People are seeing that all the policy coming out of Congress has nothing to do with what is good for American citizens....they are only legislating for global corporations. Please stop allowing the DNC to choose your candidates in all elections.....Third Way corporate democrats have captured the DNC.....run and vote for labor and justice!
Today I want to look at the issues leading the political debate and show that all of these issues are not in the public interest and ask that you think about what pundits, what news media, what political organizations have led on these issues and who they told you to vote, and how your incumbent has failed to shout out about these issues. I spent 4 years talking about these issues as they are unfolding and I shouted to vote Third Way corporate democratic incumbents out of office because I knew what they worked towards.....and so did all of the above organizations!!!!!!
Please work to find media and journalism that works for people and start your own community network and newsletter so this captured media and non-profits are not the only ones with voice!!!!
Now, I know this immigration bill kills workers, both domestic and immigrant. It is only meant to lower labor standards to third world levels and as we hear Congressional leaders say it will add another dimension to society.......green card and no citizen rights......THAT IS NOT A DIMENSION WE WANT!!!!! Jeb Bush had the gall to make it sound like we were moving towards Canada.......THAT IS THE BIGGEST PIECE OF PROPAGANDA YET!!!
Details of the Senate immigration bill
By The Associated PressPosted: 06/11/2013 11:36:53 AM PDT
A look at the immigration overhaul bill now before the Senate: ———
BORDER SECURITY
—The bill makes it a goal that there be 100 percent surveillance of the border with Mexico and that 90 percent of would-be crossers are caught or turned back.
—Within six months of enactment of the bill, the Homeland Security Department must develop a border security plan to achieve those goals, including the use of drones, additional agents and other approaches; and develop a plan to identify where more fencing is needed.
—If the goals of a 90 percent effectiveness rate and continuous surveillance on the border are not met within five years, a Southern Border Security Commission would be established with border-state governors and others to determine how to achieve them.
—Before anyone in the U.S. illegally can get a new provisional legal status, the border security and border fencing plans must be in place. Before they can get permanent resident green cards, the plans must be substantially completed, and a new entry-exit system must also be implemented at U.S. seaports and airports to track people coming and going. A mandatory system for employers to check workers' legal status must also be in place.
—About 3,500 new Customs agents would be hired.
—The National Guard would be deployed to the border to build fencing and checkpoints and perform other tasks.
—Funding would
Advertisement be provided to increase border-crossing prosecutions and to create more border patrol stations and forward operating bases. ———
PATH TO CITIZENSHIP
—The estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally could obtain "registered provisional immigrant status" six months after enactment of the bill as long as:
(1) The Homeland Security Department has developed border security and fencing plans.
(2) They arrived in the U.S. prior to Dec. 31, 2011, and maintained continuous physical presence since then.
(3) They do not have a felony conviction or three or more misdemeanors.
(4) They pay a $500 fine.
—People in provisional legal status could work and travel in the U.S. but would not be eligible for most federal benefits, including health care and welfare.
—The provisional legal status lasts six years and is renewable for another $500.
—People deported for noncriminal reasons can apply to re-enter in provisional status if they have a spouse or child who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, or if they had been brought to the U.S. as a child.
—After 10 years in provisional status, immigrants can seek a green card and lawful permanent resident status if they are current on their taxes and pay a $1,000 fine, have maintained continuous physical presence in the U.S., meet work requirements and learn English. Also the border triggers must have been met, and all people waiting to immigrate through the legal system as of the date of enactment of the legislation must have been dealt with.
—People brought to the country as youths would be able to get green cards in five years, and citizenship immediately thereafter.
———
HIGH-SKILLED WORKERS
—The cap on the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers would be immediately raised from 65,000 a year to 110,000 a year, with 25,000 more set aside for people with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. school. The cap could go as high as 180,000 a year depending on demand.
—New protections would crack down on companies that use H-1B visas to train workers in the U.S. only to ship them back overseas.
—Immigrants with certain extraordinary abilities, such as professors and researchers, multinational executives and athletes, would be exempted from green-card limits. So would graduates of U.S. universities with job offers and degrees in science, technology, engineering or math.
—A startup visa would be made available to foreign entrepreneurs seeking to come to the U.S. to start a company.
—A new merit visa, for a maximum of 250,000 people a year, would award points to prospective immigrants based on their education, employment, length of residence in the U.S. and other considerations. Those with the most points would earn the visas.
—The bill would eliminate the government's Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which randomly awards 55,000 visas to immigrants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States, so that more visas can be awarded for employment and merit ties.
———
LOW-SKILLED WORKERS
—A new W visa would allow up to 200,000 low-skilled workers a year into the country for jobs in construction, long-term care, hospitality and other industries.
—A new agriculture worker visa program would be established to replace the existing program. Agriculture workers already here illegally, who've worked in the industry at least two years, could qualify in another five years for green cards if they stay in the industry.
———
FAMILY IMMIGRATION
—Under current law, U.S. citizens can sponsor spouses, children and siblings to come to the U.S., with limits on some categories. The bill would bar citizens from sponsoring their siblings and would allow them to sponsor married sons and daughters only if those children are under age 31.
—Legal permanent residents can currently sponsor spouses and children, but the numbers are limited. The bill eliminates that limit.
———
EMPLOYMENT VERIFICATION
—Within four years, all employers must implement E-Verify, a program to electronically verify their workers' legal status. As part of that, noncitizens would be required to show photo ID that must match with a photo in the E-Verify system.
______________________________________________
Regarding Baltimore City teacher's union contracts and the changes on the School Board:
Thanks to Iris for speaking out for Baltimore's teachers.....she provided yet more stats that show what is happening in education reform has nothing to do with what people want, but by politicians simply working for corporate interests. Why she says are they moving forward with reforms that only 17% of teachers will accept Iris asks? She is speaking of the Evaluation and Testing formats that offer absolutely nothing to quality or accountability. Baltimore's teachers are joining teachers and parents across the nation saying none of these policies work. Academics have released studies that show none of these policies change performance and only take away from vital classroom time. Academics have released studies that show that charter schools on the whole do not raise achievement standards and take away from funding of REAL.....OR AS BALTIMORE CALLS THEM 'TRADITIONAL' SCHOOLS. Why are O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly and Rawlings-Blake and City Hall pushing forward with what we do not want? The intent is to privatize all public education and Wall Street is only using urban settings and the underserved to set a platform for making all K-12 private charters. They are not making these policies for what is best for the children, they are making the policies for what will be most profitable for private businesses to profit.
WE SIMPLY NEED TO RUN AND VOTE FOR A MAYOR AND GOVERNOR THAT DOES NOT WORK FOR CORPORATIONS, BUT WORK FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE!!!
The second issue is the appointment of new Baltimore School Board members....3 are leaving ....and a new School Superintendent. Now, the media had headlines that said 'City will form community group to advise on new school board replacements' as though the citizens of Baltimore were to have the say. I have friends that received an invitation to these public groups on school board choices who are now telling me it was all a scam. I am told that there will be no public input.....that the 3 new school board members are already chosen and are charter school people and that the mayor has said she will choose the School Superintendent. So, there will be no public participation.....only headlines saying there will be.
We know that Johns Hopkins is driving this education reform in the city and that Hopkins is just an extension of Wall Street and Bloomberg so your Third Way corporate democrat at state and city level are not paying one minute attention to you and are simply doing what Wall Street tells them to do.....make Baltimore City School Board privatizers and continue to expand charter schools. I have spoken to some of the current school board at public meetings and one on one. Whether the school board member is simply a business person or Teach for America there is almost no education experience with the remaining members of the board. When they hear I am an academic there is always scorn......BALTIMORE WITH A BUSINESS SCHOOL BOARD???? WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Again, I encourage Maryland citizens to go to Parents Across America and access teacher's union websites in active cities like Chigago....PURE and NYC Ed Wize are good sources for what agents for strong public education are doing!!!!! We simply need to organize for our petitions to referenda to change the City Charter and vote out these Third Way corporate democrats and run and vote for labor and justice!!! DO NOT THINK REPUBLICANS WILL NOT DO THE SAME THING!!! SIMPLY RECLAIM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!
I will make an exception as I look at Brian Vaeth and Duane Davis running as republicans for Governor and Lt Governor.....they are ordinary people from Baltimore....a former firefighter and a local political/social justice activist who are simply trying to find the best avenue around a captured and crony democratic party!!!!! DO NOT CONTINUE TO SIMPLY MOVE INCUMBENTS AROUND.
Teacher Group Calls For End To Pay-For-Performance
By Gwendolyn Glenn WYPR
Baltimore Department of Education building on North Avenue.
According to Iris Kirsch, a founding member of the group, the survey results are indicative of what she has been hearing from teachers over the past three years. “A lot of people are very uncomfortable with this contract,” Kirsch said. “Now that people have lived through it, they’re not going to vote for it again.”
More than 200 of the district’s 6,000 teachers took part in the survey. Although that is a small percentage, Kirsch said she thinks those who responded are a representative sample. Kirsch said she hopes the district and union will take the survey seriously. “We don’t want them wasting their time negotiating a contract that looks like this one and have everybody vote it back down. We want them to take our voices seriously. We want open negotiations this time that involve teachers so we can get a contract that works for all of us,” she said.
In addition to calling for the abolishment of the district’s current pay-for-performance system for teachers, Kirsch’s group is calling for mandatory smaller class sizes. School district officials say they do not comment on contract negotiations but that they have a good working relationship with local BTU and national American Federation of Teachers officials. A local BTU spokesperson said they do not expect a vote on the contract before October.
_____________________________________________
The Department of Education is run by private credit collection agencies. They take student loans that are delinquent and subject these people to the same litany of fees as a bank credit card. Thousands of dollars are added to a student loan amount to 'bring it out of default' and the terms are such that people fall right back into default and are subjected to more fees. IT IS A RACKET AND IT IS RUN BY OBAMA AND THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS. THEY ARE WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND NOT FOR YOU AND ME. Can you imagine what the Student Loan Foregiveness Bill will do to middle/lower class students struggling to meet payments?
THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION UNDER ARNE DUNCAN IS RUN BY PRIVATE CONTRACTORS -------WE WANT STUDENT LOAN BANKRUPTCY LAWS IN PLACE AND WE WANT THE ELIZABETH WARREN STUDENT LOAN RATES TIED TO THE FED BILLS.....NOT OBAMA'S STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS ACT!!!
Private Collection Agency Recovery Rates Fall Short of ED Projections
For the first 15 months of its current student loan debt collection contract, the U.S. Department of Education’s 22 private debt collection agencies have recovered $3.8 billion, 41 percent more than collected during the first 15 months of the previous contract.
The recoveries, which include all revenue streams such as approved litigation accounts and pending rehabilitated loans, are surprising given that the agencies began their collection efforts when the unemployment rate peaked at 10.2 percent in October 2009, the highest in 26 years and more than double the unemployment rate in September 2005. In January, the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent, but is still well above what some economist say will be the new normal.
Nonetheless, the Department of Education (ED) was expecting more.
“The current default recovery rates are not what we projected,” an ED spokeswoman told insideARM.com. “Although we are collecting more funds, we are not meeting our own internal goals and expectations for recoveries. We continue to analyze the data and look for ways to improve the department’s recovery efforts.”
ED had hoped to generate more collections through competition when it attached new incentives to the current contract, awarded in 2009. Top performers — which are determined by a weighted average of contractors’ performance in total dollars collected, total accounts serviced and total administrative resolutions — now receive a greater share of the accounts when they are divvied up each quarter, boosting the agencies’ potential revenues and bonuses.
Since the incentives were introduced a year ago, the collection contractors’ performance rankings have been as unpredictable as the stock market, particularly among the unrestricted contractors where it’s rare to see any one company earn the top performance ranking two quarters in a row.
While quarterly performance rankings determine placement volumes, monthly results usually are a precursor to the likely winners each quarter. At the end of January Van Ru Credit Corp. climbed five spots to finish first in the ED performance rankings with 93.46 points, while Continental Service Group, d.b.a. ConServe, earned second place with 87.27 points. Collecto Inc., d.b.a., EOS-CCA finished third among unrestricted contractors with 85.50. Pioneer Credit Recovery, the top performer among unrestricted contractors last quarter and overall leader in the dollars collected category, fell to sixth place in January.
Of all the contractors, only small business contractor Collection Technology Inc. (CTI) has earned the top ranking for more than three consecutive quarters. CTI, of Monterey, Calif., ended January with 94.11 points, followed by Coast Professional with 89.42 points. Immediate Credit Recovery finished third with 83.03 points.
CTI has maintained its lead by winning at least two of the three categories, the most important of which is dollars collected which the ED assigns 70 points. The ED awards 20 points to the winner of the total accounts serviced category and 10 points to the winner of the administrative resolutions category. The other agencies are scored against the top performers.
In the unrestricted category, Van Ru won the dollars collected category, but no others. The two other top three finishers also earned their rankings because of their performance in the dollars collected category, but neither was the top performer in any category.
Of the $3.8 billion the collection agencies (17 unrestricted and five small business firms) have recovered to date, more than $894 million is categorized as collected, which includes rehabilitated loans. Loans are considered rehabilitated when 10 or more consecutive payments have been received.
Performance Rankings for January 2011
Unrestricted (Large) Firms Score (Jan. 2011) $$ Collected (Jan. 2011)
Van Ru Credit Corporation 93.46 $11,105,721
ConServe 87.27 $9,223,902
EOS-CCA (Collecto Inc.) 85.50 $8,830,543
West Asset Management 85.10 $6,715,923
ERS 84.77 $9,227,308
Windham Professionals 84.45 $7.967,086
Pioneer Credit Recovery (Sallie Mae) 83.91 $9,974,561 Diversified Collection Services 81.08 $8,413,561
FMS Investment Corp. 80.34 $7,392,741
Allied Interstate (iQor) 78.65 $8,353,481
Financial Asset Management Systems 76.23 $8,860,694
GC Services LP 75.06 $7,736,451
NCO Group 73.83 $8,430,820
Account Control Technology 73.51 $7,104,993
Premiere Credit of North America 71.62 $6,763,313
CBE Group 67.92 $6,735,197
Progressive Financial Services 66.86 $6,171,562
Small Businesses Score (Jan. 2011) $$ Collected (Jan. 2011)
Collection Technology, Inc. 94.11 $4,881,491
Coast Professional 89.42 $4,040,513
Immediate Credit Recovery 83.03 $3,204,259
Delta Management Associates 73.24 $2,486,788
National Recoveries 70.12 $2,696,023
Today I want to look at the issues leading the political debate and show that all of these issues are not in the public interest and ask that you think about what pundits, what news media, what political organizations have led on these issues and who they told you to vote, and how your incumbent has failed to shout out about these issues. I spent 4 years talking about these issues as they are unfolding and I shouted to vote Third Way corporate democratic incumbents out of office because I knew what they worked towards.....and so did all of the above organizations!!!!!!
Please work to find media and journalism that works for people and start your own community network and newsletter so this captured media and non-profits are not the only ones with voice!!!!
Now, I know this immigration bill kills workers, both domestic and immigrant. It is only meant to lower labor standards to third world levels and as we hear Congressional leaders say it will add another dimension to society.......green card and no citizen rights......THAT IS NOT A DIMENSION WE WANT!!!!! Jeb Bush had the gall to make it sound like we were moving towards Canada.......THAT IS THE BIGGEST PIECE OF PROPAGANDA YET!!!
Details of the Senate immigration bill
By The Associated PressPosted: 06/11/2013 11:36:53 AM PDT
A look at the immigration overhaul bill now before the Senate: ———
BORDER SECURITY
—The bill makes it a goal that there be 100 percent surveillance of the border with Mexico and that 90 percent of would-be crossers are caught or turned back.
—Within six months of enactment of the bill, the Homeland Security Department must develop a border security plan to achieve those goals, including the use of drones, additional agents and other approaches; and develop a plan to identify where more fencing is needed.
—If the goals of a 90 percent effectiveness rate and continuous surveillance on the border are not met within five years, a Southern Border Security Commission would be established with border-state governors and others to determine how to achieve them.
—Before anyone in the U.S. illegally can get a new provisional legal status, the border security and border fencing plans must be in place. Before they can get permanent resident green cards, the plans must be substantially completed, and a new entry-exit system must also be implemented at U.S. seaports and airports to track people coming and going. A mandatory system for employers to check workers' legal status must also be in place.
—About 3,500 new Customs agents would be hired.
—The National Guard would be deployed to the border to build fencing and checkpoints and perform other tasks.
—Funding would
Advertisement be provided to increase border-crossing prosecutions and to create more border patrol stations and forward operating bases. ———
PATH TO CITIZENSHIP
—The estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally could obtain "registered provisional immigrant status" six months after enactment of the bill as long as:
(1) The Homeland Security Department has developed border security and fencing plans.
(2) They arrived in the U.S. prior to Dec. 31, 2011, and maintained continuous physical presence since then.
(3) They do not have a felony conviction or three or more misdemeanors.
(4) They pay a $500 fine.
—People in provisional legal status could work and travel in the U.S. but would not be eligible for most federal benefits, including health care and welfare.
—The provisional legal status lasts six years and is renewable for another $500.
—People deported for noncriminal reasons can apply to re-enter in provisional status if they have a spouse or child who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, or if they had been brought to the U.S. as a child.
—After 10 years in provisional status, immigrants can seek a green card and lawful permanent resident status if they are current on their taxes and pay a $1,000 fine, have maintained continuous physical presence in the U.S., meet work requirements and learn English. Also the border triggers must have been met, and all people waiting to immigrate through the legal system as of the date of enactment of the legislation must have been dealt with.
—People brought to the country as youths would be able to get green cards in five years, and citizenship immediately thereafter.
———
HIGH-SKILLED WORKERS
—The cap on the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers would be immediately raised from 65,000 a year to 110,000 a year, with 25,000 more set aside for people with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. school. The cap could go as high as 180,000 a year depending on demand.
—New protections would crack down on companies that use H-1B visas to train workers in the U.S. only to ship them back overseas.
—Immigrants with certain extraordinary abilities, such as professors and researchers, multinational executives and athletes, would be exempted from green-card limits. So would graduates of U.S. universities with job offers and degrees in science, technology, engineering or math.
—A startup visa would be made available to foreign entrepreneurs seeking to come to the U.S. to start a company.
—A new merit visa, for a maximum of 250,000 people a year, would award points to prospective immigrants based on their education, employment, length of residence in the U.S. and other considerations. Those with the most points would earn the visas.
—The bill would eliminate the government's Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which randomly awards 55,000 visas to immigrants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States, so that more visas can be awarded for employment and merit ties.
———
LOW-SKILLED WORKERS
—A new W visa would allow up to 200,000 low-skilled workers a year into the country for jobs in construction, long-term care, hospitality and other industries.
—A new agriculture worker visa program would be established to replace the existing program. Agriculture workers already here illegally, who've worked in the industry at least two years, could qualify in another five years for green cards if they stay in the industry.
———
FAMILY IMMIGRATION
—Under current law, U.S. citizens can sponsor spouses, children and siblings to come to the U.S., with limits on some categories. The bill would bar citizens from sponsoring their siblings and would allow them to sponsor married sons and daughters only if those children are under age 31.
—Legal permanent residents can currently sponsor spouses and children, but the numbers are limited. The bill eliminates that limit.
———
EMPLOYMENT VERIFICATION
—Within four years, all employers must implement E-Verify, a program to electronically verify their workers' legal status. As part of that, noncitizens would be required to show photo ID that must match with a photo in the E-Verify system.
______________________________________________
Regarding Baltimore City teacher's union contracts and the changes on the School Board:
Thanks to Iris for speaking out for Baltimore's teachers.....she provided yet more stats that show what is happening in education reform has nothing to do with what people want, but by politicians simply working for corporate interests. Why she says are they moving forward with reforms that only 17% of teachers will accept Iris asks? She is speaking of the Evaluation and Testing formats that offer absolutely nothing to quality or accountability. Baltimore's teachers are joining teachers and parents across the nation saying none of these policies work. Academics have released studies that show none of these policies change performance and only take away from vital classroom time. Academics have released studies that show that charter schools on the whole do not raise achievement standards and take away from funding of REAL.....OR AS BALTIMORE CALLS THEM 'TRADITIONAL' SCHOOLS. Why are O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly and Rawlings-Blake and City Hall pushing forward with what we do not want? The intent is to privatize all public education and Wall Street is only using urban settings and the underserved to set a platform for making all K-12 private charters. They are not making these policies for what is best for the children, they are making the policies for what will be most profitable for private businesses to profit.
WE SIMPLY NEED TO RUN AND VOTE FOR A MAYOR AND GOVERNOR THAT DOES NOT WORK FOR CORPORATIONS, BUT WORK FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE!!!
The second issue is the appointment of new Baltimore School Board members....3 are leaving ....and a new School Superintendent. Now, the media had headlines that said 'City will form community group to advise on new school board replacements' as though the citizens of Baltimore were to have the say. I have friends that received an invitation to these public groups on school board choices who are now telling me it was all a scam. I am told that there will be no public input.....that the 3 new school board members are already chosen and are charter school people and that the mayor has said she will choose the School Superintendent. So, there will be no public participation.....only headlines saying there will be.
We know that Johns Hopkins is driving this education reform in the city and that Hopkins is just an extension of Wall Street and Bloomberg so your Third Way corporate democrat at state and city level are not paying one minute attention to you and are simply doing what Wall Street tells them to do.....make Baltimore City School Board privatizers and continue to expand charter schools. I have spoken to some of the current school board at public meetings and one on one. Whether the school board member is simply a business person or Teach for America there is almost no education experience with the remaining members of the board. When they hear I am an academic there is always scorn......BALTIMORE WITH A BUSINESS SCHOOL BOARD???? WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Again, I encourage Maryland citizens to go to Parents Across America and access teacher's union websites in active cities like Chigago....PURE and NYC Ed Wize are good sources for what agents for strong public education are doing!!!!! We simply need to organize for our petitions to referenda to change the City Charter and vote out these Third Way corporate democrats and run and vote for labor and justice!!! DO NOT THINK REPUBLICANS WILL NOT DO THE SAME THING!!! SIMPLY RECLAIM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!
I will make an exception as I look at Brian Vaeth and Duane Davis running as republicans for Governor and Lt Governor.....they are ordinary people from Baltimore....a former firefighter and a local political/social justice activist who are simply trying to find the best avenue around a captured and crony democratic party!!!!! DO NOT CONTINUE TO SIMPLY MOVE INCUMBENTS AROUND.
Teacher Group Calls For End To Pay-For-Performance
By Gwendolyn Glenn WYPR
Baltimore Department of Education building on North Avenue.
- Listen 0:46 Teacher Group Calls For End To Pay-For-Performance
According to Iris Kirsch, a founding member of the group, the survey results are indicative of what she has been hearing from teachers over the past three years. “A lot of people are very uncomfortable with this contract,” Kirsch said. “Now that people have lived through it, they’re not going to vote for it again.”
More than 200 of the district’s 6,000 teachers took part in the survey. Although that is a small percentage, Kirsch said she thinks those who responded are a representative sample. Kirsch said she hopes the district and union will take the survey seriously. “We don’t want them wasting their time negotiating a contract that looks like this one and have everybody vote it back down. We want them to take our voices seriously. We want open negotiations this time that involve teachers so we can get a contract that works for all of us,” she said.
In addition to calling for the abolishment of the district’s current pay-for-performance system for teachers, Kirsch’s group is calling for mandatory smaller class sizes. School district officials say they do not comment on contract negotiations but that they have a good working relationship with local BTU and national American Federation of Teachers officials. A local BTU spokesperson said they do not expect a vote on the contract before October.
_____________________________________________
The Department of Education is run by private credit collection agencies. They take student loans that are delinquent and subject these people to the same litany of fees as a bank credit card. Thousands of dollars are added to a student loan amount to 'bring it out of default' and the terms are such that people fall right back into default and are subjected to more fees. IT IS A RACKET AND IT IS RUN BY OBAMA AND THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS. THEY ARE WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND NOT FOR YOU AND ME. Can you imagine what the Student Loan Foregiveness Bill will do to middle/lower class students struggling to meet payments?
THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION UNDER ARNE DUNCAN IS RUN BY PRIVATE CONTRACTORS -------WE WANT STUDENT LOAN BANKRUPTCY LAWS IN PLACE AND WE WANT THE ELIZABETH WARREN STUDENT LOAN RATES TIED TO THE FED BILLS.....NOT OBAMA'S STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS ACT!!!
Private Collection Agency Recovery Rates Fall Short of ED Projections
For the first 15 months of its current student loan debt collection contract, the U.S. Department of Education’s 22 private debt collection agencies have recovered $3.8 billion, 41 percent more than collected during the first 15 months of the previous contract.
The recoveries, which include all revenue streams such as approved litigation accounts and pending rehabilitated loans, are surprising given that the agencies began their collection efforts when the unemployment rate peaked at 10.2 percent in October 2009, the highest in 26 years and more than double the unemployment rate in September 2005. In January, the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent, but is still well above what some economist say will be the new normal.
Nonetheless, the Department of Education (ED) was expecting more.
“The current default recovery rates are not what we projected,” an ED spokeswoman told insideARM.com. “Although we are collecting more funds, we are not meeting our own internal goals and expectations for recoveries. We continue to analyze the data and look for ways to improve the department’s recovery efforts.”
ED had hoped to generate more collections through competition when it attached new incentives to the current contract, awarded in 2009. Top performers — which are determined by a weighted average of contractors’ performance in total dollars collected, total accounts serviced and total administrative resolutions — now receive a greater share of the accounts when they are divvied up each quarter, boosting the agencies’ potential revenues and bonuses.
Since the incentives were introduced a year ago, the collection contractors’ performance rankings have been as unpredictable as the stock market, particularly among the unrestricted contractors where it’s rare to see any one company earn the top performance ranking two quarters in a row.
While quarterly performance rankings determine placement volumes, monthly results usually are a precursor to the likely winners each quarter. At the end of January Van Ru Credit Corp. climbed five spots to finish first in the ED performance rankings with 93.46 points, while Continental Service Group, d.b.a. ConServe, earned second place with 87.27 points. Collecto Inc., d.b.a., EOS-CCA finished third among unrestricted contractors with 85.50. Pioneer Credit Recovery, the top performer among unrestricted contractors last quarter and overall leader in the dollars collected category, fell to sixth place in January.
Of all the contractors, only small business contractor Collection Technology Inc. (CTI) has earned the top ranking for more than three consecutive quarters. CTI, of Monterey, Calif., ended January with 94.11 points, followed by Coast Professional with 89.42 points. Immediate Credit Recovery finished third with 83.03 points.
CTI has maintained its lead by winning at least two of the three categories, the most important of which is dollars collected which the ED assigns 70 points. The ED awards 20 points to the winner of the total accounts serviced category and 10 points to the winner of the administrative resolutions category. The other agencies are scored against the top performers.
In the unrestricted category, Van Ru won the dollars collected category, but no others. The two other top three finishers also earned their rankings because of their performance in the dollars collected category, but neither was the top performer in any category.
Of the $3.8 billion the collection agencies (17 unrestricted and five small business firms) have recovered to date, more than $894 million is categorized as collected, which includes rehabilitated loans. Loans are considered rehabilitated when 10 or more consecutive payments have been received.
Performance Rankings for January 2011
Unrestricted (Large) Firms Score (Jan. 2011) $$ Collected (Jan. 2011)
Van Ru Credit Corporation 93.46 $11,105,721
ConServe 87.27 $9,223,902
EOS-CCA (Collecto Inc.) 85.50 $8,830,543
West Asset Management 85.10 $6,715,923
ERS 84.77 $9,227,308
Windham Professionals 84.45 $7.967,086
Pioneer Credit Recovery (Sallie Mae) 83.91 $9,974,561 Diversified Collection Services 81.08 $8,413,561
FMS Investment Corp. 80.34 $7,392,741
Allied Interstate (iQor) 78.65 $8,353,481
Financial Asset Management Systems 76.23 $8,860,694
GC Services LP 75.06 $7,736,451
NCO Group 73.83 $8,430,820
Account Control Technology 73.51 $7,104,993
Premiere Credit of North America 71.62 $6,763,313
CBE Group 67.92 $6,735,197
Progressive Financial Services 66.86 $6,171,562
Small Businesses Score (Jan. 2011) $$ Collected (Jan. 2011)
Collection Technology, Inc. 94.11 $4,881,491
Coast Professional 89.42 $4,040,513
Immediate Credit Recovery 83.03 $3,204,259
Delta Management Associates 73.24 $2,486,788
National Recoveries 70.12 $2,696,023
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