New CFPB targets debt collectors and credit bureaus

According to the Wall Street Journal, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has recently added debt collectors and credit bureaus to its list of consumer financial services ?targets.? The agency hopes it can further support and stand by the American consumer in this way. The article highlights the dramatic increase in the amount of debt being pursued by debt collections agencies over the past decade: currently, 30 million Americans have debt under collection, and the average amount under collection is $1,400. This is a clear indication of the pain being felt by both lenders and their customers alike.

We believe that transparency is a crucial ingredient in the debt and credit industries. We recently wrote a related piece for Fast Company -?On Creating a More Transparent Financial Services Industry?-?in which?we highlighted why regulation and legal scrutiny must be coupled with better designed financial products in general. If financial products targeting consumers were less complex and easier to understand/manage, there would be fewer defaults among customers and more profits for financial services companies; this requires a longer-term view as opposed to a short-sighted view on the financial services industry as a whole.

Largest debt collection and credit reporting firms are affected

In the announcement about the proposed new rule today, the director of the CFPB said:

Our proposed rule would mean that those debt collectors and credit reporting agencies that qualify as larger participants are subject to the same supervision process that we apply to the banks.

The new rule would apply only to the largest debt collection companies ? ones that make more than $10 million a year. That includes only 4% percent of all debt collection firms, but those firms alone account for 63% of the annual debt recovered by the industry.

With regard to the credit reporting agencies, the rule would apply to firms with more than $7 million per year in receipts. That covers about 30 of the largest companies that do credit reporting.

What you can do

The new rule is currently in proposal form, meaning the CFPB is accepting comments on it for the next 60 days. What are your thoughts? Submit your ideas and insights to the CFPB on their comment page. And if you?re curious, read the full text of the proposed rule.

We?ll keep you updated on these actions and their effect on consumers. It?s important to stay informed of the actions of the government and the companies in this industry in order to ensure that consumer?s best interests are being promoted.

Source: http://blog.readyforzero.com/cfpb-targets-debt-collectors-credit-bureaus/

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Spending cuts trump farm subsidies for many voters (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Promoting farm subsidies was once a no-brainer for rural members of Congress seeking re-election. This year, it's a bit trickier.

As lawmakers wade cautiously into writing the next five-year farm bill, agribusiness and farmers' lobbyists are preparing for the worst. With little appetite for spending on Capitol Hill, subsidy cuts in the billions of dollars are on the table as rural voters also cry out for less government.

It doesn't help that farm business is booming.

"What's different this time is we have very strong commodity prices," says Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. "And that is generally not a really good time to write a farm bill because everyone who is projecting the future says, `Oh, this is going to last forever.'"

Farm bills in 2002 and 2008 also were driven by rural election-year politics. Lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, curried favor with farm interests in their states by slipping their priorities into the bills. Taking care of everyone's needs ensured passage and subsidies remained almost untouched.

But this year, many of farmers' traditional allies are just as concerned, if not more concerned, about voters' calls for less spending.

Sen. Pat Roberts, senior Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee and a veteran of many farm bills, says his constituents aren't asking about farm subsidies as much as they used to. He says he gets more questions about government regulations that farmers see as burdensome. Traditional farm issues and the impact of farm policy have gotten somewhat lost.

"I don't think most people who run for office realize there is still a significant farm vote," he says.

Nowhere was that more clear than in Iowa, where presidential candidates have wooed farm country for decades. Several of the contenders in the Iowa caucuses actually spoke out against corn-based ethanol, a position unthinkable in the past.

Farm-state members have already said they will support eliminating some subsidies. Last fall, the heads of the House and Senate agriculture committees ? Republican Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan ? negotiated a farm bill that cut $23 billion from agriculture and nutrition programs, hoping to piggyback it on the budget-cutting supercommittee's bill. When the supercommittee fizzled, so did their hopes for a speedy farm bill.

This year, they are starting over with more input from other agriculture committee members. But direct payments, a type of subsidy paid without regard to crop price or crop yield and costing taxpayers about $5 billion a year, are still a top target as the Senate Agriculture Committee opens hearings on the legislation Wednesday. That was cemented by President Barack Obama's call to eliminate them in his budget proposal Monday, which put forth a $32 billion cut in farm programs.

That's a strong contrast from 2008, when Obama supported the last farm bill while he was campaigning for president. That legislation was far more generous ? even raising some subsidies ? than the bill Congress is weighing this year.

Former President George W. Bush also played both sides. He signed a robust farm bill before the 2002 midterm election year but later called for cuts. In 2008, when he wasn't up for re-election, he vetoed the next farm bill. Republicans up for re-election in the House and Senate joined Democrats in overriding the veto.

Since then, farm country has seen much of that GOP support fade away. Farm-state Democrats were largely swept out of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections, and several Republicans who eventually filled their seats on the House Agriculture Committee are more affiliated with the anti-spending tea party than they are with farm interests.

Unclear is how aggressively those conservatives will support farm subsidies ? and, if they do, whether they will be able to persuade party leaders and other congressional conservatives to go along. House opposition is seen as the biggest obstacle to getting a farm bill done this year.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., one of the tea party conservatives on the agriculture panel, says he is telling constituents that direct payments will have to go. "Some folks say we want you to defend it to the end of the day, and I say that's not what's going to happen."

Huelskamp believes there should still be some sort of safety net for farmers when prices drop or crops are destroyed. But he says frustration over government regulation ? labor and environmental laws in particular ? is the top issue on farm voters' minds. People understand they will have to take a cut, he says.

No one envisions a farm bill that eliminates subsidies entirely. The compromise Stabenow and Lucas reached last year would have cut spending while creating a whole new subsidy to protect farmers when their revenue drops.

"There are a lot of land mines and we just have to see how it plays out," says Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. He warns that Congress shouldn't get too confident about cutting farm programs.

If the agriculture economy crashes, he says, "there isn't going to be any money to bail anybody out."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120215/ap_on_go_co/us_farm_subsidies

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Scott Brown Cosponsors Blunt Amendment On Contraception Coverage, Elizabeth Warren Pounces

The Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON -- Senator Scott Brown, entering a political thicket pitting women's reproductive rights against beliefs of some religious institutions, is cosponsoring a bill that would allow employers and insurers to limit specific health care coverage, including contraception, based on religious or moral objections.

Read the whole story: The Boston Globe

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/15/scott-brown-contraception-elizabeth-warren_n_1278920.html

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Why Mapping Your History Matters? | Intriguing Family History

What do maps do best and why are they important in history projects? ?How can you Map your history and how will this process help you make new connections and gain new insights?for your family, social, local or special interest history project. Here we discuss the key points as to why mapping your history is a significant step forward, a useful research capability and increases the?likelihood?of making new connections and revealing new patterns in your historical data, not replacing family trees but supplementing and helping to document and reference incomplete records.

• ?What do Maps Do Best:?Maps visualise complex geographical and spatial data, they help you navigate, they help you get an overview of where you are currently and graphically represent a wide range of options for getting to your destination via a route to be selected or even in choosing and deciding your destination.
• Traditionally when we think about history the first thought is dates, sequence and chronology, but that is only one dimension of history and it is relatively linear and therefore limiting on it?s own. If we can extend the historical date based information so that we can organise and better understand the data we have and even the data we don?t then then will it?s value and usefulness increase?
• Maps help us orientate ourselves, to the absolute position of a particular point on the the earth, fixed by?longitude?and latitude, with the relatively stable magnetic north, ?being our fixed point of reference for orientation from anywhere in the world. Whilst magnetic north may have varied over time, it is the best near constant point for orientating and understanding location that we currently have.
• How can Maps better inform, communicate and facilitate our research into our history projects? We are thinking of maps as a visualisation of our history, getting away from a wall of text, enabling a large amount of data to be tracked and pinpointed, with the added potential dimensions of movement and proximity, but more of that later. Maps in history are key artefacts in defining the world that was but overlaying and correlating old maps with the contemporary was very difficult and tedious by manual paper and pen. Now we all use interactive maps in Google Bing and Wikipedia, to name but a few just to find our way around, often using GPS in the car and on our smartphones (Iphone, Blackberry,Android etc? ) So how can we harness that basic technology and why will it be helpful in exploring and investigating your history project?

Family history for a?genealogical?project as an example of Mapping Your History

Family History is often a detective process, it is part of the fun, piecing together a complex jigsaw (another way of visualising data) is essentially a fragmentary process. Most of us research and develop our family history projects over a protracted period of time. We have to?grab time when we can, ?pick-up the pieces and try and resolve puzzles,?conundrums?that take us to the next step whilst still keeping in our minds-eye the big picture.

Data presents itself often in snippets, a fact, a series of records, a document, a photograph, an object or piece of ephemera, a batch of records and from this we want to stitch together a coherent picture or vision of our family?s history. The data?accumulates over time and needs?organising ,cataloguing and often is difficult to precisely date?very quickly there can be a lot of information in your archive boxes but how can you reference it and keep an index of where you are at and how it might be connected? The records are often incomplete, some are missing damaged or you don?t even know if they exist, there can be a lot of gaps and you can be more or less certain that beyond say the last 50 years, it will get harder and harder to create a complete timeline.

But if we can start to plot not only date and sequence and lineage but place and immediately glimpse the relationships between the points we can plot on a map this provides a powerful visual means of representing our data. Think of the map as a visual interface and index of your data, we are not talking about instead of a family tree but as an additional means of representing your data. Once you start to look at different family trees and trying to consider whether they are connected or not, then the family tree itself as a data index becomes difficult to correlate with one another.?This is where the visual approach of mapping as well as using family trees can be a great help.

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How and Why Mapping Your History can Help?

• Maps help us navigate between places, in history we are looking to navigate through our data in time and space and the visual representation can simplify and make more manageable and accessible the complex data we accrue.
• Maps give us a visually driven birds-eye view of our data, interactive maps enable us to zoom in and out on demand to see a simplified or detailed view of the map and data points plotted or pinpointed on it.
• Maps and Family History Example Its vital to be able to work beyond a single family tree and be able to look at your data in a non-linear form to look for connections and patterns that might not be apparent from the linear tree format.
• Ina large family tree or series of trees the life events and records we may/may not have are vast.
• The family tree file format ?(GEDCOM) that enables life events and details to be encoded within the file format gives an idea of the scope of the data that can exist for any individual and is multiplied for each individual within that tree
• The GEDCOM codes supporting the life history format supported by most family trees systems and software programs shows how complicated this can become(see GEDCOM?life events for family history and data tags supported?)for instance.
• When you have a number of people to track in your project, then maps become invaluable in being able to see another dimension that can reveal much about the relationships between place and individuals and the communities in which they lived worked and played.
• Census data is the perfect example, if you could plot your family groups and their characteristics against the wider census of the overall population nationally regionally and within the specific areas where your families lived what would that tell you?
• Wouldn?t it be interesting to be able to perform some high level analysis of your subjects and their families against the wider population in which they lived?
• Maps provide an alternative way of visualising complex data sets that are simply not possible with just a ?family tree structure but it is more fundamental than that, more than just a ?means of simplifying and organising data

Why are maps important in History projects?

To summarise why we believe maps and the process of mapping itself is an important part of researching our history projects:

• Maps visualise apparently disparate and complex data, computer maps enable us to zoom in and out on demand
• Mapping helps us research and consider new connections using proximity as an additional factor in our analysis?by identifying data not only by date but by relative place, position and proximity between points of interest and potential connections.?Maps help us analyse and reveal new patterns in the data and discover a deeper and wider frame of reference to understanding our history projects.
• Maps help us relate the changes in place over time and the relevance of changes to our history subject:?we can relate the geography to the history of place, work, home and family life and what the significance of that geography might be at a very granular and also at an?aggregated?level. Even basic cluster analysis can be powerful in seeing visually the proximity and relationships between our data.
• Maps help us visualise movement and migration: we can see where our family came from, lived worked and played and where they moved to, we can zoom out and see where our family groups lived and where and when they migrated.
• Ability to?overlay?and link old and new data together?both text numbers and other rich media (video pictures and more) Online maps provide the ability to place contextual links at our mapped points of interest, that reference related data sets. ?We can readily and visually identify proximate and potentially significant data from additional sources that may shed light on our specific data. Contextual links and overlaying of different data help us to discover not only what happened ??when? but where, to set a sense of place.
• Online Maps enable us to readily switch and explore different maps and views instantly: the topography and terrain, the roads and today even virtually stroll stroll along the same roads with streetview. All enabled by now standard GPS technology. Previously the ability to manually map and correlate complex data was limited by the tedious manual work it required and the memory needed to cross reference each of the source data-sets often written on different and unrelated documents?
• The advent of the GPS is another key element in why GIS (geographic information systems) and maps go hand in glove with history, we can overlay historic maps and with georeferencing actually see them on top of contemporary maps using precise absolute land and sea references checked and verified with the aid of a GPS.
• Mapping your history is a reality with GPS and online mapping available on your laptop or smartphone there is no reason not to look to harness some mapping capability if you really want to move and then leap forward with your history project. You could start now?in forthcoming posts in Intriguing Resources we will be sharing what we have discovered and how you can deploy the tools tips and techniques available.

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How will this process help you make new connections and gain new insights?

• Provide via the maps a visual metaphor by which to navigate through your data
• Enables new patterns to emerge and gaps and spaces to be better understood
• It provides a more lateral medium in which to consider and analyse what was the cause and effect over time
• It introduces another dimension into our analysis of our data proximity, what was nearby, what palces events and other historical and geographic factors influenced events
• It breaks out of the shackles of a largely linear family tree format,
• Creates a new and visual interface through which we can share and ?intuitvely navigate through the snippets of data, annotated and supplemented with an ever more informed narrative of the bigger picture
• There is much more that can be achieved, but using standard web technology and a little imagination we believe there is great potential.

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Mapping Your History Matters: you can get started now?

Maps and mapping your history is a great step forward, so how can you take the first steps. Why not consider taking a look and a test drive of our free historical research service Intriguing History. We are building and mapping an ongoing series of geocoded historical references with the specific intent to seek connections and historical context that will be helpful to those of us engaged in family, genealogical, social ,local and special interest history projects.

Intriguing History , Resources and Connections are designed and developed to meet the needs of our history projects, so we can take forward our family trees and put flesh and bones on the story and expand our understanding of who we think we are and where we came from! In that process we have become engaged in wider projects and realised the potential to ?create and share solutions with others who wish to embark or are already implementing similar projects. With a helping hand from our IT experience we aim to bring hassle free solutions for you and your history project.

There is some fabulous academic work going on , in particular we are inspired by subsequently discovering ont eh web,the work being pioneered in Spatial History at Stanford University but our ambitions and focus is on placing tools at your fingertips that can be used using standard laptop, tablet ?and smartphone technology on your history projects for you your family and friends.

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Register for free email updates to Intriguing History here with just your email address?

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Source: http://www.intriguingfamilyhistory.com/why-mapping-your-history-matters/

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UN Security Council visits Haiti to review mandate (AP)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti ? The U.N. Security Council began a four-day mission in Haiti on Monday to review the terms of its mandate and evaluate earthquake reconstruction efforts in the Caribbean country.

The 15-member delegation led by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice plans to meet with senior Haitian officials, tour the future site of a job-generating industrial park and visit a police academy in the capital.

"We will see how the United Nations supports Haitian government institutions in security and governance," Rice said as she read from a prepared statement. "We will examine economic development efforts and we will look at the ongoing humanitarian challenges."

In its first mission since 2009, the delegation also aims to evaluate reconstruction efforts following the massive earthquake in 2010 that displaced more than a million people. It plans to see how it can help strengthen the national police force, which has only 8,000 officers in a country of 10 million.

The delegation will venture outside its area of expertise in security and visit a treatment center for patients who have fallen ill to cholera. Now an epidemic, the disease has been a source of tension between Haitians and peacekeepers after several studies showed that a unit from Nepal, where the disease is endemic, likely brought the disease.

Haiti now has the world's highest cholera rate and the disease has killed more than 7,000 people and sickened more than 526,000 others, Haitian officials say.

The Haitian firm Bureau of International Lawyers and its Boston-based partner, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, issued a statement Monday urging the Security Council to evaluate the cost of the U.N.'s failure to take responsibility for the epidemic. The groups filed a complaint last year againt the world body that seeks reparations on behalf of the cholera victims.

The case is under review by the U.N.'s legal department.

Tensions have been further strained because of several abuse allegations involving peacekeepers, which are under investigation.

The U.N. set up the peacekeeping force in Haiti known by its French acronym Minustah in 2004 to provide stability following the overthrow of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Haitian President Michel Martelly hopes to replace the U.N. peacekeeping mission of 11,000 troops by restoring the national army, which was disbanded in 1995 because of its involvement in coups and history of abuse, and turning it into a "professional" force.

The Security Council would need to revise its mandate if the Haitian government took concrete steps to restore the army. The existing agreement, which focuses on developing Haiti's police force, has no provision to allow peacekeepers to work with a Haitian military.

The plan to restore the army has met opposition from the United States, Canada and other nations that believe the government should devote its limited resources toward the police department or toward reconstruction.

The Security Council's arrival this week coincides with that of two other delegations.

The Caribbean Community landed in Port-au-Prince Monday for a two-day mission that will look at ways to help Haiti recover from the earthquake and try to engage the country more in the regional bloc.

Legal experts from the U.S. State Department are expected to arrive Wednesday to help strengthen the country's beleaguered judiciary. They also want to support the justice system as it weighs evidence to prosecute former strongman Jean-Claude Duvalier on corruption charges instead of the human rights abuses synonymous with his 15-year rule.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120214/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_haiti_un

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Overcome Jealousy by Improving Self-Esteem | Yes On Prop8

Jealousy is one of the most deceptive emotions we as human beings. It can ruin relationships, lead to mental distress, produce bodily symptoms, and absolutely take over your life if you} let it. Overcoming jealousy will lead to less stress, improved complete well-being, and much more satisfying relationships.

There may be quite a few factors for jealousy. If you?ve been lied to,? cheated on, or taken advantage of, you?re much more likely to experience jealousy even when it?s unrelated to those who mistreated you.

When these things occur, it oftne tends to knock our self-esteem down a notch or two. And low self-esteem leaves us wide open for jealousy. Because of this, a key to being capable to overcome jealousy is for us to boost our self-esteem.? Low self-esteem is at minimum a contributing factor, if not an all-out cause, in nearly all conditions where jealousy is involved.

This is not to say that if you?ve been cheated on or lied to that the jealousy isn?t justified.? But self-esteem still affects the jealousy and how you deal with it. The less strong our self-esteem, the more likely we are to react with jealousy in any circumstances where we may feel we are inferior in any way.? And by its very definition, low self-esteem means that we feel inferior.

So we should understand that if we were cheated upon, that it is not our fault and we should not let that to reduce our view of ourselves. It?s not your fault if your boyfriend?s a jerk. Or if the girl you?re dating is the type to run around, that?s on her, not on you, and your self-esteem should not suffer for it.

Do things that make you feel very good about yourself.? Think about all the terrific qualities you have.? Do something every day that?s just good for YOU,? something that makes you appreciate yourself and then start bettering your self esteem. This will help you tremendously in your fight to overcome jealousy.

For more details about getting over jealousy and improving your self-esteem, be sure to visit http://gettingoverjealousy.com.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at 9:17 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Source: http://www.yesonprop8.com/yes-on-prop8/60

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Nicki Minaj Resurrects Spooky Roman Zolanski At Grammys

MC's rap alter ego levitates and speaks in tongues against a fiery backdrop at Sunday's show.
By Tomika L. Anderson

Nicki Minaj performs at the 2012 Grammy Awards
Photo: Robyn Beck/ AFP/ Getty Images

Nicki Minaj may have walked away Grammy-less on Sunday (February 12), but she still managed to deliver one of the most talked-about performances of the night.

In the show's final act the animated rap star — who lost out to Bon Iver for "Best New Artist" — channeled her infamous alter ego Roman Zolanski onstage, leading the audience through a rap exorcism of sorts. At one point, she even levitated, while speaking in tongues and jumping around against a fiery backdrop.

Minaj caused a Twitter frenzy earlier in the night when she hit the red carpet wearing a blood-red, hooded robe accompanied by a man dressed like the Pope, and she continued her spirited church-act onstage. Minaj marched out sporting a brown ball gown and long, bleached-blond locks, and performed a skit before launching into her new single, "Roman Holiday," from her upcoming sophomore album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.

It was a show that Lady Gaga (who was also missed by the Grammy fairy this go-round) would have been proud of. In a pre-taped skit, Minaj was surrounded by stained glass and other religious imagery, eerily putting on lipstick, singing "I Feel Pretty." She then climbed a wall to have an exchange with the strange Pope-like figure, a man who's real identity remains unknown.

After being strapped to a leather lab table onstage, she rapped backed by a goth-looking church choir that sang a haunting version of "Come All Ye Faithful." At the crescendo, she was lifted by an invisible rope into the Grammy sky. Shooting flames helped to complete the fiery, head-scratching number.

Stick with MTV News for all the news on Whitney Houston's tribute, the Grammy red-carpet fashion, Grammy winners and more until the hangover wears off!

Related Videos

• 2012 Grammy Awards Red Carpet Highlights
• 2012 Grammy Awards Show Highlights

Related Photos

• 2012 Grammys Red Carpet Photos
• 2012 Grammy Awards: Backstage And Audience

Related Artists

• Nicki Minaj

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1679114/2012-grammys-nicki-minaj-performance.jhtml

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