Because We Are Way Too Nice To Poor People In Texas
I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but Rick Perry has just found another way to rip off poor people. You’d think there would be some sort of universal limit to the number of ways you can do that, but apparently not. He can’t count to three in debates but he can count to infinity trillion when it comes to ways of parting poor people and their money.
Payday lenders are going to hell. You know it. I know it. And they pretend they don’t know it. The Bible talks about usury and not in very nice terms. If you recall, the only time Jesus lost his temper was with the moneychangers. I’m hanging with Jesus on that one.
Here’s Perry latest deal. First he builds toll roads, you know, so that rich people don’t have to drive with the riffraff and he doesn’t have to raise taxes to build an infrastructure. But just in case some working poor people will save enough in gas to justify using the toll road, guess where you have to go to pass the toll road account?
Oh yeah, he went there.
The El Paso Times reports that the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority will be working with the payday lender ACE Cash Express to help collect tolls for the César Chávez Border Highway toll road, which is expected to open Jan. 8.
While people who want to set up an account to use the road or pay off their toll charges can do so by phone, mail or online, the only places to do so in person in El Paso are at ACE stores. Those individuals who make the transaction at the payday lender “will be charged a $3 fee to set up the account and a $2 convenience service fee to replenish a non-credit card,” the paper notes.
If you don’t have a credit card, you are charged $5 extra and have to go to a Payday lender to buy it. And if you think that Payday lenders aren’t going to try every gimmick possible to get people to take loans they can’t afford to pay back, you’re not going to hell but you are, indeed, an idiot.
Does anybody see irony in this being the César Chávez toll road? Seriously? You named ripping off poor people after César Chávez? You’re going to hell.
What ACE is getting from the partnership is far more valuable than just a small fee.
“What the partnership is essentially doing is potentially sending thousands of potential first customers directly into the stores of a payday lender, giving them what they admit is one of their most important factors,” said Diane Standaert, senior legislative counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending.
But it does not stop there.
Additionally, the man Perry appointed to oversee Texas’ consumer watchdog, William White, is also vice president of payday lender Cash America. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently fined the company $19 million.
Do you wanna know what interest Cash America charges for a 14 day loan? 533%. No, that’s not a typo. It’s three numbers starting with a 5. Some poor guy working two jobs living paycheck to paycheck has a sick kid. Where’s he going to get medicine before his next paycheck? Welcome to Cash America! He even charged higher rates to United States service men and women.
William White is going to hell. But, meanwhile, he’s Texas’s consumer watchdog.
Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.
Y’all, I hate Republicans. I do. I just hate them.
[Facepalm] Oy.
1We’ve gotta get Wendy in….
2Gov Gohmert Hair sets yet another new low in the depths of depravity. US Attorney General Eric Holder needs an entire staff devoted to TX shenanigans. Fees to vote, fees + usury to use public roads, and a whole Gohmert load of cash funneling upward into crony pockets. Sure is expensive to be poor in TX. What part of Jesus said “feed the poor” did they translate to ‘siphon the last bread crumb out of their pockets’? Historically, Marie Antoinette never said, “let them eat cake,” but had she, she would be a screaming socialist by Perry standards.
3I am glad he did it. If this doesn’t help get out the vote for Wendy, I don’t know what will. She can straighten it up once she gets in the Governor’s office.
4What a Gohmert.
5So, what does Rick get out of it…because you know he does.
6Kate Dungan, with his national aspirations in the Gohmert, can expect a soft landing onto some useless, but profitable board or an appointment to the clown car of talking useless ’employed’ on the anything but news network. I long for the days, when trash talk required athletic skills beyond sitting in a chair before a microphone. “Fox News, all the excitement of drying paint for the sedentary irrelevant.”
7And Rickie’s cut is ………..? It is so obvious that he is profiting from this. The last time anyone in history charged ordinary (meaning poor) folks to use a public road was Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham in the absence of King Richard. Even the Barons rebelled against Prince John in the end and the western world ended up with the Magna Carta, a copy of which is in the National Archives in the hallway just outside of the room with the glass cases containing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I hereby use my magic wand and cast a spell on Rickie. However, I am not going to do him the favor of telling him what his “Barons” will look like when they take him to task. He will find out soon enough.
8I’m all for Wendy winning and will certainly vote for her, but I have to say, she’s only going to be governor. Governor is the fifth one down from powerful seats in Texas government. Someone help me here. I know Lieutenant Governor is more powerful than Governor. Yeah van de Putte! In what order are the other seats of power?
9And SHAME SHAME SHAME on the payday lenders, unregulated and shameless in Texas. I get mad every time I drive past one. Are they connected with banks and if so, how? Speaking of banks, who owns PROSPERITY BANK, the one in the same building with Texas Public Policy Foundation just down the street from the Texas Capitol building?
Now, y’all, I’m not from Texas, only ever been there once on a business trip and I stayed in the hotel the whole time. My home base is Massachusetts, which is kind of the anti-Texas, I think.
But I might just move to Texas. So I can vote for Wendy Davis. And also maybe vote against Perry in some Texas presidential primary.
As for what Perry’s cut of this is, I’d suggest looking into “campaign contributions” made by this William White, who coincidentally is also vice president of payday lender Cash America (as you so aptly pointed out, Miss Juanita Jean).
P.S. And I do love your blog here, been reading it a long-ass time. Keep feeling like I should send condolence cards to every sister in Texas.
10In terms of power, who is waving ideas in front of Perry to do these sorts of things?
11My councilman here in San Antonio, Diego Bernal, passed an ordinance doing at least a little to stop those idiots. Due to the money aligned against his resolution, he did very well.
12This situation cries out for a Federal investigation. The conflict of interest alone is
13criminal. Bubba can you get on this? Maybe the Dept. of Transportation, interstate commerce, RICO?
I am sitting in Illinois, at present. 6 or 8 inches of snow on the ground and wind pickking to about forty mph, and it is going to drop to about MINUS 15 degrees. Annd this out of PERRY is colder than that. Texans, I feel your pain. At least our doofuses and ne’er do wells go to the steel bar hotel, if that is any consolation!
14Do people who use toll roads need payday loans? Seems like they are out of their demographic.
15I live in New York, but I’ve already donated to Wendy Davis, and after reading this, I’m going to do it again!
16I’m with JJ,I hate rethuglicans on general pronciples.
17“consumer watchdog.” That would be hilarious if it weren’t so pathetic. I once owned a dog like that. She watched — presumably from under the bed — while our home was burglarized. Every day I’m so pleased that I don’t have to live in Texas.
18Isn’t it amusing how all the folks who are so eager to pass laws based on what they claim the Bible says are not promoting anti-usury laws? The Bible’s pretty clear on usury being a bad thing – yet somehow the Kristians think usury is a fine thing. (Note: Christians, such as Pope Francis, seem to have a different opinion – but then, they listen to the teachings of that hippy Jesus.)
19Now Rubymay, it takes a certain type of frontier type person to live in Tayuksis. You jist come on and move here; we have a real nice house fer sale next door. I am serious. I want a nice family of Democrats to buy it. It is two story, has a swimming pool and fenced back yard, and has had a lot of work done on it to improve it including double pane windows and some prettifying too. It’s a short street which is pretty quiet and has a bunch of Dems in our two-three block long street. You come on over.
20Usury laws are in the Old Testament. Not sure they’re talked about much in New Testament except general principles like bear your own burdens but if someone else needs help, you oughta help him/her, and also the one about if you have plenty of the world’s goods and don’t share them, you’re worse than an infidel. Or something like that. I believe it. Capitalism without restraints ain’t no good atall.
21Anyone Perry appoints to anything is a sleazeball:
William White, is also vice president of payday lender Cash America. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently fined the company $19 million.
White recently said consumers, not the payday lenders, were responsible for the problems resulting from the loans.
“People make decisions. There’s nobody out there that forces anybody to take any kind of loan,” he said. “People are responsible for their decisions, just like in my life and in your life. When I make a wrong decision, I pay the consequences.”
22And ROARING from the pulpit came the sound of….
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Interesting story. Brains and Eggs had a post yesterday about the dustup between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott over this:
Brains and Eggs: We have our first flashpoint in the Texas Governor’s race
http://brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2014/01/we-have-our-first-flashpoint-in-texas.html
Here’s a quote from one of the articles referred to in the blog post:
“Attorney General Greg Abbott on Thursday called state Sen. Wendy Davis a hypocrite for demanding that Gov. Rick Perry remove William J. White as chairman of the Texas Finance Commission.
“In a statement, Abbott pointed out that Davis voted to confirm White after Perry appointed him in March 2009.”
24There will be a special place an especially heinous place reserved for prick pervey.
25It’s amazing what you can find on opensecrets.org if you start clicking on links. Note that they are not intuitive links and thus are hidden in plain sight.
My fine ‘christian’ congresscritter, among the 35 titles that opensecrets lists outside of his congressional office, apparently owns a payday loan company. opensecrets.org lists it as Fleming Payday Loans. I really can’t find the business listed as that name in his hometown, probably because he is listing it with a DBA alias or it may be in Houston, another place he operates.
Anyone out there know how I can track it down? Though it doesn’t really matter because, if he is a true believer, he knows he is going to hell.
26That’s just evil. Purely and simply evil.
27http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_24827112/texas-finance-panels-actions-attacked
According to this article,White gave Perry at least $37,000 in campaign cash since 2000. White also tried to get a bill passed to limit communities from regulating payday loans,which is illegal according to Texas laws. Sounds like business as usual for rethuglicans.
28The more I learn about Gov Perry the more disgusted I become If we aren’t getting the poor out to vote, we’ll be digging our own grave..come on …..stand up against this devil.
29Boy, I hate to do this because he is still a money grubbing *******, but it appears that Fleming shut down the payday loan scam a couple of years back and opensecrets.org didn’t list it as a ‘dormant’ business. It just keeps appearing on his disclosure forms to the government. Maybe his religion was weighing on his soul…. Nah, who am I kidding? Rethugs like him have no soul. However, I do apologize for thinking it was a current situation.
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