How banks rip off their poorest customers

Life under Capitalism, Poverty
Published on Leave a comment on How banks rip off their poorest customers

Another great example of how you’re nickled and dimed to death by the banks:

That’s right, an account with fewer features than a normal checking account (without the checks, for example) – and with a core “feature” that is free on every other account – will cost customers $60 a year. That’s not a lot, of course, but consider that the product is designed for low-income customers, who are typically on the knife’s edge with their finances. According to statistics from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the average individual in bankruptcy in 2012 was just $26 a month short on their expenses. So even small amounts count, especially when you’re paying for what should be free services. In essence, customers will give Bank of America $5 a month for the right to not be charged more.

Water is for washing

technology, US politics
Published on Leave a comment on Water is for washing

A great article in The Atlantic about the politics surrounding California’s water management and the fight to safeguard it. Here’s the money quote:

But for now, California’s water story is all about tradeoffs, and the writer behind the On the Public Record blog would like the public to be more aware of them. “I wish we made explicit societal choices. Say, ‘Yes, I would rather we supplied pistachios to the world than had a San Joaquin River’ or ‘No, I don’t actually want my lawn as much as I want to know there are salmon in our rivers.’ We can manage our water system to do a very large range of things, but we can’t do them all well,” she emailed me. “I wish we were guided by actual explicit choices, rather than by every water district manager trying to keep our status quo going just a little longer. If we knew we (all 39 million of us, overall) didn’t want to use water to grow alfalfa for dairy cows, we could design a good transition for the people involved in that industry now. But we don’t make those choices, so we can’t design programs to make the transition to a more extreme climate more gentle for people. We just try to keep spreading the water thinner.”

It happened to me!

Race
Published on Leave a comment on It happened to me!

Well, no, it didn’t, but a couple of weeks ago one Jen Caron got a little bit flustered when a black woman joined her yoga class:

I was completely unable to focus on my practice, instead feeling hyper-aware of my high-waisted bike shorts, my tastefully tacky sports bra, my well-versedness in these poses that I have been in hundreds of times. My skinny white girl body. Surely this woman was noticing all of these things and judging me for them, stereotyping me, resenting me—or so I imagined.

It all seemed a bit over the top and somewhat patronising, though if you’re feeling charitable, you could say it was one woman’s inept attempt to articulate some of the racial privileges she hadn’t had to think about until well, she was confronted with an black woman in her class. Which, come to think of it, doesn’t make it any better, making this woman a prop in her enlightenment.

Anyway, the piece got a lot of pushback and sarky comments online and what struck me was reading the same story from the other side, revealing that this may have been an unique experience for Caron, not so much for actual plus size women:

I mean, it would be racist weird to say “OMG! You’re so big and black!” so instead she says “OMG! I’m so white and small”

As a plus size woman of color, people are constantly “telling on themselves” in regards to how they see me. It could be as simple as calling me “girl” instead of my name or being shocked when I sing along to Incubus songs, it could be something as nuanced as mentioning their own appearance in contrast to mine, or as awkward as quoting Tyler Perry to me and assuming I’ll get the reference (I won’t).

The ‘Miss Triggs question’

Feminism, UK politics
Published on Leave a comment on The ‘Miss Triggs question’

Mary Beard on the public voice of women:

But the more I have looked at the threats and insults that women have received, the more I have found that they fit into the old patterns I’ve been talking about. For a start it doesn’t much matter what line you take as a woman, if you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it, it’s the fact you’re saying it. And that matches the detail of the threats themselves. They include a fairly predictable menu of rape, bombing, murder and so forth (I may sound very relaxed about it now; that doesn’t mean it’s not scary when it comes late at night). But a significant subsection is directed at silencing the woman – ‘Shut up you bitch’ is a fairly common refrain. Or it promises to remove the capacity of the woman to speak. ‘I’m going to cut off your head and rape it’ was one tweet I got. ‘Headlessfemalepig’ was the Twitter name chosen by someone threatening an American journalist. ‘You should have your tongue ripped out’ was tweeted to another journalist. In its crude, aggressive way, this is about keeping, or getting, women out of man’s talk. It’s hard not to see some faint connection between these mad Twitter outbursts – most of them are just that – and the men in the House of Commons heckling women MPs so loudly that you simply can’t hear what they’re saying (in the Afghan parliament, apparently, they disconnect the mics when they don’t want to hear the women speak). Ironically the well-meaning solution often recommended when women are on the receiving end of this stuff turns out to bring about the very result the abusers want: namely, their silence. ‘Don’t call the abusers out. Don’t give them any attention; that’s what they want. Just keep mum,’ you’re told, which amounts to leaving the bullies in unchallenged occupation of the playground.