The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed ending "ripoff clauses" in customer contracts. "Ripoff clauses" force customers file any grievances they might have against a corporation not in the courts but in private arbitration, where, as you know, the customer has little chance of prevailing against a corporation from which the arbitrator really, really would like repeat business. Naturally, big corporations hate the proposal, because corporations make money from ripoff clauses and imagine that their "right" to make money supersedes your right to have your grievances heard in court. Don't believe your right-wing uncle when he tells you if you don't like forced arbitration, you shouldn't have signed the contract -- not unless he first scolds the big corporation for putting the forced arbitration clause in the fine print where folks aren't likely to see it. Remember: blame the perp, not the victim -- even if the perp calls himself a "job creator." Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell the CFPB to implement the most vigorous "ripoff clause" rule possible.
Meanwhile, you've heard about Stanford student/athlete Brock Turner, who got a mere six months in jail for raping an unconscious co-ed near a dumpster early last year, but Portland, OR resident Darius Adams's motivation for starting a petition on Change.org which helps you tell the NCAA to ban violent athletes from competition is personal -- four Oregon State football players drugged and raped his mother in 1998. The details get more sordid from there: the four players got community service and a one-game suspension for their crime, and local police appear to have lost the rape kit (and "lost" may very well mean "threw away" in this case). People who really, really like sports excuse this kind of behavior too easily, probably because it means an abrupt end to a promising career through which one can live vicariously. Even Mr. Turner's father wondered aloud why his kid got six months for "20 minutes of action" (how cute, that pop thinks he's capable of keeping it up for 20 minutes!). But wrong is wrong, evil is evil, and everyone should know by now that lives can change in a second.
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