Katherine Isaacs at Inequality.org writes—Fighting for an Alternative to Big Banks:
[...] For many, traditional banks are out of reach geographically. Bank deserts exist in both rural and urban areas. One reason is that banks are abandoning low-income communities. Since 2008, 93 percent of bank closings have been in neighborhoods with a median income below the national average.
Surviving outside the financial mainstream is expensive. The banks outside this mainstream don’t develop products for the underserved. Instead, their services are increasingly expensive. Overdraft fees have increased 32 percent since 2010 at the nation’s 12 largest banks. These types of fees, and requirements such as a minimum balance to open an account, keep underserved consumers away from traditional banks.
So, if there is no bank in your community or it’s too expensive, where do you go? Unfortunately, a growing industry has flooded these communities with products, services and practices that are expensive and often predatory, trapping many in a cycle of debt. Payday loans, for example, have typical interest rates of 391 percent. There are approximately 22,000 payday loan stores in this country – that’s more than Wal-Mart and Starbucks combined.
Each year, the average underserved household spends $2,412 – nearly 10 percent of gross income – in fees and interest for non-bank financial services. These transactions might include a payday or car title loan, cashing a paycheck, or simply accessing Social Security benefits. As United for a Fair Economy puts it, “Each year, over $103 billion is stripped from these people and their communities and ends up in the hands of Wall Street. For the underserved, there is little opportunity to create a credit history, have access to affordable, safe and sustainable financial services, or build assets over time.”
Is there an alternative? What if a trusted, accessible, and non-profit institution (that receives no tax dollars for operating expenses) with the world’s largest retail network (31,000 branches serving every urban, suburban, and rural community in the country) existed that could help fill this void?
Well, actually, it does exist. It’s the United States Postal Service.
And many of those post offices are located in bank deserts. Fifty-nine percent of post offices are in zip codes with either zero banks (38 percent) or only one bank branch (21 percent). The Postal Service is geographically well-positioned to reach people with little-to-no access to retail banking services.
The U.S. Postal Service already offers some financial services and it wouldn’t require legislation to expand them. Its workforce is trained and certified to handle financial transactions including the sale of money orders, international money transfers, and cashing of treasury checks. The United States had a successful Postal Savings System from 1911-1967. And worldwide, 1.5 billion people receive some financial services through their postal service. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Torture: This shouldn't need to be said:
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Let's put this straight right off the bat: favoring the use of torture is not a political position, it's a mental illness.
Any further discussion of torture should be unnecessary. However, since our our national media seems to be enthusiastically pimping depravity as a governing principle, we might as well point out that the guys that have been there, done that, seen the elephant show and lived to come home? They say it doesn't work, isn't worth it, and they want nothing to do with it.
If you need further evidence, check out Mike Ritz, a former SERE instructor who worked with our servicemen and women to prepare them for harsh interrogations torture, and who went on to found his own private "stress laboratory" where he could "use just about any technique" he had read about to "see what kind of results he could get." Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator who questioned prisoners in several locations, including Abu Ghraib. In other words, these are two people who have tortured other people, neither of them is shy about that fact, and they are willing to talk about that experience. Both men appeared on NPR's Tell Me More (audio link). The guys who have really done this stuff to actual human beings do not exactly back up the words of American's biggest Dick.
First off, they discussed the difference between what service people in the intelligence field had been trained to do, and what they were then asked to do by the Bush administration.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Republicans are falling in line for Hairspray von Clownstick, after all. Greg Dworkin has horse race, preference & issue polls, plus news of fractures everywhere from Reddit to the NRA to… Europe. Dem state chairs meet, seeking inner peace. It’s almost as if guns attract crime.
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