Bob Sullivan / msnbc.com

Cranford residents on Tuesday piled belongings destroyed by the flood on the curb or front lawn.

CRANFORD, N.J. -- Picking up the pieces sometimes means throwing out everything you own.

Hurricane Irene caused historic flooding in some New Jersey communities, none hit harder than Cranford, N.J., about 20 miles west of New York City.  About one-fifth of the homes in this middle-class suburb were hit by devastating overflow when the Rahway River breached containment.  After the waters receded, thousands of residents were stuck with the onerous task of carting most of their belongings out to the curb and placing them in neat piles in the front yard for eventual disposal. On Tuesday afternoon, the north side of Cranford looked like an eerie yard sale was taking place.

If you walked into Cranford on a nice summer day -- like Tuesday -- you'd see a picture-perfect, leafy New York suburb with a thriving downtown and charming Victorian homes.  The path around the duck pond at Nomahegan Park might persuade you to take up jogging. The Rahway River winds lazily through town, looking like not much more than a babbling creek.  Hugged by Riverside Drive, the berm beside it doubles as an inviting bike trail. 

The town isn't just masquerading as a perfect American hamlet; it has some credentials.  The name comes from a place in town once called Crane's Ford -- a spot where Revolutionary soldiers set up an outpost to defend Gen. George Washington's Morristown headquarters.

At first glance, nothing seemed wrong in Cranford on Tuesday. There were virtually no downed trees -- hardly any scattered branches or leaves.  And there was no standing water, or even any large puddles, to suggest that the Rahway River had ravaged the town just 48 hours earlier.

But on the north side of town, it looked like a crazy community yard sale was under way.  Mountains of personal belongings, neatly piled 4 or 5 feet high, crowded sidewalk after sidewalk.  The piles contained decades worth of belongings, entire family histories, ruined by a massive flood caused by Hurricane Irene. 

Cranford, about a 45-minute train ride from midtown Manhattan, is one of the New Jersey towns hit hardest by post-Irene flooding, so I went to see the damage myself.  I covered Cranford Township as a cub reporter in the early 1990s for the Cranford Chronicle, so I knew the spots in town most prone to flooding.  But my inside knowledge wasn't necessary.  Cranford's gleaming city hall and police complex, which stands at the entrance to town, was ruined by the flood.  The front lawn currently serves as police headquarters.  About 10 officers milled about there on Tuesday, along with Mayor Dan Aschenbach.  He said it would cost about $1 million to fix the building.  Then he urged me to follow the trail taken earlier that day by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who came to inspect the damage to homes near Riverside Drive. 

"Where should I go?" I asked.

"Anywhere," the mayor said. "It won't be hard to find."

I hopped on my bike, which often makes navigating around storm-stricken neighborhoods a little easier. It wasn't necessary, however. Cranford's roads were fine. There were no obstacles to navigate -- just piles and piles of stuff on the sidewalks that you’d expect to find in a basement:  baby toys, couches, refrigerators,  barely-used exercise equipment, stereo turntables, cassette players, and boxes and boxes of papers.

Bob Sullivan / msnbc.com

A tell-tale water line about half-way up the ground floor of this home indicates how high the floodwaters rose.

Irene struck like a smart bomb.  It left nature pretty much intact; it merely destroyed people's lives.   According to Aschenbach, about one-fifth of the town's 8,000 homes were damaged by flooding. The piles of stuff went on for as far as I could bike.

The only other signs that something horrible had happened here were the pungent odor of gasoline and the whirring noise of generators -- the town is still without power -- and the long faces on the people quietly shuttling in and out of their homes with wheelbarrows full of personal belongings.

I hate interrupting people at times like this, but it's my job. The first man I tried to talk with politely declined, saying he "just had too much to do."  Daylight hours are precious for hurricane cleanups when the power is still out.

Down the road, I came upon a family of four struggling to carry a soaking wet sofa bed to the curb.  Their home was on Riverside Drive, with only a berm of 10-feet or so between it and the river.  Now, the yard was jammed with more belongings than most.  Their white picket fence was being used as a clothes line, jammed with sweaters, T-shirts and jeans. Dressers, couches, a treadmill -- all caked in mud -- lay at the end of their driveway.

When I asked if I could interrupt, two older adults scurried off, but two younger women said they'd oblige. Giselle and Zenayda Sedano, sisters in their 20s, said they'd bought the home in October 2009.

Bob Sullivan / msnbc.com

Giselle and Zenayda Sedano

"It was our dream," said Zenayda, the older sister. "We did it to keep the family together, so our mom and dad could have a nice place to live.  Now, we have nothing.  Everything we owned has been ruined." 

They gave me a tour of the house, which had been flooded clear up to the second floor.  The cleanup was pure drudgery, as they found memento after memento that can't be restored and was destined for the pile of broken memories in the front yard. It was also disgusting – “all the dirt, mud, feces, whatever is in that river was in our house,” said Giselle – adding that she'd changed clothes four times during the day. Still, the emptier the house, the better chance for it to dry, and the better chance mold won't take hold.

At that point, she looked at her hands and sighed. 

“My manicure looks awful,” she said.

Before Sunday, Zenayda and Giselle were living the American dream.  Giselle works as a hedge fund analyst in New York City, and graduated from Cornell in 2008.  Her sister works in the pharmaceutical business and graduated from Rutgers. 

“When my parents came to this country from Peru in their 20s, all they had was what they could fit in a suitcase,” Giselle said. “Now, all we have is what we could fit in the suitcase we took with us before the storm.”

Their mom used to keep the modest three-bedroom home impeccably clean, sweeping the floor every day. Now mud is caked on everything they own.  Water and leaves were in their prized China closet, where most of the China had been smashed. 

Their mother was washing her mud-caked LP records, brought from Peru in the 1980s. Giselle didn’t have the heart to tell her they won’t make music any more.

“I keep telling her, ‘It’s OK. They’ll play,'” she said.

When the family evacuated to a nearby hotel where their mom works on Saturday nights, they placed important objects on tables or atop cabinets. They assumed some flooding might occur, but had no idea the flooding could reach so high. Neither did Cranford officials, who eventually ordered everyone within a 500-year flood zone to evacuate.  That meant experts expected the flooding to reach levels attained only once every 500 years. 

The odds were against such damage; still, the Sedanos weren't unprepared -- they had purchased flood insurance. That will eventually pay for repairs to the home, but won’t replace the contents. Many of them, like Giselle’s college diploma, would be irreplaceable anyway.

"When we first came home we just broke down and cried,” Giselle said. “Every two seconds we have to hug each other and hold each other and keep saying ‘we're alive, we've alive,’ but it hurts.”

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.  

If you're among the potentially millions of East Coast residents who suffered property damage from Hurricane Irene, you need to prepare for a second storm -- the insurance claims process. The advice should sound familiar: You need to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

Insurance companies have a well-deserved, horrible reputation for dealing with hurricane claims, and any thinking person understands that these for-profit companies don't make money by making things easy for victims. But before you let your outrage get the better of you, consider this: Hurricane Katrina victims received more than $40 billion in insurance payouts, according to the Insurance Institute of America.  So they are paying claims, and plenty of them. Your job is not to get angry; it’s to get your fair share as soon as possible. 

Hope for the best: Be courteous, be patient, make your case like an adult. But plan for the worst: Know that there have already been a remarkable 10 major weather disasters in the U.S. this year that caused $2 billion or more in damage, and there’s an estimated $7 billion in damage from Irene, according to Kinetic Analysis Corp. Insurance firms don't have money to give away; you have to fight for yours. Here's how:

 When there's standing water throughout your ground floor, a hole in your roof or your car has floated away, carefully compiling paperwork can seem like a triviality. It's not. What victims do in the first few hours after a hurricane can make the difference between a smooth claims process and a red tape nightmare.  It's hard to do, but try to set aside the extreme emotions of the moment and think like a lawyer for a few minutes -- what kind of photographs, documents or receipts would you need to build a case if your claim is denied six months from now? 

And if you are the friend or relative of a victim, and wondering what you can do to help, playing the role of their accountant/lawyer as they work through the initial crisis is probably the best aid you can offer.

As soon as is practical, take pictures of the damage. Try to do this before you attempt any repairs.  Use the best-quality camera you can find -- more pixels now will mean better printouts later -- but if all you have is a cell phone, use it.  And there’s no such thing as taking too many pictures from too many angles.

Call your insurance company as soon as possible and get a claim number. These firms often operate on a first-in, first-out basis, so you want to get in line as soon as possible. You can call to establish a claim even before you've assessed all the damage.

Keep track of all the expenses you incur during the first few days of dealing with your damage -- keep hotel receipts, a mileage log, and track payouts for tree and debris removal.  Many of these expenses can be reimbursed under homeowners insurance, and it will be hard to re-create your costs at a later date.

Typical homeowners insurance does not cover damage from floods. For hurricane victims, that means wind damage is covered, but most water damage is not.  Separate flood insurance administered by the National Flood Insurance Program does cover flood damage, but many homeowners skip this supplemental coverage.

This wind/water distinction is old hat to hurricane-seasoned folks in Florida, but it might be new to folks in upstate New York or Vermont.  It will also be the trickiest part of the recovery from Irene, which was much more of a rain and flooding event than a wind event.  Making matters worse, many residents hit badly by Irene live in places where homeowners rarely consider hurricanes or floods. In May, WinzerInsurance.com reported that only 17 percent of Vermont residents in established high-hazard flood zones held flood policies.  The percentage in other parts of the state is undoubtedly even lower.

With so many basements flooded up and down the Eastern Seaboard, it's also important to know that flood insurance treats basement damage differently than damage in other parts of the house. While structural damage is covered, basement upgrades -- finished walls and floors, for example -- are not

For more details, here's a great primer on what typically is and isn't covered by the so-called H-03, the basic homeowners policy.

Automobiles damaged by floods are covered, subject to deductibles, provided the owner has elected to pay for what's called "comprehensive" coverage.  Roughly two-thirds of drivers pay for comprehensive coverage, according to a recent survey by AAA.

 It's important to take full advantage of the insurance you've purchased.  Many policies now include free rental car reimbursement, for example. And those who've purchased gap coverage won't have to make additional loan payments, even if the totaled value of the car is less than the outstanding loan.

When speaking with insurance companies, it's important to remember that words matter. Here's one kabuki dance that often occurs after hurricanes: flood damage to a kitchen will not be covered by a normal homeowner policy. But water damage to an upstairs bedroom might be covered if the roof of the house was damaged, leading directly to rain leaks into the room. Water damage caused by busted plumbing inside the house is covered; damage from water seeping into the house through the foundation is not.

A great primer on the lingo of insurance adjusters can be found here. It answers critical questions, such as: What is a basement?

If you are worried that insurance might not cover your damage, you'll have trouble finding help from other sources. The federal government, which is still assessing the damage, has not approved any individual aid  so far; at the moment, only state and local governments will be getting FEMA funds. So-called "individual assistance" programs could be approved after President Obama approves governors' applications for major disaster declarations, but don't count on it, given budget constraints and the politcal environment.

One often overlooked source of help for both home and business owners are low-cost Small Business Administration loans, which are made available to residents of official disaster areas. Michael Lampton, spokesman for the U.S. Small Business Administration, said he expected such a declaration soon. Loans for homeowners will probably come with a rate of 2.5 percent, and business owners will pay 4 percent. 

"It's definitely a good source for people impacted by hurricanes," Lampton said.

But of course, these are loans that must be repaid -- and that's a bitter pill for victims to swallow after already suffering Irene's wrath.

One important note: Insurance is designed to help people recover from catastrophes, not to erase every single hint of life’s unexpected problems. If the damage to your home is minimal, or even moderate, you should consider paying for it out of your own pocket.  Claims will cost you in higher premiums. They'll cost future homeowners, too, and may make it harder for you to sell the house someday, as all claims are now stored forever in a massive insurance database called CLUE -- Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange -- kind of like a credit report for your property.  (In fact, it's always fun to see what's in your CLUE report already, which you can do for free at this Web site.) If your CLUE report becomes overcrowded with claims, you or a prospective buyer might be unable to obtain homeowners insurance for the property. 

You might even want to discuss claim choices with neighbors, as insurance firms consider the claims history of homes in your neighborhood when setting premiums.

Finally, if you were lucky enough to avoid property damage this time around, now is a good time to count your blessings and double-check your home and auto insurance coverages.

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.  

Comments begin below. As a reminder, insults and name calling are not welcome and will be removed.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Joshua Persky stands in New York City with a sign proclaiming he's looking for work. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

If necessity is the mother of invention, recession is the mother of extreme job searches.

Last week, we brought you the story Jadiam Lopez, a Miami dad facing unemployment and steep credit card bills. His prospects were so bad that he took a dangerous job working as a firefighter in Iraq. His story is a stark glimpse into the world of harsh choices that many Americans are facing right now as the sluggish economy drags into its fourth year.

Have you been forced into a crazy situation by the economic downturn? As America readies for a sober Labor Day weekend, we want to hear from you. Tell us about your extreme employment situation below. But first, a little more discussion.

We know that Lopez's dilemma — stay unemployed or take a job that would have seemed crazy five years ago — is common. While we don't know how many Americans have been forced to work in a war zone to provide for their families or how many Ph.Ds are flipping burgers at midnight, there are hints everywhere.

The Labor Department says there are 14 million unemployed adults, but there's also 8.4 million "involuntary part-time workers" whom you rarely hear about. These are adults who can't find full-time jobs but are trying to make ends meet by piecing together hourly work. Some are in their chosen fields, forced to work fewer hours. But many are working in restaurants or doing other blue-collar jobs they'd never imagined. Another 2.8 million people are "marginally attached" to the labor force, meaning they'd been job hunting in the past 12 months but recently had simply given up.

Joshua Persky became the face of desperate job seekers in 2008 when the laid-off investment banker resorted to wearing a sandwich board with his phone number and walking around Wall Street. Persky became an international sensation as his poignant image catapulted around the Internet, and he got eceived a few job offers. But nothing panned out. Persky doesn't have a full-time job now, athough he is trying to parlay his fame into a business by selling a gadget called Twisplays that helps companies program digital message boards with Twitter.

Jadiam Lopez

Jadiam Lopez in a government complex in Ramadi, Iraq, posing under a U.S. flag and a flag devoted to firefighters.

There are jobs being created, albeit at a rate much lower that needed to restore the 8 million lost to the recession. In July, for example, 110,000 new jobs were created. But even this crumb of good news isn't what it seems. The National Employment Law Project says that, of the 1 million private-sector jobs created last year, most came in low-wage industries like temp work, retail or restaurants. High-wage jobs made up 40 percent of job losses during the recession, but they make up 14 percent of new jobs today, the report says.

And just because someone has a full-time job doesn't mean his or her life is normal. Last year, my colleague Allison Linn highlighted a new breed of "supercommuters": workers who drive nearly 100 miles just to get the office. The U.S. Census Bureau already had a term for people with oppressive commutes, but its definition for "extreme commuters" — 90 minutes total travel time each day —sounds eerily normal now. Needless to say, extreme commuters are on the rise, as are supercommuters.

In her careers column this week, Eve Tahmincioglu describes the lengths that job seekers are going to in an effort to attract attention. Some are making Web sites aimed at specific employers, or even writing and recording songs with lyrics like "Yes we can change the world today. Take a look at my resume.”

Active employment bulletin boards devoted to helping workers find jobs are filled with dark stories about the sacrifices workers must make now. The harshest and most obvious — steep wage cuts.

"I actually read a blog of the CEO of a recruiting firm who said that candidates should accept a 40-50% salary cut if they want to get a job," wrote one. "They are fleecing us. ... I just interviewed for a job that is identical to the one I was laid-off from last year — same exact duties, same size firm — but they are only paying $38-40K for the same job I made $70K working at. With 15 years of experience under my belt, this was more than insulting, it was downright depressing."

Deep wage cuts — extreme commutes — hazardous work — burger flipping. Has the economy forced you into an extreme situation? Let us know, below. We'll compile a report based on your stories after Labor Day. 

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.  

Comments begin below. Tasteless or insulting comments will be removed.  Comments can be posted anonymously by sending an e-mail to BobSullivan@feedback.msnbc.com.

Being jammed into a plane for 10 hours can certainly feel like being stuck in a foreign country. But that's not the reason Michael Rosen's U.S. dollars were rejected on a recent flight from Hawaii to New York.  As many travelers know, dollars — the physical kind — are useless once you board an airplane in most cases. You'll need plastic to buy a headset, a drink or a snack. Rosen, a New Jersey lawyer, thinks that's discrimination, so he's filed a lawsuit aimed at forcing airlines to treat greenbacks, and consumers who carry them, with more respect.

A New Jersey state judge will hear arguments Friday to decide whether the case has any merit. Rosen is likely to get support from consumers who seem lodged in an endless battle with the airline industry, but he faces an uphill battle in court.

The case began with a situation that captures a typical traveler's nightmare: stuck on a 10-hour flight with no form of distraction and no way to buy a drink or a snack. Rosen's attorney, Nathan Kittner, said Rosen few from New York to Hawaii on Continental Airlines last year and purchased a headset with plastic. He was told the headset would work on all future Continental flights. So when he boarded his return flight, he checked his credit cards in his luggage and took the headset with him. He got bad news as soon as he sat in his chair.

"It wasn't compatible with that airplane," Kittner said. "Now he's stuck for 10 hours." Rosen tried to pay $3 in cash to get a new headset, but the flight attendant wouldn't budge. No cash.

"This is not a small thing," Kittner said. "It was a very long flight."

Most airlines went to cash-free cabins two years ago. Kittner thinks it's just another example of the industry forcing consumers to suffer through poor service.

"They feel like the airline deregulation act gives them enough authority to make their own rules," he said. "It doesn't seem they should be allowed to tell a passenger, 'Sorry, we can't take cash.' "

There are practical reasons airlines don't want to handle coins and bills at 30,000 feet. Flight attendants hate making change, and cash accounting is a hassle.

"But that shouldn’t be the consumers’ problem; that's their problem," Kittner said. "We hope to send a message to the airlines."

Rosen's case includes several claims — Kittner thinks Continental broke a contract with his client when the initial headset failed to work on the second flight, for example. The lawsuit also alleges false advertising and violations of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.

On Friday, an Essex County judge will hear arguments on Continental’s motion to dismiss the case. Continental didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

But the case raises important larger issues. Should consumers who don't have credit cards be barred from in-flight purchases? Some don't hold plastic for philosophical reasons; others may have poor credit and have been denied credit cards.

The airlines are engaging in "unlawful discrimination against individuals who do not physically possess a debit or credit card," the lawsuit claims, according to North Jersey News.

Consumers who use cash already face some tough treatment.  Paying in cash can cause added fees to kick in (see "Paying cash? That'll cost extra"). As firms experiment with blossoming new alternative payment mechanisms, such as cell phone payment, the potential for even more discriminatory policies will only increase. Starbucks, for example, now employs a smartphone payment system that serves as a digital gift card for iPhone and Android users. What if Starbucks began refusing all other payment mechanisms? What if other stores began requiring payment through Google's Android phone? That's farcical, of course, because market forces wouldn’t allow it; consumers would just spend their money at the nearest competitor's coffee shop. Few businesses can afford to turn down money.

But this competitive element makes the airline situation unique, Kittner argued. Consumers who don't like Continental's cashless cabins can't exactly get off the plane and spend their dollars at a competitor.

"You are pretty much a captive audience on the plane," he said.

The basic argument against cashless cabins is one you've probably already heard: that "U.S. coins and currency are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues." The language comes from the Coinage Act of 1965, but it has roots that reach back much further in dollar history.

The clause seems to indicate that someone owed a debt must accept greenbacks as payment. The Treasury Department, however, says otherwise — and with a clarity rarely found in U.S. regulations.

"There is ... no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services," Treasury says on its website. "Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a state law which says otherwise.”

There are plenty of situations in which private businesses — and even government entities — dictate the way consumers can pay. Businesses can refuse to accept bills that are larger than $20, for example. Buses can accept only change for automatic fare collection machines. Plenty of parking garages or rental facilities require credit card payment.

Of course, the Treasury's clear-cut policy may not prevent a New Jersey state judge from finding a violation of the state's consumer protection law — or at least entertaining the larger case — and any kind of victory for Rosen may force airlines to reconsider their policies. He’s considering filing a class-action lawsuit over the cash-in-cabin policies.

At a minimum, the legal battle might inspire airlines to give flight attendants a little more flexibility when dealing with petty cash issues.

"All they had to do was be a mensch about it — say, 'We see you already bought a headset. Here's another one.' And this all could have been avoided," Kittner said.

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.  

Comments begin below. As a reminder, insults and name calling are not welcome and will be removed. Adults can make a point without using words like "idiot."

Jadiam Lopez

Jadiam Lopez outside his quarters in Ramadi, Iraq.

Artillery fire led directly to our first conversation. Blasts in the distance awoke Jadiam Lopez at 4:30 a.m., as often happens, so he e-mailed me. 

"We just had incoming. We can talk now if you like," he wrote.

At most firehouses, the alarm that wakes firefighters in the middle of the night means it’s time to go to work saving property, or lives. In Iraq, nightly alarms mean grab your “battle rattle” and save yourself. 

Years of punishing recession and persistent high unemployment rates have places millions of Americans in places and situations they'd never dreamed of.  For Lopez, that place is a government complex in Ramadi, Iraq, about 60 miles west of Baghdad. After years of being unable to land a firefighter job near his home in Miami, Lopez took a job as a government contractor fighting fires in the war zone. He's just completing his first year there.

"No money is worth risking your life over, but I had to do it to provide for my family," said Lopez, who spoke to me in a series of e-mails and telephone conversations from Iraq.  

Faced with mounting credit card debt and with a 3-year-old son to feed, Lopez, 31, made the difficult choice to leave home and head to the Middle East. He'd considered becoming a firefighter in Iraq since 2006, but by last year, he felt he had run out of options. 

"I'm doing it out of necessity. I got into this situation, with the economy going down. If I wasn't in debt, I wouldn't have come over here," he said.

The dual menace of credit card debt and unemployment has left many Americans looking for a way out; for Jadiam, the war has provided his financial escape route.

Lopez spent his 20s working for his mom's small health-care business. Changes in Medicare law devastated the business, cutting sharply into his income at the same time his son was born. He took on a second job, but he still couldn't keep up with his bills or afford to rent an apartment where he could live with his child and girlfriend. By 2010, he'd racked up $60,000 in credit card debt.  

"I was in so much debt that I was working two jobs and still couldn't afford to live on my own and spend quality time with my son. And I said, 'All right, it's time to take a look at Iraq,' " Lopez said.  Once a crazy idea, going to Iraq now seemed an obvious choice.  Salaries for firefighters there start at $90,000, with food and housing provided.  And in many cases, the salary is tax free.

Still, he said nothing prepared him for landing in a war zone.

"It's more of wait and see if you can stomach it when you land at Baghdad International Airport," he said. "My first nights at the Victory Base for In-processing you would hear the Blackhawks shooting their 50 (caliber guns) near the base.  Then I and the rest of my guys that got hired together were like, 'Oh boy, here we are.' "

Life in Iraq is an odd mixture of boredom and danger, Lopez said.  Fires at the government complex are rare, so most of the job involves fire code inspections.  He never goes off base, or "outside the wire," where the danger is greater. Random mortar fire is occasionally lobbed in their direction, but without much accuracy.  Still, firefighters live with the knowledge that there is always a risk.

"We all kind of have engraved in our heads if it's your time, it's your time,” he said.  There are weekly firefights among local Iraqis “outside the wire” and bomb blasts rattle the compound as often as three or four times a week.

The immediate danger can seem remote, but any travel outside the compound is extremely dangerous.  Trips to and from Baghdad are probably the most risky, Lopez said, as the firefighters travel in Blackhawk helicopters across dangerous territory.

“You adapt to your surroundings, which I never thought I would. When you first hear the siren go off, all you have time is to analyze where you are.  Do I have time to get my battle rattle or do I just run to the bunker," Lopez said, referring to his ballistic vest and helmet. “What sucks is when you’re out in the open and the alarm goes off and you have no bunker in sight. That’s when you say to yourself, ‘I hope it's not my time.’ "

So far, the odds have been kind to Lopez.  As he winds down his one-year commitment, no one in his group has been injured.  Meanwhile, he's earned enough money to eliminate his credit card debt and sock away nearly $20,000. The experience has him ready to sign up for a second year.

"Yes it will be worth it. I am now debt free and I would hope this time next year to have saved close to $80,000,” he said.  "But if I go back now I'd have to have two jobs. If I can muster another year it will really benefit my family."

Those odds don't work for everyone, however.  Lopez said only eight of the 14 firefighters in his training class are still working in Iraq. 

Daily life there is mundane: there is no alcohol, and no visits from members of the opposite sex are allowed.  The firefighters live in small trailers -- some have bathrooms, others require use of shared toilets and showers.  Entertainment comes from an occasional game of volleyball, and watching whatever DVDs make their way onto the base. 

"We have no social life here. You wake up, do your job, you go back to sleep," he said. 

Despite the boredom, the dangers are real. In late December, two large bombs exploded outside the complex, "rattling everyone here" and killing 20 Iraqi civilians.

Civilian contractors are carrying an increasingly large part of the burden in war zones, and during 2010, there were more contractors than uniformed military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to congressional reports. They are bearing a particularly large burden in Iraq, where the U.S. has officially ended combat operations and left behind only tactical personnel. Contractors are bearing more of the consequences, too: A report by ProPublica last year found that, for the first time, corporations lost more personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan than the U.S. military. In the first six months of 2010, 250 contractors were killed, compared to 235 soldiers. 

There are unexpected consequences of this shift on the home front, too. Some U.S. fire departments have lost experienced firefighters to lucrative jobs in the war zones.  In 2006, the fire chief in Rocky Mount, N.C., told the Wilmington StarNewsOnline that fully one-fifth of his department had resigned to take positions in Iraq, something he called the "Iraq phenomenon."

It's easy to understand why: One of Lopez's pals was working stateside for about $25,000 and paying taxes. The lure of $90,000 in tax-exempt earnings was irresistible.

The money creates other complications though. Contractors don't always have the smoothest relationship with military personnel.  One firefighter complained about resentment and tension on a bulletin board devoted to the issue recently.

"Military can sometimes be difficult to deal with because they don't want to be there and they see you as someone who's making a crap load of money while they are busting their butts for little pay," the anonymous author wrote. Lopez said he hadn't had that experience -- many soldiers had even asked him for advice on how to join the contractor ranks --  "but I do know a friend at another site who tells me military won't even talk to them," he said.

They money can quite literally be life changing, however. Lopez’s friend from Mississippi was struggling to survive and care for his wife and three children.

"How's he supposed to make it on $25,000? In his first year here he was debt free and is now going on his fourth year. He's done really well," he said.  "His kids go to great schools, he has good money, and he has properties with rent coming in, so coming over here was good for him."

Lopez has seen contractors who seem to be addicted to the easy money, and forget about life at home. But Lopez has a plan; his girlfriend, who is raising their child at her mom's home, will finish her bachelor’s degree in the next year. After one more year of duty in Iraq, he figures he can move home and start their family on solid financial footing.

"What’s important to know is we are all firefighters who weren't making enough money at home," he said. 

For now, though, he must live "inside the wire," for all but the two 15-day vacations he receives during the year. While most of his colleagues spend that time "seeing the world," he spent the entire month of May in Miami so he could be with his son on his third birthday.

"It's a sacrifice on her part and on my part,” he said.  “It's pretty sad how the economy has taken a hit on everybody. It's pretty amazing.”

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.  

When you hear a politician, a lobbying group, or a corporate executive yammering on about leaving the free market alone, don’t fall for it. Many businesses today are built around finding that industry -- or that particular anomaly within an industry -- where market forces simply don't apply. Then, they exploit the heck out of it for big profits.  Late fees on credit cards, for example -- who shops around for those? Or hotel safe fees that get automatically tacked onto your bill. Call this the "un-free market" at work.

Broadband Internet access has long existed in this un-free market. For a long time, many U.S. consumers had only one Internet access provider, the very definition of an un-free market.  Now, most people have two options -- an improvement, but duopolies rarely behave like free markets.

More important, when people shop for broadband, they usually don't know what they are getting. What does 10 Mbps speed really get you anyway? Is it five times better than 2 Mbps? Should you pay five times more for it? And most important, since the ISPs guarantee none of this, what do consumers really get for their $59.99 per month?

Imagine pulling up to a gas station and paying by time rather than volume. A 60-second shot of gas costs $20 -- sometime you get 5 gallons, and sometimes you get 3 gallons, but there no scale telling you how much you get. That's pretty much how things work in the Internet access world right now.

Finally, government regulators have stepped in and begun making the purchase of Internet access fairer. The Federal Communications Commission released the results of a year-long, scientific study of 13 U.S. broadband providers, focused on whether firms like AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Frontier, and others live up to their marketing materials when delivering high-speed Internet service. For the first time, the firms are being held to their promises, and consumers can find out if they are getting what they are paying for.

The results weren't bad. Most firms hit 90 percent of their advertised upload speeds.  Download speeds were another story, however.  Only four of the 13 reached their promised download speed (Charter, Comcast, Cox, and Verizon), while most of the other firms hovered around 80 percent. Cablevision fared worst, with download speeds that fell to 50 percent of advertised rates at peak periods.  (Msnbc.com is a joint venture with Microsoft and NBC Universal, the latter of which is a division of Comcast.)

Overall, the tests also showed that consumers aren't getting dramatically cheated by their ISPs, and time-of-day tests showed there is no longer a massive web traffic jam every evening when consumers get home and log in.  The tests showed that once-dreaded peak period slowdowns are now uncommon.

Still, Free Press research director S. Derek Turner, who had long called for such government tests, was critical of the findings. Free Press is a nonprofit group that advocates for consumers on a number of media and telecommunications issues.

"The way we look at the results, most of the ISPs -- nine of the 13 -- are failing to deliver their promised speeds at all times of the day. The fact that four of the 13 can deliver means the others could be," he said. "If they are unable deliver on their promises, than their advertising is highly misleading. ... If you got 80 percent of your pay for work you did, you wouldn't be happy about it." 

The tests, which were performed by a private firm that has run similar tests in the U.K., measured performance at 6,800 representative homes around the country in March.  The tests revealed a clear trend: DSL services were least likely to live up to advertised rates.  Fiber-optic services, like Verizon's FiOS, fared best, followed by cable-based systems. Wireless broadband services, like Verizon's Mobile  Broadband, were not tested.

Outside observers said the test results seemed consistent with real-world experience.  Damon Mueller, who operates TestMy.Net service, says he thought the FCC used sound methodologies. TestMy.Net gives users free, instant feedback on their Internet connection speed, and lets consumers compare results with others.

"The FCC's test is accurate and their results mirror my own. They even mention the ISPs that top TestMy's list," he said.

There are severe limitations to the FCC's results however.  To borrow a phrase from politics, all ISP issues are local.  An ISP might offer great service in New York City, but lousy service on your block in Queens because of dated wires on the telephone pole. In other words, it's quite possible that DSL, while performing worst in this test, could be the best option at your house.

Consumers, as always, bear some responsibility, and the FCC's research shows they are dangerously detached from their broadband purchasing decision.  Fully 80 percent said they did not know what speed they purchased from their ISP; another 49 percent, when asked to identify their level of service, got it wrong.

This ignorance can be overlooked, however, given that the speed numbers have proven to be rough approximations of the service provided. And besides, only geeks really care about the speed of Web traffic flowing in and out of their homes.  Most consumers simply want to know that they have enough reliable bandwidth to do what they need to do.

"To most consumers, megabits are a very abstract concept. They just want to know, 'Does it work?'  Can I use Netflix?' " Turner said. 

To that end, Mueller is worried that the FCC results -- while a good test to make sure the ISPs aren't committing fraud -- aren't really that helpful to consumers. 

"The data still isn't being presented in a way that helps people make the best choice in service provider," he said.

Here's the kind of bizarre calculus consumers are still forced to perform:  Paying $60 for a service that only achieves 50 percent of advertised rates -- say, a 10 Mbps fiber optic connection -- could still be a better deal than paying $50 for a 2 Mbps service that hits 100 percent.

FCC.gov

The FCC's download test results.

And again, none of that information actually promises an uninterrupted Netflix movie.  To really create a free market where consumers could intelligently shop for services in their local areas, free trial periods that allow side-by-side, real-world comparisons would be necessary.

It should be clear that long-term commitments, like two-year contracts required by some Internet providers, are the death of such a free market.

That's why, to Turner, the FCC tests are only the beginning. 

"We would like the FCC to pressure underperforming companies to explain why they didn't do well, and to disclose that the upper limits they advertise are never attainable," he said.

One hopeful sign that the test is already setting free market forces free -- two days after the results were published, Verizon sent e-mails to some customers bragging about the results, Turner said.

"And, hopefully this will embarrass (other ISPs) into performing better next time," he said.

RED TAPE WRESTLING TIPS

It's a good idea -- not to mention fun -- to test your broadband connection every month or so, to make sure you are getting what you pay for.  There are several services available, like Mueller's TestMy.Net.  Along with offering useful points of comparison, the site can also store results for comparison later.  The Speakeasy.nettest, now operated by ISP MegaPath, is among the most popular and easy to use. And the FCC now offers its own broadband test.

Even if you happy with your current service, you should still perform the test. Who knows what great, bandwidth-hogging service might catch your fancy next month?

What should you do if find your ISP is underperforming? Ideally, you would switch to a better service, but there's no guarantee that will improve your situation.  A competitor could be exaggerating speeds, too

You can always complain that your service is too slow, but know that it's standard industry practice for ISPs to use such calls to “upsell” customers on more-expensive plans.

"Those types of stories are pervasive," Turner said. "Customers call to complain that something they are trying to run isn't working, and customer service agents are trained to upsell them."

Be ready for the sales pitch. First insist that the company live up to its promises. Make it test your service, and compare the tests with your own results.  In the end, an upsell deal might be worth taking, but be a good “free marketeer” and avoid the long-term contract.

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.  

You might think Standard & Poor’s has something against the U.S. government, the way the ratings firm treated the nation's credit rating on Friday.

In fact, it does.

It's hard to view the monumental ratings downgrade in context without understanding the long-running feud between the government and ratings agencies.  In April, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., issued a scathing 650-page report contending that malfeasance at ratings bureaus like Standard & Poor’s was as much to blame for the housing bubble as any bank, and included a series of smoking gun e-mails that suggested that the firms knew they were profiting from unethical behavior.  A little-known section of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill also hits the rating agencies with new limits destined to undercut their lucrative business;  the Securities and Exchange Commission is discussing right now just how to implement the new rules. The public comment period on new rules ended Monday.

Is the timing a coincidence? Or could the ratings downgrade from Standard & Poor’s be viewed as a shot back at a government that's been taking plenty of shots at the ratings industry lately?

To be sure, no one needs Standard & Poor’s to say the U.S. government's coffers are in sorry shape.  But this feud over the lucrative and arcane business of granting credit ratings shouldn’t be ignored.

For years, federal agencies and Congress have made attempts to reform the credit ratings business, which on its face is a bit absurd -- part accountancy, part cheerleader, part judge and jury of the financial system. As things stand, firms that want to borrow money from the bond market seek out a seal of approval from companies like S&P, Moody's and Fitch, and pay handsomely for it. The firms say they isolate fee collection from ratings judgment, but the business model is the very definition of a conflict of interest -- and the firms' actions during the height of the housing bubble call into question their ability to keep the ratings business free of profit-driven influence.

"It's like one of the parties in court paying the judge's salary," Levin said recently.

This crazy system hasn’t always been in place. People who really needed accurate ratings – investors – once paid ratings agencies for them, a so-called subscriber model.  The 1929 market crash showed the ratings weren’t worth the paper they were printed on, however, and ratings agencies went searching for a different model.  By the 1970s, they’d settled on a more stable business model, called “issuer-pays.”  The market might go up and down, as does the quality of the ratings advice, but there is an endless stream of firms who want to borrow money and want new bonds rated.

The challenges of such a model are obvious, however, and were laid bare by the housing bubble.

Levin's report includes testimony from an endless stream of former employees who say they felt pressure to grant top ratings to new bond issues, lest they lose deals to competitors.  In fact, the housing bubble was very, very good for the ratings agencies -- Standard & Poor’s fees from mortgage-related bond issues quadrupled from $64 million to $265 million between 2002 and 2006, the report found. 

Internal e-mails from the various firms show that warning bells were repeatedly ignored.  A 2006 email from an S&P employee cited in the report said  the rating agencies "have all developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome," held captive by banks. Another e-mail cites an employee openly fretting about the agencies facing their "Nixon moment," when the housing bubble finally burst.

The problem hardly began with the overheated housing market, however. 

"The absence of timely downgrades in these cases was a product of an industry that was beset by conflicts of interest and a lack of competition. Ultimately, this compromised the integrity of the market and investors paid the price," a prominent U.S. senator stated nearly a last decade ago. That senator was prominent Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama, now one of the most skeptical voices in Congress about the current round of financial reform.  Shelby uttered those words after ratings agencies were cited as one of the causes of the Enron debacle in 2001 -- and as Republican President George Bush signed into law the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act in 2006. It was designed to prevent another Enron -- or at least to prevent ratings agencies from causing one.

At the time, lawmakers blamed the virtual duopoly that Moody's and S&P held on the ratings market, and the law made it easier for competitors to join the industry.

That didn't work. Instead, newcomers simply accelerated the "race to the bottom," and made a nefarious strategy called "ratings shopping" even easier. If a bank wanted to issue a mortgage-backed security, it could shop it to various agencies and pick whichever firm offered the highest rating. The temptation for competitive forces to overwhelm good accounting was enormous.

When the day of reckoning came for the housing bubble, the ratings agencies pulled the Band-Aid off the wound with one quick, brutal yank. In July 2007, S&P downgraded 1,100 mortgage related securities, an unprecedented volume.  The massive downgrades were immediately preceded by equally massive new issues, however. In the first week of the same month,  S&P issued 1,500 new  positive residential mortgage-backed securities ratings, and Moody's did much the same, raising the obvious possibility that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing -- or worse.

"(It) raises serious questions about whether S&P and Moody’s quickly pushed these ratings through to avoid losing revenues before the mass downgrades began," the Levin report said.

In response to the report back in April, S&P rejected the assertion that the ratings agency helped cause the bubble burst.

"We regret that, like many others, we did not foresee the speed and extent of the housing downturn, which was the steepest decline since the Great Depression," spokeswoman Catherine Mathis told Bloomberg at the time. 

S&P spokesman David Wargin flat-out denied to msnbc.com that the current regulation process had anything to do with the firm's assessment of the U.S. government's debt-worthy-ness.

"There's absolutely no connection between Dodd Frank regulation and any analytical decision we have made," he said.

It might be hard to win over critics who say the ratings agencies have a history of allowing outside factors to influence ratings decisions, however.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill includes a series of measures that once again attempt to curtail the conflict of interest that is pervasive in the ratings world,  which would almost certainly cut severely into the easy money the ratings agencies enjoy.  For the first time, the SEC can actually decertify a ratings agency for allowing profit motives to influence ratings, a fatal stroke that would cut it off from participating in government-related investments. It also strips the agencies of their long-treasured legal immunity from making mistakes: Before Dodd-Frank, it was essentially impossible for investors to sue over blatant ratings errors, like that ones that were common during the housing bubble.  Now, ratings firms can be found liable if an investor proves they were reckless or knew the ratings were inaccurate.

But regulating the credit agencies has proven to be a near-impossible task. Not only are they intertwined in almost every corner of the market, they are intertwined with government agencies, too.  Most state pension funds, for example, require that their managers only invest in funds with high ratings, which acts as a de facto endorsement of the agencies' work. 

And the agencies have such a strong role in the markets that they can bully regulators into backing off.

In July 2010, with the increased liability provision of Dodd-Frank set to kick in, ratings agencies scored a victory by telling bond issuers they could no longer include the ratings on marketing materials. Because SEC rules require credit ratings to appear, the ratings agencies effectively created a Catch-22, threatening to shut down the entire asset-backed bond market.  Regulators, faced with that potential calamity, backed off, and said issuers could temporarily issue bonds without the ratings. In December, the SEC made the change permanent, "effectively exempting companies from part of the U.S. Dodd-Frank Financial Rreform Act," according to a Bloomberg News report at the time.

So did S&P issue a downgrade to send a "back off" message to the U.S. government? 

There's no evidence of it, and even ratings agency critic Barbara Roper said she was skeptical of such a quid-pro-quo conspiracy.

“They have used bullying tactics in other areas … but I don’t see how they’ve strengthened their hand by angering the very administration officials who are making those (regulatory) decisions about them,” said Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. “They have no friends in Congress.”

On the other hand, it's undeniable that there's a macro-level conflict of interest at work when the very industry Congress is trying to reform unleashes its biggest arrow right at the heart of the financial system.

“It's clearly a problem that (the ratings agencies) have this much influence on the markets, including the power to undermine faith in the government trying to regulate them,” she said.

And whatever the motivation this time, Standard & Poor’s has clearly demonstrated its ability to move markets – and maintains more bullets in its chamber.  Another downgrade, which the agency said was possible, would take U.S. debt out of the critical “top 2” tiers of ratings, which would prevent a host of pension funds and money market mutual funds from holding U.S. Treasuries. 

“It’s not like they don’t still have a gun to the administration’s head,” Roper said. “They could be saying, ‘How’d you like that? Want to see it again?’ “

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter. 

Imagine being able to sit down in a bar, snap a few photos of people and quickly learn who they are, who their friends are, where they live, what kind of music they like ... even predict their Social Security number. 

Now, imagine you could visit one of those anonymous online dating sites and quickly identify nearly every person there, just from their photos, despite efforts to keep their online romance search a secret.

Such technology is so creepy that it was developed, and withheld, by Google — the one initiative that Google deemed too dangerous to release to the world, according to former CEO Eric Schmidt.

Too late, says Carnegie Mellon University researcher Alessandro Acquisti. 

"That genie is already out of the bottle," he said Thursday, shortly before a presentation at the annual Las Vegas Black Hat hackers' convention that's sure to trouble online daters, bar hoppers and anyone who ever walks down the street.

Using off-the-shelf facial recognition software and simple Internet data mining techniques, Acquisti says he's proven that most people can now be identified simply through a photograph of their face — and anyone can do the sleuthing. In other words, our faces have become our identities, and there little hope of remaining anonymous in a world where billions of photographs are taken and posted online every month.

"If we were able to do it, anyone is able to do it," Acquisti said. “The goal here is not to generate fear, but we are very close to a point where the convergence of technologies will make it possible for online and offline data to blend seamlessly ... and for strangers on the street to predict certain information about you from your picture."

 With some 2.5 billion photos per month posted to Facebook, odds are very good that you can be recognized, he said.

"For most of us, there is already a photo of us online. It is close to impossible to take this data back," he said. 

Using the unnerving term "augmented reality,” Acquisiti conjures up disturbing scenarios that involve law enforcement officials, marketers and other strangers constantly marrying offline and online data.  Observers could overlay detailed information like political affiliation on pictures of crowds at protests, for example, creating a scary new form of crowd control, he suggested. Meanwhile, facial images could succeed in creating a national ID where enhancements to driver’s licenses have repeatedly failed,  said Acquisti in his report, titled “Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality.”

“Notwithstanding Americans' resistance to a Real ID infrastructure, as consumers of social networks we have consented to a de facto Real ID that markets and information technology, rather than government and regulation, have created,” it said.

Anyone who's ever posted a photo on a supposedly anonymous dating site has encountered the very real fear that a friend or co-worker might recognize them from their profile picture. That risk can be roughly calculated, however, and assessed. Most users take comfort that their profile will be "lost in a crowd," with thousands of others in that age group and city making their risk of exposure low.

But Acquisti found that the convergence of facial recognition software with social networks like Facebook tilt those odds wildly in favor of the would-be exposer, or stalker. 

Acquisti searched for dating site users within 50 miles of a zip code, found about 6,000, and then found 110,000 Facebook profiles where users said they lived near that same zip code.  After eliminating some profiles that didn't match his criteria, he instructed computers to churn through about 500 million pairs of possibilities. 

It would take a human about 2 million hours to compete such a task, but Carnegie Mellon's cloud computing cluster got results in about 15 hours. One in 10 members of the dating site were positively "outed" by the database search.  A bit of fine-tuning  — limiting the geographic area further or allowing approximate matches — produced even better results. And one sobering reminder: The researchers didn't even need to log in to Facebook to get these results.

In other words, you can't get lost in a crowd anymore.

“(The technologies) make possible a world of personally predictable information, linkable from someone's face, through end-users' devices connected to the Internet,” the report concludes. “While anyone posting facial images of themselves on the Internet must realize that they may be recognized by strangers or friends, the possibility might seem remote."  Now, it’s not, the report argues.

Acquisti's team enjoyed even better results when they could obtain photographs themselves for matching purposes.  Random students who agreed to be photographed on the Pittsburgh campus of Carnegie Mellon could be positively identified at three times the initial rate —  or more than 30 percent.

'Freaky'
The researchers didn't stop there.  Next, they linked the photos and names to student likes and dislikes gleaned from their profiles, with about 75 percent accuracy. Then, they combined this effort with work Acquisti had done in 2009 on predicting Social Security numbers, and found that they could predict the Social Security number for 28 percent of the subjects within four guesses. Finally, they built a mobile phone application that could achieve the same results while wandering around campus.

To refresh: Starting from a mere photo, they were able to determine name, friends, even SSNs. 

"This is freaky," one student told the researchers.  Said another, "(I'm) surprised and shocked with the accuracy."

One interesting side note — one in two participants believed, incorrectly, that their Facebook picture was invisible to strangers. (Facebook doesn't allow privacy limitations on profile images.) Only 10 percent made the rest of the profile information viewable to strangers, meaning they obviously care about privacy. 

The researchers said the technologies will soon “democratize surveillance,” as sinking costs make peer-to-peer facial recognition cost effective and available to everyone.

Acquisti's tests aren't fool-proof  — campus participants agree to full, frontal face photos, which are much easier for face recognition software to analyze. In real life, and even on Facebook, photos aren’t always so easy to use.  But it's obvious what direction all this technology is headed in — making it harder and harder for people to find places to hide.

"We used to feel we were safe in a crowd," Acquisti said.  "What concerns me most is what our brains tell us about being private in a large group like that. We think we can stay anonymous, but now, I don't think we can."

Companies like Facebook and Google have been flirting with facial recognition for a while, and have sometimes received a lot of negative publicity for doing so.  On Tuesday, for example, the German government asked Facebook to disable its automated photo tagging feature that utilizes facial recognition software to determine who’s in photos that are posted to the site. (Click here for instructions on how to turn this off for your account.)

In July, Google acquired Pittsburgh facial recognition firm PittPatt, which makes the software Acquisti used in his research.  In 2006, Google acquired image recognition company Neven Vision, and already includes the technology in its Google Goggles product, which lets mobile phone users upload pictures and ask Google for help identifying them.  Earlier this year, Neven Vision founder and Google employee Hartmut Neven said the firm was working on incorporating facial recognition into the tool, but the company has issued several statements saying it has no plans to do so unless “strong privacy protections are in place.”

Of course, it’s easy to think up positive applications for such technologies –  the ability to find dangerous criminals or terrorists in crowds, for example. Even online daters might trade privacy for the reassurance that prospective dates aren’t lying about their background.

But it’s just as easy to imagine more sinister uses. Here’s one: The marriage of face recognition to voter registration lists could have political activists wandering the streets on Election Day, picking out registered voters and escorting them to polling places.

There isn’t much consumers can do to ward off these potential privacy invasions, Acquisti said, given how many pictures are already online. Even efforts to blur faces, or avoid posting pictures altogether, probably wouldn’t work: “Nearly all of us have a picture online that’s connected to our name,” he said.

Despite Google’s apparent self-restraint, it’s also probably impossible to stop the technology from being developed, Acquisti warned. Instead, policy-makers should immediately start debating how facial recognition can be used.

“Do we want to think in terms of policies that can stop its abuse? How would we do that? It’s an incredibly difficult question to answer,” he said. “I’ve thought about this for several years and ... there is no obvious, clear solution.”

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.