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Debt collector stalking you on Facebook? Melanie Beacham says it's harassment, and took debt collector MarkOne Financial to court, trying to get the company to stop sending her Facebook messages about the debt she owed. The company also allegedly sent such messages to everyone else on her Facebook friends list. Behind on her car payments, Beacham started receiving as many as 23 calls per day from MarkOne Financial before it found her on Facebook, according to the Orlando Sentinel. A Florida judge put a stop to the phone calls and online messages in a preliminary ruling, barring the debt collector...

...Between 1971, when Invalidity Benefit was introduced, and the mid-1980s, there were typically around 700,000 claimants. Today, there are 2.6 million (the name was changed to Incapacity Benefit in 1995). We have, tragically, encouraged some people to arrange their affairs around qualifying for the allowance. Those who suffer most are not the grumbling taxpayers – they have rather more pressing things to grumble about – but the people who have been trapped in the squalor of dependency. Before you rage about scroungers, imagine you would feel if you relied – relied – upon a weekly handout of £91.40 (the maximum...

AWOL WI Dem admits parents financially supporting him in lieu of paycheck. AWOL Wisconsin Democrat State Senator Jon Erpenbach is admitting that his mom and dad are now financially supporting him because he refuses to go back to Wisconsin to pick up his paycheck for being a state senator. In a TV interview from an undisclosed location in Chicago, the absent Erpenback also admitted that he was basically running out of money to support the hotel stay in Illinois that he has chosen for himself due to his refusal to come back to Wisconsin. He also confessed that he lives...

When Eugene Jenkins showed up at St. Paul AME Church at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, he didn’t know he would be one of the last people to get a ticket for assistance with his heating bill.He waited in line until 7 a.m., when officials started to hand out the tickets, then went home for a few hours before returning at 10 a.m. By the time he had finished up his paperwork, it was 1:15 p.m., making for a long day. Jenkins was one of the lucky ones in Macon, though. Other people were turned away because the Macon-Bibb County Economic Opportunity...

Will the real Rick Santorum please stand up? BEFORE the November 2, election, Rick Santorum defended Christine O’Donnell in her US Senate race in Delaware (though trying to have it both ways to some extent). Now, AFTER the election, Rick Santroum is now trying to jump on the bandwagon and attack the GOP’s losing candidates. Goal: NOT win elections, NOT learn how to win elections, but simply for personal aggrandizement by Rick Santorum. ________________________________________________ On September 21, 2010, Rick Santorum defended Christine O’Donnell as a candidate on Greta Van Sustren’s “On the Record” Rick Santorum Santorum — famous for dumping...

O'Donnell has trouble airing 30-minute TV ad in Delaware By Philip Rucker Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 1, 2010; 11:12 AM Christine O'Donnell is taking a page from the playbook of Barack Obama. The Republican Senate candidate has produced a 30-minute television advertisement in the form of a documentary chronicling her connection with the people of Delaware. But unlike Obama's ad at the end of the 2008 race, the tea party insurgent's campaign has run into obstacles getting it in front of voters before Election Day. The campaign did not purchase advance time on networks in the Philadelphia or...

A fidgety U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry tacked away from the press in Weymouth today, ducking questions about taxes for his luxury yacht. Following remarks at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station, Kerry - still recovering from hip replacement surgery - was able to make a quick exit from a press pack. A clearly perturbed Kerry was not happy when questions were thrown out as he was climbing into his SUV. “I have said consistently we will pay our taxes. We always pay our taxes. It’s not an issue period,” the Bay State’s senior senator said. When asked if he...

Fit enough for Ironman but not for the MPD Posted: June 20, 2010 |(109) Comments Dave Orlowski can swim 2.4 miles. He can bike 112 miles. He can run 26.2 miles. In fact, the 54-year-old athlete can do all of these one right after the other - several times a year. He completed six Ironman triathlons last year, has done three so far this year and hopes to compete in yet another one in Klagenfurt, Austria, on July 4. Orlowski can also play a round of golf, as he did recently at a fund-raiser for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Wisconsin....

Unlike his neighbors' homes, Craig Cunningham's house in Northeast Dallas looks abandoned. The grass is dried out. The concrete slab under the front door is lopsided and cracked. The green exterior has faded to a toxic-looking shade. Yellow Pages pile up near the front door, and the black mailbox is stuffed full. Maybe the home has been foreclosed on. That wouldn't be a surprise in this economy. But no, that's not the case. Inside, the 29-year-old Cunningham hunkers his 6-foot-2-inch frame on a dumpy couch. His heavy arms extend from his sides, palms up, so two Chihuahuas, Angel and Chuay,...

On the dirt he has on Sarah Palin: "There are some things that I have that are huge. And I haven't said them because I'm not gonna hurt her that way... I have things that can, you know -- that would get her in trouble, and could hurt her. Will hurt her. But I'm not gonna go that far. You know, I mean, if I really wanted to hurt her, I could, very easily. But there's -- i'm not gonna do it. I'm not going that far." Says he's referring to things Palin did while she was governor of Alaska....

Just how is Levi Johnston gearing up for his big bare-it-all photo shoot for Playgirl mag? Johnston's trainer dishes to People mag how his client is prepping for his big photo spread: eating 3,500 calories a day and working out three hours a day, six days a week, along with a lot of cardio. And luckily for Johnston, his favorite food, moose meat, is quite nutritious. "Moose meat is very good for you, high in protein and very lean," his trainer, Marvin Jones, told the mag. "He's an avid hunter, so he has his own." Jones says the two will...

All we're getting is whispers from the press, of course, A raised eyebrow here, a sad shake of the head there. But the picture that is emerging of Barack Obama, the executive, is not very flattering if you look between the lines.

BOSTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama got more than an education when he attended Harvard Law School in the late 1980s. He also got a healthy stack of parking tickets, most of which he never paid. The Illinois Senator shelled out $375 in January - two weeks before he officially launched his presidential campaign - to finally pay for 15 outstanding parking tickets and their associated late fees.

A jeweler to the stars is one of the city's worst deadbeat dads -- and a wanted man for stiffing his ex-wife and son out of half a million dollars in court-ordered support. Niraj Chaturvedi, a gem dealer who supplied baubles to Harry Winston and Fred Leighton jewelers, bolted for Allentown, Pa., after a Manhattan judge ruled he owed his family $8,500 a month since 2004. Chaturvedi's total of $472,000 puts him in the rogue's gallery of New York's worst child-support deadbeats, authorities say. Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Laura Drager found that Chaturvedi, 54, sabotaged his ex-wife's share of marital...

Details of Desmond Hatchett's remarkable family emerged when he was taken to court by the authorities in Knoxville, Tennessee, for failing to keep up with maintenance payments. He had four children in a single year – twice. Mr Hatchett, who works in a minimum wage job, said that he was not trying to break a record and has no plans to have any more children. He insists that he knows all of their names, ages and birthdays. "I'm done. I'll say I'm done," he told WVLT local television. "I didn't intend to have this many. It just happened." Knox County...

An examination of the Obama’s finances show that they were living off lines of credit along with their salaries until 2005, when the book royalties came through and Michelle received her astonishing 260% pay raise at the University of Chicago. This reexamination of the Obama’s finances was triggered by a Chicago Tribune story on whether the Obama’s should refinance their home in Chicago. In addition, it is tax time with tea parties and that is another good reason to take another look. As we first reported here last year, the Obamas received a better mortgage rate from Northern Trust than...

WASHINGTON – A day after his White House meeting with President Barack Obama, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the United States a "deadbeat" donor to the world body while making the made the rounds on Capitol Hill. Ban's criticism Wednesday of the U.N.'s single biggest backer irked some members of the House Foreign Relations Committee. They were generally supportive of his leadership but voiced concern about U.N. efforts in areas from Sudan to Somalia. "He used the word 'deadbeat' when it came to characterizing the United States. I take great umbrage (over) that," Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the panel's senior Republican, said...

A few days after David Adler's wife decided to leave her law firm in December, he was laid off from his job designing software at Brightcove. It was shocking. And scary. Until it wasn't. Adler has quickly learned to appreciate some aspects of his unexpected unemployment. The 42-year-old spends his days doting on his 6-month-old daughter, visiting museums with his family, and preparing for a possible exhibit of his photos at a local coffee shop in Dedham. Living off savings, unemployment, and severance packages, Adler knows he has to get a job eventually and has started the search. But for...

<p>There are two things my father wishes I would never discuss on this blog. My love life, and my finances.</p> <p>I'm cool with avoiding my love life. Not much to report there. I hope it stays that way.</p> <p>But with finances, I feel obligated to speak up. But before we enter into that discussion, visit this link to understand what happened with the mortgage industry to cause the current situation.</p>

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys, but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small business circles. A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit event production community — and anyone else who will listen — to get their cash upfront when doing business with her. Her campaign, say representatives of the two companies, has stopped returning phone calls and e-mails...