Aug. 6, 2017

Trump's Delusions on Police Brutality are Dangerous
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) Donald Trump often seems more shock jock than president. He likes to shock, say or tweet outrageous things, prove that he’s not just another politician. But now he is president; his words have impact, and his posturing can be dangerous.

Last week, he essentially endorsed police brutality before a gathering of police officers in Long Island: “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, and I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’ ”

His remarks received significant applause, but hours later the Suffolk County Police Department issued a statement making it clear that it “will not tolerate roughing up of prisoners.”

The cries of Baltimore’s Freddy Gray, of Amadou Diallo, Manuel Loggins Jr., Ronald Madison, Kendra James, Sean Bell, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling and many more could be heard from their graves. Each was a black man or woman who died at the hands of police.

Trump’s words are not simply bluster; his Attorney General Jeff Sessions is intent on turning them into policy. Sessions has scorned the Obama administration’s efforts to review police misconduct and to forge consent agreements on reforms with police departments from Chicago to Baltimore. He spreads the myth that reform handicaps law enforcement. In a nation that locks up more of its people than any in the world, he’s instructed U.S. attorneys to seek the harshest penalties available for those found guilty of violating the law.

Over the last decade, from Ferguson to Chicago to New York to Baltimore, our cities have witnessed major demonstrations and more in response to police brutality. Black Lives Matter demonstrations — remarkable nonviolent, civil disobedience — put police reform on the national agenda.

We began to see a bipartisan consensus emerging around sentencing reform, closing down privately owned for-profit prisons and reforming police practices from body cameras to community policing.

This reform consensus was emerging because police brutality not only tramples individual rights; it also impedes community law enforcement. It breeds anger and cuts off community cooperation. Police become seen as occupiers, not allies. The poorest neighborhoods in our urban areas are tinderboxes; too often, it is police brutality that sets them afire.

The Obama administration’s 13-month review of Chicago’s police force was completed just before Trump was inaugurated. It praised the “diligent efforts and brave actions of countless” officers, and paid tribute to the tough task they have. Yet it found that “a break in trust” impeded the police force’s ability to prevent crime: “trust and effectiveness in combating violent crime are inextricably linked,” it concluded, calling for broad, fundamental reform of police in Chicago.

Trump and Sessions disagree. They think, as Trump put it, that the laws “totally protect the criminal, not the officers. … (Officers are) in more jeopardy than (criminals) are. We’re changing those laws.”

This displays an utter ignorance of the reality of police misconduct and its victims. It is also dangerous. It gives a green light to those who would trample basic rights and mocks those who follow the laws. It encourages departments to turn a blind eye to their own practices.

In Newark, a consent decree reform agreement led to a dramatic reduction in crime. Its monitor, Peter Harvey, said reform helps police do their jobs.

“Remember, it’s the community that helps you police,” Harvey said. “Very few cities have enough cops to patrol a city 24-7 effectively, 12 months a year. You need the community to help you.” And the community won’t help if you “place community residents in chokeholds where they die, and then turn around and say, ‘Well, we want to be your friend.’ Those are inconsistent messages.”

Frustrated in Washington, Mr. Trump likes to rouse his base in speeches like that in Long Island. But these words are trouble, and his policies are worse. Across America, police reform is long overdue. What Trump and Sessions make clear is that, as long as they are in office, it will have to come from the bottom up, in the face of dangerous delusions at the top.

August 4, 2017

Student Loan Complaints Up a Record 325 Percent Over Last Year, says CFPB
By Charlene Crowell

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As students and their families begin preparing for another school year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is reporting a record increase over the past year in the number of student loan complaints. The 325 percent increase in complaints includes federal and private student loans, debt collection, and debt relief.

According to Seth Frotman, CFPB Assistant Director and Student Loan Ombudsman, the growing connections between loans to gain educational credentials and the subsequent debt incurred that must be repaid – often on modest incomes – is a real-life dilemma.

“[T]the public broadly shares the benefits of a highly educated professional workforce serving in their communities,” noted Frotman.  “Yet, too often, the financial costs of these new credentials fall on individuals in careers with limited opportunity for wage growth to offset these costs.”

When student loan industry practices that delay, defer, or deny access to critical consumer protections, additional burdens are borne along with the weight of debt owed. Little wonder, then, that consumers have contacted CFPB for assistance.

Over 320 companies have been the source of complaints that CFPB received from March 2016 forward to April 1 of this year. The largest number of complaints, 11,500, concerned federal student loan servicing. Another 7,500 complaints were about private student loans. Issues with debt collection, however, affect both types of loans and generated 2,200 complaints.

Navient, the nation’s largest student loan servicer, is also the leading servicer when it comes to complaints of debt collection concerning both private and federal student loans. Some 63 percent private student loan complainants identified dealing with the servicer or lender as the key issue, compared to nearly half at 34 percent whose problems were based on an inability to pay their loans.

Readers may recall that earlier this year, CFPB sued Navient and two of its subsidiaries for allegedly using shortcuts and deception to cheat 12 million borrowers out of their rights to lower loan repayments. The firm’s loan servicing failures caused more than one-in-four borrowers to pay more than $4 billion in interest they should not have been charged from January 2010 to March 2015, according to CFPB’s complaint.

As the litigation is still pending, it does not appear that Navient or other loan servicers have complied completely with the borrower options of Income-Driven Repayment (IDR), or Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). Both options offer debt relief to student loan borrowers.

PSLF was designed to encourage student loan borrowers into public service careers and in return, receive partial loan forgiveness so long as all of the following four conditions were met:

1.     -  A qualifying loan;

2.     - Enrollment in a qualifying repayment plan;

3.     - Qualified public service employment, such as teaching, law enforcement, social work, or public health; and

4.      120 on-time, qualified loan payments.

What CFPB’s report found was that reported servicer problems were preventing borrowers’ from obtaining their PSLF benefits. Similarly, student loan borrowers hoping for affordable IDR payments have been similarly frustrated in initial enrollment and subsequent recertification with Navient and four other student loan servicers: ACS, AES/PHEAA, Great Lakes, and Nelnet. Among these five, two – AES/PHEAA and ACS – compiled the most IDR issues by complaints.

It would be wise to resolve this recent surge in student loan complaints before this October when the Department of Education begins accepting applications for PSLF. To forge progress in this specific area, CFPB has recommendations to ensure that borrowers and servicers alike are treated fairly and in accordance with federal protections.  In 2010, the Education Department made an effort to mitigate harms caused to borrowers based in incorrect information that servicers provided. In some of those cases, borrowers were enrolled when they were ineligible for the chosen payment plan.

Information that is easy for borrowers to understand would be an important first step in improving borrower-servicer relations. Secondly, for families already enrolled in IDR, reductions or changes in family incomes should be promptly reported and recertified. Both the size of the family and income(s) are both factors that determine what is affordable under IDR.

“Servicer breakdowns should never stand between a borrower and the relief they are entitled to under the law,” said Whitney Barkley-Denney, Senior Policy Counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. “We must ensure that borrowers and their families are getting the information and help they need from servicers to make their payments affordable and to qualify for any relief programs they are eligible for.”

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Charlene Crowell is the communications deputy director with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Aug. 6, 2017

Hypocrisy - Affirmative Action for Wealthy Immigrants, Not Students
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In the same week that it was revealed that the Department of Injustice is spearheading attacks on affirmative action, our 45^th President indicated his support for legislation that would drastically revive our nation’s immigration policy.  Instead of providing immigration opportunities to the families of people who are legal residents of our country, the pending legislation would create a “merit based” system for immigration. 

According to legislation sponsored by Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, applicants for legal immigration earn points based on education, high-paying job offers, entrepreneurial ability (including the ability to invest in the US), high-achievement – Nobel Prize winners are welcome, and age (bring on the young).  Presently, about a million people are granted green cards, but the Cotton-Perdue legislation would cut the number by half within a decade.  And the “diversity lottery” that admits 50,000 people each year, would be eliminated.  A significant number of African immigrants, among others, are admitted through the diversity lottery.

The Cotton-Perdue legislation provides affirmative action for wealthy immigrants.  If you have a high-paying job offer, or money to invest, or entrepreneurial ability, you’ve got a better chance of getting in than if you are a high-school grad who would be sponsored by her sibling.  Why is this affirmative action?  Because affirmative action says that when all else is equal, you choose a preference for a certain group.  In higher education, the preference – all else equal – is for those who have been historically excluded and systematically discriminated against.  When affirmative action policies were initially developed they were designed to favor African Americans and other underrepresented minorities.  In practical terms, white women have often been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, especially in the workplace.

Forty-five and his posse support preferences in immigration, but oppose them when it comes to higher education and employment.  The Administration’s positions on both affirmative action and immigration are winks and nods to 45’s base, the nativist white people who irrationally oppose immigration, and feel that whites experience more discrimination than do African Americans.  Their beliefs cannot be verified by economic data that indicate that African American people experience more unemployment, have lower incomes, less wealth and less education.  Equally educated African Americans take twice as long to find new jobs as whites do.  Beyond economic matter, basic quality of life issues (such as police violence) are harsher for African Americans than for whites

If 45 and his crew can state their preferences for immigration policy, why can’t institutions of higher education state their preferences for admissions policy? The problem is that 45 has hired these inferior and aggrieved white people, like Candice Jackson, who works in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education.  While a Stanford student, Jackson was a staunch critic of affirmative action.  She has also said, rather callously, that most accusations of campus rape are related to alcohol or the end of relationships. 

She is exactly the wrong type of person to lead an office of civil rights.  It is not clear why Jackson was hired, but she has the right ideological credentials – she wrote a book about “the women targeted by the Clinton machine”, worked for the conservative Judicial Watch organization, and has an axe to grind against feminists, and those who support racial economic justice.  Charging this woman with defending civil rights is the same as charging Scott Pruitt with protecting the environment!

Forty-five and his colleagues would probably support the same kind of affirmative action in college admissions as they support for immigration.  If you have money, are an entrepreneur, or have already achieved, then you deserve admission.  If not, that’s just too bad.  Are we facing the end of affirmative action and the end of immigration fairness?  Most likely, unless we resist.  Every day it becomes clearer that 45 will attempt to implement drastic structural change unless our legislative process is altered by the 2018 elections.  Meanwhile, 45 is throwing red meat at the braying dogs of racism and xenophobia.  And the dogs are barking at those of us who believe in justice and fairness.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author, and Founder of Economic Education. Her podcast, “It’s Personal with Dr. J” is available on iTunes. Her latest book “Are We Better Off: Race, Obama and public policy is available via amazon.com

Aug. 4, 2017

By Marc H. Morial

“Ferguson was used by some of America’s enemies and critics to deflect attention from their shortcomings overseas; to undermine our efforts to promote justice around the world … But America is special not because we’re perfect; America is special because we work to address our problems, to make our union more perfect.  We fight for more justice.  We fight to cure what ails us.  We fight for our ideals, and we’re willing to criticize ourselves when we fall short.  And we address our differences in the open space of democracy -- with respect for the rule of law; with a place for people of every race and religion; and with an unyielding belief that people who love their country can change it.” - President Barack Obama

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Three years ago this week, a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, fatally shot an unarmed, Black 18-year-old named Michael Brown. The anger and unrest sparked by that shooting came to be symbolized by the image of a burning convenience store on West Florissant Avenue. And it presented one of the greatest challenges of his career for Michael McMillan, who’d been appointed President and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis just a year before.

Last week, hope rose from the ashes as Michael McMillan and I opened the National Urban League Conference with the dedication of the Ferguson Community Empowerment Center, built upon the foundation of that convenience store.

I could not have imagined a more appropriate way to mark the opening of the National Urban League Conference, or an event more representative of the work of the Urban League Movement.

After Michael Brown’s tragic death, activists and advocates from across the nation, activists and advocates converged upon Ferguson, rightly and justly bringing the eyes and ears of America to focus on a violent injustice. When the marchers and the protestors had moved on, it was the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, under McMillan’s outstanding leadership, who went to work, literally building upon that foundation.

Where once the flames of righteous anger burned, lives will be transformed.

The building is shared by the Salvation Army and the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, and will house the Urban League’s Save Our Sons program, is one of the most successful job placement initiatives anywhere in the nation.  While in St. Louis, I had the pleasure to meet Willard Donlow Jr.

A little over a year ago, 35-year-old Willard Donlow, Jr., found himself in a deep depression. A single father, newly divorced, he had lost his job. He was praying for a way out. And his prayer was answered. Through Save Our Sons,  he learned new computer skills, how to craft a resume, how to network, how to present yourself in the right manner at an interview. How to find a job, and how to keep a job.

Just three days after completing the program, he was offers a job, and he's hard at work redeveloping abandoned buildings here in St Louis. Join me in congratulating Willard Dunlow.

Lives are being transformed.

As part of the opening ceremonies last week, we dedicated a memorial to Michael Brown. The concrete slab into which a bench and plaque are set is flecked with pink, orange and yellow. These colors are the shreds of 100 stuffed animals, left as part of a makeshift memorial in the middle of the street where Brown died. The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis kept the offerings in storage when the street had to be cleared.

The plaque reads, “This bench and decorative concrete base commemorate the social justice, change and movement towards a more just society that came about after his death. This base contains pieces of his memorial in the Canfield Green Apartments complex brought by people from all over the world.”

The Ferguson Empowerment Center stands as a tribute to the Urban League Movement’s mission to create a more just society, and the young men whose lives will be transformed there will be a testament to that mission.