The Predators and Their Enablers

Rep. [Debbie] Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), chair of the Democratic National Committee, also has been an advocate for the payday loan industry. The website ThinkProgress 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 they’re 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.

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Yet when the CFPB [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] 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.

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[I]n Wasserman Schultz’s 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.

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That position became a major issue in her campaign for reelection to the House this year — she has a primary opponent for the first time since she entered Congress — and was even threatening the prospect of her continuing as DNC chair and presiding over the Democratic National Convention next month in Philadelphia. More than 40,000 have signed a petition calling for her removal from that post.

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Unaccustomed to a challenge in the Democratic “wealth primary” where money usually favors incumbents, she now finds herself called to account by an articulate opponent who champions working people, Tim Canova. Across the country tens of thousands of consumer advocates — and tens of thousands of other progressives angry at her perceived favoritism toward Hillary Clinton — have been demanding that Wasserman Schultz resign as the party’s chair or be dumped before the convention opens Philadelphia.

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Democratic insiders like Wasserman Schultz [continue] to whistle past the graveyard, believing that the well-funded and well-connected Clinton machine — and general fear of a Trump regime — were enough to carry them to victory in November, despite the grass-roots disgust with a party that reeks of rot from the top.

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So last week the previously tone-deaf Wasserman Schultz perked up, did an about-face and announced she will go along with the proposed new rules on payday lending after all.

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All well and good, but if she survives her primary to return to Washington, be sure to keep the lights on in those rooms where the final version of the rules are negotiated.

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Nick Bourke, director of small-dollar loans for the Pew Charitable Trusts, is a man who closely follows these things and got to the heart of the matter: Not only do the proposed new rules “fall short,” they will allow payday lenders to lock out attempts at lower-cost bank loans.

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The lust for loot which now defines the Democratic establishment became pronounced in the Bill Clinton years, when the Clinton-friendly Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) abandoned its liberal roots and embraced “market-based solutions” that led to deregulation, tax breaks, and subsidies for the 1 percent. Seeking to fill coffers emptied by the loss of support from a declining labor movement, Democrats rushed into the arms of big business and crony capitalists.

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[G]uess who’s the chairman of the platform committee for the upcoming Democratic National Convention? [...] Dan Malloy, governor of Connecticut, subsidizer of billionaires. Guess who named him? [...] Wasserman Schultz, “top Democratic ally” of “predatory payday lenders.” We’re not making this up.

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So take the planks in the platform and the platitudes and promises in the speeches with a grain of salt. It’s all about the money.

  Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

I wrote in Bill Moyers in 1996 when Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were the choices.

Yes, you're correct. Bill Moyers had no interest in being president. But as long as I have the right to vote, I'm going to use it, and if you don't give me anyone I think would make a good president, I'll write in someone I think would.

I'll have to check into Jill Stein a bit deeper between now and November - unless Bernie gets real and runs as an Independent and there is the possibility of him actually securing the office. I've got a few problems with Bernie, but he'd be more likely at this stage to win an election than Jill Stein. But since he's probably not going to do it, if I find a problem with Stein, Bill Moyers may get my vote again this year.

You can tell him if you want.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.