Time for a national usury law?

First Premier Bank has just introduced its new 79% interest rate sub-prime credit card. No, that's not a typo, and some experts expect to see more credit cards with sky-high interest. Which makes me again bring up the topic of a national usury cap. Thomas Geoghegan recommended such a cap last year, in his article in The American Prospect. He suggested a credit card interest cap of 12% and a law completely barring payday loans.img_1180 I have filed several class action suits against large payday lenders (here's a post on one of those suits). These lenders often argue that people need these 400% interest loans for short term emergencies. At what cost, though? In my experience, these lenders are commonly stretching out these "short term" loans for many months. People who borrow $500 will pay $2000 in interest over the year and they will STILL OWE THE $500. Many states allow payday lenders to charge in excess of 1000% interest. These loans suck the very life out of working class folks. They amount to financial crack cocaine, because people often end up taking out a second, and a third payday loan in order to pay off the first one. It's a terrible mess and it's ruining lives. That's why 13 states have passed laws making sure that payday lenders cannot operate in those jurisdictions. It's time for the other states, and Congress, to get with the program. To put this all in perspective, remember the stories about "loan sharks?" Those were the good old days. "Simple nominal annual interest rates on extortionate mafia loan shark debts averaged 250%." Syndicate Loan-Shark Activities and New York's Usury Statute, 66 Colum. L. Rev. 167, 167 (1966). And here's another irony. The Bible clearly holds that usury is a sin comparable to murder. Usury is prohibited by Exodus 22:25: "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.” Usury is also prohibited by Leviticus 25:35-37. In spite of these Bible quotes, if you want to find lots of payday stores and payday lenders, look for geographical areas where you'll also find conservative Christians. That is the finding of Steven M. Graves and Christopher Peterson, in a law review article entitled "Usury Law and the Christian Right: Faith-Based Political Power and the Geography of American Payday Loan Regulation," 57 Cath. U. L. Rev. 637, 640 (2008):

We conclude, with a high degree of statistical certainty, that states with powerful conservative Christian populations tend to host relatively greater numbers of payday loan locations per capita as well as a greater commercial density of payday lenders. These findings propound a tragic and sad irony. Those states that have most ardently held to their pious Christian traditions have tended to become more infested with the progeny of money changers once expelled by Christ from the Hebrew temple. Legislators in those states, who have effectively used biblical principles to shape their legislative agenda on social and cultural issues, have failed to consistently apply biblical principles to economic legislation.

All it would take for Congress to outlaw payday loans is to write up a bill, have a majority of members of Congress approve of it, and then refer it to the President to sign it. But that can't happen these days because the financial services industry pays our politicians huge amounts of money so that they WON'T sign these sorts of bills. And, of course, with regard to Congress, the banks "frankly own the place."

Continue ReadingTime for a national usury law?

Reminder that “struggle for existence” is a conceptual metaphor.

In the November, 2009 edition of Nature (available only to subscribers online) Daniel Todes has written an article entitled "Global Darwin: Contempt for Competition." Todes points out that although Darwin's idea of a "struggle for existence" made sense to his English peers, other biologists from other countries rejected this metaphor. Todes focuses on the alternative viewpoint embraced by many Russian biologists. In On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin noted that "there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms." Through this quote, Darwin recognized that he was using "struggle for existence" in a metaphorical sense. Darwin had been urged to adopt this metaphor by Russel Wallace, who feared that natural selection "seemed to personify a perceptive and forward thinking selector, or god." Todes holds that Darwin's metaphor was common sense to those "who were living on a crowded island with a capitalist economy and highly individualist culture." Russian biologists lived in a very different place, however, which led them to "reject Darwin's Malthusian metaphor." Russians did not tend to explore densely populated tropical environments. Rather, they tended to investigate "a vast underpopulated continental plain . . . it was largely empty Siberian expanse in which overpopulation was rare and only the struggle of organisms against a harsh environment was dramatic." Todes points out the Russian political system also contrasted sharply with that of Darwin's England. In Russia, capitalism was only weakly developed, and the social classes stressed cooperation rather than individual struggle, one against the other. In fact, many Russian political commentators "reviled Malthus as an apologist for predatory capitalism and the soulless individualism." This context for the Russian research led to (many successful) studies in which the focus was "mutual aid" more than "struggle for existence." [more . . . ]

Continue ReadingReminder that “struggle for existence” is a conceptual metaphor.

Meet the founder of Conservapedia

Stephen Colbert recently interviewed Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia. Learn how Jesus was a big free-market advocate:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Andy Schlafly
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorU.S. Speedskating
What's really amazing is that Schlafly doesn't seem to realize that he has just been publicly crowned as a huge fool by Colbert. Schlafly lives in a tiny world where it doesn't bother him to portray his site as a "Wiki" even though it is heavily censored, as shown by his refusal to answer Colbert's serious line of questions.

Continue ReadingMeet the founder of Conservapedia

A proposed media shield law protects bloggers like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine

The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved its version of a "media shield law," designed to protect the confidential sources of journalists. The law now moves to the full Senate, and it would need to be reconciled with a similar bill in the House before being presented to Barack Obama. The passage of a media shield bill is critically important, in that the threat of imprisonment for refusal to comply with subpoenas discourages journalists from covering numerous serious issues. According to Huffpo, the bill not only protects full time journalists, but "uses a broad definition of journalists by including bloggers, citizen journalists and freelancers." According to the Examiner,

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) endorsed the "carefully crafted" bill's inclusion of bloggers, and hailed Benjamin Franklin for his "anonymous blogs" that explained "the reasons why this country should exist." Pamphleteer Thomas Paine likewise got a few mentions as the senators debated whether to define a journalist as someone employed by a mainstream organization.
The protection allowed by this version of the bill are not absolute; they can be overridden:
With the exception of national security cases, the bill establishes a balancing test to determine whether a reporter must reveal their source. A federal judge would weigh the public's right to know versus national security claims made by the government.
The burden of proof depends on whether the case from which the subpoena is issued is a criminal case or a civil case. In criminal cases, the journalist would have to show that guarding the anonymity of sources is in the public interest. In non-criminal cases, the government bears the burden of showing that disclosure of a confidential source outweighs the public interest in news-gathering. I was elated to see that bloggers and citizen journalists are being considered for this protection, especially given the fact that so much important information being published these days is by people who are not full-time professional journalists. And see here for an illustration of the problem with mainstream" journalists." For a related post, see these three short videos featuring John Nichols and Robert McChesney, the founders of Free Press (from the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform), discussing the role of citizen journalists, among many other important media reform topics).

Continue ReadingA proposed media shield law protects bloggers like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine

It’s time to break the taboo and to talk frankly about human overpopulation

If you are feeling brave, take a look at the World Clock. You'll see that more than twice as many people are being born as are dying for any given interval (click the "Now" button to see the numbers spinning out from the present). world-clock Click the "Deaths" tab and note that for every 100 deaths, there are also more than 60 abortions, and yet the Earth's population still spirals out of control. Click around on the other tabs and you will probably find yourself transfixed by magnitude of these numbers. Notice the vast amount of forest being decimated by clicking on the "Environment" tab. Under the "Energy" tab, notice the incredibly disconcerting "Oil Depletion Timer," indicating that we have 40 years of oil left on the entire planet (you'll need to do the math, dividing the days left by 365--this estimate is based on the admittedly laughable assumption that it would be economically viable to scoop up every drop of oil). Notice the ghastly numbers of entire species being lost each week (almost 300 extinctions per week). Notice the many thousands of preventable deaths every week (under the Death tab), including ghastly numbers of children dying from preventable things like lack of nutrition. The World Clock sends me into an existential swirl. Watching these numbers accumulate fascinates me and, regarding some categories, horrifies me. Regarding the needless deaths, for example, it occurs to me that no human being has sufficient cognitive capacity or sufficient empathy to properly understand or react to numbers of this magnitude. It is impossible to feel sufficient empathy for the needless deaths of thousands people, week after week. Last year, I posted on an effort by Global Population Speak Out (GPSO) to discuss the need to discuss overpopulation. But many people are too horrified to even consider this topic. One such person repeatedly vilified me in the comments, arguing that I was an elitist (and worse) because I merely dared to raise this issue. But this issue of overpopulation is too important to ignore. [more . . . ]

Continue ReadingIt’s time to break the taboo and to talk frankly about human overpopulation