Posted by Linda H on 10:04:00 AM
Medical debt is the cause of 62 percent of bankruptcies, say
organizers of Strike Debt, which threw last night's offbeat fundraiser
for their new “Rolling Jubilee.” Ordinary people donated enough money to
collectively buy an estimated $5.9 million in bad debt in order to
cancel it.
by
Fabien Tepper :: posted Nov 16, 2012
On the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street's eviction from
Zuccotti Park, celebrity and local performers donated their time for a
"post-modern variety show" last night at Manhattan's Le Poisson
Rouge nightclub. They were there to raise money for what may be the most
far-reaching project to grow out of the Occupy movement so far: a
"bailout for the 99 percent" called Rolling Jubilee. Launched by Strike
Debt, an offshoot of OWS, the Jubilee has begun erasing people's
medical debt by infiltrating the debt-collection industry.
Strike Debt's tactic is to buy private debt the same way collection
companies do—on the debt market, at tiny fractions of its original
worth—and then cancel it in hopes of freeing debtors from their piled-up
medical bills. The group hopes that the action will bring debt
servitude to the forefront of our national conversation.
As donations surged past the $250,000
mark—five times Strike Debt’s stated goal for the evening—the soirée
took on the bubbly energy of a victory rally.
Posted by Linda H on 9:04:00 AM
Posted by Linda H on 8:30:00 AM
New Mexico’s Republican Governor, Susana Martinez, said on Monday night that she would be willing to sign proposed legislation aimed at closing the so-called “gun show loophole.”
“I think I could support it if it stays the way it is, that has, number one, keeping the guns out of the hands who people who don’t have any business having guns,”
she told a local New Mexico blog.
Currently, private sales of firearms do not require a background check. This allows criminals to easily obtain a gun undetected through avenues like Craigslist, pawn shops, or even gun shows. Eighty percent of guns used in crimes are likely
privately purchased.
A bill that would close the existing background check loophole in New Mexico has already passed through committee. The state’s full House of Representatives is expected to take up the measure on Wednesday.
source article
Posted by Linda H on 7:48:00 AM
“Every failure is a step closer to success.”
~Unknown~
Posted by Linda H on 6:30:00 AM
It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.
The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in Britain who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.
In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.
"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."
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Posted by Linda H on 3:31:00 AM
"To play it safe is not to play..." ~ Robert Altman
Apple Needs to Make it in America
