Michael Hastings, the reporter who brought down America’s top general in Afghanistan with a magazine profile, died in a fiery single-vehicle car crash on Tuesday at the age of 33. Ben Smith, Hastings’ boss at Buzzfeed, remembers him as a fearless reporter who leveraged his outsize personality to call the powerful to account:

Michael Hastings was really only interested in writing stories someone didn’t want him to write — often his subjects; occasionally his editor. While there is no template for a great reporter, he was one for reasons that were intrinsic to who he was: ambitious, skeptical of power and conventional wisdom, and incredibly brave. And he was warm and honest in a way that left him many unlikely friends among people you’d expect to hate him.

Rolling Stone contributor Jeff Sharlet reflects on Hastings’ journalistic legacy:

 And I’m writing as just an ordinary citizen – there’s not much hope in the news, but what Hastings did was inspiring. What he did was actually pretty ordinary, too – he reported what the general said. What he actually said. And that was enough to damn the general. It didn’t end the war, it was barely a bump in the path of empire, but Jesus, even that – it was beautiful. As was the outcry of a thousand hacks crying foul because Hastings did what they couldn’t do: he reported the facts. Hastings drew them out into the open. So, really, it was a double expose – of the general and the press corps that made him.

Hastings didn’t hesitate to make enemies, but he also made many friends. Journalists across the country are reeling from the news of his untimely passing. He will be missed. 

If you have disaster insurance on a mortgaged home, chances are, any payout for storm damage will go through your mortgage-servicing company, rather than to you. As David Dayen reports, many tornado survivors in Oklahoma who were counting on insurance to cover repairs are being told they must use the money to pay down their mortgages instead. 

[Photo credit: Tornado damage in Louisiana, by _Wick, Creative Commons.]

Investigative journalist Ken Bensinger of the LA Times exposes yet another abuse of poor people in a car-dependent society. Well aware that their customers need tires to get to work, tire rental companies like Rent-a-Wheel and Rimco are setting up usurious rent-to-own plans for customers who are too poor to buy upfront: 

When the tires on their Dodge Caravan had worn so thin that the steel belts were showing through, Don and Florence Cherry couldn’t afford to buy a new set.

So they decided to rent instead.

The Rich Square, N.C., couple last September agreed to pay Rent-N-Roll $54.60 a month for 18 months in exchange for four basic Hankook tires. Over the life of the deal, that works out to $982, almost triple what the radials would have cost at Wal-Mart.

“I know you have to pay a lot more this way,” said Florence Cherry, a 57-year-old nurse who drives the 15-year-old van when her husband, a Vietnam veteran, isn’t using it to get to his job as a prison guard. “But we didn’t really have a choice.” [LAT]

The price of tires rose by more than half between 2006 and 2012, as the median household income declined. Companies that used to sell custom rims to auto enthusiasts realized they could make more money gouging ordinary people who needed to get to work.

Tires account for just a tiny slice of the $8.5-billion rent-to-own market. But they stand out from the industry’s traditional fare because — unlike with a dinette set — giving back tires means not being able to drive to work. 

“Tires are a necessity,” said Jim Hawkins, a University of Houston law professor who studies the alternative finance industry. “These customers are vulnerable because they have no choice.” [LAT]

Tire financing combines the worst aspects of borrowing and renting. The real interest rate on a rent-to-own tire plan can be up to 120% per annum, or three times the interest rate of the highest-interest credit cards. However, since you are renting the tires rather than borrowing the money to buy tires, you may get a visit from the police if you miss even one payment. Since the tire company owns the tires until the final payment, some police departments treat non-payment as a species of theft. To make matters worse, tire contracts can’t be discharged in bankruptcy because they are rentals rather than loans.

Bensinger has provided yet another example of how greedy companies make poverty ruinously expensive. 

[Photo credit: pecooper98362, Creative Commons.]

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Janitors who clean multiple Target stores in the Twin Cities area began a 48-hour strike, Monday. The work stoppage is the latest in a spate of walkouts by low-wage workers in the discount retail and fast food industries. The janitors are demanding parity in pay and benefits with the cleaners who look after Target’s local corporate headquarters. The cleaners at corporate HQ are Target employees represented by SEIU; and they earn over $13 an hour, plus benefits. Whereas their subcontractor counterparts earn just $8.50 with no benefits.

As past Sidney Award-winner Dave Jamieson explains, the workers are also striking over unfair labor practices, namely, management’s alleged interference with their right to organize and bargain collectively. The janitors say that two of their co-workers were fired for attempting to organize. It is all too common for large retailers like Target and Walmart to subcontract the cleaning of their stores to smaller companies that keep their prices low by scrimping on pay, benefits, and job security for their employees. 

[Photo credit: Mr. T. in DC, Creative Commons.]