Falling Trust Means Change, Opportunity

- January 20, 2017

Falling trust in traditional institutions, such as the police, government, and media outlets, means people must rely on themselves – and each other. This can mean dealing with our own problems, but this double edged sword can kill us – or protect us. Will falling trust lead us to squabble with each other in our little tribal fiefdoms, gathering around charismatic strongmen? Few worse outcomes spring to mind. Rather, let us work around the institutions that no longer work for us. Let us take back the power we have given to the system in so many ways. We still need each other. This time of great change offers us an opportunity. Let’s remake the world into one worth living in again.

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Did Navient Mislead and Cheat Millions of Student Loan Borrowers?

- January 19, 2017

Crippling student loan debt was a hot topic this past election cycle, so much so that it helped spark discussions about “reigning in college costs.” Considering the fact that the total outstanding student loan debt in the United States clocks in at more than $1.4 trillion, reigning in costs would be a great idea, as would solutions to help make student loan payments a bit more bearable for borrowers who are struggling month to month in order to make their payments. The student loan debt crisis isn’t new, though. It’s been gaining attention for years. What is new, however, is news that one of the nation’s largest servicer of student loans, Navient, has been misleading student loan borrowers and making “serious mistakes at nearly every step of the collections process” and “illegally driving up loan repayment costs for millions of borrowers” for years, according to lawsuits filed recently “by a federal regulator and two state attorneys general.”

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Lawsuit Revived In Missouri Regarding Naked Pretrial Detainees

- January 19, 2017

Imagine that you’re a pretrial detainee in a little jail in Missouri. Now imagine that, as a detainee in that small jail, you’re forced to go naked for several hours while your only set of clothes are in the laundry. The only thing to cover yourself is a sheet and any other bedding you might have, while guards, potentially of the opposite sex, look in on you from time to time from your cell’s window. Sound a bit hard to believe? Well, believe it, because this is the reality that pretrial detainees face on a regular basis at the Cole County Detention Center in Jefferson City, Missouri. Fortunately for detainees who find the rule a bit demeaning and uncivilized, a federal appeal court revived a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the jail’s policy.

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Drug Bidding Practices Challenged By Trump

- January 19, 2017

“Aggressive” is probably a mild term to describe the president-elect’s rhetoric in the days preceding his inauguration. Offensive and damning tweets have been fired off at critics all across social media, with most mainstream news networks focusing on innumerable faux pas and controversial cabinet appointments. Missed on the ides of January is a critically important

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Tort Reform, Externalities, and Balance

- January 18, 2017

Now that the new administration plans to throw healthcare back on the table, we’ll surely hear once again about the virtues of tort reform. A perennial conservative salve for seemingly every economic ill, tort reform reduces peoples’ ability to seek redress in court. Hypothetically, tort reform serves as a counterbalance against what the business community

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