Wells Fargo is successfully convincing judges that forged arbitration agreements are legally binding

Whether an arbitration agreement exists in the first place (vs. being forged) is a HUGE difference for the victims from whether an arbitration agreement that indisputably exists covers the fraud at issue. Courts are allowed to make the initial determination as to whether or not an arbitration agreement exists, but arbitration agreements often provide that disputes as to the scope of the agreement must be decided by an arbitrator. If courts are letting arbitrators decide the former question–whether a forged arbitration agreement is binding–then it’s a major abdication of judicial power that drastically expands the scope of the Federal Arbitration Act beyond what we’ve seen before.

Put another way, if what Cory’s describing is actually what’s happening, that is a markedly worse outcome for the victims, and for the rest of us, than the bad stuff that we’re already dealing with. This isn’t some question about angels on the head of a pin. It has real-world consequences.

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Yes it is, which is why it makes no damn sense whatsoever for Cory to repeatedly report false claims when the real deal is awful and needs no BS to make it click baity.

With Trump and the rest of the “alt reality” brigade in charge we need reality and verifiable facts as a counter. Cory is doing a disservice to his (and my) causes by making false claims in his headlines, and now in his body copy.

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The facts speak for themselves; Cory’s distorted/deceptive version only diminishes the injustice of this situation.

On the other hand, I’m not aware of an instance where Cory claimed to write nonfiction.

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is that like, actually true or is it just a pithy thing you wrote? honest question. I know people can and do go to jail for ‘white collar crime’, but does this fraudulent account thing not count as like, CRIME crime?

It’s true and something I experienced myself.*

I got robbed of some money by a business that decided to flee the state, ~50k between all parties owed. Local cops told us it was a “civil matter” because we had a contract, told us to file civil suits, we had to go to the Attorney General. Still won’t see any money back.

*Obviously not a lawyer, but expecting criminals to be treated like criminals is far too much.

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Yes, I’m aware he now lives in the US. In this post, he said if obamacare is revoked, he’d move out of the US.

So, what would you like me to apologize for again?

Pinging @doctorow again. Cory, you really need to respond to this.

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I suspect in addition to quitting Facebook 6 years ago Cory also quit reading (or responding to) comments on his articles… I can see some good reasons to avoid getting bogged down in comment threads, it isn’t always productive or a good use of an author’s time. On the other hand, one of the reasons he posted for why FB is bad is that it is an echo chamber. Ironically, not reading critical comments in these threads has some of the same effect of an echo chamber, which is avoiding contradiction.

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For saying ACA is “free” healthcare that insurers just give away, instead of insurance that people pay premiums for, and for implying that people aren’t entitled to get anything for the premiums they pay if they can afford to pay out of their own pockets.

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Did Wells Fargo hire the same lawyers as Scientology?

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I guess my problem is… if the major author(s) here aren’t fussed about repeatedly posting inflammatory fake news even after its veracity has been called into serious doubt… then why am I spending time here?

I mean, sure, it’s left-wing fake news rather than Breitbart’s right-wing fake news, and I skew decidedly to the left in my personal politics… but it’s still fundamentally unsourced, unsupported fake news. And… I kind of have trouble supporting that, if that’s the site’s policy and/or focus. The very news article which Cory links to as his source explicitly contradicts the allegations that Cory is making.

It’s hard to believe that this could be a good faith mistake on Cory’s part, as he continues to broadcast these claims on the front page despite his own declared sources completely contracting them. Which is why I again ping @doctorow to please come and comment to set our minds at rest, that these were merely mistakes, and not a policy of fake news generation and dissemination.

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I think there is only one that that write inflammatory fake news. But you’re right. It’s a travesty. I have loved this site since the 1990s but it’s all gone wrong. advert, advert, advert, lunatic fake news article, advert, look a squirrel!..

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Why, look! There’s some bullshit logic right there!

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Came here to write pretty much this–thanks for beating me to it. I guess “Wells Fargo is successfully convincing judges that arbitration agreements are broader than people who signed them thought” doesn’t make as good a headline.

Both versions are dick moves, of course, and version of the dick move that is actually happening is plenty dickish even without a Heller-Kafka twist.

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The SEC wouldn’t agree with you.

They’d also have to decide to take action.

Not gonna happen. He doesn’t seem to have any involvement with the BB community here.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him respond to post in a BBS thread.

He’s been making “mistakes” like this consistently for the more than seventeen years or so that I’ve been on this site, about stories both large and small, and these “mistakes” generally seem to land in one particular corner of the political/cultural playing field. Draw your own conclusions. And for fuck’s sake, don’t let it unsettle your mind. It’s not worth the energy.

I like boingboing but I don’t hold it up to any kind of journalistic standards. That just isn’t what it or its contributors are good at. They do a pretty great wonderful thing, but they ain’t revealing the deepest truths of political underbellies or whatever

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Not to worry; my mind isn’t unsettled. I’m just pointing out that we’re well past any plausible deniability stage, now, unless @doctorow unexpectedly shows up to explain.

Cory has written this story quoting only a single source, and that single source states precisely the opposite of what he’s claiming it does. The NYT piece that Cory links to says this:

The bank’s counterargument: The arbitration clauses included in the legitimate contracts customers signed to open bank accounts also cover disputes related to the false ones set up in their names.

Cory has twisted that into:

Wells is arguing that the binding arbitration agreements on accounts that you didn’t open are also binding

And he’s made that unsupported claim into the headline of his piece.

This time he isn’t just skewing his reporting to the left and carefully choosing which set of facts to report and which to overlook, as many (most?) authors do. Perhaps usually not as frequently or as brazenly as Cory, but he’s an activist and you have to make some allowances for that. This time, though, he’s actually demonstrably inventing claims which he can’t back up and which his own sources deny, in order to smear his target. (who, I’ll mention again, absolutely deserves to be despised. But they deserve it for the things they actually did, not for the things Cory invented.)

If this is the way of things, then BoingBoing is basically a left-wing Breitbart. The same way that Breitbart invents fake news to appeal to the right, BoingBoing is now, at least in this specific instance, indisputably inventing fake news to appeal to the left. And maybe people are okay with that? I don’t know. But this is a signpost; this is actually happening on the site right now, and it can’t really be denied.

And so I’ve got to figure out how I feel about that. Whether it makes any sort of difference to me.

Can I still criticise people for reading Breitbart, if I read BoingBoing? I don’t know. It seems to me that BoingBoing hasn’t gone as extreme as Breitbart has, but maybe that’s just my left-wing politics skewing my viewpoint, and Breitbart readers would say the same thing about people who read BoingBoing. Maybe right-wing folks who read Breitbart react to it the same way that I’m reacting to this revelation about BoingBoing; that yes, there’s some kooky stuff there, but you just ignore the obviously-fake bits and the rest is basically okay. Maybe?

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