S. 1773, the Consumer Reporting Fairness Act, would protect good Americans from many of the consequences of credit report errors -- which could well include getting denied housing, a job, or a mortgage, or merely being forced to prove you've paid off debts that credit reports still list on your record -- by forcing the banks to report when debts have been discharged, including during bankruptcy proceedings (when the fact of your bankruptcy remains on your record but the debts themselves don't). And this could be you, too, since the FTC tells us that almost one out of every five Americans had an error on at least one of their last three credit reports. It gets worse: some of the biggest banksters only agreed to update discharged debts more vigorously after they were sued, since they were trying to collect on already-discharged debts. Seriously, there should be a circle of hell for such people. So CREDO helps you tell Congress to support the Consumer Reporting Fairness Act, and thus make sure folks who've paid down or otherwise discharged their debts don't get unfairly hammered when they try to put their lives back together.
Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell the FCC to crack down on the practice of charging prisoners predatory long-distance calling rates. To think that some smartass, somewhere, believes himself a genius because he came up with the notion of charging prisoners more than a buck a minute for a long-distance phone call. "You see, the prisoners need to call their families, and what are they going to do about it if we make them all use the same carrier? You might say it's a captive market! Get it, 'captive'? High-five!" The FCC has lately capped long-distance phone call prices, but state and local governments still award exclusive contracts to certain long-distance carriers -- and I bet if you followed the money, you'd find a lot of donations going to the politicians who award those contracts. But a conservative would say that prisoners should enjoy the benefits of free-market competition as much as anyone else. (If your nominally conservative uncle responds that prisoners don't deserve anything, you may challenge his credentials as a conservative. Don't feel bad about doing that, since he probably does that all the time to people who don't shout as loud as he does.)
Comments