Robert Bowman wants to be a lawyer. He tried the whole Horatio Alger Jr. story for himself. He went to community college, worked and borrowed money for the schools he attended. What he did is what millions of college students attempt to do. But as I often say we are in the age of the Strapped and it makes it very difficult for any of us to get ahead. The amount of debt one has to enter into in order to get a post high school education is tragic.

In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.

But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.

So they are now preventing him from actually starting his career which could lead to him begining to pay down his loans. That’s just great.

And they wonder why they’ve been doing so horribly?

As if buying a lemon isn’t bad enough, Chrysler is now demanding that some customers who settle lemon-law claims forfeit any future legal claims against the company.

That’s the conclusion of several consumer lawyers who have clients with lemon-law claims against the new Chrysler Corp., run by Italian automaker Fiat.

Consumers who take cash settlements for lemon vehicles in lieu of selling the vehicles back to Chrysler are being asked to sign a release that indemnifies Chrysler and its dealerships “from all known and unknown claims, damages, costs, attorneys fees, expenses, loss of services, personal injuries, and property damage.”

So if you buy another car from Chrysler-Fiat in the future and it turns out to be a lemon there’s no avenue for recourse.

Even though we the American people and immigrants working in this country who pay taxes bailed out Citibank –they still have the audacity to raise credit card interest rates.

Today, the Service Employees International Union released a statement from Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger on news that Citigroup is raising interest rates on as many as 15 million credit card holders. According to the Financial Times, “People close to the situation said that Citi, which is about to cede a 34 percent stake to the US government as part of its latest rescue, had upped rates on between 13 and 15 million credit cards it co-brands with retailers such as Sears.” This comes a week after the bank announced it would raise salaries by as much as 50 percent for investment bankers and other top executives, to accommodate for smaller annual bonuses.

They disgust me for many reasons.

I think this paragraph from the Workers United Union’s website says it all.

The worker and labor activists’ efforts successfully thwarted Wells Fargo’s push for liquidation.  Last week, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved a pro-worker acquisition deal by British private equity firm Emerisque.  The deal brings the 125-year-old suit maker out of bankruptcy and comes with Emerisque’s assurance that they will protect Hartmarx jobs.

Look out American Medical Association, Phrma, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare, GHI and Blue Cross Blue Shield! There’s a new anti-healthcare group in town. You all are no longer the leaders in denying millions of Americans healthcare claims and hiking up drug costs. Yes, that’s right HAARM is here. The acronym stands for Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine and they have a message for all of us.

I also like their list of HAARM-FUL Hereos.

Here’s one…

Most people know Rush Limbaugh as one of the country’s foremost experts on prescription drugs. But Rush is playing a much bigger role in the health care debate than that. Every day he educates his 20 million listeners on the finer points of Obamacare, like the little known tidbit that once this plan passes the government will be able to tell you not only what kind of car to drive but what kind of TV to purchase. Rush will never let the facts get in the way of scaring the bejeezus out of his listeners.

So I’m currently reading this book that was published by The New Press in 1999 called Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America by Tom Diaz. I’m probably half way through the book and what I’ve read has really led me to agree with Diaz’s conclusion that the gun industry is just like the tobacco industry. I was already on the Brady Campaign’s email list but since I’ve been reading this book I’m starting to pay more attention to what they’re doing.

Currently, the Brady Campaign has been fighting Big-Bang (my version of Big Ag, Big Pharma and Big Oil for the gun industry) on allowing guns on college campuses and classrooms.

POSITION: The Brady Campaign adamantly opposes efforts by the gun lobby to force college officials to allow students and teachers to carry hidden handguns on campus and in classrooms.

PROBLEM: The gun lobby wants to override decisions made by those responsible for campus safety by allowing students to keep handguns and other firearms in college dorm rooms and carry them into classrooms.

On their website the Brady Campaign has a map up of where gun-in-schools bills have failed and I think they’re doing a great job right now.  In Diaz’s book he states that gun ownership is waning (or was in 1999). In any case gun owners are a small minority when compared to the rest of the nation. This means that the majority of the nation can mobilize and stand up to the gun lobby if it chooses to.

I get a lot of e-Activism type emails day in and day out. Yet I have to say that I found what ACORN is doing (thanks to Democracy in Action/Wired for Change) with this email action quite remarkable. The email is sent on behalf of Dennis Leary (no, not the actor) on behalf of his 84 year-old mother Irene. His mother is about to loose her home and he’s asking for our help to send a message to the bank.

Dear Jason,

I love my mom. Her name is Irene. She’s 84-years-old, and she is the most important person in the world to me. Today, her bank is selling the house she has lived in for 34 years, and it’s breaking my heart. The unbelievable part of it is that OneWest — the bank — doesn’t even have to talk with my mom before selling her house right out from under her. That’s because OneWest is among four big mortgage service companies that haven’t signed on to President Obama’s program to help stop foreclosures. It’s the “Making Home Affordable” plan, and even though OneWest is the recipient of federal bailout money, they are still taking my mom’s home away today.

Irene addressing her son explains how she found herself in this situation.

Your father was receiving dialysis three times a week and suffering from chronic, congestive heart failure. He was vulnerable and realized he was on the verge of passing. He was worried that he’d leave me with $30,000 to $40,000 in credit card debt. With those concerns, we sought advice.

OneWest advised us we would qualify for a loan based on our credit scores and the loan would “solve our problems.” They definitely preyed upon our vulnerability.

Your father died a month after we received the loan. Our fixed income was $2,388.81 per month. With his passing, the income dropped to $1,600.00 per month. I continued to make payments, but they kept going up and up. They went up so much that even if my husband was still alive, we could not have made them.

ACORN is also asking people to call the the corporation and ask that they not sell Irene’s home.

So I’m still reading Douglas Rushkoff’s book Life Inc. when I came across this excerpt.

Studies by psychologists at the University of Chicago in which researches measured subjects’ ability to see problems from the perspective of others demonstrated how “cultures that emphasize interdependence over individualism may have the upper hand”.” (In their conclusions, the psychologists noted the individualistic bias of Western corporations compared with those of Asia. A Texas corporation “aiming to improve productivity told its employees to look in the mirror and say ‘I am beautiful’ 100 times before coming to work. In contrast, a Japanese supermarket instructed its employees to begin their day by telling each other ‘you are beautiful’.’)

Isn’t that remarkable?

Another good excerpt from Life Inc. by Douglas Rushkoff.

Because the gross domestic product of an exploited area invariably goes up, case studies like this are used ad evidence of how IMF practices and free trade provide necessary assistance to developing nations. Using these metrics, the more pollution a project and generate, the more environmental remediation and medical costs will be rung up, increasing the GDP even further. In purely corporatist terms—which are the only ones most of us physically removed form the effects our our actions have to go on—pollution is good.

Indeed. Pollution is good for you! It’s good for the economy!

So I’m still reading Douglas Rushkoff’s book Life Inc. when I come across this segment on big auto, highways and Robert Moses.

Urban-planning masters such as Robert Moses developed highway schemes intended to keep undesirable people from traveling into desirable neighborhoods. In just one of many examples, Moses built highway overpasses with only nine feet of clearance in order to prevent busses from getting through. This was intended to keep poor black people from traveling from the city to the new suburbs, while also making the purchase of a car a prerequisite for residence.

What Moses did is deplorable. This also reminds me of stories of how Georgetown in the District of Columbia was planned. I’ve heard from people that it was made deliberately inaccessible to “undesirable” people.

I’d also like to add how disgusting US automakers have been throughout the decades they’ve been in operation. They totally conspired and successfully wiped out mass-transit systems all over the nation.

Mirroring the techniques of railroad barons of the century before, GM’s lobbying group crafted legislation that made highways federally funded and controlled. Their justification was that highways were a national defense issue-required to move troops around the country in case of an attack. Conveniently, this made the secretary of defense, Charles Wilson, responsible for highway acts. Wilson was a major GM shareholder, and former president of the company.

He was the one who said “I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.” The highway system that was brought into existence destroyed the homes of thousands.

According to Senator Gaylord Nelson, 75 percent of federal transportation spending has gone toward highways, while 1 percent has been spent on mass transit.

We wonder why the nation’s major mass-transit lines are suffering. The underfunding of these systems has been going on since the days Senator Nelson was in office. Personally, I hate automobiles they crowd the streets of NY and DC making it harder for people to get around. I’m glad that Times Square, NYC has blocked traffic from entering. I think we should look at doing that in DC as well.

I look forward to the day when cars, trucks, vans and SUV’s as we know them are eradicated. Whenever gas prices go up we get a little closer to this reality. Mass-transit has to be our future. As far as workers who manufacture cars now, I think we have to begin moving those jobs into the green economy and into mass-transit. Make windmills, solar panels, busses and trains!