A Brief History of Workers Compensation Insurance Programs

Workers Compensation in the Ancient World

Almost as long as workers have been getting injured on the job, we have had some formal or informal system of compensating workers for workplace injuries. Workers compensation claims management and processing is, if not the oldest profession in the world, at least pretty close! The earliest recorded formal and legally-mandated workers compensation scheme in the world dates back to at least the year 2050 B.C., in ancient Sumeria, in what is now Iraq. Stone tablets recovered from the city of Ur – about 9 miles from Nasiriyah – established a set system of payments to injured workers, itemized by injury.

The Code of Hammurabi later adopted the practice, as did the Greeks, Babylonians, Romans, Arabs and even the Chinese.

Into the Modern Age

The Prussians, under Otto von Bismarck, were the first modern nation-states to adopt a formal workers’ compensation system following the Industrial Revolution, with the Accident Insurance Bill of 1884. Originally conceived as a measure to prevent Marxist political movements from making inroads into the Prussian/German working classes, the Bismarck program actually contained two important innovations that are at the heart of the American workers compensation system today: First, claims were separated from the tort system, so that workers seeking remedy under workers compensation rule could not sue their employers for damages in the courts. Second, claims were processed under an early version of today’s “no fault” provisions. Claims could be paid promptly, because there was no need for a magistrate to assign fault or blame through a detailed fact-finding.

The system worked so well, and was so popular, that the largely German-American population of Wisconsin, in 1911, enacted the first workers compensation insurance program in the United States – modeled closely after the Prussian system.

Development in the U.S.

While the U.S. lagged a few years behind the United Kingdom in adopting workers compensation plans, there was a very limited program created for workers who were directly involved in projects involving interstate commerce, such as railway workers, established in 1908. It was limited only to this population because the sentiment at that time was that programs like workers compensation to everyone else was properly left to the states.

At the grassroots level, however, there was a growing public awareness of the hazards of industrial age employment thanks to populist, muckraking writers such as Upton Sinclair, who highlighted the plight of slaughterhouse workers in his novel, The Jungle. This awareness of the hazards of modern industrial employment in the unforgiving factories, plants led to a number of failed attempts to pass legislation in the state assemblies, early on – first in New York (1898), then Maryland (1902), Massachusetts (1908) and Montana (1909).

The “Great Tradeoff”

Ultimately, the first state to successfully enact a broad workers compensation was the largely German-American population of Wisconsin – then very much the heart of the American Progressivist movement. Their program was modeled closely after the Prussian system, though only after a long debate between business and labor interests. In the end, they came up with the same “great tradeoff,” in the parlance of the time, that was at the heart of the Bismarckian model: Employers agreed to provide substantial wage replacement for injured workers through an insurance system, without any fault-finding requirement that would cause devastating delays in payouts to workers who depended on their wages to survive. In return, labor interests agreed to give up the right to sue their employers for covered claims. This allowed employers relief from the risk of outsized claims and judgments.

Once Wisconsin broke the seal though, other states quickly followed suit: 11 more states passed plans of their own that year, four more in 1912, and eight more in 1913. By 1935, some 45 of the 48 states then existing had passed workers compensation laws of their own, and By 1948, a similar program had been established in all 48 states in existence at that time, as well as the future states of Alaska and Hawaii.

Today, all 50 states have enacted similar legislation, including these provisions:

• A no-fault approach to claims processing – workers don’t have to demonstrate that their employer was negligent for benefits to be paid.

• Employers are protected from lawsuits (a tort exemption) over workers compensation issues.

• Employers fund workers compensation benefits by paying premiums, which vary depending the state and the occupation of the covered worker.

Additionally, 45 of the 50 states delegate responsibility for claims administration to special boards. Five states – Wyoming, Tennessee, New Mexico, Alabama and Louisiana, keep the process within the judiciary, though in each case a state agency exists to help with administration and prompt disbursement of funds to injured workers.

Different countries have different ways of handling things. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, the rules and regulations in hospitals are not the same as in other countries. If there is a royal patient in any of the hospitals, the nurses aren’t allowed to give them medicine or advise them of anything because they have their own private nurses to do that. In Iraq, nurses are not allowed to touch any men in hospitals, even if they are their patients. In China, the hospitals that do not receive enough funding, the nurses there have to reuse syringes and gloves so that they can save the cost.

In Vietnam, the students have to undergo medical students without talking to their professors because it is a rule that they are only allowed to lean via textbooks and recitation drills. The best nursing schools is New Mexico teach students to use gloves only when it is necessary which is implemented in all the hospitals there.

The above is a few examples about the type of job that nurses do in different countries. Due to the fact that nurses are paid well and are considered to be the doctors right hand, is the reason why more and more people are following this course. In fact, there are many doctors from Philippines who come to USA to get trained as nurses and then they spend a good amount of time in America. After they have made a lot of money is when they go to their home country and resume their MD practise. This field came into existence in 250 BC. At that time, men were the one who used to get the training because they were known to be purer than women; however, stats from 2009 show that only 5% of the nurses in USA are males. Today, we are able to see a lot of female nurses because they are best at taking care of people.

The best nursing schools in New Mexico do not just provide education to the students but also believe in learning better practically which is why they have several practical sessions so that the students are able to understand the human body better.

After the Crimean War, a team of nurses including Florence Nightingale were sent to the British camp where people needed help but they were not allowed inside the premises because they were women. When the first hospital is Boston was establishes was when women were finally permitted to get the training for nursing in USA which was in the year 1862 and the first women finally graduated as a nurse in 1873.

The world moves faster these days. From political sound bites to the latest teen idol (who is it this week?) to the rolling scenes of music videos, things come, things go, other things take their place and then they, too, go.

But literature, good literature, is meant for savoring. It lingers. Touches. Whispers. Long after the written words are gone from view, they play music in our minds. Herein lies the conundrum. How can twenty-first century literature be fitted to a world that moves faster, to a public who wants and expects a crashing avalanche of continuous enticement?

One answer: Literary cubism.

The Eleventh Edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary offers a definition of cubism that describes an artistic style of abstract structure which simultaneously displays multiple aspects of the same object in fragmented form.

OK.

Hmmm…

The “same object” in that working definition is my story. The “multiple aspects” and fragmented forms which I display include poems, e-mail messages, personal notes and legal documents, to name a few. And, yes, there’s room and necessity for blocks of traditional prose in literary cubism.

Cubist writing is liberating. It adds to a writer’s toolbox for telling his or her story. We’ve always had description and dialogue to set scenes, to build moods, and to create consistent, compelling characters. It feels good to now have the text of an e-mail message to do any or all of those things. We can also tap into poems, personal notes, grocery lists, and any other form of written media. These can all be used to great effect to show a lifestyle, to define a character’s motives and psyche, or to paint the tensions and emotional contours of a relationship.

As I said before – liberating.

Enough about theories of liberated lingual expression; how does literary cubism play out in application? Pretty well. In a nutshell, “Resolution 786” tells the story of a philosophical, emotionally wounded American engineer who finds himself in combat operations in the Iraq War while simultaneously trying the Lord for crimes against humanity in a courtroom setting. Literary cubism made it possible to create the tapestry of a unified experience across these wildly disparate settings, an experience of spiritual self-realization in the context of a physical realization of human mortality. Cubism gave me license to develop this multi-pronged storyline and to build my central themes using a variety of literary media presented from the perspectives of many different characters. Indeed, one vignette consists mostly of a set of e-mail messages written by the mothers, wives, daughters, lovers and girlfriends of the soldiers fighting in Iraq. In writing that part of the novel, I was struck by the blunt directness with which an author can develop characters and define relationships through e-mail messages.

But as much license as literary cubism bestows, there are still some “Do Not Drive” lanes on this literary highway. Do not use incorrect grammar, spelling or punctuation (unless you’re Cummings “sketching” a poem onto the page). Do not use flat, un-interesting prose. And, whatever you do, do not let your focus stray from telling a good story. The grandest literary artistry is for naught if you fail to tell a good story.

Yes, with literary cubism, you run risk of having your storyline devolve into un-integrated snippets of plot and story, but you run the same risk in traditional prose. Re-writing, revising and re-imaging enhance the integration of your multiple media. And as one of the characters in Resolution 786 explains while defending against the criticism of realism in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis:

“I don’t think The Metamorphosis really happened. Samsa didn’t turn into an insect. If he had turned into an insect, he would have stopped considering his own consciousness. No, Samsa became a human being who was trapped inside an insect, which is fundamentally different than becoming an insect. And as far as being realistic, if a work of artistic expression doesn’t have a traditional structure, that doesn’t mean that, taken as a whole, it doesn’t still have some valuable or otherwise instructive form or substance.”

So go ahead and wake up an insect. Go ahead and put the Lord on trial. And feel free to use a cubist structure through it all.

I find literary cubism to be a sharp, fresh and consistently interesting method for constructing novels. Considering how fast our world moves today, how flashed and multi-variant our entertainment media and tastes are, I’m surprised that more writers don’t use cubism. It’s an ideal structure for story telling in the twenty-first century.

Today I received my DNA ancestral profile back from the National Geographic Genome Project. Six weeks ago I did a simple mouth swab for DNA and sent it to the project. I have good news and bad news. My Y chromosome results identify me as a member of halo group R1b, a lineage defined by a genetic marker called M343. This halo group is the final destination of a genetic journey that began some 60,000 years ago with the ancient y chromosome marker called 168 originating in Eastern Africa.

It seems my personal DNA, the stuff that makes me who and what I am today managed to cross the southern Red Sea about 60,000 years ago in the area of Yemen. This was a tad easier than today as an ice age was locking up much of the water on the planet and the crossing was much easier than today. Spreading north, as Marker 89 through the Arabian Peninsula, “I” migrated across Iran and Iraq into Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and on into the area of Pamir Knot, a four mountain confluence on the Eastern Himalaya. dragging Marker 9 along with me.

It was here someone said go south into India but my ancestors said, “no we shall go north” into the Asian Steppes about 40,000 years ago. After another 5000 years, my DNA had to make a choice. Someone said on the steppes said “we’re heading east,” and became the Siberians who crossed the Bering Straits and became the first Americans. The Navajo are the direct descendents of these ice savvy Siberians. That was my one chance to become one of the True People.

My DNA, however, headed West as Marker 173 across modern Russia and slide into Europe as Marker 343 35,000-30,000 years ago as Cro-Magnon heading into what today is Western Europe. It was here my DNA routed the Neanderthals who had been surviving nicely as not quite us in Europe for the previous 200,000 years. They walked out of Africa long before I did in the form of Homo Erectus and adapted in Europe to the harsh Ice Age environment. They had little self consciousness and aren’t our direct descendents. No humans in Europe today have yet to be found with any remnant of Neanderthal DNA. In 200,000 years they never changed their stone tools and living seemed to be in the moment without vision, insight or the consciousness we have today. My DNA was smarter in the form of Cro-Magnon, the people responsible for the intriguing cave paintings in Lascaux Cave in southern France. My DNA drove their DNA into southern Spain where they died out perhaps as little time ago as 18,000 years.

Finally, with Europe warming and glacial ice withdrawing north, my DNA ancestors moved into Britain and Ireland. They evidently hung out there for most of what we know as civilized history, yeah right, finally made the jump across the Atlantic at the end of the 19th Century, settled in Rochester, NY. It was here I learned that I had no DNA trail but rather was a direct descendent of the long lost tribe of Zebulon, being one of the truly true people, Dutch. After all, if you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much… 🙂

Naw, just kidding. Yes I am Dutch, but my DNA never took the trip north out of Africa into Israel. When my DNA got to Iraq, it never looked back and went east not west with our dear father Abraham. It seems my DNA insisted on a much more difficult way to get to Europe over a period of 35,000 years completely bypassing Israel. I guess we might conclude if “I” was never there, and I am Dutch, then I am going to have give up the idea I am one of the descendents of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Actually I did long ago.

In fact, my DNA tells me I am a black African Saudi Iraqi Iranian Eurasian who made a choice to head north from the Himalayas into the steppes of Asia, and then West bypassing the Middle East and sliding into Europe 30,000 years ago after a 30,000 year trek to become me 55 years ago.

Ya gotta love science Goodbye bad theology. Goodbye exclusivism and false prophecies. Goodbye the idea that Shem, Ham and Japheth brought us the White, Black and Yellow races. Our skin changed color as we moved north where we no longer needed the massive darkening protection of melanin and did need to literally lighten up so we could receive enough sunlight to produce vitamin D for our bones. Someone tell the clan they all started as a small, incredibly tough tribe of “black” men and women who needed to move out of Africa on the worlds most amazing journey, over 60,000 years ago. And goodbye to a mere 6000 years since a literal Adam and Eve weren’t our literal first parents. The implications are both stunning and troubling for fundamentalists.

We are all one after all.

Awards and honors have been used by armies throughout history. There are many instances of documented proof or mention of awards or recognition being granted for battlefield courage or military merit in the armies of ancient Rome, sparta, persia and other civilizations and nation-states of the past. As old as these awards are is the equally ancient complaint among fighting men that those who bear the brunt of actual combat always seem to get slighted when it is time to issue honors.

Today's military continues this tradition. America has been at war since the 9/11 terror attacks and many battles, large and small, have been fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result of literally thousands of combat actions, soldiers and Marines have been awarded various medals for valor and military merit in these theaters of war. Not surprisingly, tales of misuse or abuse of the awards system abound and they are quite visible to those who are on the losing end of this issue – the front line troops that actually face combat on a daily basis.

As in past wars, American soldiers and Marines of enlisted rank and junior officers holding the rank of Captain and below are doing most of the fighting in these specific conflicts, yet they often are overlooked or short-changed when it comes to receiving appropriate recognition for individual acts of courage. Official records indicate that while numerous Bronze Star Medals have been awarded to these junior troops, an amazing number of these medals have been issued to more senior enlisted members and officers, many of whom never leave the relatively safe confines of forward operating bases. While many of these Bronze Stars are for meritorious service vice actual valor, it does appear that there is a good amount of bias in the favor of field grade officers and above, as well as senior non-commissioned officers, when awards boards in all branches decide who is going to receive military honors.

To counter this problem, all of the services have recently conducted or are in the process of conducting sweeping reviews of their awards processes. It will be interesting to see if actual progress will be made, resulting in a more equitable military awards system. One can only hope that the front line fighters will be more adequately recognized for their battlefield heroism.

If you look on the Internet and search various statistical sources like the Sidran Institute you will find reference to results from those persons having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.) Here are just a few to mention:

1. Past trauma stress disorder creates a monstrous economic burden to our communities.

2. A $42.3 billion is wasted due to treatments spent on misdiagnosis and not treating the underlying causes.

3. From the over 90,000 Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan one in every five will have PTSD.

4. Children who witness homicide or sexual assault are 100% likely to develop this anxiety disorder.

5. Persons of color are more susceptible to getting this Mental Health disorder.

6. A staggering 50% of all outpatient Mental Health patients have this type of trauma.

7. One out of ten women have this traumatic disorder and are twice as likely to develop it than men.

The current situation in America is that there is an emerging movement through the Christian community to connect (healing, not treating) this Mental Health disorder. This is the biggest difference in using Alternative, Self-Help processes in that the person suffering from past traumatic events are given the knowledge that they are able to heal themselves through connecting to our Higher Power (Christ is mine.) I must emphasize the essence of this epistemology that links to another type of healing the self through New Age thinking.

Too often both Born Again Christians and Catholics get caught up in fixating on their differences and issues like “being saved” and the consequences of abortions. Those of us in faith know that Satan uses division of spiritual forces to weaken that power over him.

Given such, I propose that instead of being at odds with each other, Christians and Catholics yoke in a united, spiritual front in celebrating the word of God through scriptural truths. As a solution this means to follow Christ’s word without interpreting it into any type of dogma, but take it for what it is in meaning that transforms itself through faith.

As I mentioned the dichotomy of New Age thinking, that can only take you so far without a true belief that Christ actually was born to save sinners (in humility of whom I am the greatest.) The difference is that in the Science of Mind paradigm Christ and scripture are used for just that, a model of how we should live our lives rather than the birth and divinity of Christ himself. Although, without researching scripture with faith and discernment we miss out on instructions that are mentioned repeatedly that point to “putting off the old man, removing our filthy garments, and becoming a new creature.” Perhaps we need to look more deeply into the parable of “drinking new wine in new vessels” in explanation of getting rid of old patterns of negative thinking and celebrating healing of self through positive thoughts that manifest into our present state of being.

Licorice is a member of the legume family and although similar in taste, not related to anise.The licorice plant is a perennial herbaceous plant native to southern Europe and parts of Asia and India and has been used in candies and sweeteners for centuries. Countries that currently produce licorice include India, Iran, Italy, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and Iraq. In the Netherlands, licorice drops are one of the most popular forms of sweets and have been valued for thousands of years for dozens of purposes, including a remedy for a leaky gut, coughs and colds. Its uses date as far back as ancient Egypt, where it was made into a drink to cure digestive problems, after boiling the root and adding liquid. It is still frequently worldwide in herbal teas.

Naturally sweet and easy to grow, it has been recognized for its therapeutic value to help with pain relief, irritable bowels, joint pain, sore throat, heartburn and even an antioxidant. Although excessive use of licorice can be harmful, it is highly unlikely that someone would ingest enough to be a problem. It made its way to America via Great Britain, and since licorice has been a long standing favorite worldwide, it did not go unnoticed by early candymakers, who began introducing it to satisfy America’s growing sweet tooth in the late 1800s:

Good & Plenty – the oldest branded candy, introduced in 1893 in its distinctive box with pink and white candies, identified with its trademark character “Choo-Choo Charlie” on early television, and a favorite movie theater candy; kids delighted in rattling those boxes and annoying other movie goers;

Black Crows gum drops also date back to the late 1890s;

Chuckles jellied candies – five flavors to a package which included one licorice piece, introduced in 1921;

Assorted licorice mix and swizzle sticks – fun to chew and stretch, chewing on licorice root was used in African countries for centuries as a means of cleaning teeth;

Black jelly beans – everyone has a favorite flavor, and many reach for those black ones first;

Smith Bros. cough drops – first brand introduced in 1847 and a hit with its distinctive package featuring two bearded gentlemen, sadly out of business now; (wild cherry flavor came later)

Black Jack gum – 1884 a chewing gum maker named Thomas Adams began adding licorice flavoring to his chicle gum,and called his creation Adams’ Black Jack, the first flavored gum in the U.S. It was also the first gum to be offered in sticks; (not popular anymore, but still available)

Not as popular as it was a century ago, licorice still draws a loyal following, especially among the hard and chewy candy aficionados. Aside from the fact that is can make your teeth and gums gray, it continues to have a definite following. It’s one of those flavors which you either like or dislike, and pretty much confines itself to candies. Licorice ice cream and cookies don’t seem to pop up anywhere, but that’s just fine with those who love it. And Choo-Choo Charlie may be gone, but his legend lives on. It’s good and plentiful to be sure.

You may have heard that bagpipes are a Scottish invention; you may have heard that they are an Irish invention. The truth (of course) is neither one. The bagpipe was invented in the middle east.The Old Testament mentions the instrument in the book of Daniel chapter 3, where it is listed as one of the instruments that was used to call the people to worship a golden statue that king Nebuchadnezzar had set up. (Anyone who disobeyed had to be thrown into a blazing fire –yaiks!!) This event took place in ancient Iraq, which was then part of the Babylonian empire.

From the middle east migrating tribes of peoples took the instruments to different parts of Europe, Asia and northern Africa.

Some 200 years ago the instrument was very popular throughout Europe.

It was around that time that the ruling class started to forbid the instrument.

It was decided that this instrument, with it’s droning sound was a “poor man’s instrument” and should have no part in modern music.

As a result, the instrument was forbidden in almost all of Europe, except for a few outposts such as Scotland and Bulgaria.

The bagpipe in its many forms, as of today still has retained its natural tuning.

The melody pipe or chanter has to tune in with the drone, therefore, it is hard to play together with other “tempered tuned” instruments. The key cannot be changed, also on account of this droning.

However, modern music, even though more sophisticated, has lost a very important ingredient of music, namely the rich overtones.

Those rich tones that you can hear in a well-tuned bagpipe can only be heard when the notes are exactly tuned. This is only the case in bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies (a similar instrument that operates with strings instead of pipes) and in voice.

However recently the bagpipe has been revived in modern music and there are now world wide many people who play the instrument.

This is primarily due to the fact that the (scottish highland)bagpipe has been used as a military instruments.

Today the instrument is being used in many different types of music, there are not only players of many different kinds of bagpipes again, there are also modern bagpipe builders.

This modern revival of the instrument has been inspired by painters such as Pieter Brueghel, who painted the instrument as it was played in the 1600’s.

In 2015, the German government opened the borders of the country for migrants. The flow of migrants from Iraq, Syria and other countries of the Middle East flooded the country. Then, two years ago, the Germans cheered the migrants with joy. They gave them clothes, helped in search of food and gave shelter. Why, after 3 years, did the attitude towards migrants in Germany change for the worse?

Many believe that in 2015, Germany decided to take a risky step. At that time, no one knew what a problem for Germany and Europe would result in a policy of receiving refugees. However, even after it became clear to everyone that most of the arriving migrants should not benefit, Germany did not change its policy, but, on the contrary, continued to accept the endless streams of refugees.

Later, the situation in Germany began to get out of control of the authorities. A huge number of visitors flooded the cities of Germany, creating in different parts their communities. Along with this, the attitude of the inhabitants of Germany to migrants began to change. Openness was replaced by caution, and hospitality – with fear and all-round criticism. And this is not surprising, because some events, in the center of which were refugees, will forever remain in the memory of the people, whose serenity was violated. The incident in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, the attack on the Christmas fair in Berlin became a real shock for the German society, which felt cheated.

In an interview with the Polish magazine “Do Rzeczy”, Rebecca Sommer, the founder of one of the refugee assistance associations in Germany, warned of the imminent outcome of the Germans in Poland because of the migrants who flooded the country. She said that migrants threaten the habitual way of life of the Germans. She also added that German citizens are ready to move to Poland and Hungary, only because the situation with migrants there is quite different.

One can not ignore the fact that, from the experience of the past two years, the German government, during the celebration of the New Year 2018, was forced to create security zones from migrants. A few days ago, journalists of “Berliner Morgenpost” claimed that on the New Year’s eve in Berlin, 37 sexual attacks, and about 600 crimes were registered. Not surprisingly, that in official police reports, these figures were greatly understated.

At present, no one denies the problems associated with the flow of migrants to the country. However, such behavior by official authorities demonstrates the inability to protect their citizens from the danger that threatens them. I do not want to say that all migrants who arrive are bad. Nevertheless, most of those who come, behave like at home and do not comply with the laws of the host country. Thus, they spoil relations with all migrants. I am sure that if Germany doesn’t start evicting migrants from country, then soon in the news will be talking about the Germans, seeking a shelter in Poland, Hungary or another country in Europe.

I met a future client the other day. The reason I call him a future client is, like too many people, he has less than ideal credit. Like many people, it was not his fault.

You see, this young man served his county by completing two tours in Iraq. He came home to his young wife, only to find out that she was sick and unfortunately passed away.

He took care of her, and stayed by her side until the end. His work suffered, and he was on the list when layoffs happen. The medical bills piled up, house payments piled up, and he lost his home.

He couldn't find a place to rent, or buy, because of his bad credit, and the fact that he did not have a job, so he bought a van and lived out of it. He made that van his library, and his office. He worked, went to school and got a degree, but he still had bad credit.

That's when we met. He knows a friend of mine, and my friend thought I could help. I bought him dinner. He wouldn't let me pay for it, until I made him understand that it was a business meeting and not charity.

I started off by telling him to write a letter, explaining why he has bad credit, and send it to the credit bureau. I told him to have the credit bureau include the letter within his credit report. Then I told him to request a free annual credit report.

I suggested he look the report over very carefully and dispute anything that does not look right, such as debts that he doesn't recognize. He should dispute these debts by writing a dispute letter. I told him this report would not show a credit score, but it would show the information that is used to calculate his credit scores, from all three credit bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian.

I told him a Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) score ranges from 300 to 850. Then I wanted him to know a credit score starts to become questionable when it falls below 650. A credit score breaks down into the following areas:

• Payment history 35%
• Outstanding debt 30%
• Length of your credit history 15%
• Types of credit 10%
• Employment history & Identity
• Inquires made on credit within fourteen days
• How long it took to pay off debts in the past
• Late payments
• Bankruptcies, Foreclosure and liens

The following are some things I told him to do, in order to start repairing his credit:

• Pay rent and other bills In advance
• Do not take out additional credit cards
• Pay two months rent as a security deposit, instead of one month
• Get a roommate
• Pay with direct deposit
• Obtain recommendations from employers, and other business you have purchased from
• Use a credit repair company to validate debt, stop vendors from reporting past bad debt and questionable accounts. Some credit repair companies are Lexingtonlaw.com, Skyblue, creditrepair.com and Ovation
• Find a good mortgage broker

Lastly, it usually takes about two years of doing the things listed above before your credit is repaired. When someone that has less than ideal credit is ready to buy a home, they should try to purchase the home through a company, such as American Rent To Own. This way they could lease, and then purchase the home. American Rent To Own allows some of the rent to go towards the purchase of the home.