, one third of teen boys and 40 percent of young men have had nude pictures shared with them by someone who was not the intended recipient of the images.

So why does this epidemic, of adults and teens sending provocative or nude photos, exist? Modern technology obviously lends convenience to the ease through which nude pictures can be sent and study after study proves that men need more visual stimulation than women. But I think we are dealing with a problem here because the double-edge sword of women’s sexuality often prevents them from talking about this issue openly with other women and as a result, it hinders them from finding solutions or strategies for managing and combating the pressures and requests for sending provocative or nude pictures.

Often, frustrating male behavior related to sexual activities is a common point of discussion between women. However, when it comes to men requesting nude cell-phone pictures, there is a lack of community amongst women when it comes to actively and openly discussing the pressures and possibilities of sending such pictures.

Without this sense of community and opportunities to talk, women are just facing yet another sexual pressure, alone. This widespread plea for nude pictures shows that we still lack respect for women’s bodies and sexuality (whether its about their boundaries or their desires) and that it remains a major issue. The concept of “no means no” has yet to be acknowledged by too many men. For most guys, “no” simply means a gateway to “yes” — kind of like a child’s behavior with a parent, where the kid hopes repeated begging will lead to the adult caving in.

Does “just the tip”/nude photos, or any other form of pressured sexual contact have to do with the fact that we give men the impression that as long as they are not raping a woman, everything else, including pressured requests, is okay?

I am not surprised that most women avoid talking with other women in their lives about the idea of sending nude photos to men. After all, women still have to contend with a double-edge sword when it comes to their sexuality. Some women are on the receiving end of pressure to do things they don’t feel comfortable doing, and when they do things that aren’t part of an acceptable (according to societal norms) set of sexual activities, they are vilified by other people.

Seventeen year-old, high school senior, Mayron Gezaw, of Fairfax, Virginia, put it perfectly when she told The Associated Press that she heard a classmate shared a nude photo with her boyfriend through text, “The whole class was sharing it by the end of the day. …The guys said, ‘She’s so hot.’ The girls were more like, ‘I feel sorry for the girl,’ or they just lost all respect [for the girl].”

The question I have is: when is the person requesting those provocative/nude pictures going to have his respect diminished?

Yashar Ali is a Los Angeles-based columnist, commentator, and political veteran whose writings about women, gender inequality, political heroism, and society are showcased on his website, The Current Conscience. Please follow him on Twitter and join him on Facebook. 

He will be soon releasing our first short e-book, entitled, A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not Crazy — How We Teach Men That Women Are Crazy and How We Convince Women To Ignore Their Instincts. If you are interested and want to be notified when the book is released, please click here to sign-up.

Related Posts:
Men Who E-Maintain Women
He Doesn’t Deserve Your Validation: Putting The Fake Orgasm Out of Business
A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not Crazy

by Nicole Breanne

The boy scouts have a really simple slogan: “Always Be Prepared.” They teach it to 7-year olds. It’s a very simple premise, but it’s so important. So why the fuck can’t a presidential candidate remember that? If you’re going to be on a televised debate when you’re trying to prove you are the best man for the job, maybe you should…oh, I dunno, study your notes? Talk to the half a dozen people you hired to prep you, AND KNOW THE NAMES OF THE DEPARTMENTS YOU’RE GOING TO CUT!

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. Last night there was a debate in Michigan (Detroit, what!) and Rick Perry was talking about cutting cabinet positions. This is a direct quote from said debate: “Commerce, Education and the – what’s the third one there? Let’s see…”

Oh, yeah, let’s see…Let me just take a minute to get my thoughts together, not like this is a big deal or anything. Not like I should know this or anything!

He ended up saying it was the Department of Energy, but the damage was done. What’s even better, he thinks it’s no big deal. “I stepped in it, that’s what my wife would say.” He went on to say that he feels this little slip up (little slip up, really?) has made him more human, and people can relate. Look, its no secret, I’m really jaded, cynical, and pretty much bat shit crazy, so forgive me if I don’t want to relate to my President. I don’t want to see the dude and be like, “Yeah, that guy gets me…” ‘Cause if he gets me, he’s got no business running the goddamn country. I know my limits, and maybe these candidates need to know theirs.

Perry then said: “Any time you’re standing in front of however many million people we were and you have a loss of train of thought, sure, it impacts you. But the fact is one error is not going to make or break a campaign.”

That’s true, one mistake won’t, but he’s made a lot of mistakes. He’s no longer a serious (and I use that term extremely loosely) candidate. He’s a joke. The fact that he can’t see it makes it even worse. There’s a bigger issue here then a little brain freeze by Perry. It’s an overwhelming sense that the current culture has that it’s okay to be a fuck up. It’s okay to not be the best person for the job, and still get the job. It’s okay to just believe your own hype.

I blame the internet, and social media. Ugh okay, maybe, I’m just bitter because I’ve been fired from a job where I made really tiny mistakes because I was still learning. But this guy has been a politician for years, and fucks up on a major platform, and he gets to keep his job? I was a freaking secretary and apparently the weight of the company could come crashing down on my typos and inability to format a letter. Guys, don’t even worry about it, I can write letters, I write amazing letters. But my boss was psycho –– I mean it –– I can write a letter! I’ll write a letter right now if I have to! Clearly, I’m not bruised by that experience at all…and do you see how defensive and completely embarrassed I am about this? How I immediately set out to prove that I am capable? Over fucking letters…Yet this dude can FORGET THE NAMES OF DEPARTMENTS live on TV AND then call the African American candidate “brother,” but he gets to stay in the race and just shrug it off, like, “Oh well, I made a mistake. Whoops!”

In the words of my seven-year-old nephew, who’s not even a Boy Scout but still totally grasped this whole debacle, “what a pile of junk.” This whole “Southern boy, awe-shucks, are those my boots under your bed?” act that Perry’s been putting on is getting really fucking old. By the way, that’s not a dig at the South, I currently have a Southern boy’s boots under my bed as I type this. So back off. It’s totally Perry-specific.

The other issue is that everyone is commenting on how he was a front runner, and now that’s over. But why was he a front runner? Well, because the dude’s got bank. That’s what it boiled down to. Money. Not qualifications, not experience, not views, not ethics, but the almighty dollar. I’m getting so disillusioned, and really fed up. Part of me wants to shave my head, hop on my motorcycle, shoot a campaign commercial, and just run on the freak ticket. I’m really good in front of a camera, I know my lines, and I’m sorry but I think I’m a bit better looking Sarah Palin, so I bet I could go really far as long as I don’t have to write my own letters. Oh wait, fuck, it won’t work, I may be at least somewhat qualified in the batshit crazy department, but I’m not a Republican.





By Nicole Powers

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, General Motors’ EV1s were the Apple Macs of cars. Ahead of their time, they were only driven by an enlightened “different” thinking few, but those that did felt passionately about their high tech machines.

A fully electric plug-in vehicle with a range of between 70 and 140 miles depending on model, the EV1 was first introduced into the marketplace in 1996. Available in limited test markets on a closed lease-only basis (whereby no actual purchase was allowed), it was developed by General Motors partly in response to the California Air Resources Board’s requirement that the seven major auto companies in the US had to make at least 2% of their output zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) by 1998 in order to sell any cars within the state (with further graduated steps stipulated up to 10% in 2003).

Though grudgingly produced by General Motors, the vehicle was beloved by the few consumers lucky enough to rise to the top of the company’s reportedly vast waiting list. But it was likely a car that was never intended to succeed. General Motors seemingly put more effort into fighting the CARB mandate in court than meeting existing demand for vehicles or marketing the EV1 to create even more. It was therefore not uncoincidental that the demise of the EV1 occurred in tandem with the gutting of CARB’s ZEV rules. The EV1 program was officially cancelled in 2003, and a total recall was put in motion, with repossessed cars being not only compacted but shredded for good measure too.

A 2006 documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car, chronicled the crushing demise of this groundbreaking car. In it filmmaker Chris Paine highlighted the collusion of the auto industry, oil companies, and politicians, who all had a vested interest in seeing the electric vehicle die an untimely death alongside CARB’s environmentally prudent directives. Catching the zeitgeist, Who Killed The Electric was the third highest grossing documentary that year (Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth being the first).

However, a decade after General Motors presided over the funeral of the EV1, the killing of the vehicle has proven to be a costly mistake. With gas prices rising, Toyota filled the rapidly increasing fuel-efficient void with their hybrid Prius, which went on sale in Japan in 1997. Following its worldwide debut in 2001, Toyota have sold over a million Prius cars in the US alone, and the rest of the auto industry has been scrabbling to catch up.

With revenge being served on a platter less than a decade on, Paine and his documentary team were compelled to reexamine the fortunes of the electric vehicle in a follow up film. The first had centered on activists working from outside the industry, with this film Paine chose to follow a diverse group of instigators working from within. Revenge Of The Electric Car therefore features four EV evangelists (some of whom were more recently converted than others) who are attempting to drive the future of the automobile into the present: Bob Lutz (General Motors’ Vice Chairman up until May 2010), Elon Musk (Tesla Motors’s CEO), Carlos Ghosn (Nissan’s President and CEO), and Greg “Gadget” Abbot (a DIY electric engine retro-fitter).

SuicideGirls recently visited Paine at his ultra green home to talk about his cinematic “I told you so” and the electric awakening of a sluggish car industry that was in need of a shock. After checking out the 2008 Tesla Roadster parked in Paine’s garage, the irony was not lost that we were conversing about, and anticipating the dominance of, the gas-free vehicle in the heart of LA’s oil country amidst the pumpjack nodding donkeys of Baldwin Hills.

Read our exclusive interview with Chris Paine on SuicideGirls.com.

by Nicole Powers

Let me introduce you to a lovely lady I met on October 7th at #OccupyLA. She was there simply to tell her story. Like many people in this economy, she had been finding it difficult to make ends meet, so when Obama’s Loan Modification program began it seemed like a godsend. Little did she know, it would be the start rather than the end of her problems.

She duly completed all the paperwork her bank, Wells Fargo, asked her to, and was told what her reduced payments would be. She continued to pay her mortgage, but at the adjusted rate, as she’d been instructed to by Wells Fargo. She never missed a payment, and was not in arrears.

However, months later, out of the blue, she found out her application, for whatever reason, had been rejected. At this point, Wells Fargo treated her like she had been in arrears, because she’d been paying reduced payments on a mortgage that had failed to be modified. To add insult to injury, Wells Fargo then slapped her with a slew of interest charges and fees, because they in effect retroactively considered her account to be in default because of the Loan Modification decision.

Her bank then suggested she reapply, which she did – twice. Two more times, exactly the same thing happened. Following the third failed application, Wells Fargo began proceedings to repossess her home, even though she had made all her mortgage payments in exactly the way the bank had prescribed.

Turns out, the Loan Modification process is notoriously flawed and has been accused numerous times of causing foreclosures, as was the case here. Richard Gaudreau, an attorney, explains in an essay for Huffington Post exactly why the Loan Modification process fails to help troubled homeowners while lining the pockets of banks (surprise, surprise!):

The government pays mortgage servicers $1,000 for each “loan mod” application. Studies have shown though that mortgage servicers stand to make far more in fees from a foreclosure than they ever will from a loan modification request.

Obviously this kind of behavior is unconscionable. It’s hard to comprehend that a “trusted name” like Wells Fargo would want to force a loyal customer and her family out onto the street in order to make a quick buck on a few fees. But this is happening to untold numbers of people all across our nation at the hands of nearly all the major banks.

My #OccupyLA friend had done everything required of her to meet her obligations, but somehow that wasn’t enough — is that remotely fair? But these days we don’t seem to require fairness, never mind empathy and understanding, from the financial institutions in which we entrust our wealth, our security, and our futures. Clearly this was not an institution worthy of the trust this lady had been placed in it. Is it worthy of yours?

If you need to put a human face on the reasons why you’re being asked to move your money from a big bank to a community institution or credit union on November 5th — Bank Transfer Day — let my #OccupyLA friend be it.

To find a credit union in your area visit: moveyourmoneyproject.org

Related Posts

#OccupyLA — A Remarkably Civilized Society
#Occupy You Must
The Start of OccupyLA
Why Aren’t We Seeing More Prominent People Coming Out In Support of #OCUPPYWALLSTREET?

by Nicole Breanne

So, Herman Cain, the latest opinion polls show Cain, the former chief executive of a chain of pizza restaurants, running about even with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who had been the front-runner. Cain appeals to some conservatives because he is a political outsider at a time of anti-Washington sentiment that could help the Republicans challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012.

Except he doesn’t have the cash for a campaign, and the fact that he’s an idiot, but the Republican’s don’t care about that. First he stated in a PBS interview earlier in the week that China had indicated it is “trying to develop nuclear capability” even though their nuclear weapons testing dates back to the 1960s! 1960, 2011 what the big difference? China sucks according to Cain.

But his lack of knowledge on foreign affairs isn’t what this blog is about; it’s about Herman Cain being down to fuck anyone but his wife (and zombies, but we’ll get to them later).

[..]