Demovictory9
Demovictory9's JournalTrump administration hid report revealing Wells Fargo charged high fees to students
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/10/student-loan-fees-wells-fargo-1021129Trump administration hid report revealing Wells Fargo charged high fees to students
By MICHAEL STRATFORD 12/10/2018 06:39 PM EST
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The Trump administration for months concealed a report that showed Wells Fargo charged college students fees that were on average several times higher than some of its competitors.
The “unpublished” report was obtained by POLITICO through a Freedom of Information Act request. It was produced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau office previously led by Seth Frotman, who quit as the bureau’s top student loan official in protest of Trump administration policies. Frotman said in his resignation letter that CFPB leaders had “suppressed the publication” of the report.
The previously unseen analysis examined the fees associated with debit cards and other financial products provided by 14 companies through agreements with more than 500 colleges across the country.
Wells Fargo provided roughly one-quarter of those accounts but the bank collected more than half of all fees paid by students, according to the report data. The bank’s average annual fee per account was nearly $50, the highest of any provider.
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A spokesperson for the CFPB did not comment on why the bureau did not make the report public. “The Bureau shared this information directly with the Department of Education," the spokesperson, who declined to be named, said in a statement.
The Education Department did not comment on whether it took any action based on the report, which it did not make public, either.
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who is poised to become chairman of the House education committee, said earlier this year that the allegation that the CFPB had concealed the report on fees charged to students warranted an “immediate investigation” and called for congressional hearings.
Study: Only two-thirds of Millennials fully believe the Earth is round
https//www.sfgate.com/news/article/Millennials-flat-earth-theory-two-thirds-study-12813321.php
According to a study conducted by British firm YouGov, only two-thirds of Millennials fully believe that the Earth is round.
The survey asked 8,215 American Millennials the question, "Do you believe that the world is round or flat," then offered them the following set of answers:
- I have always believed the world is round
- I always thought the world is round, but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts
- I always thought the world is flat, but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts
- I have always believed the world is flat
- Other/Not sure
66 percent of the study's participants chose "I have always believed the world is round," nine percent chose "I always thought the world is round, but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts," five percent chose "I always thought the world is flat, but more recently I am skeptical/have doubts," four percent chose "I have always believed the world is flat," and 16 percent chose "Other/Not sure."
Fox News Talked More About Migrant 'Invasion' Just Before Election Than In Past 3 Years Total
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fox-news-migrant-invasion_us_5c0abb34e4b035a7bf5af1b5Ahead of his party’s shellacking in the 2018 midterm elections, Republican President Donald Trump spent weeks warning his supporters that a caravan of Central American migrants headed for the U.S border constituted an “invasion.”
Trump’s favorite television channel was his most important ally in that effort. Prime-time Fox News programs used the words “invasion” or “invaders” to describe migrants and asylum-seekers more times in the 30 days leading up to the Nov. 6 election than they did during all of 2015, 2016 and 2017 combined.
I used transcripts to analyze the use of the terms “invasion” or “invaders” to refer to immigrants or asylum seekers on Fox News prime-time programming from Jan. 1, 2015, to Nov. 30, 2018. The analysis shows that, although the network was pushing anti-immigrant rhetoric before Trump announced his candidacy, a noticeable uptick occurred in the months around the 2018 midterm election. Prime-time Fox News hosts and guests used the words to refer to migrants 33 times in the 30 days ahead of the election, up from 25 times in all of 2015, 2016 and 2017. Fox has kept up the attacks in the weeks after the Republicans lost the U.S. House: Prime-time hosts and guests used the terms 48 times between Election Day and the end of November. Most of the mentions came from Fox hosts Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson.
where is the "Smocking Gun"?
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun...No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,...
3:46 AM - Dec 10, 2018
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86.2K people are talking about this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/10/trumps-latest-rage-tweets-expose-depth-his-own-corruption/?utm_term=.1dec69c60193
William Barr, Trump's Attorney General Pick, Wanted Government to 'Restrain Sexual Immorality'
https://www.thedailybeast.com/william-barr-trumps-attorney-general-pick-wanted-government-to-restrain-sexual-immoralityhttps://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1440,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1544405988/181207-michaelson-barr-tease_j929rx
Barr went on to blame everything from crime to sexually transmitted diseases on a government-led attack on “traditional values.” He explicitly called for the government to subsidize Catholic religious education and to promote laws which “restrain sexual immorality,” a reference to homosexuality and non-marital sex.
These views are no longer those of a private citizen. As attorney general, Barr would have more influence than anyone else in the country in how laws dealing with religion, LGBT rights, civil rights, and women’s rights are enforced or not.
Barr served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993. After he left government, he laid out his views in an essay, “Legal Issues in a New Political Order” published in the St. John’s University Law School journal The Catholic Lawyer.
“The American government,” he wrote, “was predicated precisely on [the] Judeo-Christian system” that “flows from God's eternal law.” But since the 1960s, Barr wrote, “the state no longer sees itself as a moral institution, but a secular one.”
Specifically, Barr continued, “through legislative action, litigation, or judicial interpretation, secularists continually seek to eliminate laws that reflect' traditional moral norms. Decades ago, we saw the barriers to divorce eliminated. Twenty years ago, we saw the laws against abortion swept away. Today, we are seeing the constant chipping away at laws designed to restrain sexual immorality, obscenity, or euthanasia.”
In fact, those “barriers to divorce” often forced women to remain in abusive or miserable marriages, and treated men as the “head and master” of the household with near absolute power, especially over shared property. And the “laws designed to restrain sexual immorality” criminalized gay sex, condemning millions of lesbian and gay people to lives of misery, isolation, and vulnerability to criminal prosecution and violence.
Suffering pickaxes and dog poop, Trump's Hollywood star has become a symbolic spectacle
On the Hollywood Walk of Fame one summer night, a man with a neck tattoo knelt over Donald Trump’s star, armed with a black Sharpie.
The piece of plywood concealing the newly repaired star was already a sorry sight, defiled by spat-out gum, littered potato chips and scrawled words: “MAGA,” “SAD,” “Q-Anon.” The young man had come to add his own message.
“What’s he writing?” somebody in the bevy of onlookers murmured as Juan Larrazabal began tracing out letters.
The message slowly came into focus: “Latinos 4 Trump!”
Over scattered groans, the lanky, 26-year-old Los Angeles native sprang to his feet and began to argue with onlookers.
“Just letting you know, Trump’s out to help. I swear to God,” he shouted over objections. “I love Trump, and so do all my Mexican family members!”
“F--- Donald Trump!” responded a passerby.
Since Trump announced his campaign for the Oval Office in 2015, his Walk of Fame star has been a constant source of conflict and spectacle. The pink pentagram has been destroyed twice, obliterated by a pickax two weeks before the 2016 election and again this past July. It has been a regular target of lesser vandalism: stomping, spitting and dog-pooping. It has been scrawled with pejoratives and spray-painted with swastikas.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/suffering-pickaxes-and-dog-poop-trumps-hollywood-star-has-become-a-symbolic-spectacle/2018/12/09/01b739a2-d84e-11e8-a10f-b51546b10756_story.html?utm_term=.a1b0abe85ed2
Stars for other celebrities also have been subjected to protest-related vandalism and notes of adoration from fans. All of the 2,500-plus coral, terrazzo and brass markers are under video surveillance, Martinez said.
But never has one been so frequently and intensely targeted as Trump’s.
who walks in the rain next to someone without an umbrella and doesn't lean theirs over
to cover the umbrella-less friend? who does this?
:large
Democratic Women Are About To Lead Michigan. Republican Men Are Freaking Out.
Democratic women are poised to rule in Michigan. In January, the state will have a female governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson. Attorney general-elect Dana Nessel will be Michigan’s first openly gay elected official. Two are taking over from Republican men, and one from a Republican woman.
Democratic women are also approaching equal representation in their party’s caucus in the state legislature.
Faced with this apparently terrifying wave of estrogen, the state’s male-dominated GOP is, to put it precisely, freaking out.
Republican legislators in Michigan’s House are floating a raft of measures during this lame duck session meant to weaken the roles of all three women. One would undermine the governor’s and attorney general’s abilities to intervene in lawsuits; another diminishes the secretary of state’s role in campaign finance oversight. They’re even looking to limit the governor’s ability to appoint a director of the state police.
Last month, the lame-duck legislature voted to keep a ban on telemedicine abortions in place. And last week, GOP legislators passed one bill gutting paid sick and family leave and another weakening a planned minimum wage hike. The two policies would disproportionately hurt women, who make up the majority of low-wage earners and are more likely to need leave.
What’s happening in Michigan is worth a closer look as an unprecedented number of women are set to enter Congress. And it’s a sign of how heated the political arena can get as women start chipping away at what’s been centuries of male-dominated politics.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-women-michigan_us_5c0ad184e4b0a606a9a88869
Disneyland is quietly revoking annual passes of guests who buy and resell souvenirs
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/12/07/disneyland-is-quietly-revoking-annual-passes-of-guests-who-buy-and-resell-souvenirs/
?w=863
Disneyland has been quietly revoking the annual passes of so-called “personal shoppers” and others who buy collectible merchandise inside the parks and then resell it, either to individuals or online, according to observers and people who say it happened to them.
The move demonstrates Disney’s powerful marketing savvy — and also the seemingly insatiable appetite of collectors who are willing to pay sometimes high markups for limited-edition merchandise that’s only sold inside the parks. Even items that seem mundane to the uninitiated — like plastic popcorn buckets made in China — can be feverishly sought-after by Disney collectors, when they’re carefully released in limited quantities for a short time only.
The collector craze has led to a secondary market ranging from small-time personal shoppers who go to the parks and fetch items for individual clients to resellers who buy large numbers of products and post on sites such as eBay.
Lately, observers say that Disney appears to have aggressively targeted these resellers, cancelling their annual passes under a provision in the passholder contract that bans people from using their discounts and then reselling items they purchased inside the parks.
Samantha Cudnohufsky, 25, of San Diego said she was surprised to receive a letter dated Nov. 16 informing her that her Disneyland pass was being revoked for one year.
“It came out of nowhere — I had no warning,” Cudnohufsky said, adding that she began operating a small personal shopping business about four years ago. “They took away my pass right before the holidays. … I had several people tell me that other people had been hit too.”
Even though her pass has been canceled, Cudnohufsky said she is still obligated to pay Disney monthly until May.
“They’re not stopping the payments,” Cudnohufsky said. “I still have to make my payments or they will send me to collection. It’s about $71 a month.”
Disney responded to requests for comment with a written statement that “Park Rules and Annual Pass Terms and Conditions are in place to help protect the experience for all of our Guests.”
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