News & Articles

Whenever a corporation issues a statement declaring that it is committed to “treating consumers fairly and with respect,” chances are it’s not.
After all, if the outfit was actually doing it, there would be no need for a statement. Indeed, this particular claim came from Encore Capital, one of our country’s largest buyers of bad consumer debt – and it definitely has not been playing nice with the people it browbeats to collect overdue credit card bills, car loans, etc.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman found that Encore, based in San Diego, filed nearly 240,000 lawsuits against debtors in a recent four-year period, using our courts as its private collection arm. Problem is, Encore’s bulk filing of lawsuits are rife with errors, out-of-date payment data, fabricated credit card statements, etc. Tons of them are missing original loan documents, payment histories, and other proof of debt.
Debt predators, however, scoot around this lack of facts by simply having their employees sign affidavits asserting that the level of money owed is accurate. Judges, overwhelmed by the unending flood of lawsuits filed by Encore et al, have accepted those affidavits as true, thus ruling in favor of the corporations. But Schneiderman found that – Surprise! – affidavits were simply being rubber-stamped by company employees, who didn’t have time to check for accuracy. An employee of one large debt-buyer testified that he was having to sign about 2,000 affidavits a day!
This is no minor scam – one in seven adults in the U.S. is under pursuit by debt collectors. It’s hard enough for struggling families to claw their way out from under the economic crash without having lying, cheating, predator corporations twist the court system to pick their pockets and shut off their hope of recovery.

“Debt Buyer Faces Fine In Doubtful Lawsuits,” The New York Times, January 9, 2015.

Exposing the corporate funders of “Dr. Evil’s” attack ads

A longtime Washington PR flack for tobacco giants, labor exploiters, frackers, and other corporate profiteers celebrates himself “Dr. Evil” – the scourge of all progressive groups!
But Rick Berman is not a doctor, not evil, and not a scourge. While he is a wholly-unprincipled little man, he’s just a self-serving huckster who grubs for corporate dollars by offering to do their dirty PR work.
Berman’s modus operandi is not exactly sophisticated: Taking money from the likes of Phillip-Morris, Monsanto, and Tyson Foods, he sets up tax-exempt front groups (with non-descript names like Center for Consumer Freedom, Employment Policies Institute, and Environmental Policy Alliance) posing them as independent research outfits; each one is an empty shell, run by his small staff out of his Washington, DC office; using the names of the front groups, Berman and Co. buy full-page newspaper ads and write opinion pieces that amount to raw hatchet attacks on whatever progressive groups or public policies the corporate funders want to kill.
His mad dog style is hardly worrisome to those targeted, for rather than drawing converts to the corporate funder’s cause, it merely rallies the usual anti-labor, anti-enviro, anti-”fill in the blank” crowd. But it still appeals to brand-name corporate clients, for Berman promises to spew their message into the media without having any of the nastiness stick to them. “We run all this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors,” he assured energy executives last year. “There is total anonymity,” he bragged. “People don’t know who supports us.”
But, oops, not only is he ineffectual, but big holes in his curtain of anonymity are now revealing some of the corporations hiding behind it.

To take a peek, go to www.BermanExposed.org.
“Rick Berman Strikes Again With Environmental Policy Alliance,” www.foodandwaterwatch.org, March 6, 2014.

Message to TPP elites: Secret government is Un-American

So, someone hands you a beer, but instead of it being a recognizable brand, it’s in a totally blacked-out can with nothing but the letters “TPP” printed on it.
“You’re really gonna like this,” says the smiling stranger who handed it to you. But you naturally hesitate and ask: “Well, who made it? What’s in it?’ Now the guy’s smile seems forced as he says: “Sorry, pal, but those are trade secrets. Trust me though – there’s nothing bad in it. Just drink up... and enjoy the buzz that it’s gonna give you.”
Would you swallow that? Neither would I, but here comes Barack Obama, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Speaker John Boehner, and every corporate lobbyist in Washington insisting that We the People should quickly chug-a-lug their strange brew called TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) – without knowing what’s in it. “It’s just a free trade agreement,” they say, with lying eyes and forced smiles.
But TPP is not free, not about trade, and not anything that we normal Americans would ever agree to. Rather, it’s a raw deal enthroning global corporations over our democratic right to be a self-governing people! It creates a whole new privatized government, subjecting us and our laws to an overriding supreme authority of corporate tribunals set up by the World Bank and the UN.
TPP literally is an un-American sneak attack on us by our own “leaders.” Negotiated in strict secrecy by a handful of corporate elites and government officials, they produced a secret “deal” that is to be kept secret from the people for four years after it is approved, even though it transfers much of our people’s sovereignty to secretive international tribunals made up of global corporate lawyers with no accountability to The People.
Holy Thomas Paine!

To fight this establishment of secret government, go to www.stoptpp.org.
“Dont Keep Trade Talks Secret,” www.nytimes.com, April 14, 2014.