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Welcome friends to our weekly recap of stories you may have missed this holiday week. As always, I've included something to make you smile at the end.
History Made in Canada
Most people had never heard of the Hamilton Honey Badgers before this week. For good reason. They are part of the six-team Canadian Elite Basketball League. Yeah, I didn't know it existed either.
Earlier this week, the Honey Badgers made history naming Chantal Vallee its head coach and general manager. She is the first woman anywhere in basketball history to hold both posts for a men's team.
“Men have been coaching females with success for generations,” Vallee told the National Post. “I think what’s interesting is we’re at the point where a man or a woman can be hired, not based on gender, but ability."
Vallee may be the first, but likely not the last. Stateside, former WNBA star Becky Hammon was hired as the assistant coach of the NBA's San Antonio Spurs in 2014. One year later, she led the Spurs' Summer League team to a championship.
No one ever thinks twice about a man coaching women's teams, but the opposite remains an anomaly. Only about three percent of NCAA men's teams are coached by women.
But let's be honest, this is about something more. In a world where sports remains a home for toxic hyper-masculinity among fans, especially, the idea of a woman even broadcasting men's sports brings out the worst in people. Now, imagine a woman in charge of wins and losses.
But let's not forget that teams have employed an assortment of criminals, domestic abusers and human dregs of all varieties in the name of winning. Fans have cheered them and bought their jerseys.
Instead, how about hiring more talented women instead? They can lead teams to victory, build franchises and make significant contributions on and off the field of play. Accomplishments that fans and leagues can be proud of.
Borrowers Pay the Price ... Again
The Associated Press had an exclusive story about how Navient Corp., the third-largest student loan servicing company, "may have driven tens of thousands of borrowers struggling with their debts into higher-cost repayment plans."
The U.S. Department of Education, in response to federal and state lawsuits, conducted an audit of Navient's customer service practices and discovered that for nearly 10% of all borrowers struggling to repay their loans, the company did not disclose the full suite of repayment options available. As a result, those customers were steered "into high-cost plans without discussing options that would have been less costly in the long run."
In other words, they were directed into plans where interest continued to accrue even if they received a forbearance. Interest, of course, is where loan servicing companies make their money.
[T]he five states suing Navient — Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, California and Mississippi — say the behavior breaks their laws regarding consumer protection. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says in its own lawsuit the practices are unfair, deceptive and abusive and break federal consumer protection laws.
The audit was conducted in 2017 and has intentionally not been made public by the Department, which admitted as much. The AP received a copy of the audit from the office of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a major critic of the Trump Administration and the Department of Education.
Navient's response left a lot to be desired:
“We (are not) aware of any requirement that borrowers receive all of their repayment options ... on each and every call,” the company said, adding that if the Department of Education chose to require all servicers to discuss income-driven repayment plans with all borrowers, the Department of Education needs to redo its contract with Navient.
So, "pay us more and we'll do it" is what you're going with here?
According to the Federal Reserve, as of April 2018, over 44 million U.S. student loan borrowers owe a total of $1.5 trillion in debt. The delinquency/default rate is 10.7% (90+ days delinquent). From January - March 2018 alone, student loan debt increased by $29 billion with $31 billion in new 90+ days delinquent balances.
Also, this:
One Way to End Extreme Poverty
Speaking of billions, in reading the AP story, I was reminded of the Oxfam International study from earlier this year called "Reward Work, Not Wealth."
According to the report, 2017 "saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history, one more every two days. This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over." Incredibly, "82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, and nothing went to the bottom 50%."
The report focuses on this "bottom 50%" and how women are often overwhelmingly in jobs with the worst conditions.
Oxfam has spoken to women across the world whose lives are blighted by inequality. Women in Vietnamese garment factories who work far from home for poverty pay and don’t get to see their children for months at a time. Women working in the US poultry industry who are forced to wear nappies because they are denied toilet breaks.
To address these issues, Oxfam is calling on governments around the world to "ensure our economies work for everyone and not just the fortunate few." Among its recommendations:
Ensure all workers receive a minimum living wage that would enable them to have a decent quality of life.
Eliminate the gender pay gap and protect the rights of women workers. At current rates of change, it will take 217 years to close the gap in pay and employment opportunities between women and men.
Ensure the wealthy pay their fair share of tax through higher taxes and a crackdown on tax avoidance, and increase spending on public services such as healthcare and education.
And Finally ...
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(Photo by: The Canadian Press/HO, Hamilton Honey Badgers)
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