| Chartered to protect the henhouse, has the FTC turned into a fox?
I rarely get e-mail from the USA Today's Byron Acohido (who from time to time interviews me for my opinions on tech). But today, Acohido drew my attention to a story that he has co-authored with Jon Swartz under the headline FTC under fire as credit bureaus sell consumers' data. The story draws attention to a complex Web of potentially conflicting interests involving Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras, the law firm she used to work for, her husband who still works for it, how that law firm represents one of the big three credit reporting bureaus, and whether or not the FTC has morphed into an agent of the credit reporting bureaus' success from the consumer guardian that The People have entrusted it to be. While the targets of this follow-the-money like inquest deny any impropriety, I can certainly understand the position of Robert Kuttner, author of The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity who, who in response to the USA Today inquiry, said: Federal agencies that are supposed to be looking out for the consumer are really protecting the companies that do bad things the agencies were set up to prevent.
Free steps towards protecting your ID
Thanks to a new law in Maryland, you can now request the three major credit reporting agencies not give out your credit report. It is just the newest way to protect you from identity theft. It will cost you $15, a five dollar fee from each credit reporting agencies. But there are two other steps you can take to guard your good name and they are both free.You see ads all the time promising you a free credit report. Those ads are all too familiar to Angie Barnett, President and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland. “It is all over the internet, we find them everywhere, I'm listening to the radio, you hear it constantly." But Barnett warns buyers beware. She says, “that you can get these free credit reports but what they are going to do is give you something you can already get for free then secondly they are going to try to sell you a bundle or package of services that are directly related to protecting you from identity theft." She goes on to say that those services are steps you can take on your own without paying.The federal government requires all three of the major credit reporting agencies, Transunion, Experian and Equifax, to give you a free copy of your report once a year. There is only one place on the internet where you can do that and it is http://www.annualcreditreport.com“We encourage people to be sure you stagger it," says Barnett.
Federal deficit possible, study says
We get that. There is no point in coming on and using your usual Rhetoric 101 trick of discrediting the source, the reporter, the paper, and anyone else in the partisan drivel supply chain. The source does that. Posted 14/01/08 at 10:02 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment .
Clinton blames Obama camp over remark
RENO, NEV. (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday faulted chief rival Barack Obama's campaign for twisting her comments about slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Clinton was questioned by reporters about South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn's reaction to her comments last week that seemed to suggest that President Lyndon B. Johnson should get more credit for passage of major civil rights legislation rather than King. Clyburn, in an interview in The New York Times, had expressed disappointment in the Clinton campaign over what she had said as well as former President Clinton's remark in New Hampshire about Obama telling a "fairy tale" in his opposition to the Iraq war. "I regret the way that this matter has been used," Clinton told reporters.
Filed under: CollegeBasketball
She set out as she had done every Sunday afternoon for years. She locked her door, turned to the weather, and held the hand rail as she stepped carefully down from the porch. Once on the ground she adjusted her hat on her gray head. As this was a winter day in the Christmas season, a cold day, she also adjusted her coat. Had it been raining, she would have pulled a large lawn and leaf bag, as if it were a poncho, over her head and upper body. Most times she shouldered her hand bag. This day she also shouldered a bulging plastic shopping bag. She walked along the dirt road that would lead her to the paved road that would lead her to the highway. Her only company was her shadow, small and indistinct at her feet. She walked without the deliberate care of someone unfamiliar with the terrain, but neither was her gait quick.
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