Dan's Stolen Card and Equifax's Free Credit Report Scam

Today, Dan blogged about his stolen credit card experience, at DAN CLARK: STOLEN CREDIT CARDS, and he's turned into a "credit card bill checking nerd," he says. He's got it right as far as I'm concerned. You really need to check your cards yourself.

You may have heard the singing group commercial, "FreeCreditReport.com" thing. It's not free. In fact, it's a scam. Equifax, the super big credit rating company, runs it. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission took Equifax to court to have it change the web site since the FTC authorizes only one web site for free annual credit reports, here, as required by law. Since Equifax was determined to keep its scam going, it changed its web site to charge you $1.00 for a charity donation, which Equifax writes off of course, to satisfy the law. But, even that isn't all that you'll pay for if you get a credit report from its site. You will also have to sign up for "credit monitoring," for about $15.00 a year (could be per month - I'm not sure). You may not even know you signed up for the charge. (Note: I have a tool added to my browser that measures the "trustworthiness" of a web site, the "Web Of Trust" tool. Green for trustworthy, Yellow for watch out, Red for terrible. It gives Equifax's web site a Yellow - Watch Out!). So, the "FreeCreditReport" is not free.

As for Equifax monitoring, I don't believe it either. About a year and a half ago I received a letter from a company (I've forgotten its name) that informed me that my personal data was stolen and that they arranged with Equifax, Transunion and Experian, the three credit rating companies, to monitor my credit account. So, every month for the past 1-1/2 years I have received an email from Equifax saying "nothing has happened" to my account. But, that isn't true. In the past 1-1/2 years I've had to replace a lost credit card, I've charged my card to ship to family addresses (shipping to other addresses should be top of the alert list) and I've created a new bank account. None of these things caused Equifax to alert me of a change in my account, yet these are the things that should be reported to the account holder.

So, I'm with Dan. Go look at your credit card accounts yourself. Also, use the authorized FTC web site to get an annual free credit report. That's the only place that's authorized by law.

Dave

CNBC Nonsense and 5 Myths about your taxes

In my last post I claimed that CNBC is full of sh*t. Here are 5 Myths about your taxes from the same source (The Tax Policy Center) that Erin what's-her-name of Street Signs, CNBC, claimed as her source for taxing rich Americans 60% or more. All she is doing is creating yet more myths. Americans with incomes of more than $1 million pay around 27% tax. Add state taxes, around 2% to 3% more, and you get around 30%. Also, anyone who makes more than around $100,000 does not have to pay Social Security Taxes all year long. For example, a person who makes less than $100k pays a little over 8% all year, but someone who makes more may pay 6% or 5% Social Security Tax.

So, it's bunk. Go make a million if you can. You get to keep the rest of it.

Dave

CNBC Nonsense...

This is nonsense, but it's typical of CNBC.

Let 'im Go

If you read this story: Federal judge orders release of Guantanamo Bay detainee, then you should also read this story. The government is appealing the judge's ruling in the first story, but I don't know why other than we're afraid of our own shadow. We don't need to waste money on these guys.

Dave

Net Neutrality is Good for Business and People

I guess the judge held to a strict reading of the law in this case, Net neutrality faces serious setbacks - Yahoo! News: "Net neutrality faces serious setbacks," i.e., that the FCC did not have the authority to force net neutrality on Internet Service Providers (ISPs). If he didn't follow the law, then he's as blind as a bat to the huge benefit of net neutrality and he's probably in Comcast's, lobbyist or Republican's pocket. I hope Congress gives the FCC the authority to do that, in clear, uncertain terms, but I doubt that it will since it will probably require 60 votes in the Senate and the "No" party will vote against it, probably because Sarah Palin will be against it. I'm sure that her idea of the Internet goes no farther than twitter and Facebook. She has no idea of the billions of dollars of business done over the internet that, due to the court ruling, is throttled by Comcast, AT&T and other ISPs. She would also have no idea on how beneficial the Internet is to keeping people informed, but if they were informed they wouldn't be following her.

Personally, my hope is for new technology and Google. For example, CISCO and Juniper are testing 100 gigabyte per second (roughly 100 billion bits) routers, the next generation routers. CISCO says its router can handle 322 terabytes (you can download the entire Library of Congress in a few seconds), if, of course, you're connected to other equipment that can produce that speed. These routers solve the traffic jam on the Internet; all wires meet at the router, sort of like 32 or 64 high speed highways meeting at the same intersection. Comcast and AT&T have stacks of slow routers in their data centers. When they use next generation routers, all of their excuses for limiting Internet use are moot. Of course they will make you and me, the customer, pay a heavy price for that.

That's where Google comes in. Google thinks that the Internet should be free, a really novel and counterintuitive idea. It has two projects that they hope makes this happen. The first is its "Open Source" project that Google keeps software programmers updated on in its own (don't click unless you're a geek) blog. It's all pretty technical, but the gist is that for any software and/or equipment (Google phone) that Google gives away or sells, any programmer in the world can contribute to it. I could, for example, write a program or a section of a program, give it to Google and Google could then upload it on its phones and everyone could run it; free of charge. Google gets some of the best programmers in the world to contribute because programmers are geeks and they can't let an improvement pass them by - that's why Google programs are among the highest quality programs available. I believe that each contributing programmer gets a share of the profit generated by the program.

The second project is Google's free Internet access project. Google is testing this concept in several communities around the country. For example its free service to Mountain View, CA, is one such test. Google believes that, if the Internet is free to everyone, business increases, advertising increases, more people buy and use services that result in increased commerce for everyone. So far, it's proving to be true.

By the way, you can use a good office suite open source program, OpenOffice, instead of Microsoft Office, right now - and it's free. Sun Microsystems started this project and Oracle owns it now. It doesn't have all of those "security" issues that Microsoft Office has. The only thing I've found that it doesn't do is suggest grammatical corrections like Microsoft Office does. But, I was never sure Microsoft was correct anyway. I'll probably stick to what I learned from Mildred Armstrong - well, maybe not, but it's not her fault.

Dave

Oil turns higher after Fed minutes - MarketWatch

Let's see... There must be a joke here someplace. PBS Nightly Business Report says that oil is going higher and that it's not demand and it's not capacity. Oh, it's traders, BUT the report says that it's not speculators, but only traders betting on future demand. Let's see, if I take away demand and I take away capacity and I make sure I have "speculators" definition right; "a financial action that does not promise safety on the initial investment along with the return of the principal sum. Speculation typically involves...the purchase of assets [oil]...in a manner...deemed to have...a significant risk of the loss of the principal investment..." sort of like if the demand doesn't materialize and those traders lose their money. lol! That must be the joke. A speculator is a trader betting on future demand for the asset they bought.

Here we go again. Speculators are driving the price of oil up. The joke's on us.

Oil turns higher after Fed minutes - MarketWatch: "SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures made a fresh attempt at gains Tuesday afternoon after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve interest-rate meeting, released at 2 p.m. Eastern, showed officials watching the economy for signs of whether to tweak their pledge to keep rates very low for a 'extended period.' Some warned against an early start to rate hikes. After initially deepening losses, oil for May delivery added 20 cents, or 0.3%, to $86.84 a barrel. June gold traded electronically rose $1.80, or 0.2%, to $1,137.8 an ounce from a floor settlement of $1,136."

Companies Externalizing Costs - Who Keeps Them Honest?

If you read as much as I do about Innocence Projects, environmental lawsuits and other civil lawsuits taken on by nonprofit groups to correct a social injustice or to free an innocent person or clean up a mess, you would know that most of these projects are staffed by volunteer law students or university law clinics that want to correct a wrong. You would also learn that in most cases the government or corporate defendant yells bloody murder and accuses the universities or nonprofit agency of "liberal bias." It never fails. Why is trying to correct an injustice or a wrong a liberal bias? Why isn't it "the right thing to do?"

In every environmental case I've read about, I invariably find that the company tried to externalize costs by having somebody else pay for its environmental mess. Companies do this all the time, externalize their expenses for things they don't want to pay for. Usually, tax payers clean up the environmental messes. In this case, University of Maryland is taking on Perdue, the huge chicken producer, and two Perdue farmers who dump their chicken manure and other waste into the Pocomoke River that flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The US Government and states and counties around the Chesapeake have spent billions trying to clean up the bay so that the Chesapeake Oyster and Shrimp will make a comeback - for food. The cleanup also makes for cleaner water. Everyone should want that.

But, that doesn't seem to be the case. This article says somebody is against it. School Law Clinics Face a Backlash - NYTimes.com: "ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Law school students nationwide are facing growing attacks in the courts and legislatures as legal clinics at the schools increasingly take on powerful interests that few other nonprofit groups have the resources to challenge."

Perdue's Chairman went to Maryland's Legislature to ask for help fend off the law students. Read on and you see who is helping get a law passed to limit the University of Maryland, a Republican, "Michael D. Smigiel Sr..., who represents areas along Maryland's upper shore of the Chesapeake Bay, questioned whether such clinics should be taking sides on controverisal issues." In Louisiana, the oil and gas industry is fighting Tulane University by the same method, through the state legislature. And, guess who's behind that. "'There is no reason that tax money should pay for these law students to act like regulators,' said State Senator Robert Adley, a Republican who submitted the bill in response from his state's oil and gas industry."

There is another way companies externalize costs, and that is by having tax payers ultimately pay welfare to those people who lost jobs in the recession. That happens when a person who should be getting unemployment insurance payments is cheated out of those payments by companies who fight the insurance claim. Companies pay the unemployment insurance, and it is cheaper for them to fight the laid-off worker's claim, as this NY Times article explains. In this case, Equifax, the credit-rating giant, bought Talx Corporation (made up of attorneys), to specifically go after the niche market of litigating unemployment claims for corporations. Every unemployment claim denied means lower unemployment insurance cost to the company. The Federal Trade Commission and the Labor Department are trying to fight Talx, on the one hand Equifax/Talx has monopolized the market, violating anti-trust laws, and on the other Talx causes each claim such delays and creates such a hassle that the laid-off worker simply gives up or runs out of money during Talx's constant appeals.

A PBS Newshour interview, on April 2nd, shows the problem. Only 60-65% of the unemployed in the United States actually receive their benefit, while 95-97% in Europe receive theirs. Among other problems, it pays companies to challenge as many claims as possible.

You get only one guess at which political party had more to do with our current unemployment system than any other. Yep. Republicans, and probably a Blue Dog Democrat or two. If corporations are supposed to pay for these things, why do we keep voting people into office who help them make us pay for it?

Dave