Hip, Gifted and Black. Here is to the creatives!
Thank you, Mr. Thurston for saying it better than I likely ever could.
Attention, BLERDS! All net!!
I believe in you too, Saddie.
The Lesson: Wisdom knows no age.
Secrets of the Tax-Prep Business
Over the years, entrepreneurs and corporate executives have devised any number of clever ways for getting rich off the working poor, but you’d have to look long and hard to find one more diabolically inventive than the RAL. Say you have a $2,000 tax refund due and you don’t want to wait a week or two for the IRS to deposit that money in your bank account. Your tax preparer would be delighted to act as the middleman for a very short-term bank loan—the RAL. You get your check that day or the next, minus various fees and interest charges, and in return sign your pending refund over to the bank. Within 15 days, the IRS wires your refund straight to the lender. It’s a safe bet for the banks, but that hasn’t stopped them from charging astronomical interest rates. Until this tax year [6], the IRS was even kind enough to let lenders know when potential borrowers were likely to have their refund garnished because they owed back taxes, say, or were behind on child support.
Hewitt didn’t invent the refund anticipation loan. That distinction belongs to Ross Longfield, who dreamed up the idea in 1987 and took it to H&R Block CEO Thomas Bloch. “I’m explaining it,” Longfield recalls, “but Tom is sitting there going, ‘I don’t know; I don’t know if people are going to want to do that.’”
But Longfield knew. He worked for Beneficial Corp., a subprime lender specializing in small, high-interest loans for customers who needed to finance a new refrigerator or dining-room set. His instincts told him the RAL would be a big hit—as did the polling and focus groups he organized. “Everything we did suggested people would love it—love it to death,” he says
(via the-feature)
LA based dancer, Young Buck and classical musician Yo-Yo Ma.
The Lesson: Art cannot be defined, contained nor ignored. Remix it!
Close to 35,000 students applied to Harvard College this year for admission to the Class of 2015 matriculating in August. Letters of admission were sent on March 30 to 2,158 students, 6.2 percent of the record pool of 34,950. More than 60 percent of the admitted students will receive need-based scholarships averaging more than $40,000, benefiting from a record $160 million in financial aid. Families with students on scholarship contribute an average of $11,500 annually toward the cost of a Harvard education.
In addition to the increase in applications submitted to Harvard this year, the academic talent and pool of diverse candidates (on average) increased as well. Reportedly, more than 14,000 applicants scored 700 or above on the SAT critical reading test; 17,000 scored 700 or above on the SAT math test; 15,000 scored 700 or higher on the SAT writing test; and 3,800 were ranked first in their high school classes. According to Harvard College the diversity numbers are as follows: 17.8 percent Asian-American 11.8 percent African-American 12.1 percent Latino 1.9 percent Native American 0.2 percent Native Hawaiian.
BLERD OF THE DAY
British Hip-Hop Artist, Mystro, AKA “MysDiggi,” AKA “Digmund Freud” gives out free hugs Hip-Hop on the London Streets.
The Lesson: The only shame in self promotion is not doing it.
BLERD OF THE DAY
For I am my mother’s daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.
Mary McLeod Bethune
BLERD OF THE DAY:
“To make things worse, the next day, when John Jr. was at school, his teacher read the whole class an article from the newspaper about my execution. She didn’t know I was John Jr.’s dad; she was just trying to teach them a lesson about making bad choices. So he learned that his father was going to be killed from his teacher, reading the newspaper aloud. I panicked. I needed to talk to him, reassure him.”
John Thompson -
Founder of Resurrection After Exoneration, a support group for exonerated inmates
Mr. Thompson spent 18 years in prison (14 of them on death row) before exulpatory evidence possessed by the prosecutors was uncovered exonerating him. Thompson, upon release in 2003 dedicated his life to righting the wrongs against him and others similarly situated.
Last month, the Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 split to overturn a civil case he’d won against them and the district attorney who oversaw his case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence — which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasn’t Thompson’s.
The Lesson: Harness any negative energy you have and use it as a catalyst for positive change!
