Local News
Drugs
Retirement
Administration) is concerned, so long as a
drug beats the placebo, then it is effective,”
Turner says. “But I think doctors would like
to know that Fanapt was actually statistical-
ly inferior to the others.”
In 2008, Turner led a research team that
tically significant benefits for patients, com-
pared to placebos (sugar pills).
“According to the published literature, the
results of nearly all of the trials of antide-
pressants were positive,” that study
reported. “In contrast, FDA analysis of the
trial data showed that roughly half
of the trials had positive results.”
The bias toward positive studies
was less in this year’s antipsychot-
ic study than in the 2008 study on
antidepressants. Turner says it’s
probably because antipsychotics
are generally more effective than
antidepressants.
“When you compare between
drug classes and use FDA data, it’s
clear that, overall, antipsychotics are more
effective than antidepressants. But when
you rely on the data in medical journals, the
difference between these two drug classes is
obscured,” Turner said.
About half of all
antidepressant drug studies
found no statistically
significant benefits for
patients
found antidepressant drugs were getting a
positive spin. His research, published in the
New England Journal of Medicine, showed
that medical journals were biased toward
publishing studies that report positive
effects.
That matters, because about half of all
antidepressant drug studies found no statis-
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Lending
PHOTO COURTESY PCC
continued from page 1
Preston Pulliams, district president of Portland Community College,
announced his plans to retire from the college next year, July 2013, at
PCC’s Board of Directors meeting Thursday night. He has served as PCC’s
president since May 2004, and is perhaps best known for leading Oregon’s
largest college through a dramatic surge in enrollment while state funding
for public education has declined, tirelessly seeking other resources and
looking for more efficient ways to help serve the region’s educational
needs.
continued from page 1
percent.
Former Gov. Ted Kulongowski in 2007
signed into law a handful of bills bitterly
fought by the payday loan industry which
effectively ended their growth in the state –
but didn’t end their ability to pull money
from desperate borrowers.
Merkley was speaker of the Oregon
House that year and was instrumental in the
effort.
“Payday and other high-cost,
small-dollar loans are marketed as
ways to cover short-term credit
needs,” Merkley wrote to Cordray
last week. “However, the loans are
often structured to trap borrowers
in long-term debt.
“These loans have high fees and
automatic roll-overs, which, as
research by the Consumer Federa-
tion of America has shown,
combine with other practices to make the
effective annual interest rates 400 percent
APR or more,” Merkley wrote.
Now that payday lenders have taken their
business to the worldwide web, basing their
operations in offshore locations such as the
Virgin Islands, they are effectively escaping
any accountability for unethical transac-
tions – because without federal regulation,
it’s all legal.
The Skanner News called up the Everest
Cash Advance company Monday afternoon
for a comment on this story; the telephone
operator, who identified himself as Antonio,
abruptly cut the line.
Bank Makes Deposit—Followed by
Withdrawals
Merkley says the Oregon borrower inter-
viewed by The Skanner News had a typical
experience with SCS Processing Limited,
Once the company had the
her banking information, they
were able to freely deposit –
and withdraw – money from
her bank account
doing business as Everest Cash Advance.
Once the company had the borrower’s
banking information, they were able to
freely deposit – and more importantly, with-
draw – money from her bank account
without any scrutiny or limitations whatso-
ever, once she had filled out the online form
determining her “eligibility” for a loan.
“The very next day – maybe even the
same day – I got a notice from them saying,
‘Even though we haven’t been able to reach
you to verify your information, we have
determined that you are qualified for a loan
and the money is already in your account,’”
the borrower said.
“So I checked my account and sure
enough there was $400 that I hadn’t count-
ed on. And being that I was just so
incredibly desperate to pay off a bill that
absolutely had to be paid, I went ahead and
used it.
“Then two days later I contacted them
and said, ‘What’s the interest rate on this
loan?’ And they said, ’30 percent.’ And I
said wow that’s a lot of money.”
She says by the next day, SCS Process-
ing had taken $130 right out of her bank
account.
“Now I assumed – again a lot of this was
just real stupidity on my part – that $100
of that was going to the loan and $30
towards interest. Two days later they took
out another $130, and I thought, ‘Oh my
gosh, well at least it’s half paid.’
“So I called them and they said, ‘Oh no,
that $130 is purely the interest – none of
that is going towards principal.’”
so when she finally started confronting the
agents she had connected with, she had no
records of what they said or what the terms
of the “loan” were.
The borrower took her complaint to the
Oregon Department of Justice, which
quickly determined that neither SCS Pro-
cessing Limited nor Everest Cash Advance
had a current address in the United States.
“In the meantime they took out another
$272.50, completely wiping out my back
account, and of course I had some overdraft
charges for checks I had written.
Merkley and Akaka are calling for:
— Requiring greater disclosure for online
websites that mask the true identity of the
lender and ending abusive practices that
provide data to payday lenders and debt col-
lectors that defraud consumers in paying
debts they do not owe;
— Closing loopholes and other measures
to rein in offshore payday lenders that can
drain bank accounts without consumers
having the ability to stop them;
— Making sure that all banks and insured
depository institutions are supporting
healthy banking practices.
No Paper Trail
The borrower said that almost all of the
conversations she had with SCS were in
online chat rooms set up for that purpose –
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Decolonization
continued from page 1
According to Bureau of Justice Statistics
(BJS), Blacks and non-white Hispanics
made up over 60 percent of the prison pop-
ulation in 2010. Whites, whose data
included Hispanics, made up over 32 per-
cent. In comparison, Blacks and Hispanics
accounted for a total of 28.9 percent of the
general US population while non-Hispanic
whites were 63.7 percent, according to the
US Census Bureau.
Incarceration legally strips prisoners of
rights such as voting, living in public hous-
ing and receiving welfare as long as they are
in state or federal custody. It also allows
employers to discriminate against them
when hiring. According to BJS, there were
7.1 million people in the US correctional
population in 2010.
“The system is set up so people go back,”
says Imarisha. “People who don’t have
folks incarcerated don’t know how it
works.”
Imarisha and Eliana Machuca have both
had incarcerated family members.
They have differing accounts of exactly
how Decolonize PDX came together but
both say it was a response to the lack of spe-
cific action targeting prisons in the Occupy
movement.
It is one of many decolonization move-
ments throughout the US but is unique
because it’s the only one that is autonomous
from Occupy.
“Frankly, Occupy was very white,” says
Machuca. “We saw that there were other
radical people of color trying to start things
around decolonization and joined together.”
According to Machuca, Decolonize PDX
currently has a mailing list of 50 and a core
group of 15-20 active members.
The group has released online statements
and participated in public actions to raise
awareness.
On Dec. 31, members of Decolonize PDX
rode the MAX with an empty picture frame
with the caption, “Should the cops have the
right to murder me?” They had riders pose
with their faces in the frame and used the
visual to discuss police brutality, specifical-
ly the shootings of Oscar Grant, Jackie
Collins and Aaron Campbell.
On Feb. 20, the group partnered with
Portland Community College’s (PCC)
Black Student Union to screen “Three
Thousand Years and Life.” The film exam-
ines how prisoners ran Walpole State Prison
with no violence and how the return of
guards brought back negative prison condi-
tions.
“It shows that there are alternatives to the
genocidal prison system,” says Imarisha.
She says there has been a positive
response to Decolonize PDX’s actions, with
people acknowledging that the current sys-
tem doesn’t make them feel safer.
According to BJS, only 7.9 percent of sen-
tenced prisoners in federal prisons were
serving for violent crimes in 2009.
The group sees the push to criminalize
more activities as a means to fuel an
increasingly privatized and corporate sup-
ported prison system.
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March 21, 2012
The Portland Skanner Page 3