The time I got swindled

About five years ago my checking account received an unauthorized debit from which I had made a previous purchase. The debit was for $30, but caused my checking account to go overdrawn by approximately $800.

Not knowing the debit had been taken and I was already overdrawn, I deposited enough money to cover my pending expenses and let my checking account to fall deeper and deeper in the red.

It took the bank 6 days to notify me of the overdraft on my account. In the mean time, the bank charged me $32 for every debit that came in as an overdraft, six dollars for every day I was overdrawn, plus the amount of each debit while not giving me overdraft protection and covering the amount I owed to each business at which I had made purchases.

When I discovered my overdraft, I immediately went to the bank and asked to see what had gone wrong. I received a small statement from all charges and deposits from the prior week and discovered the unauthorized charge. The bank contacted the business that had charged me and got them to take away the $30 charge without argument.

As for everything else, the bank did nothing to help me. I was told I would have to collect the overdraft fees from the company that had put me into the negative. They also continued to charge me $6 for every day I was overdrawn, causing the overdraft to grow even larger.

I was never able to collect my fees the company who had taken the unauthorized debit from my account. In the end, I owed every business what I owed them, plus their individual check-bouncing fees, the bank overdraft fees, the daily $6 overdrawn fee and also the money I owed to the businesses I had to pay two-fold to the bank.

To expose such practices from the bank and the business, I would contact the Better Business Bureau to report the incident and look for similar complaints.

Marshall University Foundation feeling the recession

Businesses are not the only entities feeling the negative effects of a poor economy. Universities and colleges, including the Marshall University Foundation, have experienced a decline in endowment funds, net assets and charitable donations.

According to the foundation it experienced a 15 percent decline in the number of donors and a 29 percent decrease in the value of gifts given, down from $8.6 million in 2008 to $6.1 million in 2009. According to a Chronicle of Higher Education article, the foundation experienced a loss of 17.8 percent in endowment value in 2009.

The decrease in gifts of 29 percent is greater than the 11.9 percent decrease in gifts U.S. universities and colleges experienced, according to a survey by the Council for Aid to Education. According to a Chronicle of Higher Education article from March 7, the national decline in endowments was 23 percent in 2009 compared to the foundation’s loss of 17.4 percent.

According to the foundation’s annual report, it experienced a decrease of net assets of 21 percent, down from $119 million in 2008 to $94 million in 2009

R. Scott Anderson, Marshall University Foundation chief financial officer, said the foundation had to cut its operating budget late in fiscal year 2009 including a reduction in staff of five positions in April 2009. These structural changes will carryover to fiscal year 2010.

Financial Aid Director Kathy J. Bialk said the amount of available scholarships for all students decreased from approximately $2.87 million in 2008 to $1.2 million in 2009.

“We haven’t seen our numbers for 2010-2011, but we are hoping they are better,” Bialk said.

Anderson said the foundation also reduced the amount of support to various Marshall University departments by 34 percent: from $14.5 million in 2008 to $9.5 million in 2009, according to the foundation’s audited financial statements.

“In fiscal year 2010, there were some specific endowed scholarships which did not have earnings available to award scholarships,” Anderson said. “The foundation continues to award scholarships in 2010, although in a reduced amount based on the market values of the endowment funds.”

Montserrat Miller, associate professor of history, said the history department has felt the decline in available scholarships. Miller said student awards once accompanied with a monetary award were given without a check while others were not awarded at all in the 2009-2010 school year.

“I was told that the ADK Doris C. Miller Scholarship was underwater,” Miller said, “and as a consequence we have taken a year off from naming a recipient.”

According to the 2009 Voluntary Support of Education survey conducted by the CAE, in which the foundation participated, charitable donations to colleges and institutions in the U.S. were down by 11.9 percent, the steepest decline in the survey’s history.
In a Feb. 3 CAE press release, Ann E. Kaplan, director of the VSE survey, said the decline in gifts to universities was expected given the economic conditions.

“Historical patterns indicate that as the economy recovers, contributions will rise again,” Kaplan said in the release. “However, 2009 was a difficult year for colleges and universities and, indeed, also for the individuals and institutions that care about them.”

According to the survey, prior to the 2009 downturn, gifts to universities and colleges had increased at an average rate of 4.1 percent over the past ten years.
According to the survey, gifts to operations experienced a modest decline of less than 1 percent, but gifts for capital purposes, which include gifts to endowments, for property, building and equipment, experienced a steep decline of 25 percent.

Foundation Gifts by Year














Marshall University Foundation Net Assets by Year


Sources: Marshall University Annual Financial Report 2006-2009

City’s wallet feels the economic crisis

Huntington Mayor Kim Wolfe’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2010-2011 reflects the hardships the town is facing in the wake of the national economic crisis.
In the State of the City address on Feb. 13, Wolfe said the current fiscal year budget was cut by 10 percent from last year’s budget in reaction to the current national economic crisis and an estimated 10 percent reduction in proposed revenue for this year
The proposed budget has been cut from last year’s proposed budget of $44.6 million to approximately $39.5 million, a difference of $5.1 million.
The cuts in the proposed budget expenditures were across the board except for the budget under the heading of mayor, which saw an increase of approximately $2000. City Council and insurance budgets are the only two to remain the same.
Accounting for 24 percent of the decrease in expenditure, the proposed budgets for the Huntington Police Department and Fire Department are down by a total of $1.1 million.
In the State of the City address, Wolfe said the $1 user fee increase made it possible to hire six new police officers With the proposed budget, the city will likely have to remove administrative positions in the police and fire department, and replace them with sworn personnel, thus reducing first responders in the field.
The largest cut in revenue sources comes from Business and Occupation tax and federal grants, which are estimated to decrease by $1.9 million and $1.4 million, respectively.
In the State of the City address, Wolfe said the city is trying tactics to collect on delinquent taxes and fees; for instance the city turned over the collection of outstanding Business and Occupation taxes to a private auditing service.
“We are exploring all that is currently available to us,” Wolfe said in the address. “In the budget that is presented, instead of massive layoffs and reductions in services, we are proposing cutbacks in some areas, removal of some positions and furloughs for city employees.”

The State of Huntington, according to Wolfe

In the State of the City address on Feb. 13, Mayor Kim Wolfe focused on successes, future plans, and the fallout from the economic crisis that affecting the community’s fiscal situation.

Wolfe thanked the city council for the $1 user fee increase, which resulted in the city hiring six police officers, paving $800,000 worth of streets and purchasing Street and Traffic Engineering Division equipment.

The mayor pointed to several city successes; including the creation of a constituent services liaison, which allows the city to be more responsive to residents’ requests or complaints, national attention from “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”, and the completion of the first phase of the Old Main Corridor with funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Wolfe said the current fiscal year budget was cut by 10 percent from last year’s $44 million to approximately $40 million in reaction to the current national economic crisis and an estimated 10 percent reduction in proposed revenue for this year.

Few Contributed, but at MU and Uk, most gave to Democrats

During the 2008 presidential election, people who identified their employer as Marshall University or the University of Kentucky gave a large majority of donations to Democratic candidates over Republican candidates according to campaign contribution information obtained from Fundrace on huffingtonpost.com.

Approximately 97 percent of donations from MU employees and 78.7 percent of donations from the UK employees went to Democratic candidates.

Ten MU employees donated a total of $4,791 and 75 UK employees donated a total of $52,902 in the 2008 presidential election.

George Davis, Marshall University political science professor, said even though there was too little information to draw any overwhelming conclusion from the donation patterns, it did not surprise him that the university employees were more likely to support Democratic candidates.

“People working in higher education are more likely to be more educated, more affluent and because of that among the most politically involved,” Davis said. “What is surprising is that only 10 employees from Marshall and 75 from Kentucky contributed to candidates.”

President Barrack Obama received the most financial contributions from employees at both universities, with 52 percent of the total from UK and 62 percent of the total from MU.

This is a greater percentage than he received in total. Obama totaled approximately 42 percent, or $659.7 million, of the total $1.54 billion in monetary contributions raised by the top 18 fund raising presidential candidates according to the campaign finance election guide on nytimes.com.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came in second in financial contributions at both universities with 16.6 percent of the total contributions from UK and 21.7 percent at MU.

Sen. John McCain came in a close third in donations from university employees at UK with 15.7 percent of the total donations, but did not received any donations from MU employees.

2008 presidential election financial contributions from Marshall University and University of Kentucky employees by candidate

Democrats	Marshall University	University of Kentucky
Obama	$2,948	$27,774
Clinton	$1,043	$8,786
Edwards	$1,000	$4,055
Kucinich	$0	$1,000
Total	$4,491	$41,615
Republicans
McCain	$0	$8,321
Paul	$300	$2,716
Guililani	$0	$250
Total	$300	$11,287

To: Professor Morris
From: Melissa Ison
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Story Outline: Waste and efficiency in local government

Subject: Cabell County/Huntington government are/are not pursuing environmental efficiency

Scope: While covering the President’s Office for the Parthenon, President Kopp released a report showing embarrassing amounts of waste – monetary and energy – within the university. I am curious to see if local government is doing anything similar to what the university is doing to monitor waste and curb costs.

Need: It is important for the tax paying public to know if their governments are seeking to curb costs by becoming more energy and waste efficient.

Methods: I would contact various government departments – mayor’s office, police, fire, etc. – to see if there have been any efforts to become more efficient.

Sources: I would rely on interviews from employees within these offices, rather than department heads to see their take on the efficiency in their departments. I think the interesting people to interview would be the office workers and the maintenance crews. I would also rely on the individual, detailed budget and financial reports from each department to see how money is being spent and if waste is being monitored.

Presentation: This would be a post on my blog, Appalachian Refugee.

Follow-up: This could be a good continuing piece if the government agencies have or have not been pursuing more environmental and monetary efficiency. Further investigations could focus on state government and schools.

Investigative journalism is alive and well

The article “Foreign Interpreters Hurt in Battle Find U.S. Insurance Benefits Wanting” by T. Christian Miller investigated the claims of mistreatment from insurance companies of injured interpreters employed to aid troops during the Iraq War.

The propublica.org and the Los Angeles Times co-published article investigated claims that injured interpreters benefits from insurance companies were not meeting what was originally promised. Many of them not qualifying for coverage due to lack of paper work and others being bullied into accepting a settlement much lower than what was promised.

The article is well written, well researched and not overly graphic in nature. Though it is dealing with interpreters who were injured during the war, the journalist does not linger on the injuries inflicted to promote sympathy for them. It focuses only on the evidence derived from interviews, documents and insurance claims.

The evidence Miller found to support the claims came from interviews, corporate documents and data on insurance claims. Miller explained each individual interpreter in different sections, with their account followed by the counter from the accused.

In supporting claims and seeking responses from the parties involved, Miller cited statements from insurers, the Labor Department and internal AIG documents.

The use of graphics in the story aided the readers experience and did not merely repeat the facts of the story. The graphics illustrate where the interpreters are from by state or nation. Though this specific story is specifically about foreign contractors, many of the contractors are also American.

This article is informative for current war contractors, and might spark the interest of human rights activists and individuals serving in the military.

I was right, well, sort of

In a post from Jan. 21, I attempted to predict with mild success what President Obama would say in his first State of the Union address on Wednesday.

In the address Obama sternly and optimistically pushed for bipartisanship by asking Congress to put aside their differences and focus on jobs and the economy, the need to pass health care reform, tackling the deficit and national security. I predicted correctly Obama would use the forum as a call to arms for bipartisanship to pass important legislation like the health care bill. I was partially correct about Obama pointing to the success statistics of the Recovery Act. Instead of focusing on the numbers, he told stories of the people and businesses the act helped.

While I was correct on some of the themes of the address, I failed in predicting the specifics of how he would go about making his points. I also failed in noting a few major points of the address, like job creation, on what Obama needed to focus.

Some early Huntington budget help

The spending freeze in Huntington government may help ease some of the city’s financial woes. According to a WOWK story from Jan. 11, the freeze will not affect new hiring and will not cut all spending. Now, purchases have to go through the mayor's office rather than just the department heads and the finance directors.

Mayor Kim Wolfe proposed the spending freeze, not a new initiative for the city, a few months earlier than usual to help ease the city’s budget problems. In an article from the Herald Dispatch dated Jan. 10, Brandi Jacobs-Jones, director of administration and finance, said last year’s freeze resulted in approximately $1 million in savings.

To fully understand the situation in the city, it is important to examine the facts and the situation. Huntington W.Va. according to the U.S. Census bureau has an approximate population of 49,000 and covers 15 square miles. The total revenue estimate for the current fiscal year 2010 is $41,064,610, and the previous 2009 revenue estimate was $38,758,863. In contrast, the expenditure estimates for fiscal years 2010 and 2009 were $42,135,417 and 39,990,304, respectively. Both years show a projected estimate loss of approximately $1 million.

According to the Huntington city budget Huntington’s two biggest tax revenue sources are the business and occupation tax with approximately $16 million and the municipal service fees with approximately $5 million. The biggest expenditures for the city are the police and fire departments, which cost the city approximately $10.5 million and $9.5 million, respectively. Combined, the fire and police department make up for almost 50 percent of the expenditures of the city’s budget.

Kopp trying to say everything is OK

In a statement aimed to lull faculty and staff, Marshall University President Stephen Kopp declared the university is working to thrive with the 3.4 percent reduction in state appropriations.
Kopp said the university is pursuing programs in the health care industry, such as pharmacy and physical therapy, to accommodate a growing demand in the field, attract and retain students and help meet budgetary restraints. Kopp said using some programs like the endowment based research program, which once funded will be self-sustaining, and the newly formed Sustainability Department, which is monitoring the university’s efficiency and waste, will help with budgetary issues.
With this announcement Kopp is trying to let the faculty and staff know the university is trying to improve the current situation in the face of budgetary cuts and the new freeze on tuition. This statement was probably a reaction to calm fears of further departmental cuts within the university.

2010 State of the Union: A Preview of possibilities

2010 State of the Union: A Preview of possibilities

As President Obama is planning to give his first true State of the Union address on Jan. 27 to a joint session of Congress, some themes may be expected in his speech.

Though it may be difficult to predict everything the president will discuss, some common themes that have been coming from the White House and the president himself in speeches since his presidency began can be expected.

The address has historically been a forum for sitting presidents to tout their successes, to talk about their future plans and budget and as an agenda setting platform of the president for the House and Senate. President Obama delivered a State of the Union address in 2009, but since he had only been in the White House briefly, it was not considered a true State of the Union address.

Obama may use the forum to call for unity in completing common goals like President Gerald Ford did in his Jan. 15, 1975 address when facing hard economic times.

“We can do this by fashioning a new partnership between the Congress on the one hand, the White House on the other, and the people we both represent, “ Ford said. “Let us mobilize the most powerful and most creative industrial nation that ever existed on this Earth to put all our people to work.”

Without the ability to tout the great success of health care reform passage, Obama may have to use the “Ford method” as a call to arms for bi-partisanship. Since Democrats recently lost their super majority due to the loss of the Massachusetts Senate race to replace Ted Kennedy’s seat, which they had been relying on to get the health care reform bill passed without a filibuster, President Obama is likely to speak about the need for bi-partisanship and partnership between Congress and the presidency in efforts to pass important legislation like the health care bill.

As it was during President Ford’s presidency, the state of the economy has been a major issue in the U.S. for several years now, and Obama will undoubtedly speak of his successes and future plans of improving the economy.

The U.S. Government’s official Web site used to track the money spent through the grants, loans and contracts of the economic stimulus package has a ticker boasting the 640,329 jobs created or saved and a bar graph showing over $158 billion already awarded in funds. Obama will most likely cite these figures as a measure of how he is working to help the economy.

Spending is one theme, but the Obama White House has been mentioning plans to cut the deficit in the near future, so he may outline some plans to accomplish this goal. Peter Orszag, White House budget director, gave the following statement to POLITICO.

“The President strongly believes that as the recovery strengthens and job growth returns, we will have to take the tough steps necessary to return our nation to a fiscally disciplined and sustainable path,” Orszag said, “We recognize that the projected medium-term deficits are too high, and as part of the FY 2011 budget process, we are committed to bringing them down.”

One topic in deficit reduction President Obama may discuss is his plan to appoint a bi-partisan panel to produce a deficit reduction plan. According to a Jan. 20, 2010 Associated Press article in the Los Angeles Times, Obama has shown the White House is willing to work towards dealing with the deficit this year. It also stated the panel allows him show compromise without offering specifics that would offend key interest groups.

On Jan. 17 President Obama announced he had told White House aides and federal agencies to not give any new work to government contractors who had not paid taxes. Citing studies by the Government Accountability Office, President Obama said such contractors owed $5 billion in taxes. Though $5 billion is a nothing compared to the $1.3 trillion deficit an article in The New York Times said the administration inherited, it seems likely President Obama will point to such initiatives as efforts to combat the deficit.

The Ghosts of State of the Unions past

History repeats itself, and the major issues facing the U.S. today have already happened and will happen again.

President Obama just announced he would deliver his first true State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010. In preparation for his address, I have compiled a few common themes past presidents have discussed in their State of the Union addresses and researched some of President Obama’s recent speeches in an effort to predict what he will discuss. Here is some of my research in preparation for the address.

President Obama in a recent speech

While it may not be a surprise to anyone who has not been living under a rock for the past year to know what some of the major problems facing the U.S. are today, looking at one of the most recent speeches President Obama gave on Jan. 18 at a campaign rally for the open senate seat in Massachusetts can give us some insight into what he will be discussing. The themes he discussed about the senate candidate Martha Coakley were health care reform, financial regulatory reform and clean energy.

President Gerald Ford

Some of the themes from the State of the Union address President Gerald Ford delivered on Jan. 15, 1975 sound familiar to some issues the U.S. is still facing today. Ford’s presidency was plagued with recession and a gas shortage. The gas shortage prompted President Ford to speak of the need to lessen our dependence on foreign energy sources and our economic stability.

“Our growing dependence upon foreign sources has been adding to our vulnerability for years and years,” President Ford said. “And we did nothing to prepare ourselves for such an event as the embargo of 1973.”

He proposed plans to cut the U.S.’s dependency on foreign oil and to boost the U.S.’s own energy sources to have a surplus capacity in total energy to assure reliable energy and stability.

While we hear some of the same themes in Obama’s rhetoric, his is more focused on producing clean energy, not only for stability, but also for environmental reasons.

President Ronald Reagan

In his State of the Union from Jan. 26, 1982, President Reagan discussed economic problems and the need to work together to solve the problems the country was facing at the time. One interesting line from his speech echoed similar lines we have heard from Obama.

“This time, however, things are different. We have an economic program in place, completely different from the artificial quick fixes of the past,” Reagan said.

He is remaining optimistic and saying we are doing something to fix the problem, but it is going to take some time. He is urging the audience to hang in there and to not expect a quick fix. Throughout his presidency, Obama has consistently said our economic situation in the U.S. would not be fixed over night. In his speech at the campaign rally in Massachusetts on January 18, Obama brought up this again.

“People are frustrated and they are angry, and they have every right to be,” Obama said. “I understand; because progress is slow and no matter how much progress we make, it can't come fast enough for the people who need help right now, today.”

President George H. W. Bush

An entire Paragraph from President George H. W. Bush’s State of the Union from Jan. 29, 1991 resonates with the issues the nation is currently facing.

“A comprehensive national energy strategy that calls for energy conservation and efficiency, increased development, and greater use of alternative fuels; a banking reform plan to bring America's financial system into the 21st century so that our banks remain safe and secure and can continue to make job-creating loans for our factories, our businesses, and home buyers,” Bush said.

Nearly twenty years later, the themes Bush discussed are all issues with which we are currently dealing, and President Obama will probably discuss them on Jan. 27.

Eye-opening statistics and closed-eye solutions

In his Jan. 19, 2010 State of the State address, Gov. Joe Manchin described what he called eye-opening statistics on the state of higher education in West Virginia.

“Amazingly, the United States and Germany are the only western democracies in which parents are more likely to have earned a college degree than their children,” Manchin said. “And in West Virginia, for every 100 ninth graders in school today, statistics tell us only 16 will graduate from college.”

While discussing many of the problems West Virginia is facing in education, Manchin offered little, if any, ideas for resolving the problems of retention in higher education institutions. Manchin’s only direct advice to technical, four-year colleges and universities was to freeze tuition rates.

“Learning additional skills beyond high school is more critical than ever for West Virginians,” he said. “That is why I am asking all of our technical and four-year colleges and universities to freeze their tuition rates for the coming school year.”

The more times I read this statement, the more it confuses and confounds me. So, I ask, what is the goal with this request?

While this may be a small relief for many students’ wallets, it is yet to be seen if keeping the tuition rates at their current level would do anything to help the retention rates of West Virginia’s universities, four-year colleges and technical schools. It could be argued that the difference between a few hundred dollars will do little to encourage or dissuade current students from completing their educations.

As in previous State of the State addresses, Manchin has once again figuratively patted the state on the back for a job well done and told West Virginians to roll up their sleeves and work with what is available. Manchin said he recently required state agencies, including universities, four-year colleges and technical schools, to cut their budgets by 3.4 percent.

According to an article in The State Journal, university officials blame recent tuition increases on declining state funding for higher education. When the universities lose expected funds with budget cuts, they are forced to find the funds elsewhere, and tuition hikes can be a solution to the problem. With budget cuts and a tuition freeze, Marshall University will have fewer options to expand and grow the university to attract and retain students.

As a senior at Marshall University, I have noticed fewer and fewer options of courses. In my search for courses this semester I noticed courses filling up faster and fewer options in upper division courses fitting my schedule and requirements. There were over 25 English 101 courses available. This illustrates that there is a great difference between the number of first-year students and junior and seniors. Though most of the English 101 courses are full, this also shows the university has been able to provide more than enough of the 101 classes required by everyone to incoming students. But, for those trying to fill their requirements to graduate, classes seem to be growing scarcer.

Further budgetary cuts and the tuition freeze could prevent Marshall from giving students options. Even if a tuition freeze helped with retention, which I doubt, adding more students to the full upper-level courses would make it even more difficult for students to get into the courses needed to meet requirements.

While this example is one of many negative effects of budgetary cuts, it epitomizes the problems the university may face with fewer funds available than necessary to operate the university. It is also one reason why freezing tuition will not help with retention. Students need more course options, not fewer, to have a more fulfilling education. Students may become discouraged if they are forced to take a certain course simply because it meets the requirements and is the only one that will fit into a semester’s schedule.

If retention rates are a concern for the governor, perhaps working with universities, technical schools and four-year colleges to come up with coherent plans and offering incentives for retention rate improvement would be more beneficial than freezing tuition rates and saying it is to help retention.