How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
News
- Details
- Written by: Lake County News Reports
The following are several new scams reported to Lake County News by local residents in officials.
The bottom line on all of them – don't respond and never give out your personal information to such solicitations.
Foreclosure scams run amok
With thousands of homes being lost across the state to foreclosure, many people are looking for help to save their homes, and the result is many predatory practices are springing up.
The state Department of Consumer Affairs, at its Take Charge California Web site has a page set up just to address various scams (www.takechargeca.ca.gov/besafe/scams.shtml).
At the top of the current scam list is the foreclosure topic.
The Department of Consumer Affairs urges that anyone seeking foreclosure relief should take special precautions with anyone who is not their mortgage lender.
Some of their tips:
Don't transfer title or sell your house to the foreclosure rescuer. Fraudulent foreclosure consultants often promise that if the homeowners transfer title, they may stay in the home as renters and buy it back later. The foreclosure consultants claim that transfer is necessary so that someone with a better credit rating can obtain a new loan to prevent foreclosure. But beware – this is a common scheme “rescuers” use to evict homeowners and steal all or most of their home’s equity.
Don't pay money to people who promise to work with your lender to modify your loan. It is unlawful for foreclosure consultants to collect money before they give you a written contract describing the services they promise to provide and they actually perform all the services described in the contract, such as negotiating new monthly payments or a new mortgage loan.
Don't pay your mortgage payments to someone other than your lender, even if he/she promises to pass the payment on to the lender. Fraudulent foreclosure consultants often keep the money for themselves. Don't sign any documents without reading them first. Many homeowners think that they are signing documents for a new loan to pay off the mortgage they are behind on. Later, they discover that they actually transferred ownership to the “rescuer.”
Don't ignore letters from your lender. Consider contacting your lender yourself, as many lenders are willing to work with homeowners who are behind on their payments.
Do contact a housing counselor approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), who may be able to help you for free. For a referral to a housing counselor near you, contact HUD at 1-800-569-4287 (TTY: 1-800-877-8339) or www.hud.gov.
If you transferred your property or paid someone to “rescue you from foreclosure you may be a victim of a crime. If that's your experience, please register a complaint with the Attorney General’s Public Inquiry Unit at www.ag.ca.gov/consumers or by calling (800) 952-5225 (TTY (800) 735-2922).
Scam preys on support for military
An e-mail scam now circulating via e-mail purports to come from a soldier – names change on the e-mails, but have included Sgt. Deborah Taylor and Sgt. Sarah Curtis Hulburt – who claims to be a member of the US Army USARPAC Medical Team, which supposedly deployed to Iraq at the beginning of the war.
In the e-mail's narrative, the writer promises to share “highly classified information” gained at the forefront of the war. The e-mail includes a link to a BBC story from April of 2003 regarding a stash of nearly $200 million in US and foreign money found in Baghdad.
The writer claims to have happened upon a large amount of money and asks for the receiver to respond to an e-mail if they're interested in assisting her “to both our benefit.”
If you receive an e-mail from an unknown individual asking for information, don't respond.
Beware the sweepstakes letter
The rule is, if it seems too good to be true, it usually is.
So if you receive a letter in the mail from the “Sweepstakes Audit Bureau” based in Dallas, Texas, that says a $12 million prize has gone unclaimed and asks for a $5 research and data fee – to be paid by check, cash or money order – it's best to put it in the shredder.
The letter doesn't clearly say the sender has won anything, and the back of the letter reportedly says the fee only qualifies the person who sends it in to receive a listing of unclaimed prizes.
Locally, there's been at least one case of an elderly resident receiving the letter and bringing it to the attention of law enforcement.
Mystery shopping scam
A local resident reported receiving a letter from “Shoppers Viewpoint Inc.” which includes a cashier's check for $5,000.
It's another scam, because the check is reportedly counterfeit.
Instances of such letters have been reported not just locally but across the country. A report from Aiken, South Carolina, noted that legitimate companies don't send out cashier's checks or require you to send money.
E-mail
{mos_sb_discuss:2}
- Details
- Written by: Lake County News Reports
Congressman Mike Thompson (D-Napa Valley) joined a bipartisan group of members voting for H.R. 1586, which passed the House by a vote of 328-93.
“It’s a slap in the face to tax paying Americans when failing companies spend taxpayer dollars on outrageous bonuses,” said Thompson. “By closing this loophole, we are fulfilling the promise made to taxpayers that their money wouldn’t be spent on executive bonuses.”
The legislation passed Thursday by the House will tax bonuses from companies that received $5 billion or more in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds.
The bill would impose a 90-percent tax on bonuses paid after Dec. 31, 2008. The tax would also apply to bonuses paid by entities affiliated with these companies.
Thompson's office reported that the bill would not affect anyone receiving a bonus with adjusted gross income below $250,000 or employees of companies that have received $5 billion or less in TARP funds. This tax would not apply to any bonus that is returned to the company in the same taxable year that the bonus is paid.
“As much as I dislike using the tax code for this purpose, the bonus debacle was an exception I’m willing to make,” said Congressman Thompson.
The bill the House passed Thursday is very similar to legislation written by Congressman Thompson earlier this week. On Tuesday, Congressman Thompson introduced H.R. 1572, the “Taxpayer Protection Act,” which would subject any entity that received assistance under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to a bonus tax rate of 90 percent.
Senate leaders have indicated that they will introduce and pass legislation to address this issue soon.
The action by the House of Representatives followed a Thursday latter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
In that letter, Geithner outlined steps the Treasury Department has taken to recoup the payments made to AIG employees as well as future payments.
Geithner asked AIG's chief executive officer, Edward Liddy, about the retention bonuses paid to employees within the financial products division, “the very division most culpable for the rapid deterioration of AIG.” The contract, he said, were found to be legally binding by AIG's lawyers, and the Treasury Department's attorneys found that it would be “legally difficult” to prevent them.
Geithner said he demanded Liddy scrap or cut hundreds of millions of dollars in additional payments due this year and beyond, which he said Liddy committed to do on terms that are consistent with the executive compensation provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the administration's executive compensation guidelines and the interests of the American taxpayers.
The Treasury Department is working with the Department of Justice “to determine what avenues are available by which we can recoup the retention awards that have been paid,” wrote Geithner.
A contractual commitment will be imposed on AIG to pay the Treasury Department from the operations of the company the amount of the retention awards just paid. “In addition, we will deduct from the $30 billion in assistance an amount equal to the amount of those payments,” he said.
The company also will be subject to strict executive compensation provisions enacted by Congress in the ARRA, Geithner said.
“But in working to resolve the AIG bonus problem, we should not lose focus on the larger issue it raises,” Geithner wrote.
“This situation dramatically underscores the need to adopt, as a critical part of financial regulatory reform, an expanded 'resolution authority' for the government to better deal with situations like this,” he wrote.
“Such a resolution authority should include a comprehensive and broad set of regulatory tools that would enable the government to deal with financial institutions, like AIG, whose failure would pose substantial risks to our financial system, but to do it in a way that will protect the interests of taxpayers and innocent counterparties,” Geithner wrote. “Without this expanded authority, the government has been forced to take extreme measures to prevent the catastrophic collapse of AIG and allow the time necessary for its orderly wind down.”
Geithner said the public ire that has fallen on Liddy is unjustified, since he took over last year at the request of the US government to help rehabilitate the company and repay taxpayer funds, and in doing so inherited a difficult situation.
He said he looks forward to working with Congress “to modernize our financial regulatory system in way that protects the American taxpayer, meets the challenges of a dynamic global market and reduces the chance that we will face a financial crisis of this magnitude in the future.”
{mos_sb_discuss:3}
- Details
- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
COBB – A big rig crash shut down a portion of Highway 175 on Cobb for several hours Thursday evening.
The crash was reported at 4:41 p.m. at Highway 175 and Socrates Mine Road, according to the California Highway Patrol.
A big rig was said to have hit a utility pole and lost its load of rocks and asphalt, which blocked both lanes of the roadway and knocked down phone and power lines, the CHP reported.
The report said the driver suffered minor injuries.
Caltrans, CHP and Cal Fire were among the responders attempting to get the roadway reopened. Caltrans brought a scraper to clear the lanes as well as closure signs. Pacific Gas and Electric also arrived at the scene to move wires out of the roadway.
The CHP issued a statement shortly before 6 p.m. reporting that the roadway would reopen a half hour later.
The roadway did open briefly before 7 p.m. but closed once more shortly before 7:30 p.m., according to the CHP.
The CHP reported that the roadway finally reopened just before 9 p.m.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
{mos_sb_discuss:2}
- Details
- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LOWER LAKE – A week after a majority of the Konocti Unified School District's board voted to close Oak Hill Middle School, a united board on Wednesday agreed to convert all of the district's elementary schools to include kindergarten through eighth grades.
The vote followed an in-depth presentation by members of the district's management team that looked at the pros and cons of turning the schools K-8 versus a plan that would have configured East Lake and Lower Lake Elementary schools to K-8, and converted Burns Valley Elementary to K-3 and Pomo Elementary to fourth through eighth grades.
The district voted to Close Oak Hill Middle School on March 11 as part of a plan to cut $1.2 million from the upcoming fiscal year's budget, as Lake County News has reported.
District Superintendent Bill MacDougall said the district's administrators began meeting last Thursday to weigh the pros and cons of the different reconfigurations, with meetings continuing this week.
“We've been working very, very, very hard,” MacDougall said.
Management team members Jeff Dixon, Pat St. Cyr and and Patty Langston presented the pros and cons. Dixon, the Lower Lake High School principal, said they were chosen for the duty because they're believed to be the most neutral members of the team when it relates to the proposed changes.
The lists of pluses and minuses for each plan that district administrators compiled clearly favored the K-8 model. Administrators held that the model fosters greater relationships between students, parents and faculty; creates safer campuses; requires fewer transitions for students; keeps siblings together; and maintains equity between sites.
At the same time, it will mean boundary shifts, loss of electives and programs, stretched resources and larger class sizes in seventh and eighth grades.
Dixon said district administrators considered going K-8 districtwide is considered to be “the least hassle” and the easiest transition, with the emphasis on relationships for students, teachers and families. Administrators were concerned that the alternative would see more students slip through the cracks. For that reason they offered their “overwhelming support” for converting all district elementary schools to K-8.
Board President Mary Silva asked about the prospect of some programs being lost or watered down.
Lower Lake Elementary Principal Greg Mucks told Silva and the board that it would be a mistake for any of the district's principals to claim they would be able to keep all of the programs currently offered at Oak Hill Middle School.
“What we're going to do is our best,” he said.
Mucks and Pomo Elementary Principal April Leiferman also went over boundary changes and possible enrollments for the various schools under the different grade alignment scenarios.
Board Clerk Anita Gordon asked about growth possibilities for the district's schools, which Mucks said he believes exists. Interdistrict transfers also were accounted for in their calculations, although he added, “We may not be able to grant very many more.”
Board member Hank Montgomery, who last week voted against closing Oak Hill along with Board member Herb Gura, reminded fellow board members that he had asked at the March 11 board meeting about the ramifications for the other school sites if Oak Hill closed. He said he felt he had received an assurance at the time that the other schools could handle the additional enrollment.
However, Montgomery said the message he was getting from Wednesday night's meeting was that the only way to accommodate the shifting student population was to open up another school. They hadn't previously discussed an alternative school for grades fourth through eighth as a way to make the enrollment shifts happen.
MacDougall said there are a few options for reconfiguring the schools, and that they can fit all of the students at the district's schools – minus Oak Hill – without the alternative school.
He said taking some of the more difficult students in the lower grades and having them go through a system similar to Carle High School would help more students graduate.
Montgomery said that he was hearing a boundary realignment and opening an alternative school were necessary, which he hadn't heard before. “It feels like it's coming piecemeal rather than having everything on the table to look at.”
He said he wanted to see the big picture – “so that we know what it is we bought.”
MacDougall said he thought of it not as a piecemeal approach but one that was being presented step by step. That's because each part is contingent on a board decision.
The board still has an issue of school programs to consider down the road, MacDougall said.
Once the board decided they wanted a K-8 program, MacDougall said he would design a K-8 program “that will surpass anything in Lake County.”
Montgomery said he believed many of the public hearings at the district's schools, which had been held to take community input on the options relating to school closures and realignments, would have gone differently if parents knew boundary realignments were being considered. “I don't think people understood that was part of what we were looking at.”
MacDougall said boundary shifts had been identified as a possibility early on.
Board member Carolynn Jarrett said they needed to come to the realization that there's no way to make $1.2 million in cuts and have everything next year that they have now. She said they need to identify priority programs and make sure they continue.
She said the district has been talking about alternative programs for elementary school students for a number of years. “This is an extremely opportune time for us to be meeting those needs.”
Said Montgomery, “We have discussed an alternative elementary program for years but up to this point we have not decided to create one,” he said.
With some issues being pulled from the night's agenda – including recommendations on alternative education program for grades fourth through ninth – Montgomery said he assumed the district wasn't prepared to deal with it.
Silva said she wanted to make sure the district's seventh and eighth grade students will get the services they need to succeed in high school.
Mucks said they'll try to get teachers who can deliver high quality programs, but even then they will come nowhere near the electives and programs Oak Hill Middle School currently has, and the programs could be diluted.
However, he said he believed the K-8 model provides for deeper relationships between students, families and the community, adding that stronger student achievement will be a result.
“This is a big change in this community,” said Silva, noting that community members were counting on the board to make the right decisions for students.
Debra Malley, principal of East Lake Elementary School in Clearlake Oaks, explained to the board that “a K-8 is an elementary school, not a middle school.”
She said the school has followed the exact curriculum as Oak Hill, but it looks different at an elementary school. Malley has worked with Mike Brown, Lucerne Elementary's principal and superintendent, to get ideas from him about how to help improve East Lake.
“It's working. We have our bumps but I want to stress it's an elementary school, not a middle school,” she said.
Troy Sherman, principal of Burns Valley Elementary, told the board he has a superb staff. “We will do the best we can to make it happen,” he said of the transition.
Sherman added that a decision made soon will give the schools more time to plan.
Jarrett said the decision before the board was whether to go K-8 or split some of the schools up. A former fourth grade teacher, Jarrett said she didn't want to ask third graders to transition to another school, which she saw as an additional burden.
That comment received a round of applause from the several dozen people in the audience, many of them with signs that had slogans such as “Unity in K-8.”
Jarrett said a phone survey of parents found that 48 percent favored the K-8 option as opposed to 33 percent who wanted to see Pomo and Burns Valley split up.
Gura said it was clear to him that the K-8 was the most popular with the administration and community, although he was concerned about electives and the music program, the latter being one of the district's greatest strengths.
Silva said she knows the district can make the transition. “I believe in this district and I believe we will make it work.”
Montgomery asked to hear from audience members before a vote was taken.
Many people – including students and parents – had submitted yellow forms to speak to the board. But when Gordon asked if they wanted to speak or if they wanted the board to vote, the response was a united, “Vote!”
Gura made the motion to convert the district's elementary schools to K-8, with Jarrett seconding. The vote was 5-0, and was greeted with a round of applause.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
{mos_sb_discuss:2}
