John Oliver broadcast this show in mid-2016. It remains one of the most amazing, most generous gestures I have ever seen.
Oliver, as you may know, mixes up great information and in-depth reporting with funny graphics and unexpected jokes. He keeps viewers entertained as he educates them.
In this segment, he explains debt collection agencies, how they buy debt of all kinds for pennies on the dollar, try to collect, and if they don’t succeed, sell it to another debt collector. The hapless consumer can expect to be harassed with increasingly unscrupulous and aggressive tactics.
Oliver’s team goes to debt collection industry meetings, where the industry leaders talk about consumers as dumb clucks. He films an Arkansas legislator pushing a bill to reduce consumer rights and misrepresents its purpose. It passes easily.
Finally, he does something utterly remarkable.
He creates and incorporates a new debt collection agency Of his own. His company buys $16 million of unpaid medical bills for only $15,000. The bills are owed by 9,000 people. And, then, as chairman of the board, he forgives all the debt.
This is one of the most brilliant and generous stunts ever. Nine thousand families were cleared of medical debt by John Oliver’s gesture.
How about it, Bill Gates? Eli Broad? The Walton family? Sheldon Adelson? John Arnold? Doris Fischer? Reed Hastings? Arthur Rock? Bruce Rauner? Penny Pritzker? The DeVos family? Laurene Powell Jobs?
One generous act of compassion and kindness. If John Oliver can do it, why not you?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How about billionaire brilliant people taking a lesson from John Oliver instead of messing with the lessons of teachers and their students whom they have treated as subjects in a lab experiment? Can the billionaires set up a foundation to buy up debt and then forgive it?What a brilliant NGO gift to the 99%.
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TAGO!
😎
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Yes to that, Robert!
But, (sigh), no. That is not the plan of the villainthropists. It’s fine to erect museums & concert venues & slap their names on them (& let’s not forget charter schools), but we commoners have to pay admission, & the buildings & grounds are used to glorify decaying cities in the areas the tourists visit.
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The scam also affects those who think debt collection will be sit-at-the-phone easy money, the dumb clucks that are on the inside. I don’t know if Mr. Oliver pointed this part out of not , so here’s my personal example: for over 10 years we’ve been getting calls looking for some one we don’t know and never met who never lived in our house. I started keeping track of the different companies that called and got bored with that after the number went over 10 of them, but I still politely explain this to the callers who typically sound like they’ve just found out they’ve been had by the last set of grifters who resold the list, knowing it was full of junk accounts that belong in a bonfire of all the old debt that can never be collected. I doubt anyone checks death records or anything else, no one updates the lists, it’s all one giant scam.
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Wow, what a wonderful idea! That is such an incredible gesture, too! I wish the rich would do that for seniors whose checks are being garnished for student loans, too.
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Reblogged this on Literary Nirvana and commented:
Even though this didn’t happen during the Christmas period and I sorta watched the episode on YouTube, it didn’t dawn on me of the significance of this action until a person I respect blogged about it. Now I think the world, my city, or at least my tens of followers should know as well.
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John Oliver rocks. Thank you, John Oliver.
And to think DUMP just signed that Christmas present for himself and those who are the top .01%ers … just so SICK.
I suspect Dump is taking out his “lack of love” from his parents on others. Plus, he is so jealous of Obama, too.
Only a SAD and mean person would use the presidency to BASH and INJURE the citizens of this country, which he represents.
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