2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumMoyers: DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz’s Change Of Heart On Payday Lenders Is Too Little, Too Late
First, a quick recap: Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), chair of the Democratic National Committee, also has been an advocate for the payday loan industry. The website Think Progress even described her as the top Democratic ally of predatory payday lenders. You know the bottom-feeding bloodsuckers of the working poor. Yes, them.
Low-income workers living from paycheck to paycheck, especially women and minorities, are the payday lenders prime targets easy pickings because theyre often desperate. Twelve million Americans reportedly borrow nearly $50 billion a year through payday loans, at rates that can soar above 300 percent, sometimes even beyond 500 percent. Bethany McLean at The Atlantic recently reported that the governments Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) studied millions of payday loans and found that 67 percent went to borrowers with seven or more transactions a year and that a majority of those borrowers paid more in fees than the amount of their initial loan.
Yet when the CFPB was drawing up new rules to make it harder for payday predators to feast on the poor, Rep. Wasserman Schultz co-sponsored a bill to delay those new rules by two years. How, you ask, could the head of the partys national committee embrace such an appalling exploitation of working people?
Just follow the money. Last year, the payday loan industry spent $3.5 million lobbying; and as we wrote two weeks ago, in Wasserman Schultzs home state, since 2009, payday lenders have bought protection from Democrats and Republicans alike by contributing $2.5 million or so to candidates from both parties, including her. Thats how Representative Wasserman Schultz, among others, wound up representing the predators instead of the poor.
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http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/moyers-dnc-chair-wasserman-schultzs-change-of-heart-on-payday-lenders-is-too-little-too-late/
senz
(11,945 posts)Who are the targets?
So much for the scuzzy racist/sexist accusations behind which the true predators hide.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Doesn't he trust science?
Pastiche423
(15,406 posts)AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)Bridge the gap between what people and what they believe.