SO MANY THINGS

I've truthfully been almost deliberately avoiding forming an opinion about Libya simply because I feel like my attention to current events and national politics is completely maxed out, and I just don't feel like I have the mental capacity to analyze all of the information out there, given the energy I already spend paying attention to labor movements in the Midwest, local politics, and the general ideological struggle between big business and citizens, among other things.  Oh yeah, and food, and health. But I do feel a bit reassured by the information that Obama has given here:

Also, I've been keenly aware of how few substantive posts I've been writing here lately, and I attribute this to the same problem.  It's weird, really, how stressed out I feel lately, considering the fact that my only obligations at the moment are making sure I participate in a few online discussions for a whopping two unbelievably easy online classes, and the knowledge that I start a new (and completely different than I've ever done) extremely part-time job in a week.  But even the job thing only happened as of a couple weeks ago, so, yeah.  Since quitting my shitty bank job in November, I've managed to stress myself out to the extent of minor panic attacks by merely reading news on the internet and listening to the radio, to the extent that it feels like a full-time job to even keep up with reading my Google Reader.  It's... well, I don't know.  Silly?  Annoying?  A pointless waste of time and energy?  A white whine?  Or, perhaps more optimistically, a catalyst for becoming more involved in... anything?

Mostly, I am trying desperately to fight against the whole stuck-in-the-suburbs, cold-ass Minnesota lethargy that sets in every year, that I'd been able to at least partially able to avoid when I lived in the city.  It's a lot different here, and I didn't think it would make such a difference when I moved last summer... until winter happened.  It's really difficult to live like I'm most happy living in a place where public transportation is practically non-existent, grocery stores stock for a 97% white population and as a result don't even carry Tapatio or basmati rice (it is Michelle Bachmann's district, where most of the grocery stores are; perhaps Mexican hot sauce and Indian rice are considered unpatriotic?), and the only restaurants to choose from are Applebee's and TGI Friday's.  And I can't even express how desperately I miss gridded, numbered, alphabetized streets.

That's not to say that I've had a completely bad time living here so far.  There are countless benefits to living with my immediate family, including serious financial benefits.  Rent is extraordinarily cheap, and while my husband and I still have an annoying number of monthly static expenses, the break on rent (even factoring in the price of gas, now that we have to drive absolutely everywhere we want to go, even if it's only half  a mile away) is a huge bonus when it comes to pretty much everything else.  Being students, Jesse and I were able to afford to register for Netroots Nation, which is happening in Minneapolis this June.  I was also only able to comfortably make spontaneous plans to take a road trip to attend the rally in Madison a few weeks ago because of my current living situation.

So, really, like anything, there are serious pros and cons to my current living situation.  But, man, I miss Minneapolis.  I miss being able to walk or bike anywhere I wanted to go.  I miss the walkable and bussable farmer's markets.  I miss having a wide variety of items in the local grocery store-- at the big regional chains, even.  I miss having a bar nearby that wasn't one of those sports bars where dozens of 20-something douchey turds with backwards baseball caps and large and unnecessary trucks feed bleached-blonde girls Jag shots all night to a soundtrack of Nickelback.  Not to mention that whole "social life" thing that the kids keep talking about, that ceases to exist when work schedules and a lack of desire for DWIs are factored into weekend plans. 

So, pardon my lack of posting.  I hope you watch all of the videos I manage to link to in lieu of real substance, though, because they're good.  I promise to get back to regular, substantive posting soon.  Here are some more videos:

Al Franken consistently makes up for Minnesota's 6th District's terrible choice of Bachmann.

Donald Trump (who plans to run for President in 2012, remember) is a completely ridiculous person, as expected:

About language-- specifically, how ensuring that English is the only language in which we will discuss important technological, educational, and other pressing issues, is potentially harmful in numerable ways.  I'm really bad at summarizing everything from videos to articles to anything else you can imagine.  Just watch it; you'll be happy you did.

One great thing about going to my first training at my new job (I'm a phone canvasser.  This means I call members of my organization and ask them to donate money for current legislative efforts we're focused on) is that when I went into the phone room, one of the first things I saw was a Wellstone yard sign.  These are still in people's yards around the more progressive neighborhoods of Minneapolis.  Minnesota will never forget Paul Wellstone.  His followers were, and are, some of the most dedicated and devoted progressives around.  The murder death of Paul Wellstone is still, to this day, felt and discussed all the time around progressive circles.

About Paul Wellstone, I can't claim a long support or anything toward him.  When he was killed, I was just 18, and only starting to get involved in local politics.  All I knew of Wellstone was what my mom had said of him, disparagingly: "he's such a 'bleeding-heart'!"  I didn't know what that meant at the time, but was alternatively beginning to embrace my seemingly intrinsic support for anyone willing to actually have a bleeding heart, especially out loud, like Wellstone did.  I worked in a photo lab with a very ardent Wellstone supporter at the time, and based on her frequent discussions about him and my own research, I had decided that I was going to vote for him, without question.  His death a few weeks later shocked me.

That was also the election year (the first one I was legally allowed to vote in!) that Pawlenty was running for governor, for the first time.  I remember thinking I might vote for him, and that I really liked his claim that he was from a working class St. Paul family.  I believed him.  I also based the majority of my political opinions on network television commercials.  That year, I ultimately ended up voting for Ken Pentel, the Green party candidate, rather than either of the two main party candidates, based on a lot of Dave Matthews Band listening and weed-infused Daily Show viewings that made me believe that voting for a third party was beneficial (I still do believe this; I just want us to be practical about it).  

Fuck Pawlenty, though, seriously:

If I could just be juvenile for a moment: BARF.

Bank suing the Fed over ‘Durbin amendment’ to financial reform act

People following the banking industry's shenanigans may be familiar with the so-called Durbin amendment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  The amendment targets the interchange fees that merchants pay to their banks for their customers' Visa card use.  In short, merchants have been saying for some time now that the fees are prohibitively high, and banks are saying that the fees are simply the cost of doing business.

Well, the amendment was passed with the rest of the Act, and not without fervent attempts (of questionable legality) to stop it on the parts of many banks; notably, Minnesota-based TCF Bank:

Like many banks that issue debit or credit cards, TCF is quite worried that Congress will slash fee income from cards. TCF has asked customers to write Congress to oppose such legislation. And [CEO Bill] Cooper says about 120,000 customers have responded. 

The bank has also asked employees for support. At one point, an e-mail went out to TCF executives asking them to keep track of which employees wrote Congress. That could have gotten the bank in legal trouble, and the request was withdrawn within a few hours.
Cooper said it wasn't his idea. 

"Somebody may have done that," Cooper said. "If that did happen, I don't know about it. And I can assure you that if that happened, it wasn't instructed."

Sure, Bill.  Sure.

Well, now Bill Cooper has decided to take his frustration out on the Fed by way of a lawsuit.

The Wayzata-based regional bank, which collects about $100 million a year from interchange fees, is seeking a court order declaring the Durbin amendment unconstitutional and an injunction barring its enforcement. 

The bank's chairman and chief executive officer, William Cooper, says the law unconstitutionally takes away TCF's property in the form of fees and violates the bank's right to equal protection by favoring smaller banks. 

Unable to sue Congress, Cooper decided instead to sue his own regulator, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and the Fed's board of governors.

You can read the lawsuit here.

If you don't feel like reading all 54 pages, allow me to summarize:

Cooper is extremely angry that this amendment passed because it was pushed through late in the session and wasn't debated.  He's upset that TCF is a relatively small bank compared to the bigger institutions originally targeted.  Mostly, though, he's really upset that he won't be able to get away with charging customers for the use of their debit cards to recoup the loss in revenue:

TCF cannot, in response to the Durbin Amendment, begin charging its customers for debit cards to recoup lost revenues; customers would quickly migrate to the exempt banks, use credit cards (issued by other banks) as debit cards, or return to the more inefficient use of written checks. Nor can TCF drop its debit service--TCF’s customers expect and demand that their checking accounts include this service. TCF is left with no choice but to continue to provide debit cards at no cost to its customers. In that event, TCF’s costs will remain largely unchanged, but TCF will be able to recover only a small portion of those costs.

Since TCF recently had to change their overdraft policies, just like the rest of the banks here in the US, their profits have been cut drastically.  TCF is unique in that more of their profits came from overdraft fees than most other banks, so they're already smarting over that.  In response, TCF is ordering their branch employees to force lie to aggressively promote customers to "opt in" to their overdraft services, which would charge customers $35 per overdrafted transaction.  Keep in mind that TCF, like Wells Fargo and other large national banks, posts their customers' transactions in highest-dollar-amount to lowest-dollar-amount order, potentially causing more overdraft fees than the customer would have received had the bank posted the transactions in chronological order.  Wells Fargo lost a class action lawsuit over this practice recently, and it appears TCF is going to be following suit, as consumers are now suing the bank for the very same reason.

It seems as though TCF is in a bad spot, as revenues from overdraft fees are sharply declining, and profit from gouging merchants for interchange fees are looking to be headed in the same direction.  Cooper's reasoning for the lawsuit, however, doesn't seem to hold water.  Senator Durbin's statement on the amendment:

The Durbin amendment would direct the Fed to issue rules to ensure that debit interchange fees are reasonable and proportional to the processing costs incurred.

Senator Durbin responded to the lawsuit:

"The law in no way addresses the fees TCF, or any other bank, can charge and it does not set interchange rates," Durbin said, adding that the law was a "reaction to the frustrations of millions of merchants and consumers who were getting nickled and dimed by the anticompetitive interchange system set up by big banks and credit card companies -- including TCF."

Cooper insists that, rather than exactly what is written in the law itself, the Durbin amendment unconstitutionally sets the prices that banks like his are allowed to charge merchants who, as he says, are simply trying to rake in more profit for themselves, and will not pass the savings on to customers:

"It is nothing but blatant lobbying by one industry [retailers] to take advantage of the political weakness of another," Cooper said. "Do you think Wal-Mart is going to give this money to charity? Why do you think they spent all this lobbying money to get it done?"

Ultimately, Cooper believes that TCF is too small of a bank to be subject to these new restrictions, and probably just fears that he won't be able to have enough money to donate to Michele Bachmann to do his bidding, and MN Forward, the organization that supports Tom Emmer for Minnesota governor, and is actively anti the LGBT community.  This is unsurprising, as Bill Cooper is the former chair of the Minnesota GOP.

(LOL, he's concerned about lobbying.)

I'm interested to see the results of this lawsuit.