As reported in last week’s issue of The Blue Banner, Carmichael Hall needs nearly $27 million in renovations.
The building needing repairs should come as no surprise, but the fact it needs such expensive repairs should be looked at more closely.
The newest building on campus, the Zeis Science & Multimedia Building, cost only $24 million to build, nearly $3 million less than the repair estimate to Carmichael.
Is it even worth spending $26.7 million on repairing a campus building nearly 45 years old?
Why did the university wait until the building was 40 years old to request funds for renovation from the state?
It is not as if the building suddenly began to crumble. Administration officials had to realize that a heavily trafficked, aging building would eventually deteriorate.
It might seem drastic to suggest UNC Asheville skip Carmichael’s repairs and build an entirely new instructional building, but maybe that is something the university should consider.
The economy, while on the rebound, is not doing well enough that the state of North Carolina can justify giving UNCA $26.7 million to fix an old building. It is hard to imagine the state’s economy will be doing well enough at any point in the next few years to justify such an action.
If UNCA decided to build an entirely new building, funding from the state would probably come more easily and the university might even receive private funding like it did from Steve and Frosene Zeis, who gave the university $3 million in April 2005.
Chances are slim that many people will be willing to pony up a couple million dollars to renovate an old building on a campus that is not even that old itself.
It would be one thing if this were UNC Chapel Hill and the renovations were needed for a 200-year-old historic building on campus, but we’re talking about a 45-year-old building on an 50-year-old campus.
Those numbers do not add up to $26.7 million. What they add up to is some poor planning by the university and maybe even some wasteful spending.
UNCA received funding for all of the 44 years since Carmichael Hall was built and yet officials apparently never saw fit to use any of that to fix any issues with the building? Hard to imagine, but that appears to be the case.
The university spent a lot of money over the last few years to do an assortment of different things on campus. A new $42 million health center is being built, a $24 million science building was just completed and dorm rooms have seen renovations,.Highsmith Union now has a computer lounge for commuters and the list continues.
In fact, the university just spent $150,000 to update its Web site. While it didn’t cost $27 million, maybe that $150,000 could have fixed a couple classrooms, ceilings or windows in Carmichael Hall.
Carmichael is a place where students actually, physically go. A Web site is something intangible in cyberspace. That $150,000, though, was certainly less elusive, particularly now that it is gone.
Hopefully the economy will turn around quickly and Carmichael Hall will receive the renovations to be better than ever, but in the more likely case this does not happen, those making the decisions at UNCA need to think of better alternatives to spend the money they do receive.
We can only hope from this point on the university will exercise more foresight and not let Karpen, Owen or Zageir get to the point where they too need millions of dollars of renovations. A little money spent here and there will go a long way toward preventing this from happening again.
http://www.thebluebanner.net/administration-waited-too-long-for-carmichael-1.1173353
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Not one of my stronger articles. Credit to Campus Voice Editor Tom McLean, Editor in Chief Sam Hunt and the copy editors for making this one a little bit tighter.
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I've just made an edit to correct a GFE, so this version is ever so slightly different than the linked version.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Public Affairs Journalism Article Two - Personality Profile: Asheville Foreclosures
By Patrick Zarcone
After being married 43 years, giving birth to four children and doting on nine grandchildren, Patricia Gulley has a lifetime worth of experiences.
That’s a good thing, too. The drama that comes along with marriage, children and grandchildren has prepared her well for what JPMorgan Chase has put her and her husband through for more than a year since their mortgage issues arose.
The Gulley’s troubles began in July 2008 when Jerry Gulley was laid off
from his job at Precision Restoration Services, an insurance restoration company based in Weaverville.
“He was terminated from his job on July 29, 2008, because of the economy,” said Patricia Gulley, 59, of Leicester. “The man had eight vans on the road and obviously they didn’t need my husband’s services after completing a $3 million job. They just let him go. No notice, no nothing, just fired him on the spot.”
Due to an injury that left her with two metal plates in her leg and unable to work, Patricia received Social Security Income disability payments from the government. When Jerry lost his job at Precision Restoration, the disability payments were their only source of income for the two months between Jerry’s firing and when he began to receive unemployment.
“When my husband lost his job, we had money to deal with for a month. I had my house payment to make, so I could see on the horizon that we were gonna be in trouble,” she said. “I called my mortgage company and told them, ‘Hey, look, we’ve lost our job and we’re gonna do the best that we can, is there some way you can help us?’”
Chase said they would be willing to help.
“They put me in touch with the homeowners assistance program, which put us under hardship forbearance, which put us then under loan modification because at that time the government was stepping in and doing loan modifications,” she said.
A loan modification, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is “a permanent change in one or more of the terms of a mortgagor's loan, (which) allows the loan to be reinstated, and results in a payment the mortgagor can afford.”
“What happened was, I sent in all the necessary financial statements, income tax papers and proof of not having a job, and I had my payment, but they said in order for us to qualify we have to be three months behind, so I made no payments,” she said. “They said, ‘don’t worry, we will add this to the end of your mortgage,’ which, oh my God, you don’t know how grateful I was (to hear that).”
Things were looking up at the time, according to Gulley.
“It took them from August through December to get all the paperwork done, to get the modification, but they lowered our interest rate from 7 to 4.5 percent and they took away the mortgage insurance. They lowered our payments and by the time they added everything in, our payments were $647,” she said. “We pay our insurance and our taxes along with our house payment, which brought our payments up to $750 and it had been $891, so that helped us a lot.”
The Gulley’s made seven payments to a specific person working with Chase Home Finance in Columbus, Ohio, and then received some startling news: the payments they’d made, more than $5,000 worth, were nowhere to be found.
They’re now receiving help from OnTrack Financial Education & Counseling in their case against Chase.
“My client received a loan modification last year and then the lender supposedly lost all their financial documents, so they were never given a loan modification by Chase,” said Grace Hines, a financial housing counselor at OnTrack. “Because of their error, and my client has proof, all the documents showing she received a loan modification, Chase has put them into a state of foreclosure. They have a hearing date and a sale date, and we’re trying to prevent all of that from happening.”
While Chase more than likely didn’t intentionally lose the documents, they also haven’t tried very hard to make things right, according to both Gulley and Hines.
“When all this got messed up, they had to trace back and find our payments, which they found over $5,000 in payments they had lost. So they did find our payments,” Gulley said. “What they said was, ‘well, we’re going to have to re-modify the loan again,’ and I said, ‘this is bullcrap, just go back like it was.’ Because all they were gonna do is tack more interest and more late fees and wait another three months or so.”
Chase Home Finance tacked on both interest and late fees for the months that they told the Gulley’s not to pay, just as the Gulley’s worried might happen.
“Chase told them not to pay because it wouldn’t help their situation anyway and when they were told by Chase not to pay their mortgage, they didn’t and now they’re being charged all these late fees,” Hines said.
On top of the late fees and interest, Chase asked the Gulley’s to re-do all of their paperwork and send it in again so that they could look at the information and decide if they were going to do another loan modification.
“Basically they’re still telling us that they're willing to stop the sale, but they can’t do it until they receive the documentation from the client, but the client has already faxed the documentation,” Hines said. “Chase is taking 10 days to receive the information, scan it into the system and get it to the bankruptcy department in order to make a decision.”
The Gulley’s sent their documentation to Chase Home Financial on Feb. 4 and called the next day to verify that the documents were received. Chase told them it would be until at least Feb. 12 before they look them over. Their court date is set for Feb. 17.
What led up to this point is mismanagement, confusion and poor communication, according to Gulley.
“They kept saying the payments will be due Nov. 1, then Dec. 1, well the last time I talked to them, ‘well it looks like it’s going to be Jan. 1.’ All these months have gone by, I have not made any payments, I do have some of the money,” she said. “I’ve even got my first August payment that was due that I couldn’t send because they said they lost our loan. Where do you send payments to somebody when they’ve lost your payments before and they can’t even find your loan, would you send them any money?”
The Gulley’s story is becoming more and more common in 2010, Hines said.
“From the (start) of this new year, I’m getting more of these from Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Chase customers. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but a lot of them paid their bailout money back to the government and now they’re pulling back and not honoring their modifications that they offered their clients and now we’re having to apply all over again,” she said.
This means extra work and time that’s being wasted on re-applying instead of being able to follow up on the work that has already been done, and all of it adds up to anger and frustration, Hines said.
“So everything I did with my clients last year, I’m having to do it all over again and it’s ridiculous. These people cry in my office everyday. You see grown men cry and you see grown ladies cry because of the emotional strife they’re going through is more than they can bear to handle. It’s just tough,” she said.
While dealing with the lost loan payments and having to go through the application process again, the Gulley’s also filed for bankruptcy.
“In November, we went in and we discussed our financial situation (with our attorney) and he said Chapter 7 (bankruptcy) would be what we needed to do so we went ahead and did that to get rid of the hospital bills that we could’ve never paid, there were almost like $10,000 of them, and credit card debt,” Gulley said.
Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to the U.S. Federal Courts, is part of the bankruptcy code that provides for "liquidation, i.e., the sale of a debtor's nonexempt property and the distribution of the proceeds to creditors.”
The bankruptcy has only added to the stress, Gulley said.
“The stress is just overwhelming,” she said. “I don’t sleep at night. I do, but I don’t, you know? It’s just hanging over our heads constantly. Are we going to have a place to live? What are we going to do?”
Right now, times are tough for the Gulley’s. They’re hoping that the loan modification issues can be worked out with Chase, and quickly since they only have so much money.
“We’re living on unemployment and when they strike the unemployment, I don’t know what we’re going to do. But we’ll make it through, we’ve made it so far and something will come along,” she said. “You know, the way these people have done us, if I wasn’t so mean and so aggressive and persistent, we probably would’ve already lost our house and it wasn’t even really our fault. I was making my payments, I was sending my payments to whom I was told to send them to and it’s just a nightmare.”
As someone who deals with mortgage lenders and their clients on a daily basis, Hines knows just how difficult the mortgage crisis has been on everyone involved, but that doesn’t make how they’re handling the crisis any more acceptable, she said.
“We know that the lenders are all inundated with a lot of applications and they’re struggling, but in the same respect, I’m just not feeling much pity for them,” Hines said.
Gulley said, in the end, persistence and courage are what separate those who keep their homes from those who don’t.
“People are afraid and fear gets into people and they give up and I’m not going to give up,” she said. “For some reason, God’s brought us this far and he’ll take us the rest of the way.”
Gulley also said having a little bit of fight in you helps as well.
“My theory is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and let me tell you, I can squeak,” she said. “I’ve had to fight for everything and it’s just a way of life. Either you’ve got to fight for it or lose everything you’ve worked for all your life.”
After being married 43 years, giving birth to four children and doting on nine grandchildren, Patricia Gulley has a lifetime worth of experiences.
That’s a good thing, too. The drama that comes along with marriage, children and grandchildren has prepared her well for what JPMorgan Chase has put her and her husband through for more than a year since their mortgage issues arose.
The Gulley’s troubles began in July 2008 when Jerry Gulley was laid off
from his job at Precision Restoration Services, an insurance restoration company based in Weaverville.
“He was terminated from his job on July 29, 2008, because of the economy,” said Patricia Gulley, 59, of Leicester. “The man had eight vans on the road and obviously they didn’t need my husband’s services after completing a $3 million job. They just let him go. No notice, no nothing, just fired him on the spot.”
Due to an injury that left her with two metal plates in her leg and unable to work, Patricia received Social Security Income disability payments from the government. When Jerry lost his job at Precision Restoration, the disability payments were their only source of income for the two months between Jerry’s firing and when he began to receive unemployment.
“When my husband lost his job, we had money to deal with for a month. I had my house payment to make, so I could see on the horizon that we were gonna be in trouble,” she said. “I called my mortgage company and told them, ‘Hey, look, we’ve lost our job and we’re gonna do the best that we can, is there some way you can help us?’”
Chase said they would be willing to help.
“They put me in touch with the homeowners assistance program, which put us under hardship forbearance, which put us then under loan modification because at that time the government was stepping in and doing loan modifications,” she said.
A loan modification, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is “a permanent change in one or more of the terms of a mortgagor's loan, (which) allows the loan to be reinstated, and results in a payment the mortgagor can afford.”
“What happened was, I sent in all the necessary financial statements, income tax papers and proof of not having a job, and I had my payment, but they said in order for us to qualify we have to be three months behind, so I made no payments,” she said. “They said, ‘don’t worry, we will add this to the end of your mortgage,’ which, oh my God, you don’t know how grateful I was (to hear that).”
Things were looking up at the time, according to Gulley.
“It took them from August through December to get all the paperwork done, to get the modification, but they lowered our interest rate from 7 to 4.5 percent and they took away the mortgage insurance. They lowered our payments and by the time they added everything in, our payments were $647,” she said. “We pay our insurance and our taxes along with our house payment, which brought our payments up to $750 and it had been $891, so that helped us a lot.”
The Gulley’s made seven payments to a specific person working with Chase Home Finance in Columbus, Ohio, and then received some startling news: the payments they’d made, more than $5,000 worth, were nowhere to be found.
They’re now receiving help from OnTrack Financial Education & Counseling in their case against Chase.
“My client received a loan modification last year and then the lender supposedly lost all their financial documents, so they were never given a loan modification by Chase,” said Grace Hines, a financial housing counselor at OnTrack. “Because of their error, and my client has proof, all the documents showing she received a loan modification, Chase has put them into a state of foreclosure. They have a hearing date and a sale date, and we’re trying to prevent all of that from happening.”
While Chase more than likely didn’t intentionally lose the documents, they also haven’t tried very hard to make things right, according to both Gulley and Hines.
“When all this got messed up, they had to trace back and find our payments, which they found over $5,000 in payments they had lost. So they did find our payments,” Gulley said. “What they said was, ‘well, we’re going to have to re-modify the loan again,’ and I said, ‘this is bullcrap, just go back like it was.’ Because all they were gonna do is tack more interest and more late fees and wait another three months or so.”
Chase Home Finance tacked on both interest and late fees for the months that they told the Gulley’s not to pay, just as the Gulley’s worried might happen.
“Chase told them not to pay because it wouldn’t help their situation anyway and when they were told by Chase not to pay their mortgage, they didn’t and now they’re being charged all these late fees,” Hines said.
On top of the late fees and interest, Chase asked the Gulley’s to re-do all of their paperwork and send it in again so that they could look at the information and decide if they were going to do another loan modification.
“Basically they’re still telling us that they're willing to stop the sale, but they can’t do it until they receive the documentation from the client, but the client has already faxed the documentation,” Hines said. “Chase is taking 10 days to receive the information, scan it into the system and get it to the bankruptcy department in order to make a decision.”
The Gulley’s sent their documentation to Chase Home Financial on Feb. 4 and called the next day to verify that the documents were received. Chase told them it would be until at least Feb. 12 before they look them over. Their court date is set for Feb. 17.
What led up to this point is mismanagement, confusion and poor communication, according to Gulley.
“They kept saying the payments will be due Nov. 1, then Dec. 1, well the last time I talked to them, ‘well it looks like it’s going to be Jan. 1.’ All these months have gone by, I have not made any payments, I do have some of the money,” she said. “I’ve even got my first August payment that was due that I couldn’t send because they said they lost our loan. Where do you send payments to somebody when they’ve lost your payments before and they can’t even find your loan, would you send them any money?”
The Gulley’s story is becoming more and more common in 2010, Hines said.
“From the (start) of this new year, I’m getting more of these from Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Chase customers. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but a lot of them paid their bailout money back to the government and now they’re pulling back and not honoring their modifications that they offered their clients and now we’re having to apply all over again,” she said.
This means extra work and time that’s being wasted on re-applying instead of being able to follow up on the work that has already been done, and all of it adds up to anger and frustration, Hines said.
“So everything I did with my clients last year, I’m having to do it all over again and it’s ridiculous. These people cry in my office everyday. You see grown men cry and you see grown ladies cry because of the emotional strife they’re going through is more than they can bear to handle. It’s just tough,” she said.
While dealing with the lost loan payments and having to go through the application process again, the Gulley’s also filed for bankruptcy.
“In November, we went in and we discussed our financial situation (with our attorney) and he said Chapter 7 (bankruptcy) would be what we needed to do so we went ahead and did that to get rid of the hospital bills that we could’ve never paid, there were almost like $10,000 of them, and credit card debt,” Gulley said.
Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to the U.S. Federal Courts, is part of the bankruptcy code that provides for "liquidation, i.e., the sale of a debtor's nonexempt property and the distribution of the proceeds to creditors.”
The bankruptcy has only added to the stress, Gulley said.
“The stress is just overwhelming,” she said. “I don’t sleep at night. I do, but I don’t, you know? It’s just hanging over our heads constantly. Are we going to have a place to live? What are we going to do?”
Right now, times are tough for the Gulley’s. They’re hoping that the loan modification issues can be worked out with Chase, and quickly since they only have so much money.
“We’re living on unemployment and when they strike the unemployment, I don’t know what we’re going to do. But we’ll make it through, we’ve made it so far and something will come along,” she said. “You know, the way these people have done us, if I wasn’t so mean and so aggressive and persistent, we probably would’ve already lost our house and it wasn’t even really our fault. I was making my payments, I was sending my payments to whom I was told to send them to and it’s just a nightmare.”
As someone who deals with mortgage lenders and their clients on a daily basis, Hines knows just how difficult the mortgage crisis has been on everyone involved, but that doesn’t make how they’re handling the crisis any more acceptable, she said.
“We know that the lenders are all inundated with a lot of applications and they’re struggling, but in the same respect, I’m just not feeling much pity for them,” Hines said.
Gulley said, in the end, persistence and courage are what separate those who keep their homes from those who don’t.
“People are afraid and fear gets into people and they give up and I’m not going to give up,” she said. “For some reason, God’s brought us this far and he’ll take us the rest of the way.”
Gulley also said having a little bit of fight in you helps as well.
“My theory is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and let me tell you, I can squeak,” she said. “I’ve had to fight for everything and it’s just a way of life. Either you’ve got to fight for it or lose everything you’ve worked for all your life.”
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Mayor's vote clashes with community standards
Last Tuesday, the Asheville City Council voted 4-2 in favor of further examining the issues surrounding the extension of benefits to city employees in same-sex partnerships.
Although the right decision, there is very little chance city employees involved in same-sex relationships will ever receive the same benefits of married heterosexual city workers due to Mayor Terry Bellamy’s opposition to the idea.
At the council meeting, Bellamy said, “I’m not going to support the motion. I’m not going to support it now and I’m not going to support it when the information comes back.”
That is not the right attitude, and Bellamy’s refusal to even consider the idea is unacceptable, particularly for Asheville.
The only so-called benefit homosexual city employees have now is the city cannot fire employees for their sexual orientation.
City employees involved in same-sex relationships enjoy no other benefits they can share with their partners or their children.
Bellamy easily won re-election last year, most likely with the votes of several homosexual individuals. With her “no” vote, she betrayed them, regardless of whether they are city employees or not.
To suggest the families of those in homosexual relationships do not deserve the same benefits as other city employees is both an affront to the way that person lives and an affront to them as human beings.
Bellamy’s mayoral actions have otherwise been progressive and socially conscious, particularly with her focus on housing reform.
But apparently her conscience does not include all of society. Otherwise she would support the measure.
Councilman Jan Davis also voted against the motion. He said extending benefits to same-sex couples would be too costly in the current economy, and the city lacks the funding to provide the benefits.
It is hard to say whether that is true, but at least Davis makes a reasonable argument. However, it might also be an excuse for a personal agenda. Bellamy gave no reason other than to say health insurance should not be politicized.
And Bellamy is right. Health insurance should not be a political issue. However, neither should benefits for employees and their families.
A person’s sexual orientation should never be a political issue. But it is. It always has been and will continue to be because that is just the kind of nation we live in.
If the mayor does not believe health insurance is a political issue, perhaps she should turn on the television to witness just how much health insurance involves politics.
That does not make it right, but it is also reality.
It would be wonderful if the city council did not have to vote to extend benefits to homosexual city employees, and instead, benefits were given to every city employee and their families.
Unfortunately, it is a political issue and it requires people to actually stand up for what is right and act upon it.
Many consider Asheville to be a progressive oasis in a desert of a not-so-progressive area of the state. In fact, the magazine The Advocate recently named Asheville the No. 12 most gay-friendly city in America. The city also has more homosexuals per capita than most large cities in the United States.
Whether or not the mayor or anybody else in Asheville likes it, gay people play a big role in making Asheville the city it is.
It is because of the welcoming attitude Asheville has previously portrayed that so many homosexual people live and visit here.
There are currently six jurisdictions in North Carolina that provide benefits for same-sex domestic partnerships, including the cities of Durham and Greensboro and the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Asheville needs to be added to that group if the city wants to continue to tout itself as gay-friendly and progressive.
http://www.thebluebanner.net/mayor-s-vote-clashes-with-community-standards-1.1162671
Although the right decision, there is very little chance city employees involved in same-sex relationships will ever receive the same benefits of married heterosexual city workers due to Mayor Terry Bellamy’s opposition to the idea.
At the council meeting, Bellamy said, “I’m not going to support the motion. I’m not going to support it now and I’m not going to support it when the information comes back.”
That is not the right attitude, and Bellamy’s refusal to even consider the idea is unacceptable, particularly for Asheville.
The only so-called benefit homosexual city employees have now is the city cannot fire employees for their sexual orientation.
City employees involved in same-sex relationships enjoy no other benefits they can share with their partners or their children.
Bellamy easily won re-election last year, most likely with the votes of several homosexual individuals. With her “no” vote, she betrayed them, regardless of whether they are city employees or not.
To suggest the families of those in homosexual relationships do not deserve the same benefits as other city employees is both an affront to the way that person lives and an affront to them as human beings.
Bellamy’s mayoral actions have otherwise been progressive and socially conscious, particularly with her focus on housing reform.
But apparently her conscience does not include all of society. Otherwise she would support the measure.
Councilman Jan Davis also voted against the motion. He said extending benefits to same-sex couples would be too costly in the current economy, and the city lacks the funding to provide the benefits.
It is hard to say whether that is true, but at least Davis makes a reasonable argument. However, it might also be an excuse for a personal agenda. Bellamy gave no reason other than to say health insurance should not be politicized.
And Bellamy is right. Health insurance should not be a political issue. However, neither should benefits for employees and their families.
A person’s sexual orientation should never be a political issue. But it is. It always has been and will continue to be because that is just the kind of nation we live in.
If the mayor does not believe health insurance is a political issue, perhaps she should turn on the television to witness just how much health insurance involves politics.
That does not make it right, but it is also reality.
It would be wonderful if the city council did not have to vote to extend benefits to homosexual city employees, and instead, benefits were given to every city employee and their families.
Unfortunately, it is a political issue and it requires people to actually stand up for what is right and act upon it.
Many consider Asheville to be a progressive oasis in a desert of a not-so-progressive area of the state. In fact, the magazine The Advocate recently named Asheville the No. 12 most gay-friendly city in America. The city also has more homosexuals per capita than most large cities in the United States.
Whether or not the mayor or anybody else in Asheville likes it, gay people play a big role in making Asheville the city it is.
It is because of the welcoming attitude Asheville has previously portrayed that so many homosexual people live and visit here.
There are currently six jurisdictions in North Carolina that provide benefits for same-sex domestic partnerships, including the cities of Durham and Greensboro and the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Asheville needs to be added to that group if the city wants to continue to tout itself as gay-friendly and progressive.
http://www.thebluebanner.net/mayor-s-vote-clashes-with-community-standards-1.1162671
CBS's right-wing partisanship hurts Super Bowl
In America, it’s usually only acceptable for sports and politics to mix once a particular player decides to retire and enter the arena of politics, such as our own Heath Shuler.
CBS’s decision to run an ad titled “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,” that conservative Christian group Focus on the Family funded, may alter the fate of Super Bowl advertising.
The ad, featuring former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, was rumored to be overtly anti-abortion in nature, but the message was apparently toned down for the final cut. Many women’s groups, including the National Organization for Women, wrote to CBS and requested the ad be pulled.
While CBS, or any broadcast network airing the Super Bowl, can decide which ads to run and which ads to keep off viewers’ television screens, the decision should include both precedent and common decency.
After Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction,” CBS has played it safe when it comes to supplementary Super Bowl content, including rejecting advertisements from liberal organizations.
In 2004, they rejected a MoveOn.org ad featuring children working in a factory asking the question, “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?” They also rejected a pro-vegetarianism advertisement by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
They did not, however, reject the advertisement from the militantly anti-gay and anti-abortion group, Focus on the Family. What prompted these decisions on what advertisements are acceptable to air during America’s most watched telecast of the year?
The “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” ad was much tamer than many originally thought, but it does not change the fact that the spot advertised a highly political and highly controversial organization.
Does this mean that even the Super Bowl, a historically politics-free haven, can now become the friendly confines for wildly political organizations and their more mild- mannered advertisements?
There is no place for a political agenda, and CBS made a monumental mistake by airing the ad. CBS rejected ads by both GoDaddy.com and the gay dating Web site ManCrunch.com because they “Had the potential to offend a significant number of people.”
It is hard to imagine how an effeminate former football player who now sells lingerie online (GoDaddy.com) or two friends kissing as a third looks on in horror (ManCrunch.com) could be considered more offensive than an ad by a group whose founder, James Dobson, said part of why Sept. 11 happened was because, “God is displeased with America for its pride and arrogance, for killing 40 million unborn babies, for the universality of profanity and for other forms of immorality.”
CBS and other corporations have the right to choose which ads they air. If they feel ads featuring even the slightest homosexuality might be too offensive to their viewers, perhaps they should re-evaluate just who is watching.
As for the politicization of Super Bowl ads, there should be none.
Sports remains one of the few institutions left in this country that politics and religion has yet to poison. Unfortunately, CBS took a step towards changing that Sunday night.
http://www.thebluebanner.net/cbs-s-right-wing-partisanship-hurts-super-bowl-1.1123409
CBS’s decision to run an ad titled “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,” that conservative Christian group Focus on the Family funded, may alter the fate of Super Bowl advertising.
The ad, featuring former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, was rumored to be overtly anti-abortion in nature, but the message was apparently toned down for the final cut. Many women’s groups, including the National Organization for Women, wrote to CBS and requested the ad be pulled.
While CBS, or any broadcast network airing the Super Bowl, can decide which ads to run and which ads to keep off viewers’ television screens, the decision should include both precedent and common decency.
After Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction,” CBS has played it safe when it comes to supplementary Super Bowl content, including rejecting advertisements from liberal organizations.
In 2004, they rejected a MoveOn.org ad featuring children working in a factory asking the question, “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?” They also rejected a pro-vegetarianism advertisement by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
They did not, however, reject the advertisement from the militantly anti-gay and anti-abortion group, Focus on the Family. What prompted these decisions on what advertisements are acceptable to air during America’s most watched telecast of the year?
The “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” ad was much tamer than many originally thought, but it does not change the fact that the spot advertised a highly political and highly controversial organization.
Does this mean that even the Super Bowl, a historically politics-free haven, can now become the friendly confines for wildly political organizations and their more mild- mannered advertisements?
There is no place for a political agenda, and CBS made a monumental mistake by airing the ad. CBS rejected ads by both GoDaddy.com and the gay dating Web site ManCrunch.com because they “Had the potential to offend a significant number of people.”
It is hard to imagine how an effeminate former football player who now sells lingerie online (GoDaddy.com) or two friends kissing as a third looks on in horror (ManCrunch.com) could be considered more offensive than an ad by a group whose founder, James Dobson, said part of why Sept. 11 happened was because, “God is displeased with America for its pride and arrogance, for killing 40 million unborn babies, for the universality of profanity and for other forms of immorality.”
CBS and other corporations have the right to choose which ads they air. If they feel ads featuring even the slightest homosexuality might be too offensive to their viewers, perhaps they should re-evaluate just who is watching.
As for the politicization of Super Bowl ads, there should be none.
Sports remains one of the few institutions left in this country that politics and religion has yet to poison. Unfortunately, CBS took a step towards changing that Sunday night.
http://www.thebluebanner.net/cbs-s-right-wing-partisanship-hurts-super-bowl-1.1123409
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Obama administration mishandles budget
More than $768 billion will go to continue the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, buying predator drones and building more weapons in the fiscal year 2011, according to the Obama administration’s Monday budget release.
Obama also proposed a three-year spending freeze on several domestic programs, including farm subsidies and education.
The controversial freeze would only save approximately $250 billion from 2011-13, according to administration officials, chump change when it comes to the deficit in this country.
If the president were serious about a spending freeze, he would consider stopping military expenditures for those three years, which he is not doing.
The U.S. will spend $768.2 billion on defense in 2011 alone, according to the budget release.
That is enough money to pay for pretty much any of the health care plans, whose bills are now stalled in Congress.
It would also cover the cost of green-technology construction including continental high-speed rail lines, residential solar panels and nationwide wind turbines.
Instead, the government will spend that money on continuing two disastrous wars, building more bombs, more helicopters, more planes and finding new, expensive ways to kill other people.
The U.S. spends nearly as much money on defense than the rest of the world combined, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s FY 2009 report.
World military expenditures totaled $1.473 trillion in 2008 and of that amount, the U.S. spent $711 billion, or 48 percent of the total, according to the center’s statistics.
Even though the reported figure for FY 2009 was $515.4 billion for defense spending, that number did not include nuclear weapons, combat figures or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were included in the numbers used by CACNP.
A military-spending tab ringing up at nearly $1 trillion makes talk of a domestic-spending freeze hard to digest for Americans, regardless of political persuasion.
If the administration has to halt certain expenditures, the most unnecessary should be first on the chopping block.
A rare consensus, both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) agree upon a defense-spending freeze.
So as to not end on a sad and aggravating note, some positive things did make it into the budget report.
According to the FY 2011 budget, the Obama administration will repeal many of the Bush-era tax breaks for wealthy families and individuals as well as oil, coal and gas companies, resulting in more than $1 trillion designated for green-technology funding.
The budget also included an extension for middle-class tax breaks, and small businesses will receive some benefits for hiring more workers.
Other optimistic budget items included a revoke of the No Child Left Behind Act, a funding-halt for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada and an increase in Pell Grant tuition by $17 billion.
http://www.thebluebanner.net/obama-administration-mishandles-budget-1.1112216
Obama also proposed a three-year spending freeze on several domestic programs, including farm subsidies and education.
The controversial freeze would only save approximately $250 billion from 2011-13, according to administration officials, chump change when it comes to the deficit in this country.
If the president were serious about a spending freeze, he would consider stopping military expenditures for those three years, which he is not doing.
The U.S. will spend $768.2 billion on defense in 2011 alone, according to the budget release.
That is enough money to pay for pretty much any of the health care plans, whose bills are now stalled in Congress.
It would also cover the cost of green-technology construction including continental high-speed rail lines, residential solar panels and nationwide wind turbines.
Instead, the government will spend that money on continuing two disastrous wars, building more bombs, more helicopters, more planes and finding new, expensive ways to kill other people.
The U.S. spends nearly as much money on defense than the rest of the world combined, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s FY 2009 report.
World military expenditures totaled $1.473 trillion in 2008 and of that amount, the U.S. spent $711 billion, or 48 percent of the total, according to the center’s statistics.
Even though the reported figure for FY 2009 was $515.4 billion for defense spending, that number did not include nuclear weapons, combat figures or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were included in the numbers used by CACNP.
A military-spending tab ringing up at nearly $1 trillion makes talk of a domestic-spending freeze hard to digest for Americans, regardless of political persuasion.
If the administration has to halt certain expenditures, the most unnecessary should be first on the chopping block.
A rare consensus, both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) agree upon a defense-spending freeze.
So as to not end on a sad and aggravating note, some positive things did make it into the budget report.
According to the FY 2011 budget, the Obama administration will repeal many of the Bush-era tax breaks for wealthy families and individuals as well as oil, coal and gas companies, resulting in more than $1 trillion designated for green-technology funding.
The budget also included an extension for middle-class tax breaks, and small businesses will receive some benefits for hiring more workers.
Other optimistic budget items included a revoke of the No Child Left Behind Act, a funding-halt for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site in Nevada and an increase in Pell Grant tuition by $17 billion.
http://www.thebluebanner.net/obama-administration-mishandles-budget-1.1112216
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Public Affairs Journalism Article One - Foreclosures in Asheville
By Patrick Zarcone
Of North Carolina’s 100 counties, only 13 experienced more home foreclosures than Buncombe County in 2009, according to statistics provided by the Administrative Office of the Courts.
There were 1,174 home foreclosures in Buncombe County from January 2009 through December 2009, a 41 percent increase from 2008, when Buncombe County saw 833 home foreclosures, according to the AOC.
“Because housing prices were rising, there were folks who would start buying houses in anticipation of them rising higher, and this actually contributed to prices rising further because it placed a demand on housing,” said Robert Tatum, associate professor of economics at UNC Asheville. “They were buying so they could turn around and sell it at a higher price,” he said. “So when housing prices finally fell, this put people in a lot of bad situations because a lot of folks had high loan-to-values.”
The state experienced a 17 percent increase in foreclosures from 2008 to 2009 for a total of 63,341.
Rising home sales and the sudden plunge the housing market took caused the current crisis, according to Tatum.
With the economy in a downturn, foreclosures have only become more common.
“The economy slowing down in and of itself caused unemployment, so that put people in another situation that would make it kind of hard for them to pay for their loans,” Tatum said. “It’s just that housing prices were rising and people didn’t think they’d actually ever fall, and it led to a lot of these consequences.”
For residents in some of North Carolina’s westernmost counties, there are at least two organizations that are ready and willing to help those who find themselves in a situation where they might lose their home.
Pisgah Legal Services has a presence in the foreclosure protection field in Buncombe County and other counties in the western part of the state.
“Pisgah Legal is a not-for-profit organization (that) offers free legal services for the low-income population here in Western North Carolina,” said Pablo Averza, a legal screener at Pisgah Legal Services in Asheville. “We serve seven counties, but our services are not limited to those seven counties because we have several programs that help more counties, almost 15 in total.”
Averza, who is working on his fourth year at Pisgah Legal, is the person who interviews nearly every person that calls Pisgah Legal for help with anything ranging from legal representation in a domestic violence case to issues with banks or lenders in home foreclosure cases.
“One of the (issues) we help with is people under distress due to the foreclosure situation, and we have a team of two attorneys here that help with those matters,” Averza said. “We have a staff of 16 attorneys and we also have a network of 300 attorneys that help us in a pro-bono fashion.”
According to literature available at their office, Pisgah Legal and their full-time staff and network of attorneys generated approximately $27 million in quantifiable benefits to their clients in 2008 on only a budget of $2.2 million, all of which came through donations from people, businesses and corporations.
The numbers for 2009 won’t be available for another few weeks, but they should be even greater than the numbers for 2008, according to Averza.
“We saw an increase of requests in all of our services last year, and I believe there was probably 20 to 25 percent (increase) than we used to receive before and in terms of foreclosures there was a big escalation,” he said.
While Pisgah Legal does represent clients in home foreclosure cases, they’re only able to represent those who have legitimate legal claims that can be defended in court. For cases without legal claims, there is another organization in Buncombe County that can help.
OnTrack Financial Education & Counseling is another local nonprofit organization that is seeing firsthand the impact the foreclosure crisis is having on Western North Carolinians.
“We’re a non-profit financial counseling agency and people come to us because they’re having difficulties and struggles in one part of their financial lives or another, so we help people get out of debt and learn to live debt free,” said Thomas Luzon, director of counseling at OnTrack.
OnTrack provides services ranging from helping with student loan defaults to improving landlord-renter relationships to foreclosure prevention. They serve the 18 westernmost counties in North Carolina and rely on grants in order to fund some of their programs.
Their foreclosure prevention services are one of their most popular and also the most in-depth that they provide.
“They come in for help because they want to keep their house. Most of the time there has been a reduction in income usually due to a job layoff in these days and they’d like to keep their house, but you know, lenders are difficult to work with,” Luzon said. “What people don’t really understand what options they may have available to them, so that’s the most intensive service that we provide.”
Providing a service is one thing, but providing a service well is something entirely different. According to the statistics provided by Luzon, OnTrack does their job well.
“In 2008, we opened 511 cases and lost four and in 2009 we opened 834 cases and lost seven,” he said.
That’s a 99.2 percent success rate for both 2008 and 2009. Continued success will be important.
“North Carolina and us are expecting (the number of foreclosures) to increase in the neighborhood of about 50 percent,” he said.
That would put the number at more than 1,200 new foreclosure cases by the end of this year.
The only problem with these foreclosure numbers is that they don’t necessarily tell the real story, Luzon said.
“When the foreclosure crisis started, the media and everything all really zeroed in on foreclosures and the thing is, that’s the aftermath, you know? The horse is already out of the barn so why worry about the door? It’s really the defaults that are the key.”
Defaults, in terms of foreclosures and in the simplest terms, are when a person is behind on their mortgage payments to the bank or the lender. Defaults, as a statistic, can be a good indicator of what’s to come in terms of the number of foreclosures ahead, Luzon said.
“According to the Mortgage Bankers Association in January the number of people who were 60 days late on their mortgage was double that of January of ’09,” Luzon said. “That’s always the precursor.”
Another important and overlooked aspect of home foreclosures is the impact it has on the community as a whole when it comes to home equity.
“You could own your home free and clear and say to yourself, ‘you know, I really feel bad about the foreclosure crisis but I own my house free and clear, so I’m immune to it, I don’t have to worry about,’” he said. “But if I live across the street from you and I get foreclosed on, that affects you.”
Because so many people don’t understand their mortgages or how foreclosures work, people don’t respond as they should when they do actually get foreclosed.
“The one thing on the part of people where they’re hurting themselves when it comes to the foreclosure crisis is they wait too long to come see us,” Luzon said.
Foreclosure prevention is such an important issue that OnTrack actually provides a service for those who aren’t even in default yet, he said.
“We do a lot of outreach and we even have a service called pre-mortgage default, and that’s for people who are current on their mortgage but are afraid they might become delinquent in a month or two, and that’s when we like to get them. That’s the best time to get them.”
“But there’s a lot more options in the beginning than there are at the end,” he added.
Of North Carolina’s 100 counties, only 13 experienced more home foreclosures than Buncombe County in 2009, according to statistics provided by the Administrative Office of the Courts.
There were 1,174 home foreclosures in Buncombe County from January 2009 through December 2009, a 41 percent increase from 2008, when Buncombe County saw 833 home foreclosures, according to the AOC.
“Because housing prices were rising, there were folks who would start buying houses in anticipation of them rising higher, and this actually contributed to prices rising further because it placed a demand on housing,” said Robert Tatum, associate professor of economics at UNC Asheville. “They were buying so they could turn around and sell it at a higher price,” he said. “So when housing prices finally fell, this put people in a lot of bad situations because a lot of folks had high loan-to-values.”
The state experienced a 17 percent increase in foreclosures from 2008 to 2009 for a total of 63,341.
Rising home sales and the sudden plunge the housing market took caused the current crisis, according to Tatum.
With the economy in a downturn, foreclosures have only become more common.
“The economy slowing down in and of itself caused unemployment, so that put people in another situation that would make it kind of hard for them to pay for their loans,” Tatum said. “It’s just that housing prices were rising and people didn’t think they’d actually ever fall, and it led to a lot of these consequences.”
For residents in some of North Carolina’s westernmost counties, there are at least two organizations that are ready and willing to help those who find themselves in a situation where they might lose their home.
Pisgah Legal Services has a presence in the foreclosure protection field in Buncombe County and other counties in the western part of the state.
“Pisgah Legal is a not-for-profit organization (that) offers free legal services for the low-income population here in Western North Carolina,” said Pablo Averza, a legal screener at Pisgah Legal Services in Asheville. “We serve seven counties, but our services are not limited to those seven counties because we have several programs that help more counties, almost 15 in total.”
Averza, who is working on his fourth year at Pisgah Legal, is the person who interviews nearly every person that calls Pisgah Legal for help with anything ranging from legal representation in a domestic violence case to issues with banks or lenders in home foreclosure cases.
“One of the (issues) we help with is people under distress due to the foreclosure situation, and we have a team of two attorneys here that help with those matters,” Averza said. “We have a staff of 16 attorneys and we also have a network of 300 attorneys that help us in a pro-bono fashion.”
According to literature available at their office, Pisgah Legal and their full-time staff and network of attorneys generated approximately $27 million in quantifiable benefits to their clients in 2008 on only a budget of $2.2 million, all of which came through donations from people, businesses and corporations.
The numbers for 2009 won’t be available for another few weeks, but they should be even greater than the numbers for 2008, according to Averza.
“We saw an increase of requests in all of our services last year, and I believe there was probably 20 to 25 percent (increase) than we used to receive before and in terms of foreclosures there was a big escalation,” he said.
While Pisgah Legal does represent clients in home foreclosure cases, they’re only able to represent those who have legitimate legal claims that can be defended in court. For cases without legal claims, there is another organization in Buncombe County that can help.
OnTrack Financial Education & Counseling is another local nonprofit organization that is seeing firsthand the impact the foreclosure crisis is having on Western North Carolinians.
“We’re a non-profit financial counseling agency and people come to us because they’re having difficulties and struggles in one part of their financial lives or another, so we help people get out of debt and learn to live debt free,” said Thomas Luzon, director of counseling at OnTrack.
OnTrack provides services ranging from helping with student loan defaults to improving landlord-renter relationships to foreclosure prevention. They serve the 18 westernmost counties in North Carolina and rely on grants in order to fund some of their programs.
Their foreclosure prevention services are one of their most popular and also the most in-depth that they provide.
“They come in for help because they want to keep their house. Most of the time there has been a reduction in income usually due to a job layoff in these days and they’d like to keep their house, but you know, lenders are difficult to work with,” Luzon said. “What people don’t really understand what options they may have available to them, so that’s the most intensive service that we provide.”
Providing a service is one thing, but providing a service well is something entirely different. According to the statistics provided by Luzon, OnTrack does their job well.
“In 2008, we opened 511 cases and lost four and in 2009 we opened 834 cases and lost seven,” he said.
That’s a 99.2 percent success rate for both 2008 and 2009. Continued success will be important.
“North Carolina and us are expecting (the number of foreclosures) to increase in the neighborhood of about 50 percent,” he said.
That would put the number at more than 1,200 new foreclosure cases by the end of this year.
The only problem with these foreclosure numbers is that they don’t necessarily tell the real story, Luzon said.
“When the foreclosure crisis started, the media and everything all really zeroed in on foreclosures and the thing is, that’s the aftermath, you know? The horse is already out of the barn so why worry about the door? It’s really the defaults that are the key.”
Defaults, in terms of foreclosures and in the simplest terms, are when a person is behind on their mortgage payments to the bank or the lender. Defaults, as a statistic, can be a good indicator of what’s to come in terms of the number of foreclosures ahead, Luzon said.
“According to the Mortgage Bankers Association in January the number of people who were 60 days late on their mortgage was double that of January of ’09,” Luzon said. “That’s always the precursor.”
Another important and overlooked aspect of home foreclosures is the impact it has on the community as a whole when it comes to home equity.
“You could own your home free and clear and say to yourself, ‘you know, I really feel bad about the foreclosure crisis but I own my house free and clear, so I’m immune to it, I don’t have to worry about,’” he said. “But if I live across the street from you and I get foreclosed on, that affects you.”
Because so many people don’t understand their mortgages or how foreclosures work, people don’t respond as they should when they do actually get foreclosed.
“The one thing on the part of people where they’re hurting themselves when it comes to the foreclosure crisis is they wait too long to come see us,” Luzon said.
Foreclosure prevention is such an important issue that OnTrack actually provides a service for those who aren’t even in default yet, he said.
“We do a lot of outreach and we even have a service called pre-mortgage default, and that’s for people who are current on their mortgage but are afraid they might become delinquent in a month or two, and that’s when we like to get them. That’s the best time to get them.”
“But there’s a lot more options in the beginning than there are at the end,” he added.
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