Grief, Shock After a 'Gentle Giant' Loses His Life in the Line of Duty

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Colleagues called Stephen T. Johns "Big John," for he was well over 6 feet tall. But mostly friends recalled the security guard's constant courtesy and friendliness.

Christian Davenport and Paul Duggan
June 11, 2009 - Washington Post

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Colleagues called Stephen T. Johns "Big John," for he was well over 6 feet tall. But mostly friends recalled the security guard's constant courtesy and friendliness.

"A soft-spoken, gentle giant," said Milton Talley, a former employee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Johns was killed yesterday in the line of duty -- shot, authorities said, by an avowed white supremacist who entered the museum with a rifle.

Details of the shooting remained sketchy last night, but apparently the 39-year-old, who was armed with a .38-caliber revolver, did not have time to react when James W. von Brunn walked into the museum, according to police sources.

"Immediately upon entering the front doors of the museum, he raised the rifle and started shooting," D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said of von Brunn, 88, adding that he "was engaged by security guards, and there was an exchange of gunfire."

When the smoke cleared, von Brunn was critically wounded. The only casualty among the guards was Johns, who lived in Prince George's County. At least one bullet from a small-caliber rifle hit Johns in his upper-left torso, according to Johns's employer, the Wackenhut security company.

"Two other . . . armed security officers opened fire with their service revolvers," the company said. "The intruder was hit at once" and wounded.

Johns died at George Washington University Hospital.

"There are no words to express our grief and shock over these events," the museum said in a statement, describing Johns as "an outstanding colleague who greeted us every day with a smile."

Johns, a 1988 graduate of Crosslands High School in Temple Hills, lived in an apartment in the Temple Hills area. Friends said he had a son.

Allen Burcky, another former museum employee, said last night that workers there considered each other "like family" and that Johns was "very courteous, very helpful."

Lourdes Padilla, the mother of a close friend, said that Johns trained as a plumber but that she didn't think he had ever entered the trade. He remarried about a year ago, Padilla said.

Johns's sister, Jacqueline Carter, declined to comment as she entered her home in Temple Hills. "She's in bad shape right now," said a man who was driving her.

Wackenhut describes itself as the U.S. government's "largest contractor for professional security services." An official with the union that represents Wackenhut employees at the museum said Johns was paid about $20 an hour.

"It's a heavy loss," said Assane Faye, the Washington district director of the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America.

Like other guards at the museum, on Raoul Wallenberg Place SW near the Mall, Johns underwent training for which he received the D.C. police designation of "special police officer," which permitted him to carry a revolver on duty.

Faye said that during contract negotiations with Wackenhut two years ago, the union pressed for company-issued protective vests. Although Wackenhut seemed open to the idea, vests have not been issued, Faye said.

"I hammered this in our negotiations two years ago because of how sensitive that museum is," he said. "Our guards needed more protection." He said that one of the guards at the museum was "verbally assaulted by one guy walking by, saying anti-Semitic remarks. For that reason, I made that the center of the negotiation."

Authorities said Johns was not wearing a protective vest.

Susan Pitcher, a Wackenhut spokeswoman, declined to comment on the shooting beyond the company's statement.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, said officials at those institutions took immediate steps to enhance security after the shooting in Washington.

"The key component is not only to have your own security, but to work with the local police force," he said. "In our case, the LAPD has a very good grasp of where all sorts of extremists might be and are able to deploy very quickly."

William S. Parsons, the Holocaust museum's chief of staff, praised Johns and his colleagues.

"Never take your guard force or your security people for granted," Parsons said. "They did exactly what they were supposed to do."

Taking Time Takes Patience

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Desperate and Afraid, People Trust Leader

Ted Rall
June 10, 2009 - TedRall.com

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WASHINGTON, NORTH AMERICAN PROTECTORATE, GREATER GERMAN REICH--

From Honolulu to Portland, Maine, North American citizens of the Greater German Reich gathered on June 6th to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the victory of Axis forces at D-Day, the battle that decided World War II. Fallen heroes of the Wehrmacht and SS were commemorated at solemn ceremonies and Party rallies throughout the Reich, but the day held special meaning in Washington, which until 1945 was the capital of the former United States.

Speaking at the Supreme Kommandatur, which was built at the site of the former American presidential palace, Chancellor Adolf Hitler III said the war against the Western Allies paved the way for the years of peace and prosperity that followed. "It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide," he said.

Recollections of the National Socialist triumph at Normandy were clouded by several developments--a severe recession, a war with no apparent end in sight, and continuing concerns over human rights abuses.

Hitler III swept into power last November with a slogan--"change you can believe in"--that charmed members of the Reichstag across the political spectrum from far right to extreme right. Since that time, however, changes have proven either incremental or non-existent. For example, Hitler III promised during the campaign to help national comrades in danger of losing their homes--but instead spent trillions of marks to bail out feckless banks. He promised to withdraw from the Eastern Front, but has extended the pullout timeline by a year, is leaving tens of thousands of troops in place, and even plans to open a new front in South Asia.

Finally, he declared his intent to close Auschwitz ("Germany does not 'do' genocide," he said) only to move the remaining inmates to other camps, which are being expanded.

Despite the lack of action, most people continue to support the charismatic new Leader. "He has a lot on his plate," says Kristof Mathewsohn, the cable TV commentator. "Give the guy time."

Indeed, five months into his chancellorship, the Leader remains the most trusted figure in North American politics. A new poll of homeless, recently dispossessed workers found that 72 percent trust Hitler III "to do the right thing."

"In watching and listening to Hitler III's press conferences, it's easy to appreciate why people trust him," said a man who preferred to remain anonymous because, as a Jew, he could be arrested and murdered by the state. "Sure, I wish he'd shut down the gas chambers and the ovens, but he has a lot of other problems to fix first. I'm sure he'll get around to investigating the guys in the previous administration for their role in the Holocaust--nothing drastic, maybe a truth and reconciliation commission or something."

Members of the media remain in thrall to the Leader's suave persona, which is magnified by the glamour his statuesque wife and adorable daughters have brought to Germania (formerly Berlin). "Finally--parties we can believe in!" quipped a reporter as he slipped into a sold-out Wagner performance where Hitler III and his family appeared for a long-promised "date night."

Few have forgotten that Hitler III offered the best alternative. "We live in a one-party system," pointed out Rachel Maddoff, host of "The Rachel Maddoff Show." "Can you imagine how much worse it would have been had Hitler III lost?"

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Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.

Water Stress, Ocean Levels to Unleash 'Climate Exodus'

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June 10, 2009 - Agence France Presse

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Tens of millions of people will be displaced by climate change in coming years, posing social, political and security problems of an unprecedented dimension, a new study said on Wednesday.

"Unless aggressive measures are taken to halt global warming, the consequences for human migration and displacement could reach a scope and scale that vastly exceed anything that has occurred before," its authors warned.

"Climate change is already contributing to migration and displacement.

"All major estimates project that the trend will rise to tens of millions of migrants in coming years. Within the next few decades, the consequences of climate change for human security efforts could be devastating."

The report, "In Search of Shelter," was compiled by specialists from Columbia University in New York and the United Nations University, and from a non-governmental organisation, CARE International.

It was presented to journalists on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Bonn, a staging post to an envisioned new global pact for tackling global warming and its impacts.

The study swung the spotlight on several regions that, according to projections, will be badly hit by rising sea levels, flood or drought.

Rather than a migration from poor countries to rich ones, the exodus is most likely to unfold within poor nations, with a movement mainly from the countryside to cities, thus further burdening urban infrastructure, it said.

In central Mexico, where tens of millions of people live, rainfall in some areas could decline by up to 50 percent by 2080, "rendering many livelihoods unviable and dramatically raising the risk of chronic hunger," the report said.

South Asia faces both short- and long-term threats.

Warming will accelerate melting from Himalayan glaciers in springtime, thus heightening the probability of flooding. But glacier shrinkage will eventually affect the flow of major rivers that wind down from the Himalayan foothills.

"This has a lot of consequences for agricultural production in one of the world's most populous regions," said Charles Ehrhart, climate-change coordinator at CARE.

The Ganges Delta, small island states and other low-lying areas, meanwhile, are in peril from rising sea levels.

If ocean levels rise by two metres (seven feet), "9.4 million people would be completely flooded out" in Bangladesh alone, said Ehrhart.

A two-metre (seven-feet) rise is seen by most climate scientists as being at the top end of predictions for what could happen this century.

In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) predicted sea levels will rise by up to 59 centimeters (23 inches) before 2100 due the expansion of warmer waters.

But this figure does not factor in a partial melting of massive ice sheets in western Antarctica and Greenland, a scenario now identified by more recent research.

The new report urged policymakers to develop tools to identify regions and populations at risk of being displaced by climate change.

And they said funds mustered to help cope with climate change under the future global treaty must also be directed at poor migrants.

The new pact, designed to run from 2012, would chiefly slash emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation that are warming Earth's atmosphere, affecting weather patterns.

The report admits that the definition of a climate migrant is complex, as poverty, a run of bad harvests or civil strife are usually the immediate, and thus most visible, triggers for displacement.

Estimates of the likely numbers range from 25 to 50 million people by 2010, while the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has pitched a figure of 200 million by 2050.

The term "climate refugee" is shunned by UN organisations, as "refugee" is a term with legal connotations under the 1851 Geneva Convention.

A healthcare reform bill will affect nearly everyone

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Despite the looming brawl in Congress, the Democratic majority is expected to pass some form of legislation.

Noam N. Levey
June 10, 2009 - Los Angeles Times

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Reporting from Washington -- Spurred on by President Obama and an array of businesses, medical providers and consumers clamoring for change, congressional Democrats have begun to lay out specific plans for overhauling the nation's healthcare system -- proposing changes that would affect almost every American, old or young, sick or well, rich, poor or middle-class.

Despite a looming brawl over key details, the Democratic majority is expected to pass a bill that will make ordinary Americans the ultimate stakeholders who must live with the system, adjust to changes and -- one way or another -- absorb the costs.

For laid-off autoworkers, there could be a new guarantee that they won't lose their family health insurance. A patient with heart disease could receive more advanced treatment to avoid hospitalization. Small shop owners could get help figuring out coverage for employees. An overweight teenager might find a new slim-down program at school.

And for some Americans, especially the affluent and those with traditional job-based medical insurance, there could be new or higher taxes.

After months of spadework and consultation with the interested parties, lawmakers begin the most sweeping healthcare debate in a generation with broad agreement on the need to control costs, improve the care Americans receive and expand coverage to nearly everyone.

But shadowing the debate, which is expected to dominate Washington's summer and extend into the fall, are the same vexing controversies that have derailed almost all previous efforts to reshape the U.S. healthcare system.

There is still no consensus, for example, about how large a role the federal government should play. Nor is there agreement on who should bear the cost, which could surpass $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

Obama's proposals include higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans. But that idea has generated widespread opposition in Congress.

Other financing schemes may be just as unpopular, such as taxing employer-provided health benefits or putting new levies on sugary beverages to raise revenue and encourage healthier behavior.

The first concrete legislation emerged Tuesday as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) filed a mammoth bill that, among other things, outlines a dizzying new government regulatory structure to ensure that every American gets health insurance.

Other bills are expected to follow from a trio of senior House Democrats, including Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), whose bill may offer the best hope for gaining Republican support.

In addition, a phone-book-size catalog of amendments and less-detailed alternatives -- including many from Republicans seeking to shape the debate themselves -- are expected to compete for attention.

Though they differ on important details, the Democrats' plans all focus on three broad goals, each of which has contributed to stalemate in the past:

* Improving the quality of care for everyone by encouraging doctors, hospitals and others to adopt the best, most effective courses of treatment. Research shows that many doctors fail to adopt advances in treatment and that more than 25% of all treatment may be medically ineffective or unnecessary.

Achieving this goal moves the government into the sensitive area of relations between individual patients and their doctors.

But many health policy experts say such changes could do the most to reduce medical costs and improve care.

"At the end of the day, that may be the most important thing we end up doing," said Ken Thorpe, a healthcare economist at Emory University.

* Curbing the explosive growth in costs by prodding the medical system to make more cost-effective decisions and to increase efficiency by moving to computerized medical records.

The public and employers are staggering under the cost of the present system -- rising at more than twice the rate of inflation and expected to surpass $2.2 trillion this year. But reining in prices can narrow freedom of choice and impose changes on providers.

* Making health insurance readily available to the 46 million people who don't have it, as well as more affordable and less burdensome to those who do, and to the employers who still deliver the bulk of medical insurance to workers.

In one of their most controversial proposals, Obama and congressional Democrats want to create an optional government insurance plan that individuals could choose instead of a private plan. Supporters argue that such a plan would curb costs and improve quality by creating competition for the handful of private insurance companies now dominating the market.

Few proposals ignite hotter partisan passions.

"It's just very, very difficult," a frustrated Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said after emerging from one meeting with fellow lawmakers last week.

Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is a leading member of a bipartisan group that has been working for months on healthcare legislation with input from dozens of interest groups.

This is the seventh major push over the last century, and senior senators from both parties say they are trying to find common ground.

"I think we have been surprised at the amount of agreement there is," said Wyoming Sen. Michael B. Enzi, the senior Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

One thing lawmakers in both parties have agreed on is that people's existing healthcare arrangements should be disrupted as little as possible. In particular, people should be able to keep their insurance and their doctor if they want to.

"For lots of Americans, there won't be much change right away," said Drew Altman, an expert on healthcare politics and president of the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

"That is inherent in the strategy."

Altman said that approach reflected the fact that most Americans report high satisfaction with their own care, even as they worry about rising costs.

In the same spirit, senior lawmakers and the administration are working to preserve the current employer-based system through which most Americans get insurance, while rejecting a single-payer system favored by some liberals, as well as a more free-market system favored by conservatives.

But signs of tension are already emerging, especially over provisions that Republicans charge would lead to government intrusion into the private relationships between patients and care providers.

Sensitive as those issues may be, many healthcare analysts worry that paying the bills may ultimately be where cooperation breaks down.

"The stars are aligned. The signs are promising," said Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at UC Berkeley who has studied previous efforts to overhaul the nation's healthcare system.

"But so far there has not been much congressional willingness to consider even relatively modest revenue-raising ideas," he said. "And in the healthcare debate, time is one of the greatest dangers. It gives people a chance to decide they are against whatever is on the table."

Grand Theft Auto

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June 01, 2009
Greg Palast - GregPalast.com

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Screw the autoworkers. They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders - led by Morgan and Citibank - expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.

The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

I smell a rat.

Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama's "Car Czar" - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left. That's the law. What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replaced by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock - or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

Preventive Detention for Pensions

So what's wrong with seizing workers' pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it's illegal.

In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can't seize workers' pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that's because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries." Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits."

"The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits."

Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it's not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank's a little short. A plan's assets are for the plan's members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.

Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker's spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another "Guantanamo" moment for the Obama Administration - channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.

Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must:

"... act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses."

By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock.

This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.

House of Rubin

Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don't even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren't asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?

As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who've already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama's point-man in winning banks' endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).

With GM's last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan's Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank's "finest year ever."

Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?

And it's been a good year for Senor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. "Owning" is a loose term. Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler - indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.

("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama's working class hero.

If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers' funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat's plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.

It doesn't make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.

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Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and "Armed Madhouse." He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981. Palast's latest reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! are collected on the newly released DVD, "Palast Investigates: From 8-Mile to the Amazon - on the trail of the financial marauders."

Is Your Newest Facebook Friend a Sleazeball Debt Collector?

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Exposing the latest and slimiest ways the "financial services" industry is raking it in from cash-crunched Americans.

Liliana Segura
June 10, 2009 - AlterNet

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With millions of Americans struggling in the current economic crisis, it should come as no surprise that a growing number of people are falling behind paying their bills. This is no cause for celebration -- unless of course, you happen to make your living as a debt collector, a debt-settlement company or other notoriously sleazy outfits engineered to profit off people's financial misery.

It's bad enough that while newspapers and car companies die off, the debt business is booming. But recent months have brought a number of reports and lawsuits that exposed some of the latest -- and slimiest -- ways the "financial services" industry is using to cash in on already-struggling Americans.

Is Your Newest Facebook Friend a Debt Collector?

When Michigan resident Paula Newland fell behind in her car payments, she found herself battling some typical -- and not so typical -- tactics used by debt collectors. In addition to repeated, harassing phone calls from three companies -- including 15 calls on one Saturday and claims that phone calls were "concerning a 'family emergency' " -- Newland was told that if she did not pay up, her car would be reported stolen, and she would be arrested. The company also threatened to deploy what they called a "shame automobile" and "camp out all weekend" in front of her house.

And then came a novel approach: As if all this weren't enough, the fact there were overdue payments for her 2005 Chevy Impala were broadcast on her MySpace account.

Outraged and humiliated, Newland filed a civil suit earlier this year claiming "damage to her business and community reputation, extreme mental distress, aggravation, humiliation and embarrassment."

Newland is hardly alone. Debt collectors are increasingly using social-networking technology to go after people in debt. Ever get "friended" on Facebook by a cute stranger? Think twice before you add them. Some debt collectors have been caught posing as random "friends" on Facebook.

According to a post on Consumerist last month, "Debt collectors are using cute chicks as bait on Facebook to track down and keep track of debtors." It told the story of one employee of a debt-collection agency, who after "friending" some 658 people, declared (rather bizarrely):

"haha you guys i tricked you all my name is actually Emily and i work for cbv collections as a skip tracer i bet you guys got calls from them saying you owe money thats all my doing :) you want to call and bitch? i dare you to call me 604-[redacted]!!! I wait to hear from you :)"

Writing about the Consumerist story, blogger Angela Connor who writes at Social MediaToday, noted a trend in the Google searches that lead people to her site. "Here are a few I've seen in the last two weeks," she wrote:

1. "facebook debt collectors" (there are many instances of this one!)
2. "debt collectors are going to start infiltrating social media"
3. "Do bill collector's use LinkedIn?"

"This clearly is a topic on the minds of many," Connor wrote. "I have no idea who is conducting these searches (bill collectors or those trying to avoid them), but I know we will see this more often."

Indeed, another recent lawsuit tells the story of James Ricobene, who sued a Chicago company called Universal Tracing in April after "a senior investigator for the collection agency posted a message on [Ricobene's] daughter's MySpace page asking her to 'contact our office immediately so we can discuss the peaceful recovery' of his 2007 Mercedes GL450.

"The suit identifies JP Morgan Chase Bank as the lender on the vehicle. 'Failure to contact me will result in further action against your father,' the investigator, Chris Flanagan, warned Gina Ricobene."

Because friends and family members saw the MySpace message, James Ricobene says he was "humiliated, embarrassed and suffered substantial emotional distress."

Harassing You for Debt That Belongs to Someone Else

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is supposed to prohibit debt collectors from contacting third parties, like family members, when going after people. But this remains one of the oldest tactics in the book. What's more, consumer rights advocates tell horror stories about the relentless harassment of people who find themselves in debt collectors' crosshairs because of identity theft -- or simply because they share a name with a person with debt.

Human logic would suggest it would be simple to clear up such an obvious mistake. Wrong. Getting off a debt collector's call list is apparently harder than getting off a no-fly list.

One New York lawyer (who, full disclosure, happens to be my sister) represents poor people in debt-collection lawsuits; she tells the story of a client who is blind and partially paralyzed and yet continues to be harassed by a debt collector insisting that he pay money he owes on a gym membership.

"He was like, 'I'm stuck in a wheelchair, and I can't see! Why would I go to the gym?' " says Anamaria Segura, a staff attorney at MFY Legal Services. Neither this -- nor the fact that the man shares a name with his son, whose debt he was possibly being harassed for -- seems to be convincing the debt collector to back off.

"The thing that was hard about helping this client is that he'd not only apparently had his identity stolen; his credit report mistakenly reported debt that belonged to his son, under his son's Social Security number (they have the same name, just Jr. and SR.)"

When the collectors would call, he would explain that there was a mistake -- and they would immediately ask for his Social Security number, to confirm the account. When he refused to provide them with it due to privacy concerns -- after all, this was probably the reason his identity had been stolen in the first place -- the caller would take his reluctance as proof of a challenge or refusal to pay.

"His son was incarcerated, and they barely kept in touch, so he couldn't ask his son about the accounts, so he had to constantly field these phone calls from aggressive debt collectors who demanded payment."

Aside from the gym membership, a debt collector also accused him of owing money on a car rental. This, too, was a mistake, since the client cannot drive.

Yet debt collectors resorted to callous tactics -- including bigotry -- to try to get the money: "One collector said to him once, 'you Hispanics, you're all the same, you don't want to take responsibility.' "

While such harassment is appalling and annoying, it shouldn't actually end up costing you anything, right?

Think again.

A different New York man described being called multiple times by a Buffalo, N.Y.-based collection agency called Capital Management Services regarding debt on a Chase Bank credit card. The man, Paul Alappat, "told the collector he had never possessed a Chase Bank card and asked them to stop calling him."

When he applied for a home-equity loan two years later, however, the collection showed up on his credit report. His lender told him that if the $394.74 debt were not resolved, the loan couldn't be made.

"Since I was in a hurry to get the loan approved," Alappat said, "I paid the full amount, including the interest."

The Rise of 'Debt-Settlement' Firms

OK, so debt collectors can be total bullies. But what about those seemingly kindler, gentler companies that promise to settle your debt for a fee? According to the International Association of Professional Debt Arbitrators, theirs is a "profession that truly makes a difference."

And making a difference is lucrative, apparently. "The debt-settlement industry is growing very rapidly," boasts the IAPDA Web site. The IAPDA cites historic levels of credit card debt, as well as changes in bankruptcy laws that make it harder for consumers to clear debts, as reasons to "be a part of this exciting industry." In fact, it calls it one of the "top-rated career opportunities of the new millennium."

Last month, however, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced a nationwide investigation into debt-settlement companies, calling it a "rogue industry" that offers consumers "false hope, charging tremendous fees and leaving them in a worse financial situation."

"The debt-settlement plans offered by these companies are often inherently flawed and, based upon consumer complaints, it appears that many consumers are being misled regarding the nature of the services offered by these companies," according to a press release released last month by the attorney general's office. "For example, some companies falsely represent that they can reduce consumers' credit card debt by as much as 75 percent through negotiations with creditors. In addition, the companies often take their fees up front and keep their fees even when they do not provide the promised services."

The cruelty of these plans is that they are based on a payment plan that is a set-up from the start.

"The debt-settlement plans are generally premised on consumers aggregating savings, over one to three years, from which both the payment of the company's fees and any negotiated settlement are to be made. Yet most consumers who are targeted by these companies are unable to meet the savings requirements because of their precarious financial situation."

"The real racket," says Anamaria Segura at MFY Legal Services, "is that they'll say, 'Oh you owe $4,000? We'll negotiate with your creditors and settle that for $2,500!' But the fact is, that if the consumer ever is able to compile the $2,500 to pay off the creditors, by the time that happens, the $4,000 balance is now $6,000, because of interests, fees and late charges -- and the debt-settlement companies know that,"

When people come up short, these companies end up telling consumers to find other ways to cough up the cash. This, according to the AG's office can include telling people to mow lawns, "cut down" on car insurance, "borrowing from their neighbors and church," and perhaps most memorably, "selling their blood plasma."

"Debt collectors are totally different from debt-settlement companies," explains Segura. "I've had some debt-collection lawyers say to me, 'Oh they are terrible, we don't work with them, they really mislead people.' And they're right. But in my experience debt-collection lawyers are no better."