Churches Take Lead In Push For Healthier Lifestyles

BBB Receives Thousands Of Complaints On Mysterious Credit Card Charges

U.S. marketing company is charging online shoppers every month without their knowledge

The Grand Rapids Times
7-4-2008

Grand Rapids, MI – Better Business Bureau is warning credit card holders to closely check their statements for mysterious charges that are cropping up by the thousands across the country.

Upset online shoppers have contacted BBB about unwanted credit card charges that are ultimately being traced back to Connecticut- based Affinion Group, an affinity- marketing company that recently changed its name from Trilegiant.

In the last 12 months alone, BBB has received nearly 1,800 complaints regarding Affinion Group.

Most complainants state that they were shocked when they discovered unwanted charges on their credit card for membership services such as “Shoppers Advantage,” “Privacy Guard” or “Great Fun.”

Charges ranged from $12 to as much as $59.99 every month.

Some complainants had been charged by Affinion Group every month for several years, resulting in hundreds of dollars being paid for services they never took advantage of or even realized they had signed up for.

“Consumers who get signed up for Affinion’s programs never actually provide their credit card information and therefore don’t suspect that the company will immediately begin charging their credit card every month,” Ken Vander Meeden, BBB of Western Michigan CEO.

“The large volume and pattern of complaints BBB has received indicates that Affinion is not taking enough steps to ensure consumers understand exactly what they’re getting into when they click on enticing pop-up ads - and that’s why they have a longstanding unsatisfactory record in BBBs book.

Some complainants were able to retrace their steps and find out how they were inadvertently signed up for membership services that resulted in the monthly charges.

Typically, consumers had purchased items online - such as movie or airline tickets - from a reputable Web site.

At some point in the transaction process, pop-up ads or chat boxes appeared offering incentives, such as $20 rebate cards for the Web site or claims like, “Click here for your 10% savings.”

Complainants allege they were signed up for unwanted services simply by clicking on pop-up ads or replying to chat windows, even though they ultimately declined the offers.

Complainants never provided their credit card information to ads or chats because the company with which they had just made their online purchase had a pre-established agreement with Affinion Group to automatically transfer consumer information when they clicked on the ad or chat.

“Most complainants report to BBB that they have no idea how or why they were being charged and were extremely angry when they discovered how much money they had lost through affinity marketing practices,” added Vander Meeden. “Unfortunately many credit card holders are learning the hard way about the value of reviewing their statements and finances every month.”

Tavis Smiley Softens Position on Obama, Says Blacks
Must Defend Presumptive Nominee Against Attacks

The Grand Rapids Times
7-4-2008

By Bonnie V. Winston
Special to the NNPA from the Richmond Free Press

Richmond, Va. (NNPA) - Political commentator and national talk show host Tavis Smiley seemingly has softened his position on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

In an exclusive interview with the Richmond Free Press, Smiley lauded the Illinois senator for his historic achievement in becoming the first African-American to run for president under a major party banner.

He also denied that his departure from the hugely popular Tom Joyner Morning Show was linked to his stance on Sen. Obama.

“I don’t allow people to run me away from anywhere,” he said in a phone interview from his Los Angeles home. “I start and leave on my terms.”

Smiley, who was set to speak in Richmond June 14, became the subject of much speculation in April when it was announced he would be quitting Joyner’s radio show after 12 years of offering twice weekly commentaries on politics and a range of other subjects.

It was rumored that he is leaving because of his tough posture on Sen. Obama, particularly among throngs of listeners who fervently supported the senator’s historic nomination quest.

Joyner said at the time that Smiley quit because he couldn’t handle the criticism from listeners upset because “he’s always busting Barack Obama’s chops.”

But, Smiley denies it.

In the past, the 43-year-old Smiley has criticized Obama for not attending the State of the Black Union for the past two years. Smiley has convened the event – a national conversation on issues pertinent to the Black community – for eight years.

In February 2007, when the televised convocation drew 10,000 people to Hampton University, Obama was announcing his historic bid for president from the statehouse in Illinois that very weekend.

Smiley explained during the interview, as he has in a commentary, that his contract is up with Joyner’s show. He said he is fatigued with rising at 3 a.m. everyday to meet the show’s 6 a.m. start on the East Coast. He said there are other things he wants to do.

His last commentaries on the show were to come at the end of June.

“You mentioned empowerment. Well, I want to move on and do other things,” he said.

While Smiley said that Obama – and all elected officials – must be held accountable to the people who put them in office, he noted that Sen. Obama’s history-making nomination “releases progressive possibilities and portends for us – people of color and for women – the opportunity to do things that we heretofore have not had a chance to do.”

But, he cautioned, the general election campaign against Republican John McCain will be a bruiser.

“We have to brace ourselves for the ugliest, nastiest racist, most expensive campaign ever in this country,” he said. “I don’t think people have really grasped yet how ugly, nasty, racist and divisive this race is going to become.”

Smiley called on people to prepare to defend Sen. Obama “against any and all White supremacist attacks” that are certain to be launched.

“We have to stay informed. We have to stay awake. We have to stay alert. We have to stay aware,” Smiley said. “And we have the obvious call to be involved – in controlling our destiny in every step that we can. So we have to get involved. Whether people support Obama or McCain, you have to be involved in the process.”

Class Reunion Awards Locals For Service

The Grand Rapids Times
7-4-2008
By Dawn Hudson

[click here to download page 8 from the Print Edition of the Grand Rapids Times]

Crout Family Reunion

[click here to download page 9 from the Print Edition of the Grand Rapids Times]

We Must Pay Attention To Rise In Gun Violence

By Marion Wright Edelman
NNPA Columnist

Over a 48-hour period this Memorial Day weekend, 21 people were shot in New York City, six fatally. A gunman opened fire on a crowd in a shopping district in Queens and wounded five people. A 15-year-old was killed while leaving a party in Manhattan. A 13-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl were wounded in Harlem.

This spring frenzy of gun violence has not been limited to New York. Other cities have experienced a similar rash of shootings. In one weekend in June, 14 people were shot to death in Los Angeles County. The police attributed the violence to gang activity.

During the early morning hours of May 24, three men were shot to death in Philadelphia. Each was the victim of multiple bullet wounds. In the last weekend in May, seven people were killed and three were wounded in the District of Columbia in just nine hours. In a city where homicides had been on the decline in recent years, the number of D.C. murders surpassed the previous year’s mark for May. A rash of shootings earlier this year caused the District’s police chief to call a virtual ‘’all hands on deck’’ alert to put as many officers on street duty as possible as a deterrent to more gun violence.

Regardless of whether the shootings were motivated by a gang rivalry, revenge or an unwelcome glance at someone else’s girlfriend, the rampant gun violence plaguing our nation must stop. To do something about this scourge, we have to address its causes. There are more than 200 million privately owned firearms in the United States.

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Get Down To Reality Of Black On Black Killings

Reality Check
By Peter Bailey, NNPA Columnist

Before dealing with a problem, it is important to analyze it thoroughly and accurately. We seem unwilling to do that when it comes to the serious problem of too many Black-on-Black homicides in numerous urban areas.

Without claiming any sense of infallibility, I offer the following ways to analyze and develop solutions to the problem:

First of all, it is not a case of Black males just randomly killing each other as is too often projected. That is too broad a stroke.

The reality is a situation where, in overwhelming numbers, low-income Black males are killing other low-income Black males and in many, if not most, instances the killer and the victim knew each other.

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I Understand Michelle Obama’s Comment

By Ron Walters
NNPA Columnist

Michelle Obama has all of a sudden become the center of attention in the election because she is perceived by John McCain’s people to have made Barack Obama vulnerable to an attack on his loyalty to the country.

And as silly as it is – why would someone running for president of the United States be disloyal to the country, or have his wife voice such sentiments? – Obama has to defend his campaign against such attacks.

She was speaking shortly after Obama had drawn ahead in the primary race and it looked like he would win and she said that “for the first time in my adult life I’m really proud of my country.”

But I not only heard what she said, I understood it, like many people who happen to be of African descent in America.

Pride of country, loyalty, patriotism, etc. are all emotions that have ebbed and flowed for African Americans with the force of the damage directed against them historically and many whites have had a problem with what they perceive to be the ungrateful black, who should love their country right or wrong.
 
Well, that sentiment is possible if you have not been on the receiving end of a whole of bad stuff that intervened in your attempt to love America with all your heart - stuff like what happened to many blacks who saw the bodies of their loved ones floating in the waters of Katrina - that made you question whether the country really loved you.

This has been the case for the past 28 years, since Ronald Reagan and his mean-spirited conservatism came in and sat down in the White House and refused to honor the history of struggle that we called civil rights that virtually justified a new wave of vigilantism against blacks and legitimized government withdrawal of resources, fostering a mood that criminality was the real urban problem, passing laws to lock’em up and throw away the keys.

Let’s see. Michelle Obama is 44 years old, less 28 years finds that she was 16 years old when Ronald Reagan came into office. So, she is right that for most of her adult life she has had to witness – and probably argue against -- the attack on Affirmative Action that has weakened it to the present state that something called “diversity” has been legitimized, but no one quite knows what it is.

She has had to witness the upsurge in the drug trafficking, together with low-wage warfare in urban neighborhoods, that if people really loved us could have been stopped.

She has had to listen to government officials argue about the “test-score gap” and “children born to female headed house holds” and other narratives that clearly possessed a subtext of black inferiority.

And she has had to think about a country that would rather go to war to enrich a relative few rather than to spend money fixing up dilapidated schools and neighborhoods, and restoring the lives of the poor and homeless.

These are the things that if you were black, you questioned the loyalty of those in power who trashed the notion of American Democracy and the high hopes that the framers set out for the country. You felt, like many of us, that the country had been on an upward trajectory with the movement for Civil Rights that helped Hispanics to vote, empowered women to seek equal rights, established protection for the disabled and proposed fair housing for us all. Many have a feeling that this America was rejected and that another version rooted in the revival of white privilege has dominated the last 28 years.

So, I understand Michelle Obama. The real truth slipped out but her comment really had nothing to do with her basic pride in being an American, or her loyalty to the premises of American democracy. It has to do with the feeling that there has been a theft of Democracy by a gang with narrow goals of diverting the resources of the country to their own interests.

That is not an America worth being proud of. The America worth being proud of is one that restores the hope of those who have not achieved the American dream that there is coming a new regime of sensitivity to the human condition, one which takes concrete steps to open up opportunities to make America a democracy that the world also can be proud of again.

She senses that it can happen for the first time in a long time and so do I.

But this feeling, so much embedded in the desire for change, is being corrupted by the vile interpretation of commentators and others whose notion of pride, patriotism and loyalty to country is placed on a bumper sticker, not on the heart.

Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Center and Professor of Government and Politics. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (University of Michigan Press)

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