MOTHER JONES DAILY: Meta Announces a New, Trump-Friendly Fact-Checking Policy, Medical debt to be removed from all Americans' credit scores, What people get wrong about Christian women who voted for Trump, “Ironic”: Major oil ports threatened by projected sea level rise, The GOP keeps parroting Trump's false claims about the New Orleans attack, The IDF killed an American peace activist. Her husband is still looking for answers. 7JAN25

 

January 7, 2025 Hi, I'm Sophie Hurwitz, a fellow here at Mother Jones. In December, I took a train down to Washington, DC, to meet the family of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old American volunteer killed by an Israeli soldier in the West Bank last September.  I had written about Eygi before, talking with other protective peace activists and witnesses of her death. (Israel says a soldier likely shot her in the head by accident; the person I spoke with believes it was “intentional.”)  But, until then, I had not met her family in person. It was 101 days after Eygi’s death when I greeted her husband, her older sister, and her father in DC. I then spent three days with them. I watched as they struggled to navigate the (literally and figuratively) labyrinthine halls of our Capitol to ask for justice. The family moved from office to office telling the story of her brief life and violent death.  Over and over, I witnessed the same thing: The family struggled to find the words to make Eygi real enough—the living human they knew, who loved activism and cooking—so that her death might warrant a government response. They received many handshakes and condolences but few real commitments. Secretary of State Antony Blinken particularly disappointed them. “I have been forced to sideline my grief in order to scrape and beg daily for the past three months,” Hamid Ali, Eygi’s husband, told me, “to plead with the Biden administration to seek justice for my wife.” The week after the Eygis visited DC, Blinken sat for a series of exit interviews with the New York Times and the Financial Times. In those discussions, he defended his legacy as a peacemaker on Israel and Palestine.  The Eygis’ experience tells a different story. I encourage you to read my piece and judge for yourself. —Sophie Hurwitz

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Meta Announces a New, Trump-Friendly Fact-Checking Policy A plan to replace professionals with user-generated notes is cheaper—and likely to please the president-elect.  BY ANNA MERLAN

MOTHER JONES MEMBERSHIP UPDATE THIS IS READER-SUPPORTED JOURNALISM Our nonprofit newsroom has a lot of hard, consequential work to do in the new year ahead, and that’s why we need your support right now. It’s simple: without it, we can’t do our job.   Independent, truth-telling media needs newsletter readers like you to step up and donate. Every dollar you chip in will help us produce the journalism that is needed at this crucial moment. Donate Now

Medical debt to be removed from all Americans' credit scores BY JULIA MÉTRAUX What people get wrong about Christian women who voted for Trump BY NINA MARTIN “Ironic”: Major oil ports threatened by projected sea level rise BY DAMIAN CARRINGTON The GOP keeps parroting Trump's false claims about the New Orleans attack BY JULIANNE MCSHANE

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The IDF killed an American peace activist. Her husband is still looking for answers. 101 days after Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi’s death in the West Bank, her family finally met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. But it was just another official "saying things that I’ve already heard before," said Eygi's husband. BY SOPHIE HURWITZ

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Practical Progress: Maxing Out the Minimum...Discredited...Letters From Iran...10JAN14

PRACTICAL PROGRESS: the Agenda Project Action Fund's actually 'brief' briefing on the most Important news from the Progressive Movement.
MAXING OUT THE MINIMUM -- Over 4.5 million workers began receiving higher pay on January 1st when thirteen states raised their minimum wages ... however no state has yet to pass a minimum wage properly adjusted to inflation -- roughly $10.74, according to Raise the Minimum Wage. This number jumps to 25 dollars an hour if average labor productivity is factored in. Director of the Center for American Progress' Half in Ten and the Poverty and the Prosperity Program Melissa Boteach hammered home the point: "The War on Poverty hasn't failed; rather, our economy has failed... We have an economic and moral obligation to help raise people out of poverty, and it starts by enacting realistic policies that invest in job creation, increase wages, and expand educational opportunities for all people."
READ: "Proposal to Strengthen Minimum Wage Would Help Low-Wage Workers, With Little Impact on Employment" by the the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $10.10 Would Lift Wages for Millions and Provide a Modest Economic Boost" by the Economic Policy Institute, and "50 Years After the War on Poverty, Will the Middle Class Become the New Poor?" by AlterNet Senior Editor Lynn Parramore.
DISCREDITED -- 47 percent of employers conduct credit checks on their job applicants, a practice that Demos, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and others hope to prohibit through the Equal Employment for All Act. Sen. Wareen summed up the problem on a recent press call with Demos: "Let people compete for jobs on the merits, not whether they already have enough money to pay all their bills." Demos has found that one in ten unemployed people claim that they were denied jobs based on the results of credit checks. READ "Discredited: How Employment Credit Checks Keep Qualified Workers Out of a Job" and WATCH Demos Vice President of Policy and Outreach and Top Wonk Heather McGhee voice her support for the bill HERE.
The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, and The Hill covered the story.
LETTERS FROM IRAN -- Berim and Netformance launched Letters from Iran, an online campaign of over 500 letters from individuals from Iranians to Americans. This effort comes as a group of foreign policy experts and the White House urge against new Iran sanctions. Berim and Netformance are planning a Hill Action Day on January 30th. CHECK OUT Letters from Iran and FIND out more HERE.
ADVANCEMENT PROJECT URGES END OF WI DISCRIMINATION ENGINE -- Advancement Project urged a federal court to issue a permanent injunction preventing Wisconsin's Voter ID Laws from going back into effect in the wake of the November bench trial. The groups contest that the current legislation violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits discriminatory voting practices on the basis off color, race, and/or language. This is the first case to come to trial following the Supreme Court's June Shelby County v. Holder ruling that struck down Section 5 of the VRA. READ the full post-trial brief HERE.
Advancement Project Co-Director and Top Wonk Penda D. Hair: "As the leading democracy in the world, it is our responsibility to ensure that states do not pass laws that hinder citizens' inalienable right to vote. States across the nation have an obligation to ensure that citizens have equal access to the ballot."
IN THEIR WORDS -- As the U.S. Supreme Court gears up to rule on three cases surrounding birth control and abortion, Alliance for Justice (AFJ) has released a new report breaking down the views each Justice has on reproductive rights issues. The study analyzes confirmation hearings, voting records, and their legal writings. READ: "In Their Words: The Supreme Court Justices on Abortion."
FROM THE WONK WIRE ...
... THE GREAT REDISTRIBUTION: Former Secretary of Labor and Top Wonk Robert Reich explains why 2013 was the year of a Great Redistribution upward.
... TOO BIG TO ENFORCE: University of Missouri Kansas City Associate Professor of Economics and Law and Top Wonk William Black evaluates the consequences of the Volcker Rule.
... CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?: Princeton University Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and Top Wonk Alan S. Blinder investigates the role the poor play in the battle against fraud in free phone service.
... AVERTING LAYOFFS -- CEPR Co-Director and Top Wonk Dean Baker will be speaking at the national conference "Averting Layoffs & Saving Jobs Through Work-Sharing," organized by the National Employment Law Project and the Center for Law & Social Policy. The conference is today, Friday January 10th in DC. FIND out more and RSVP HERE.
Find out more at www.TopWonks.org.
Check out our newsletter's site at PracticalProgress.org.
E-mail tips, news, and reactions to Hannah Hendler at hhendler@agendaproject.org.

6 Ways Sen. Warren's 'No Credit Checks for Hiring' Bill Helps All of Us 19DEZ13

SEN ELIZABETH WARREN D MA continues to fight for the rights of all Americans with her introduction of this legislation in the Senate. (I wish my Senator, Tim Kaine D VA, who serves on the Senate Banking Committee with Sen Warren, had the same moral conviction and courage she does.)  There is no good reason for Congress not to pass it, as the article shows there is no relationship between an employees credit score and their job performance. And allowing employers to access and use credit scores of potential and current employees can only keep people in a cycle of unemployment, underemployment and economic distress. We can only hope and pray Sen Warren's legislation is passed by Congress as it will help many out of unemployment, putting them on the path to economic stability. From HuffPost...

This week Sen. Elizabeth Warren and six colleagues introduced the Equal Employment for All Act, which would make it illegal for employers to disqualify job applicants based on their credit scores. It's an admirable and important bill which deserves our support. It also gives us an opportunity to have a broader discussion about the kind of society we hope to become.
Here are six reasons to support a bill which will help all of us in the end:
1. It aids the long-term unemployed.
Long-term unemployment is at historically high levels in this country, and policymakers have done far too little for this hard-hit group of Americans. They have experienced the ongoing loss of their way of life - often accompanied by the loss of their homes, their belongings, and their sense of self-worth.
Long-term unemployment is almost always accompanied by unpaid bills, which drastically lower a person's credit score. Today that lower credit score can render a person unemployable, leading to the kinds of heartbreaking stories described in a New York Times article on the subject earlier this year.
Instead of alleviating the problem of long-term unemployment, the use of credit scores in hiring makes it worse. On a societal level, that's indefensible. And on an individual level, it's inhumane.
2. It begins to right a terrible injustice.
One of the great injustices of the past five years is the way that Wall Street, whose fraud caused the current economic crisis, still holds enormous power over its victims.
We've seen that injustice played out in continued foreclosures, as banks evict families because their homes are worth less than the outstanding mortgage loan - thanks to the banks who created a housing bubble - and because many homeowners are unable to find adequate work as a result of the bank-created jobs recession.
We've seen that injustice reflected in credit card debt and other loans, whose costs have soared as the result of overly complicated contracts with hidden provisions.
And we see that injustice in the spectacle of Americans who are unable to find work as the result of foreclosures, soaring borrowing costs - and a credit-scoring system created for the banks.
This bill begins to end that pattern of injustice, by ending at least one of these practices. It's a start.
3. It also begins to level the playing field between Wall Street and ordinary Americans.
Financial institutions enjoy extraordinary, even unprecedented power over individual Americans. A consumer's relationship with a bank is no longer even the semblance of a contract between autonomous equals. It's an asymmetrical relationship in which one party - the bank - can unilaterally change the terms of the agreement, in many cases leaving the consumer with no recourse.
Sen. Warren's brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, goes a long way towards leveling this relationship. But financial institutions and other corporations still hold excessive power over individuals. One of their most powerful tools is the credit score.
The greatest tool consumers have against corporations and banks is, or should be, the ability to withhold payment when a contract isn't honored.  But a bad credit score hurts consumers in a number of ways. It makes it harder for them to find housing, it makes borrowing more expensive, and many consumers understand that it will make it harder for them to find a job - whether they are searching for one now, or (like most Americans) consider it likely that they'll be looking for one at some point in the future.
Because of this leverage, many people are forced to passively accept injustices from misbehaving corporations. If they withhold payment, even in cases where a product was defective or services not rendered, they may find themselves unemployable.
This imbalance of power allows banks and other corporations to keep acting unjustly. That needs to change.
4. It reduces the ongoing encroachment of Big Data on our daily lives.
The computer crowd likes to say that "Information wants to be free." We've learned now that it actually wants to be very, very expensive - and it's not interested in whether you remain free. Big Data is a self-sustaining and self-expanding institution which seeks to maximize profits by finding new markets for the information it gathers.
The credit score industry is an excellent case in point. FICO and its competitors began gathering credit information for lending institutions. Once they created systems for collecting the data, their only remaining challenge was a sales challenge: who else will buy it?
That's how Big Data becomes big.
The employer market is enormous. Even in recessionary times like these, hundreds of thousands of hiring decisions are being made. Each involves multiple candidates. Cracking this market was a major "score" for the credit score industry.  And if the social and human costs of entering this new market were enormous - well, that's not their problem, is it?
It may not be their problem. But it's ours. And in solving it, we can also send a signal to the corporate world and the body politic: Big Data doesn't run things - people do.
5. This credit information isn't even useful.
Our infatuation with Big Data can also lead us to ascribe more wisdom to it than it actually possesses. This is a perfect example of that phenomenon in action. The only academic research we could find on the topic, published in the Psychologist-Manager Journal in 2012, concluded that "Predictors extracted from applicant credit reports ... had no relationship with either performance appraisal ratings or termination decisions."
Not a "weak" relationship. Not an "unproven" relationship. No relationship.
This practice creates needless misery. This bill will stop it.
6. It reaffirms our values as a society.
If credit information doesn't predict employee performance, why use it at all? Whether consciously or not, its only purpose becomes cultural, not economic. It becomes a way for people who have jobs to avoid those who don't. It's a way of stigmatizing the unemployed, as if they are carriers of a terrible contagion.
We're often tempted to look away when we see the hungry or the sick on the street. This practice does something similar, by keeping the bearers of bad luck away before it rubs off on us, too.
But that's just superstition, and it's not who we are. At our best, we're a society whose citizens help one another in times of need. We're a society that believes in equal opportunity. We're a society that believes in the right to privacy. And we're a society that believes people who want to work should be able to work.
Sen. Warren deserves credit for introducing this bill. So do her Senate co-sponsors: Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). And so does Rep. Steve Cohen (TN-9), who introduced a similar bill in the House in 2011.
The people who are being hurt by these credit checks want to improve their own lives. It's time to let them. We'll be improving our own lives too.

Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/6-ways-sen-warrens-no-cre_b_4470684.html 

Consumer agency wants oversight of debt collectors, credit bureaus 16FEB12

THIS is what democracy looks like! The CFPB is doing exactly what is needed for the benefit of the 99%, and the decision to rely on regulations rather than lawsuits to protect consumers shows Richard Cordray shows congress and the American people he is not interested in wasting time and tax-payer dollars in the courts but is committed to the mandate that created the CFPB, consumer protection. From the Washington Post.....

By Ylan Q. Mui

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday sought to bring debt collectors and credit bureaus under its purview, marking the first time the often controversial industries would be subject to federal supervision.
Under its proposed rule, the CFPB would oversee the nation’s largest debt collectors, the primary credit reporting agencies such as Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, and other lesser-known consumer reporting agencies. It is the first attempt by the watchdog agency to define which businesses in the vast swath of nontraditional financial institutions will be subject to the same examination process as banks.
“This oversight would help restore confidence that the federal government is standing beside the American consumer,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement.
Cordray said a reason why they are targeting these firms is because they have expanded their reach into consumers’ lives during the recession. More people are now being pursued by debt collectors and have watched their credit scores slip.
Those scores have become crucial in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Some employers are even looking at credit scores as criteria for jobs. A car, a home, a college education are all financed by lenders that rely on the score to determine who gets credit and how much they pay for it.
For most consumers, those scores are based on records of loans they have taken out in the past and how well they have paid them off. This information is housed in the Big Three national credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Lenders use formulas developed by companies such as FICO and VantageScore to analyze the data and determine how likely each person is to repay.
Government regulators, financial firms and consumer advocates have launched extensive education campaigns in recent years to make sure that consumers understand what goes into their Big Three credit reports and how that affects the cost of a loan.
But little attention has been paid to the so-called “Fourth Bureau” firms that target the 30 million consumers outside the mainstream financial system. Often they are students, immigrants or low-income consumers who do not qualify for traditional loans or choose not to use them. Instead, they rely on a makeshift system of payday lenders, check cashers and prepaid cards — none of which show up in the Big Three. Without a paper trail of credit, these consumers are virtually shut out of the traditional banking system.
As a result, fourth bureau firms are increasingly using non-traditional and, at times, unreliable data, including auto warranties, cellphone bills and magazine subscriptions to come up with credit scores.
Yet federal regulations do not always require these companies to disclose when they share your financial history or with whom, and there is no way to opt out when they do. No one is even tracking the accuracy of these reports. That has left the most vulnerable consumers with little insight into the forces determining their financial futures.
The CFPB agency became the first federal agency to oversee so-called “nonbanks” after President Obama appointed Cordray as director late last year. But before it can use its power, the CFPB must set standards for which companies make the cut.
The proposed rule sets the bar for debt collection agencies at $10 million in annual receipts. The CFPB estimated that would encompass about 175 firms that account for about 63 percent of the debt collected from consumers each year.
For consumer reporting agencies, the CFPB proposed a standard of $7 million in annual receipts. That includes not only the three major credit bureaus but also roughly 30 smaller firms in the Fourth Bureau. The rule would give the CFPB authority over about 94 percent of the industry by receipts.
The power to oversee such firms and other nonbanks was a key component of the new agency’s design, and the CFPB has quickly flexed its muscle. It has already convened hearings on payday lending and plans to propose new rules for mortgage servicers.
The agency said it will continue to roll out guidelines employing a variety of criteria to define businesses that will be subject to supervision.
“This is going to be a very important way for us to interact with industry participants to know exactly what they’re doing,” Cordray said. He added that the power could be more efficient than using the “blunt instrument of lawsuits.”