An Indiana staffing firm has just agreed to a substantial settlement to settle discrimination claims.

The Renhill staffing company will pay $585,000 in an age, race and retaliation discrimination suit. According to the suit, brought forth by the EEOC, “Renhill’s Fort Wayne office and a former office in Decatur violated federal law by failing to refer African-American applicants and applicants ages 40 and older for work assignments.” Furthermore, the EEOC claimed that employees of the firm were retaliated against when they complained about these practices.

In addition to the financial settlement, Renhill will be under a consent decree for the next three years, so that monitors can ensure that the company’s discriminatory practices are not continuing.

Popularity: 76% [?]

I remember complaining because I had student loans. But, I kept telling myself that it went towards a good cause. However, had I not gotten loans, I might not have been able to finish college.

Today, I read something that showed me how close to home this credit crunch is going to hit Americans.

It appears that some banks are now no longer offering student loans.

In the past fortnight, some banks, including HSBC, have pulled out of the $85 billion (£42 billion) a year US student loans market, fuelling anxiety that the turmoil that hit debt markets on Wall Street last summer is spilling over into the wider economy and making credit more difficult to secure for ordinary American households.

In the US, many undergraduates take out a federal guaranteed loan and top up their financial needs with a private loan from lenders such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citi-group. In the academic year 2005-06, $17 billion in private student loans was used to finance higher education.

Banks have become reluctant to offer private student loans because worsening credit conditions have meant that they cannot package up the loans and sell them on.

Although the brightest students who win places at America’s rich Ivy League universities will be affected less because of generous bursaries - which do not have to be repaid – less able students applying to other institutions are expected to face difficulty in securing private loans to fund their study. At one end of the field is Harvard University, with $34 billion of endowments, and at the other are many community colleges and low-tier universities with limited resources.

So, unless you kid’s in an Ivy League school, chance are that securing a loan is going to be a problem. Mark my words: this will be the next cause for a major credit crisis. When scarcity becomes an issue, you’ll see the vultures swoop in, offering student loans at bad rates. When things subside in the housing market, these bad loans will be sold to them and default rates will skyrocket.

Why do I think this? It is because the current presidential administration’s answer is to bail out big business and leave the little guys to fend for themselves, which leaves them vulnerable to unscrupulous practices. So, I will not be surprised when the issue arises again, in a different form.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Well, sort of.

Chester Davenport is believed to be one of the wealthiest black entrepreneurs in America. Via his Georgetown Partners firm, he has made quite a name for himself.

Now, he is trying to influence one of the largest business mergers of the upcoming year. As you may be aware, the two satellite radio companies, XM and Sirius are talking about joining forces. This could mean that there would be more than 300 nationwide radio channels under one company’s control.

Davenport believes that there should be opportunities for minority broadcasters to lease channels on the new XM/Sirius network. What Davenport is speaking of is a share of the pie that could mean between 50-100 satellite channels. Right now, the odds are not stacked in his favor. The current FCC chair, Kevin Martin, has shown that he is willing to side with the big corporations over the rights of minority ownership.

So, let’s see what happens. I will say that I hope that we will not see minority radio owners shut out of the new frontier of satellite radio.

Popularity: 14% [?]

While candidates bicker back and forth over who’s more presidential, there a big white elephant in the room that’s screaming for attention — the economy.

Last week, President Bush, with the support of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, announced an economic stimulus plan.  The idea is to give up to $800  to single people and up to $1600 to married couples in hopes to kick start the economy again and avoid a recession.

Let me publicly go on the record and say I think this is a horrible idea.  First of all, this, like the money for the Iraq war, will be borrowed money.  So, at some point in time, this will need to be paid back, with interest.  Secondly, what a we going to buy that will really help the U.S.?  Most of our manufacturing is done outside of the U.S. so, for example,  if a family buys a new T.V. or clothes, that money will likely go out outside of the country.

Well, to say the least, this economic stimulus plan was not well-received.  Foreign markets plummeted as investors sold off their shares in U.S. holdings.  In an emergency measure, the Federal Reserve cut the key interest rate by .75%.  This was sparked by fears of a huge drop in the U.S. stock market when it opened this morning.  At one point in time, there was an expectation of a 500-point drop in the Dow when markets opened today.  This news did little assuage investors and the Dow posted a 300-point loss in the opening minutes of trading.

One thing should be glaringly obvious in all this.  Who you pick for president is important.  As you can tell, their policies have a huge impact on your daily lives.  So, for whomever you consider voting, remind them of one thing — it’s still all about the economy.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted.

As you might be aware, I had been contemplating a change since Radio One fired Matsimela Mapfumo from its “The Power” channel on XM radio and replaced his show with a sports show. When I heard that he got a show with Sirius, I gave it even more thought but, there were still a few shows on the Power that were keeping me there.

Well, it looks like I am being nudged, again. I read, today, that XM Radio is ending its relationship with Radio One and will be bringing programming for the Power in-house. From what I can surmise, XM will continue carrying the shows of Joe Madison, Warren Ballentine and Al Sharpton but, effective Jan 8, all other on-air talent will be dumped.

According to Radio One, the advertising dollars just weren’t coming in. Truthfully, the quality of the programming on the Power had gone down significantly in my eyes and I really only listened to three shows: the Joe Madison Show in the morning; Digital Spin, at night; and On With Leon on the weekends.

The only reason I chose XM over Sirius was the availability of a black talk channel. However, when Radio One began “dumbing down” their programming (this was how I saw it), I had to question whether or not I would stick with XM. So, we’ll see what the next few weeks bring. If it’s not good, I’m off to Sirius.

Popularity: 26% [?]

My wife was sharing with me a story about somebody we know and was telling me how this person is asking that all the gifts that people give her child not be made in China. Given the volume of items made in China, that is an awesome challenge. My wife conveyed to me that she thought the request was kind of funny but, personally, I agree with this mother.

As I have posted here before, just because our government won’t acknowledge it, toy safety is a big concern. In recent news, we have seen story after story about toys manufactured in China containing lead paint. I even heard about a kids C.S.I. game that contained asbestos. As a parent, this bothers me greatly. A kid could inhale something or accidentally consume paint chips and, over time, develop some serious problems.

Recently, tests on more than 1,200 childrens’ products yielded some horrifying results. Researchers from 9 states, along with the national Center for Health, Environment and Justice encountered the following:

Tests on more than 1,200 children’s products, most of them still on store shelves, found that 35 percent contain lead — many with levels far above the federal recall standard used for lead paint.

A Hannah Montana card game case, a Go Diego Go! backpack and Circo brand shoes were among the items with excessive lead levels in the tests performed by a coalition of environmental health groups across the country.

Only 20 percent of the toys and other products had no trace of lead or harmful chemicals…

…Easthope said 17 percent of the children’s products tested had levels of lead above the 600 parts per million federal standard that would trigger a recall of lead paint. Jewelry products were the most likely to contain the high levels of lead, the center said, with 33.5 percent containing levels above 600 ppm. Among the toys that tested above that limit was a Hannah Montana Pop Star Card Game, whose case tested at 3,056 ppm.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a level of 40 ppm of lead as the maximum that should be allowed in children’s products. Lead poisoning can cause irreversible learning disabilities and behavioral problems and, at very high levels, seizures, coma, and even death.

This is something to think about as we purchase toys for our little ones this year.

UPDATE: You can find more information at www.healthytoys.org. Right now, the site seems to be experiencing high traffic so, you may not get in right away.

Popularity: 26% [?]

As I think about the housing crisis, I can only think of the words of one of my favorite talk show host, Joe Madison, saying that black people are “undervalued, underestimated and marginalized.” You see, for many years, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been railing against predatory lending. Of course, their warnings went unheeded. Now, we stand on the edge of financial catastrophe in this country, largely fueled by a lot of bad home loans — with a disproportionate amount of them made to people of color.

However, the question that’s not really been pursued in the mainstream press is “where minorities steered into bad loans when they could have otherwise been offered more conventional loans?” An article I read causes me to think that this was very likely the case.

In September, the Federal Reserve released a study that found 52.8 percent of African-Americans got a high-cost home loan when they refinanced in 2006, compared to 37.7 percent of Latinos and just 25.7 percent of whites in the same year.

A similar study by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known by its acronym ACORN, in September found the same pattern even when income was equal.

According to ACORN, upper-income blacks were 3.3 times, and Latinos 3 times, more likely than upper-income whites to have a high-cost loan when purchasing a home in 2006.

“I keep hoping one day I’ll do a study where race doesn’t play a part,” said Liz Wolff, author of the ACORN study.

“But clearly, there is a racial bias,” she added.

So, the foreclosures climb and more and more Americans are losing their homes. But, we have to ask, how many minority families are going to lose their homes because they were steered into loans by people who felt that it was okay to, basically, rip off people of color.

Popularity: 27% [?]

I was watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night and he interviewed Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician. In that interview, Klein shared something that should be of grave concern to Americans that suspect that they are being spied on and don’t like the notion.

A while back, Bush had to admit that he was illegally using the NSA to spy on Americans. However, not being able to completely tell the truth, Bush told the American people that he was only spying on Americans who were contacting people internationally, with specific interest to contact to parties in the Middle East.

However, if what Klein is saying is true, this directly contradicts what President Bush is professing. According to Klein, the government, with AT&T’s cooperation, copied all internet data that flowed through AT&T’s network.

This interview followed a Capitol Hill press conference in which Klein was a participant. In his statements, Klein spoke of a secret rooms in AT&T’s San Francisco offices, as well as other AT&T locations, containing the equipment the NSA would need to copy off the data. While Klein was never allowed in the room, he was responsible for installing the “splitter” that would allow for the data to stream to two places simultaneously, one-half that was hard-wired directly into this secret room.

Consider some of what he alleges:

He said that as an AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers.

One day he found that the splitters were hard-wired into a secret room on the sixth floor.

Klein said only a management-level employee with NSA security clearance was allowed inside, but documents he obtained form AT&T showed that highly sophisticated data mining equipment was kept there.

Conversations he had with other technicians and the AT&T documents led Klein to believe there are 15 to 20 such sites nationwide, including in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and Atlanta, he said.

Now, understand this. This meant that, without a warrant or even a reason to suspect those they were spying on, phone (voice-over-internet), internet, email, etc. traffic were being captured. Furthermore, since a good portion of traffic goes over AT&T’s network, you didn’t even have to be an AT&T customer to have your information captured.

All this comes on the heels of Congress considering whether or not to grant retroactive immunity to companies who participated in these illegal measures.

I say no to immunity and let the chips fall where they may for this people who violated the law and the Constitution to spy on Americans.

Popularity: 17% [?]

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961

So, what happens when the war profiteers take over? You get this current mess in Iraq and the drumbeats to war with Iran. War is good money. Ask once-struggling Halliburton or Blackwater how good the “war business” is. It almost seems that good common sense has been abandoned by people who embrace the logic that spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars so their friends can make tens of billions is fiscally-sound policy.

It is against this backdrop that an interesting piece of legislation has been introduced. The House passed a bill, by a vote of 375-3, calling for a prohibition of war profiteering. The bill calls for stiff penalties for companies and individuals who knowingly defraud the government. Individuals can face sentences of up to 20 years in prison for fraud and companies can face fines ranging from $1 million to double the gross profits of the contracts, whichever is greater.

Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, took exception to the bill, worrying that “mere overpricing” would be criminalized. However, to that I respond with what the same refrain I constantly hear from the “conservative” side of the aisle, “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

I, for one, hope that this legislation become law. War is supposed to be a last resort, not a business decision.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Riddle me this — if the economy is doing so well, why are home foreclosures going up? I mean, if there is so much money going around, am I left to believe that people, in record numbers, are just choosing not to pay their mortgages?

The real estate information company, RealtyTrac Inc., of Irvine, CA, has released its foreclosure figures for the time frame of September 2006-September 2007 and the findings are disheartening. For the month of September 2007, alone, 223,538 foreclosures were filed. Then number for September 2006 was 112,210, which just missed doubling last year by a mere 882 filings. RealtyTrac did say, however, that this number was lower that August 2007 — in that month 243,947 foreclosures were filed.

However, the company is also saying that, despite September’s numbers being lower than August’s, this should not be seen as an end in the cycle of foreclosures. With the rates on adjustable rate mortgages increasing, it would be expected that more will lose their homes due to an inability to afford the higher mortgage payments.

Popularity: 26% [?]