July 3, 2016

Long-Running Apartheid Crimes Case Axed by U. S. Supreme Court

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Efforts by South African victims of racist apartheid to obtain justice suffered a new defeat in the U.S. Supreme Court this month when the Judges declined to revive a suit against two U.S. companies that, according to the complaint, helped to suppress the Black population.

The judges left in place a 2015 ruling that cleared Ford Motor Co. and IBM Corp. According to the claims raised by the South Africans, Ford was complicit in extrajudicial killing, torture and directing and controlling the sale of specialized vehicles to the South African security forces while IBM created and maintained an identity card system to denationalize the black population.

Several of the plaintiffs were former employees of Ford who were arrested and tortured after Ford released information about protests to the apartheid government.

Over the years, dating back to 2002, complaints against dozens of corporate defendants who collaborated with apartheid were filed by a South African legal team and Harvard law faculty and students. The cases were all dismissed by a district court despite a law that allows non-U.S. citizens to seek damages in American courts for egregious human rights violations committed abroad.

Initially, 23 companies were named in the suit including Citigroup, Exxon Mobil, American Isuzu Motors, General Motors and Barclay’s Bank. They were liable, according to the suit, because the police shot demonstrators “from cars driven by Daimler-Benz engines”, “the regime tracked the whereabouts of African individuals on IBM computers”, and “the military kept its machines in working order with oil supplied by Shell.”

“[A]t the least, defendants benefitted from a system that provided a glut of cheap labor,” the South Africans maintained.

In a friend of the court brief, former U.S. ambassador for war crimes, David J. Scheffer, said: “The United States cannot afford as a nation and world leader to undermine international law by immunizing its nationals who aid and abet atrocity crimes from civil liability for their knowing conduct, absent a specific mandate to do so by Congress,”

Dumisa Buhle Ntsebeza, founder of South African National Association of Democratic Lawyers and president of South Africa's Black Lawyers Association, represented the victims. 

June 28, 2016

Economic Power of Black and Other Consumers Limited by Low Knowledge About Credit
By Hazel Trice Edney

Steve Brobeck, Executive Director, Consumer Federation of America

Barrett Burns, President/CEO, VantageScore Solutions

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Despite the level of economic destruction suffered by millions of Americans –and disparately by African-Americans – during the housing crisis, many people still have only basic knowledge of credit scoring rather than knowledge of the complexities still impacting their financial lives, according to a new survey.

“The good news is that consumers understand the basics of credit scores, such as the importance of making loan payments on time,” says Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), which recently released the results of its sixth annual credit score survey. “The bad news is that this knowledge is limited and, each year, can cost them hundreds of dollars in fees on services and additional interest on consumer loans,” he said in a release announcing the survey results.

Brobeck led a June 13th phone conference announcing the survey results. He said one of the most critical unknown facts about credit scores is that "low scores can add hundreds - even thousands of dollars - to your credit costs every year."

The results are not broken down by race, but financial experts indicate this lack of knowledge has more severely impacted African-Americans and Latinos since they already suffer more economic disparities than people of other races. Financial experts at the Durham-based Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) says racial minorities are often even targeted for financial abuse; then when their credit scores plummet, their financial lives become even more difficult.

“Every day working for CRL, I’m reading information about finances. And invariably from one issue to the next, Black people – Blacks and Latinos – are getting the short end of the stick. It’s just horrible,” says CRL spokeswoman, Charlene Crowell.

Among the findings of the CFA survey of 1,005 adults in April are as follows:

• Consumers greatly underestimate the cost of low credit scores. Only 22 percent know that a low score, compared to a high score, typically increases the cost of a $20,000, 60-month auto loan by more than $5,000.
• A significant minority do not know that credit scores are used by non-creditors. Only about half (53 percent) know that electric utilities may use credit scores (for example, in determining the initial required deposit), while only about two-thirds know that these scores may be used by home insurers (66 percent), cell phone companies (68 percent), and landlords (70 percent).
• Over two-fifths think that marital status (42 percent) and age (42 percent) are used in the calculation of credit scores. (While these factors may influence the use of credit, how credit is used determines credit scores.)
• Only about half of consumers (51 percent) know when lenders are required to inform borrowers of their use of credit scores – after a mortgage application, when a consumer does not receive the best terms on a consumer loan, and whenever a consumer is turned down for a loan.

Attaining the necessary knowledge about the financial world, including about credit scoring, can be the key to a new economic beginning, experts say. Ron Busby, president/CEO of the Washington, DC-based US Black Chambers Inc. says, “The number one, two and three concerns for Black businesses is access to capital.”

Some business credit difficultly has been related to historic discrimination against Black-owned businesses. But often times when seeking to attain credit, Busby said, “I do believe we just go unprepared.”

To help prepare communities and individuals with crucial information, the CFA has a credit knowledge quiz by which current or prospective borrowers can learn how much they don’t know, but also learn new, valuable information. The 12-question quiz can be found at creditscorequiz.org.

Other important credit information is also readily available on line, including personal credit scores, says Barrett Burns, president/CEO of VantageScore Solutions. VantageScore is a 10-year-old credit scoring model created by the three national credit reporting companies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, which aims to "address the economic realities" of the 21st century.

“Access to scores and to the tips and explanations that accompany them on many of the sites give consumers a better chance to understand their credit worthiness before applying for a loan,” Burns said on the phone conference. “These scores help consumers take charge of their credit profiles and to improve their credit scores before they seek credit and when they’re ready to apply for a loan these websites help consumers consider many different credit products side by side on an online dashboard allowing them to make more informed decisions.”

The national survey also revealed that millennials (18-34 year-olds) know less about credit scores than do generation-exers (35-51 year-olds). This indicates the need for early credit education.  “On eight of nine key knowledge questions, gen-exers scored more highly than millennials,” the release states.

In a nutshell, the CFA survey advises consumers of all ages to “raise their credit scores or maintain high scores” by doing the following:

• Consistently make loan payments on time every month.
• Using a small portion of the credit available on a credit card.
• Pay down debt rather than just moving it around, as well as not open multiple new accounts at the same time.
• And check credit reports to make sure they are error-free by contacting annualcreditreport.com or by calling 800-322-8228.

Crowell concludes, “Whether it’s buying a car, buying a home, managing credit card debt, managing student loan debt, all of those things contribute to your credit scores. You don’t want to default on a loan, whether it’s a car or a home – you don’t want to do that.”

July 3, 2016

Obama Foundation Chooses Designer for Presidential Library
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Obama Foundation on Friday selected a New York architectural firm to design the Presidential Library Center for the nation’s first African-American president.

The library will have a dual role of improving the economy in a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, where it will be constructed. In addition to being a destination point for tourists from around the world, the Presidential Library Center will serve as magnet to attract more businesses, jobs and other services to the area. The Obama Foundation is considering two sites on Chicago’s Mid-South Side for the first Presidential Library in Chicago—Jackson Park and Washington Park.

The team of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) and Interactive Design Architects (IDEA) of Chicago will design the Obama Presidential Center, which will house President Obama’s archives. The center also will focus on the Obama presidency and the issues of our time.

Dina Griffin, a black woman architect, is president of IDEA, but all of the firm’s other top officials, including its founders, are white. The firm qualifies as a minority and women-owned business.

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien is a husband and wife team of a white man and an Asian woman with an all-white staff, based on a staff photo.

The Obama Foundation issued a Request for Proposals on December 21 to seven architectural firms that were selected from more than 140 firms worldwide that applied for the job.

The two firms will lead a multi-disciplinary and wide-ranging design effort that may ultimately include 15 to 20 other firms engaged in various specialty areas crucial to the center’s design.

“We are deeply moved by the mission of the Obama Foundation and the role the center can play in empowering that mission. It is a joy, an honor, and a responsibility to create a place that reflects the optimism and integrity of the President and First Lady,” said Williams and Tsien. “This has been a transformative presidency and we will work to make a center that embodies and expands the Obamas’ vision. We look forward to collaborating with our partners, Interactive Design Architects, and working with the South Side community.”

June 28, 2016

Another Take on Brexit from an African Perspective

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Writing on the blogpost This Is Africa, Malawi journalist Levi Kabwato tackled the much reported story of “Brexit” from his own unique perspective.

“European Union policies towards Africa and the rest of the Global South are unhelpful to the ordinary African,” he began. “It is against this backdrop that we must see Britain’s referendum on the EU and use what we have already seen the EU do to its poorer member countries to craft more critical and useful thoughts on how Africa can respond to developments such as Brexit.”

Kabwato noted the near uniformity of news reports on Brexit, bemoaning “a weakened South African rand”, and prophesizing an apocalypse as “vital trade agreements” implode.

He continues: “This is the same EU that, earlier in June 2016, signed an Economic Partnership Agreement in Gaborone, Botswana that included a bilateral protocol between the EU and South Africa on the protection of geographical indications and on trade in wines and spirits.”

“What would this actually mean for a homeless person? Or a struggling black farmer, marginalized and not empowered?” he asked.

“The absence of an alternative narrative regarding this main news story should worry Africans who have been made to believe that they are facing imminent problems should Britain leave the EU.

“Is a weak Britain necessarily bad for the continent because it threatens the ‘Empire’? Is it not an opportunity for Africa to negotiate future trade and cultural deals from a position of strength?

“If Brexit must point Africans to anything, it is the pace at which democracy is being threatened in Europe, how poor countries like Greece are being further impoverished via their association with the EU and how the EU itself has become an anti-democratic institution, often meddling in domestic policies of member states. This means that the organic (local) hopes, dreams and aspirations of ordinary European citizens are routinely dismissed or ignored altogether.

“Is this what Africans concerned about Brexit are mourning? Or is it the myth of British exceptionalism, with its painful links to colonialism? Perhaps it is the trade agreements – most of them kept in secret?

“Maybe it is to stand in solidarity with the working class of Britain, which has borne the brunt of EU-imposed policies that have impacted negatively on their income and quality of life.”

In a lighter vein, the website OkayAfrica posed the question WhatifDavidCameronwasAfrican?”regarding the just-resigned Prime Minister. Patrick Nkusi tweeted back: “We would still be counting the votes and only God knows till when…”