Tim Grant
Via AARP Bulletin
July 9, 2010
Jul. 8, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) — In the not-so-distant future, Social Security checks will no longer be in the mail.
The paper version of Social Security payments will go into full retirement by March 1, 2013, and anyone who receives federal benefits after that date will be required to accept those payments electronically.
While the shift to direct deposits will save trees and be a great convenience to many Americans receiving Social Security and other federal benefits, it also could open the door for creditors to freeze bank accounts belonging to the growing number of senior citizens in financial trouble.
“In the cases I’ve had, these bank accounts were frozen by judgments usually brought on by credit card companies,” said Catherine Martin, an attorney with Neighborhood Legal Services Association in Pittsburgh, a free legal service for low-income residents. “Usually I just call the bank and, if they’ve made a mistake, typically the bank will correct it. If they didn’t immediately correct the problem, I didn’t want to delay the solution so I’d file court papers.”
Courts are supposed to schedule a hearing within five days of someone filing a claim involving a frozen bank account holding Social Security benefits, but very often it takes longer, Ms. Martin said.
Although federal law restricts creditors from garnisheeing Social Security, Supplemental Security Income and veterans benefits to fulfill debts, financial institutions have continued to allow it to happen.
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing in September 2007 titled “Frozen Out: A Review of Bank Treatment of Social Security Benefits,” senators heard from one man whose bank account was frozen by creditors for 23 days, denying him access to his Social Security funds.
A study conducted by the U.S. Inspector General one year later, which looked at 12 of the largest banks in the country and a sample of smaller institutions, concluded that 70 percent of them had garnisheed funds from accounts where only Social Security benefit payments were deposited. The inspector general estimated at that time that about $178 million each year was being illegally garnisheed from exempt bank accounts.
More senior citizens are under more financial pressure now than at any other time in history.
Americans age 55 or older experienced the sharpest rise in bankruptcy filings during the 16-year period between 1991 and 2007, according to a report released by AARP. The rate of personal bankruptcy filings among those ages 65 or older grew by 125 percent, while the bankruptcy rate of seniors ages 75 to 84 jumped a stunning 433.3 percent.
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Where Are They Now?
Bill Haley and His Comets
“Rock Around the Clock” launched rock ’n’ roll
by: Kitty Bennett | from: AARP Bulletin | July 9, 2010
It was recorded in two takes in half an hour, languishing for over a year as the B side of “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town).” But when Blackboard Jungle, a then-edgy film about high school hoodlums, played “Rock Around the Clock” over its opening credits, the song swiftly became a hit.
Bill Haley and His Comets’ infectious rock anthem became the No. 1 song in the country 55 years ago today, the first rock ’n’ roll song to make it to the top of the charts. Kids danced in the aisles of theaters when they heard it blaring over the speakers, and the song provoked rioting here and in Europe.
Since then, more than 500 artists have recorded the tune, from accordionist Myron Floren to the Sex Pistols. James Myers, who with Max Freedman wrote the song, once estimated that it sold 100 million copies.
“It would have been impossible to know that Haley’s number one single created a dividing line between all that came before and all that followed,” music historian Fred Bronson wrote in The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits. “It was the beginning of the rock era.”
Marshall Lytle is the sole surviving member of the original Comets. “I’m still rockin’ around the clock,” an exuberant Lytle told the AARP Bulletin from his home in Branson, Mo. He will be 77 in September.
Lytle and his family moved from North Carolina to Chester, Pa., in 1942, where Tex King, a guitar player in a band known as Bill Haley and the Four Aces of Western Swing, rented a room from Lytle’s mother. King taught Lytle to play the guitar and introduced him to Haley, whom he idolized. In late 1951, Haley approached him about replacing his bass player, who had just quit, but Lytle protested that he was a guitar player, not a bass player.
“Go down and buy you a bass this afternoon and come on to work with me tonight,” Haley persisted, adding that he could teach him to play it in half an hour. The transition to bass was easy, Lytle said, once he visualized the bass as just a big guitar missing two strings. He jumped into playing five shows a night with the band, then known as Bill Haley and the Saddlemen. The Saddlemen were Billy Williamson, Johnny Grande and Lytle. In late 1952, at the suggestion of the program manager at a radio station where Haley had a show, the band changed its name.
“So we took the cowboy clothes off, put on suits and bow ties, and we became Bill Haley’s Comets,” Lytle recalled in Still Rockin’ Around the Clock, his memoir.
The band grew to include Joey Ambrose on sax and Dick Richards on drums. In 1954, after one rehearsal, they recorded “Rock Around the Clock.” After it became a hit the following year, Ambrose, Richards and Lytle, then earning $175 a week, asked Haley for a $50 raise.
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CBS/ AP) Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is in trouble with many in his party after speaking out against the war in Afghanistan. Some are even calling for him to be removed.
And, reports CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Bill Plante, there’s talk in GOP circles that Sarah Palin should replace him.
John McCain’s one-time running mate and former Alaska governor is, as Plante puts it, “the star of the Republican Party. She’s the top endorser, top fundraiser — and now could be the party’s top dog. Some members of the GOP base are calling for her” to take Steele’s place.
READ MORE & SEE VIDEO
cbsnews.com (The Early Show)
He was caught on tape recently failing to tow the party line on the Afghan war, calling it “a war of Obama’s choosing” and adding, “This is not something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.”
This isn’t the first time Steele’s been in hot water with members of his own party.
Among other incidents and gaffes, in April, he had to apologize after members of his staff took donors to a sex-themed club in Los Angeles.
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