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Great reflective report: What do you do when what "Everybody knows" is 100% wrong?

10/21/2013

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A powerful retrospective report showing the real facts behind the notorious "McDonald's Hot Coffee" case -- the gruesome burns, the fact that she was in a parked car, not a moving one, the fact that McDonald's had hundreds of warnings that it was serving dangerously hot coffee, the fact that the plaintiff only asked for her medical bills to be paid (before McDonald's offered her a paltry $800 against medical bills of $10,000) -- on and on, the "outrageous" result turns out to have been more than justified, and the only real outrage is that McDonalds and the Chamber of Commerce have managed to fool most people into thinking that they were the victims in this case.

Watch this excellent New York Times report, and then if you really want to understand how corporate America tries to turn real people against each other (the better to fleece them, and keep them from standing up to big corporations), look for the great movie "Hot Coffee" too.


P.S.  Click here to make a contribution -- one-time or monthly -- to help make another documentary that helps set the record straight about the civil justice system, the only part of government where real people get to stand toe-to-toe and fight back on level ground with corporations.  That's why corporations hate it so much, and why they want to tell you lies, so you'll hate it too
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Oregon among the worst in terms of letting debtors keep enough to recover

10/11/2013

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Oregon Allows Debt Collectors to Push Working Families into Poverty

A new report by the National Consumer Law Center gives Oregon a D

Portland, OR - The decision of what bills to pay and what bills to put off is a game of financial roulette tens of thousands of Oregonians are forced to play every month as they struggle to recover from the economic downturn. The priorities are obvious - keep your family housed and fed and pay for transportation plus other items necessary for work - other creditors get what's left.

A new report from the National Consumer Law Center exposes how state exemption laws take these difficult decisions out of workers hands by giving debt collectors the ability to seize a substantial portion of a person's wages and the tools essential for their work. The report, No Fresh Start: How States Let Debt Collectors Push Families into Poverty, finds that Oregon law fails to meet basic standards that would allow debtors to continue to work productively to support themselves and their families.

Exemption laws are designed to protect debtors and their families from poverty, and preserve their ability to be productive members of society. Oregon gets an F when it comes to protecting wages. Current wage garnishment law allows debt collectors to push a family below the poverty level. A minimum wage earner working full time can have their weekly pay reduced to $268.50, less than the federal poverty level for a two-person family. If they work less than full time their wages may be reduced to $217.50, less than half of the federal poverty level for a family of four. Oregon's overall grade is a D. A copy of the NCLC report can be found here.

Oregon's archaic exemption laws fuel the lucrative and fast-growing debt buyer industry. "When a worker's wages are slashed below the poverty level to pay off old credit card debt that was bought for pennies on the dollar by an out-of-state debt buyer everyone loses. The debtor can't pay the landlord or the childcare worker and the family is forced to rely on government services to make ends meet," said Angela Martin, Executive Director of Economic Fairness Oregon, an advocacy group fighting for reform of Oregon's debt collection laws.

"In 2012, the FTC received more than 125,000 consumer complaints about debt collection, representing almost 25% of all consumer complaints it received. Debt collection lawsuits are clogging up civil courts across the nation," said Robert Hobbs, National Consumer Law Center's Deputy Director and author of Fair Debt Collection. "This report serves as a wake-up call for states to update their exempt property laws and stop putting millions of families at risk. Doing so will allow local courts to redirect their focus from the insatiable appetite of a debt machine that churns out millions of undocumented debt collection lawsuits each year."

The NCLC report includes several recommends for reforming state exemption laws, those include:

Preserve the debtor's ability to work, by protecting a working car, work tools and equipment.
Protect the family's housing, necessary household goods, and means of transportation.
Protect a living wage for working debtors that will meet basic needs.
Protect retirees from destitution by restricting creditors' ability to seize retirement funds.
Be automatically updated for inflation.
###


Angela Martin
Executive Director
Economic Fairness Oregon
www.economicfairnessoregon.org

angela@economicfairness.org
(w) 503-236-6088
(c)  503-810-9770
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John Gear Law Office LLC and Salem Consumer Law.  John Gear Law Office is in Suite 208B of the Security Building in downtown Salem at 161 High St. SE. That is right across High Street from the Elsinore Theater, a half-block south of Marion County Courthouse.

John Gear is only licensed to practice law in Oregon. This site may be considered advertising under Oregon State Bar rules. There is no legal advice on this site so do not take anything you read here as advice for your particular problem or situation. And I do not represent you and I am not your attorney unless you have hired me with a representation agreement. While I do want you to consider me when you seek an attorney, you should not hire any attorney based on brochures, websites, advertising, or other promotional materials.  All original content on this site is Copyright John Gear, 2010-2022.
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