Web Letters | The Nation

Foreclosure Review Report Shows That the OCC Continues to Bury Wall Street’s Bodies

I am very upset about the check I received in the mail for the forclosure of my home. It was a slap in the face. The company could not have done a review and sent me a check for $600. They took almost two years to send me this. I never received any kind of assistance from Metlife in regards to my mortgage. Sent them the funds they requested and then some, but they did not acknowledge it. I sent more money orders in and they returned all five of them. The St. Martin Center here assist homeowners and they did not know anything about the review. So if you did a review you should have spoken to them also. I want to see the report that they took from my mortgage company, I should have the right to see what they wrote about the foreclosure of my home. I have written the senators, OCC, president and the newspaper because this is all wrong!

You Are a Guinea Pig

Your article on human testing through various chemical industries is well done and right on. To add to the list of such human, and sometimes plant and animal testing, is the massive number of studies that have done on innocent public citizens through the atomic and nuclear development era. Studies have been carried out in large cities, small towns, rural areas and vast areas of indigenous peoples’ lands all across this country and other countries across the globe. Fukushima is only the most visible and recent of such petri dishes. This testing even finds its way into our hospitals and schools. I am happy to see your accounting of this deceptive and dangerous practice. I am the author of Romancing the Atom: Nuclear Infatuation from the Radium Girls to Fukushima (Praeger, 2012)

Wayne LaPierre Is Winning

I’m a person who has always considered herself a rebel, even a radical, and I’ve always voted. I’ve been of the liberal Democrat persuasion all my adult life. (I’m 68.) I loved the sixties for the dramatic social change that was brought about by young people and activists. I was an active participant in the Feminist and Gay Rights movements in the ’70s, and I moved on to Democratic Party politics. I lived in Houston, and learning politics in Texas is the way to experience what a rough sport that process can be. I left Texas in 1987, and I’ve lived in several states and cities/towns since then. I didn’t get involved in anything in the ’60s. I’d chosen alcohol and drugs as my priority. In 1988, I got sober and clean, and that’s what I was involved with for eleven years. Now, I’m retired, learning to use a computer, experiencing the Internet, and trying to be an activist through communicating online. Newtown made me sad, angry and guilty. I didn’t feel I’d made much effort to do whatever I could to improve our society. Now, I’m becoming afraid that wealth and corruption are controlling our government and us, Obama is a disappointment, and I don’t much like this country any more. I’ve come to believe that our situation is hopeless. Someone please tell me what I can do. I’m not a person who gives up easily. I’m just sad.

A California Town Bleeds From Sequestration's Cuts

This situation shames the United States for taking out political disputes on the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens. My solution is to lobby for the US to stop the $2.5 billion annual subsidy to Israel, a nation that has great wealth, and convert that money into mending the wounds of sequestration, which citizens had no part in creating.

Who's Afraid of Sheryl Sandberg?

To Katha Pollitt: I’ve just read your most recent column on the book Lean In, and found it lovely even though I have had no contact with the controversies you described. But I did so mostly so that I could tell you that I’ve had one of your poems on my refrigerator for about twenty-five years or more, and that it’s “The Mind-Body Problem.” So, reading in your bio here that you’ve published a second book of your poetry by the same name, and just recently, too, I’m very excited to go look for it now. So, from a remedial writer and poet, thank you for all these years of keeping me company in the kitchen, and sane.

Ten Reasons to Avoid Doing Business With Amazon.com

Everything that you read about Amazon’s unethical business practices is true. Coming from the inside, I see how the taxation of sellers pushes Amazon’s taxes of sales onto the sellers. They charge a seller commission then tax the seller on the commission, force a seller to a fixed shipping rate, then tax them on the shipping purchased from Amazon.

The commission itself is scam. Charging a commission on shipping that is too low for a seller to ship the item in the first place enables them to force sellers into using Fulfillment by Amazon, where fees pile up. As the moment that Amazon sees that an item is making money for its sellers, they will freeze out all sellers so that they can control the market, then tell us to inform the sellers that it was the publishing/manufacturing/production company that requested that we remove the listing. The seller will then be responsible to pay for a removal fee to get their items back or a disposal fee if they don’t want the items sent back. Guess what, that means Amazon gets you to pay them to make money off your products that you thought were being destroyed.

Seller Performance and A-Z claims: big joke. If you as a seller think you will win one and get your item back, wake up from that dream. That team has made the choice within the first ten minutes after the buyer filed the claim. They don’t release the information to seller support, so don’t bother calling them, as they are making stuff up based off of the e-mail sent to the seller. Best bet is to bombard seller-performance@amazon.com with e-mails. They are the only ones that can help you now, and the best part is that most of your e-mails are set to auto-resolve. Oops, guess they got you again.

Operating agreement: Don’t base your seller rules off that form, it changes every day and nobody, not even the employees of Amazon, knows what the rules will be.

Want to know more? E-mail Jeff, his address can be found with a simple Google search.

In Rape Tragedies, the Shame Is Ours

I came across this on a friend’s Facebook in response to your article. Very touching and moving response.

As a victim of repeated rapes over the span of my last two years in high school, the tragedy reported in this article makes me sick to the stomach. It is a deep, dark hole that women are shoved into following sexual assault.

I was never intoxicated, I was never violently attacked, I was never inappropriately dressed, but I most definitely was unwilling. Each and every time I said no, it was rape. Each and every time, it cut deeper. Unprecedented thoughts of suicide raced through my mind. I was lost and felt hopeless. I felt strangled by a world I no longer knew or understood.

Somehow, through the love and support of my friends and family, I’ve made it to a place where I’m happy, successful, and proud of myself. If you’d asked me six years ago if I felt any of those things, the answer would be an unquestionable no.

I didn’t fight back. I didn’t report it to the police or anyone else. I accepted it and in doing so gave the guy the impression that it was okay, that it was all right to violate me again and again. I don’t want this post to be an attack on him (long ago I found it in myself to forgive him for the pain he caused me). I want this post to send a very clear message.

Rape is never okay and it is never the woman’s fault.

To the women who have suffered: Rape does not define you. Do not let it control or limit you. Search out the love and support of those around you. Believe in yourself. Love yourself. Most of all… do not blame yourself.

The Enemy-Industrial Complex

Thank you so much for the article on the enemies behind the door. As Pogo said, the “enemy is us.” However “us” is not the average North American citizen. It is the vast corporatocracy that governs us. It surely does not serve the welfare of the citizens of the US and its handmaiden Canada to crush the propects of a decent standard of living for the people of Africa or Latin America.

The people of the Middle East have had the US/Israeli boot on their necks for the last sixty years. Now we have the spectacle of the Canadian government avowing that they are a greater friend, and supporting any move of the “apartheid” government of Netanyahu to crush any hope of a Palastinian state as laid down by the UN in 1948. It is easy for the forces of Canada, US or Israel to push buttons to rain death in the form of white phosphorous on hospitals, schools and homes in Gaza. These people in Palestine and elsewhere do not have the means to do that. So we can expect more 9/11s, Boston Marathons, Air Indias and the like. When when one of our school buses is destroyed by an IED, will John Baird or Stephan Harper recognize where the fault lies?

Pop, Charts: On Paul Krugman

Yes, it takes more effort to actually understand Krugman and why he focuses on what he does than to glibly mock his hard work. The Nation shouldn’t condone laziness.

Madness in the Method: On 'Homeland'

In your opening sentence you ask if it is fair to criticize Homeland for its tenuous relationship to reality—and the answer is no. As a person who works in nonfiction, it always irks me when people hold fiction to the same standards as nonfiction. Fiction is not realty—it is a place where we explore what-ifs. Nonfiction is where we explore what is.

I am a huge Carrie fan—as a fictional character. She is a woman, and I like seeing female leads. She has been diagnosed, and I like seeing a person diagnosed with a mental illness as something other than dangerous, violent, incapable of navigating reality and a victim, which is how people diagnosed with mental illness are traditionally treated in fiction and in nonfiction.

Secondly, in my opinion there is much misinformation in your article about “the mentally ill.” One fact would be that those diagnosed are less likely to be dangerous and violent than the general population. The real issue for me is that so many people are afraid of “the mentally ill” and that they view all people who are diagnosed through the filter of fear. Fiction writers can take their characters wherever they want—but your view that Carrie’s story would end after her ECT treatment “in reality” (yeah, that could happen) doesn’t ring true for me, because many people who are diagnosed go on to recover, have jobs, marry, own homes, pay taxes and work all kinds of miracles against great obstacles.