[Quote:]

As many as one in five members of the armed services are being preyed on by loan centers set up near military bases that can charge cash-strapped military families interest of 400% or more, a new Pentagon report has found.

Steep lending charges have long plagued servicemembers, but the problem has become a more urgent concern to the military as it has struggled to fill its ranks during the Iraq war. That’s because debt troubles can keep troops from going overseas.

“We’re seeing a growing trend of folks who are not eligible to deploy because of financial problems,” says Capt. Mark Patton, commander of Naval Base Point Loma in California. Patton says debt problems can cost some servicemembers their security clearances.

The report says “payday loan” stores (so named because their loans are often due on a borrower’s next payday) have sprung up by the thousands around military bases and elsewhere in the past decade.

Lenders typically charge $15 to $25 per $100 loan for two weeks, and most loans are extended for several weeks. The report says the average loan is $350 and has an annual interest rate of 390% to 780%. The average borrower, it says, pays back $834 for a $339 loan.

The report cites estimates 13% to 19% of servicemembers — at least 175,000 people — took out high-interest, short-term loans last year. It said nine out of 10 loans go to borrowers who take out five or more over a year.

How’s that for “taking care of the troops”?

[Quote:]

Paul Reviczky, who fled Hungary in 1957 to escape Communist persecution, is one of the latest homeowners to discover that Ontario law favours banks, mortgage companies and purchasers over victims of fraud.

“I was shocked to learn that this could be the law in Canada,” Reviczky says. “I fled Hungary to escape lawlessness like this and now my sense of security in Canada is gone.”

Gerry Phillips, Ontario’s minister of government services, vowed yesterday to change the land-registry system to protect homeowners like Reviczky from title fraud.

Reviczky purchased the property at 220 Sheppard Ave. W. in 1980 for $67,500 to generate a rental income that would help pay for the education of relatives back in Hungary.

The retired tobacco farmer, who came to Canada 49 years ago with his wife Ilona and his then 3-year-old daughter Marietta, says he felt so strongly about his duty to help out the family he left behind that he specified in his will that the property could not be sold after his death because the income was to be used for their support.

Since his wife’s death in February 2005, he has lived alone in his home a few kilometres from the rental property.

Reviczky could not believe his ears on June 26 when his neighbour, a real estate agent, told him she had noticed on the computer that he had sold his rental property in May.

“So I went back to my office, got the record from the computer and showed it to him,” Vivian Ho told the Toronto Star. “His face turned red and I was worried that he was going to have a heart attack.”

Police believe Reviczky’s most recent “tenants” forged his name on a power of attorney that purported to give a grandson named “Aaron Paul Reviczky” authority to sell the home on his behalf.

“I don’t have a grandson named Aaron,” Reviczky says. “I don’t have any grandsons.”

[Quote:]

Spence claims he was falsely accused of stealing his own car after he was stopped by police, who sold the vehicle at auction before he could appear in court to clear his name.

“I tried to tell them it was my car, but they wouldn’t listen,” the Baltimore man said.

Police spokesman Matt Jablow said the department is investigating the incident.

“We’re looking into the circumstances surrounding why the car was sold,” Jablow said.

Spence, 28, said police pulled him over in February because the 1993 red Cadillac Eldorado coupe had a cracked rear window. Spence said he and his two passengers were then dragged from the car and arrested by four officers who said the car was stolen.

“I was listening to the radio from the back seat of the police car. It said a gray Cadillac sedan was stolen; mine is a red coupe. I guess the officer must have been color blind,” Spence told The Baltimore Examiner.

In June, Spence represented himself in court, providing the title and the testimony of the car’s previous owner. By then it was too late, however; the car had been sold at auction two months earlier.

http://www.bombornot.com

(in the hot-or-not style)

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When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.

He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.

Do you know what happened this week back in 1850, in California?

California became a state.

The State had no electricity.

The State had no money.

Almost everyone spoke Spanish.

There were gun fights in the streets.

So basically, it was just like California today, except the women had real breasts and the men didn’t hold hands.