Fake Payday Loan Reform

Missouri and Utah are among the states in which legislators are proposing fake payday loan reform, per "States’ Attempts To Reform Payday Lending Are Often Just Smoke & Mirrors." Here's an excerpt:

Sen. Mike Cunningham, who sponsored the Missouri bill . . . says it will protect consumers from some of the practices payday lenders have utilized for so long. Missouri’s proposed reform comes less than two years after a group called Missourians for Equal Credit Opportunity helped put an end to a ballot initiative that would have allowed Missouri residents to vote for or against capping the state’s interest rate at 36%. The current proposed bill does not feature any kind of rate cap, meaning interest for a typical two-week payday loan can balloon to more than 1,000%.

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What Karl Marx got right

To this point, Karl Marx offered a system of government that has not worked well anywhere that it has been tried, at least so far. I took a college course on Marx many years ago, and I was impressed with many of his criticisms of capitalism. Some of those criticisms of capitalism are becoming apparent to most of us, as set forth in this article by Sean McElwee of Rolling Stone. Here are the headings: 1. The Great Recession (Capitalism's Chaotic Nature) 2. The iPhone 5S (Imaginary Appetites) 3. The IMF (The Globalization of Capitalism) 4. Walmart (Monopoly) 5. Low Wages, Big Profits (The Reserve Army of Industrial Labor) McElwee's conclusion:

Marx was wrong about many things. Most of his writing focuses on a critique of capitalism rather than a proposal of what to replace it with – which left it open to misinterpretation by madmen like Stalin in the 20th century. But his work still shapes our world in a positive way as well. When he argued for a progressive income tax in the Communist Manifesto, no country had one. Now, there is scarcely a country without a progressive income tax, and it's one small way that the U.S. tries to fight income inequality.
Here's a related article by Jesse Myerson of Salon: "Why you’re wrong about communism: 7 huge misconceptions about it (and capitalism)." Here are the misconceptions: 1. Only communist economies rely on state violence. 2. Capitalist economies are based on free exchange. 3. Communism killed 110 million* people for resisting dispossession. 4. Capitalist governments don’t commit human rights atrocities. 5. 21st Century American communism would resemble 20th century Soviet and Chinese horrors. 6. Communism fosters uniformity. 7. Capitalism fosters individuality. Myerson's conclusion regarding misconception 7:
As a matter of fact, most of the greatest art under capitalism has always come from people who are oppressed and alienated (see: the blues, jazz, rock & roll, and hip-hop). Then, thanks to capitalism, it is homogenized, marketed, and milked for all its value by the “entrepreneurs” sitting at the top of the heap, stroking their satiated flanks in admiration of themselves for getting everyone beneath them to believe that we are free.

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Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps: Why the proposed Comcast-Time-Warner consolidation is a terrible idea

I have twice heard Michael Copps speak at Free Press national conferences. He is a former FCC Commissioner, a thoughtful and principled man who now has grave concerns about media consolidation, including the latest proposed mega-deal wherein Comcast hopes to buy Time-Warner. Here are Copps' words on this latest terrible development:

You may wonder why a long-time regulator like me is writing to you. ... I worked at the intersection of policy and journalism as a member of the Federal Communications Commission and saw first-hand how my agency’s decisions limited your ability to accomplish good things. Since I stepped down two years ago, the situation has only gotten worse. I want to do something about it. I want you to do something about it, too. Let me tell you what I saw. I was sworn in as a commissioner in 2001. “What an awesome job this is going to be,” I thought, “dealing with edge-of-the-envelope issues, meeting the visionaries and innovators transforming the ways we communicate, and then making it all happen by helping to craft policies to bring the power of communications to every American.” It was a heady time.... New media would complement the traditional media of newspapers, radio, TV, and cable, ushering in a golden age of communications. ... The FCC that I joined had a different agenda. It had fallen as madly in love with industry consolidation, as had the swashbuckling captains of big media. The agency seldom met an industry transaction it didn’t approve. The Commission’s blessing not only conferred legitimacy on a particular transaction; it encouraged the next deal, and the hundreds after that. So Clear Channel grew from a 1970s startup to a 1,200-station behemoth. Sinclair, Tribune, and News Corp. went on buying sprees, too, and the major networks extended their influence by buying some stations and affiliating with others. Gone are hundreds of once-independent broadcast outlets. In their stead is a truncated list of nationwide, homogenized, and de-journalized empires that respond more to quarterly reports than to the information needs of citizens.

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It’s time for public banks

The state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) is a model for Los Angeles and other cities, counties, and states . . . [It] is a major money-maker for North Dakota, returning about $30 million annually in dividends to the treasury – not bad for a state with a population that is less than one-fifth that of the City of Los Angeles. Every year since the 2008 banking crisis, the BND has reported a return on investment of 17-26%. Like the BND, a Bank of the City of Los Angeles would provide credit for city projects – to build bridges, restore lakes, and pay bills – and this credit would essentially be interest-free, since the city would own the bank and get the interest back. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by 35% or more.

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