Travel/Leisure: Being Right or Making Money

As we get ready for John Boehner to take the gavel from Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, I find myself thinking back to the last time a Republican speaker took control of the House from a Democrat -- and reflecting on how far down the wrong road we have traveled since then.

It was January 1995, and Newt Gingrich, now considered a right-wing bomb thrower, was taking the gavel from Tom Foley. After taking the oath of office, he delivered a speech that praised FDR as "the greatest president of the 20th century" and presented concern for the least among us as a shared national objective. "The balanced budget is the right thing to do," he said. "But it does not in my mind have the moral urgency of coming to grips with what is happening to the poorest Americans."

For the incoming Republican speaker, reducing poverty and lifting the poor into the middle class was a moral imperative beyond the left vs. right battlefield -- not just the purview of lefties, socialists, and community organizers:

I say to those Republicans who believe in total privatization, you cannot believe in the Good Samaritan and explain that as long as business is making money we can walk by a fellow American who is hurt and not do something.... If you cannot afford to leave the public housing project, you are not free. If you do not know how to find a job and do not know how to create a job, you are not free. If you cannot find a place that will educate you, you are not free. If you are afraid to walk to the store because you could get killed, you are not free.

So now, with poverty higher than it was 16 years ago, with greater income inequality, and with the middle class struggling to hold on, what will Speaker Boehner make his number one priority? According to the Washington Post, it's "cutting spending," followed by repealing the healthcare law, and "helping get our economy moving" (no specifics on how he plans to do that).

Yet we saw on 60 Minutes that he's very aware of how fragile the American Dream has become, telling Lesley Stahl, "I can't go to a school anymore. I used to go to a lot of schools. And you see all these little kids running around. Can't talk about it." And he choked up when he did try to talk about "making sure these kids have a shot at the American Dream, like I did. It's important."

Interestingly, in his first speech as speaker, Gingrich also talked about being moved by the woes of school kids.

"I have seldom been more shaken," he said, "than I was after the election when I had breakfast with two members of the Black Caucus. One of them said to me, 'Can you imagine what it is like to visit a first-grade class and realize that every fourth or fifth young boy in that class may be dead or in jail within 15 years? And they are your constituents and you are helpless to change it?' For some reason, I do not know why, maybe because I visit a lot of schools, that got through. I mean, that personalized it. That made it real, not just statistics, but real people."

But the trajectory of our political discourse over the last decade and a half has meant that taking on poverty has gone from a moral imperative and shared national objective to an afterthought -- or no thought at all.

The question is, is there anything that can be done to help Boehner make the connection between the policies he supports and the effect those policies have on the kids who bring him to tears?

Newt Gingrich failed to follow through on the moral imperative he identified in his first speech as speaker, trading in his moral vision and replacing it 15 months later with an announcement that the Republican agenda could be reduced to six words: "Earn more, keep more, do more."

Will Boehner's take be "Earn more, keep more, cut more"? Or is there a chance he will surprise us? Maybe it's because it's close enough to Christmas that I still believe in miracles, but wouldn't it be great if the John Boehner who takes the gavel on Wednesday is the one who weeps at the thought of kids denied a shot at the American Dream?

It's an enormous relief to find someone at a large, powerful company who is kind, helpful, and able to solve your problems. Unfortunately, reader Flora learned that just because a person is kind and helpful, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't document your conversations with them in case things go horribly wrong.

I am writing with the hope that someone else might read my story and not make my mistake. I've had a lot of trouble paying my bills this year. I moved in with my parents in November to get things under control. One of the companies I owed money to was Citibank Student Loans. I finally contacted them in mid December to try to make things right so my loan would not go into default. The customer service rep could not have been friendlier. After I made a payment on the loan over the phone, she told me she had set me up on a payment plan, that as long as I continued to pay the same amount every month, my loan would not default. She wished me a Merry Christmas before I hung up the phone hugely relieved.

Last week, I called Citibank again to make another payment on my loan by the appointed date, as she had instructed. The very friendly customer service rep told me that my loan was in the process of being sent to collections, but that I could call Citibanks' default department to make a payment. I called the number prepared to pay 300% of the payment I owed to keep this from happening, 800-967-9977. No one answered. The call went to voicemail. And the voicemail box of the number was full. I just tried it again, and it's still full.

I called the main citibank number back, explaining that I wanted to make a payment. They just told me to keep calling the default office every hour or so until they emptied their voicemail box. After four hours, I finally left a voicemail which was returned the next afternoon while I was in a doctor's appointment. I called again to leave a voicemail that night, being sure to keep my phone on me at all times so I could answer them. They called back the next afternoon. The customer service rep I talked to explained that my loan had been sent to collections in the 3 weeks since I had last talked to citibank, she claimed they had no record of any payment plan, and explained that they had the right to send my loan off to collections whenever they chose to. When I protested, asking if they had any recording or computer record of the conversation I had with the representative, and awe-struck that they completely ignored our deal, the customer service rep immediately changed her tone to shouting at me over the phone, explaining very brutally that it was all completely my fault for not paying. I waited long enough to hear the number of the collection agency to call before I hung up the phone literally in tears. I'm now trying to reach the collection company so I can start to clean up my credit score, bit by bit. I realize that I should have been paying more sooner, but that shouldn't change the fact that they made an agreement with me, and then broke it immediately after, right? I don't even know where my last payment went, if it's in the citibank system or with the collection agency. All of my information has been removed from my online account. I was really trying to make this work.

I hope that anyone having difficulty making payments to citibank student loans records any and all conversations they have with customer service representatives. I was so naive, and trusted that such a large business would not completely lie to me. I hope that you let other people know not to make the same mistake.

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Monday, January 24, 2011

Being Right or Making Money

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