Comments

1
John Oliver I love your regional US accents!

Also, 2nding what Sarah Silverman said on the issue.
2
The end times are coming. Dan is up and posting coherently at 7am and 7:23am his time. [unless he's on the east coast, or still in Europe]

Now, if only the chattering class can take on "private" student loans and private parental student loans -- usurious interest rates far above the already high federal direct student loan rates. All of which incl the "private" loans are ultimately backed by the fed. govt.

Corporate welfare. APRs over 10% in some cases and all the risk to the taxpayer and student, can't be cleared in bankruptcy.

Granted in the US of A we're not likely to pay for students to go to university, sadly, but at least let them borrow direct from Uncle Sam for 100% of an education at the rate of 10 year treasury bills around 2.5%.
3
"Why isn't Washington state on the list?"

Maybe you haven't noticed that the Republicans control the state Senate?

Or that, even before Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon started to caucus with the Republicans, there were more than a few so-called Democrats who vote like conservatives on things like regulating pay-day loans (and Boeing tax breaks, and....)

Washington isn't as liberal as Seattle likes to think it is.
4
The payday loan industry has successfully blocked attempts to eliminate it in this state but we did pass a very restrictive law a couple of years ago, thanks to the efforts of the Statewide Poverty Action Network and Frank Chopp. The 2010 bill blocked the worst abluse of the industry, which is the repeating cycle of debt, where you have to take out a new loan just to pay off the old one.

Not surprisingly, the lenders like Moneytree, assisted by turncoat "Democrats" like Tim Sheldon and Rodney Tom, have repeatedly tried to roll back the 2010 law. I'm sure there will be a bill in the Senate again next year. If you're looking for a culprit here, Sheldon is your man.
5
So they can say "shit" on HBO (or at least Youtube), but they have to bleep out "fuck," but they can still flash the word "fuck" on screen.
6
@4: If you need a root canal, Sheldon's your man, but humpin' and pumpin' is not Sheldon's strong suit. It's the name. 'Do it to me, Sheldon.' 'You're an animal, Sheldon.' 'Ride me, big Sheldon.' It doesn't work.
7
@6, how about "oh, Timmy, you're such a tool"?
8
How does Oliver manage to make topics like payday loans and net neutrality so riveting?
9
@6,
A Sheldon can also do your income taxes.
10
@6
I'll have what she's having.
11
I've never had a problem with payday loans. Maybe because I don't put myself in that tight a financial spot? Maybe?

Nah. Couldn't be! Those payday loan clerks must be pointing guns at the poor folks innocently wandering in and FORCING them to sign! Get those crooks!

The term 'personal responsibility' means nothing at all to you liberal trash, does it?
12
@11 I'm not a superstitious man but I would still hesitate to say that kind of thing where the leukemia fairy might hear it

13
@11, that's not far from saying, "I don't get saddled with huge medical bills because I'm smart enough to not get sick."

I don't see why you would have a problem with Americans getting together to educate each other about abusive business practices--freedom of association and whatnot.
14
@12, Jinx!
15
Blah, blah, blah, corruption, blah, blah, blah, government, blah, blah, blah, killing poor people, blah, blah...
17
It was a great segment until they had to Sarah Silverman it up. Yeah, yeah, i get it, Silverman is cutesy and foul-minded - but suggesting people do dumb-ass things like try to steal carts full of groceries is not helpful. If they'd cut the middle half out of her PSA the whole 15 minute segment would have been perfect.

#11 go grow a soul, you prick. Trapping people into a cycle of debt in which your company makes a 400% return on the loan it extended to a desperate poor person is not a healthy part of our society. You can proselytize a tough-love approach to the poor without cheering on the conscience-less vampires that suck them dry and intensify their poverty.
18
@4 Yup. We were able to pass feel good legislation that makes it more difficult for people who are caught in the cycle rather than punishing the ones who do the predatory behavior.

Go Frank Chopp!
19
I think there's a lurking sadness in the silverman 'ad' that is all the sadder given views like those of @11.

Instead of taking these payday loans, what can these unfortunate people do? Well, turns out just wildly implausible things.

I get the comedy motivation for these other options, but for me it highlighted the royally fucked situation a lot of people are in.
20
This is from the Wonga.com web site, just one of many similar products available in the UK.

Representative example

Amount of credit: ÂŁ150 for 18 days. Interest: ÂŁ27.99. Interest rate: 365%pa (fixed).
Transmission fee: ÂŁ5.50. One total repayment of: ÂŁ183.49. Representative 5853% APR.

Yep. You see that correctly. Representative apr of 5,853%. If you had bought Google stock on the day of it's IPO, you wouldn't have done anywhere near this well.
21
Taking advantage of the desperate poor, unfortunately, continues to be a thriving business model. Washington has been unable to ban these bloodsuckers altogether (though Senator Sharon Nelson and Speaker Frank Chopp did an impressive job curbing some of the worst abuses) because Moneytree is HQ'd in Renton. The founder, Dennis Bassford, has the second-largest house in the Seattle area, after Bill Gates'.
22
@17

You might be mistakenly assuming that Seattleblues isn't one of those conscience-less vampires that suck poor people dry and intensify their poverty.
23
@15
That about sums up the arguments of the authoritarian left.
24
I love how these liberal assholes understand that if abortion is illegal, it will still go on in underground clinics with awful conditions.
Well, if you didn't have shit for brains, you may guess what would happen if Payday Loans become illegal. They are illegal in New York and New Jersey, so what happens to poor people who need a loan? You guessed it, they go to these guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loan_shark
So, would you rather poor people maybe ruin their credit taking a loan from a payday loan office, or ruin their lives being forced to take a loan from a mobster?

Liberal short-sightedness at its finest.
25
@11
I agree. I was poor as hell and I never took a payday loan or even ran up too much credit card debt. Problem is liberals have this racist, classist mentality that poor people and minorities are incapable of lifting themselves up and need big government to run their lives and make their decisions for them. It's like the "white man's burden" of colonialism all over again.
The road to serfdom on white liberal massa's plantation is paved with good intentions. Good thing most poor, working class people and people of color don't buy it.
26
@18, you are unusually thick. That's not what the law does. The law in fact prevents the most extreme form of predation and is a model for other states as well as the federal Department of Consumer Protection.

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-on…

http://povertyaction.org/payday-lending-…

If you were capable of answering the clue phone that never stops ringing, you'd also know just how difficult passing even that law was, and how close Moneytree and others, working with Republicans and conservative "Democrats", have come to repealing it. But that would violate your eyes-wide-shut approach to awareness of what goes on in this state, or who is sticking up for the interests of poor people. Hint: it's no one you know.

It's certainly not your buddy Jess Spear, who has never even heard of the Poverty Action Network nor spent five minutes learning about the state she claims to live in, or learned anything about payday lending besides what's in her official Socialist Alternative Big Red Binder of received opinions. The most important of which is, as always, "let's pretend the people of Washington don't exist".

We -- sensible progressives -- get enough grief from the brain-dead right wing (@11, @25); it's really annoying to get it from the equally brain-dead left too.
27
Last time I visited the city of my birth, Tampa FL, there were payday loan stores everywhere, it was astounding. I've never seen such a huge dominant spread of an industry like that.
28
It was so close to not passing...in 2010...when Democrats ruled the house AND the senate and had the governor.

No.

And, actually, I'm not actively rooting FOR Jess Spear. I'm rooting AGAINST corporate democrats like Frank Chopp. It's Democrats like Frank Chopp who pass neutered bills like the Foreclosure Fairness Act of 2011 or the Payday Lending Law which chose not to penalize predatory behavior. Both of these bills make corporate democrats like you feel great about passing laws, but they actually help very few people.

The Payday Lending Report says nothing about helping people get out of debt, but instead merely says that it bans people from going cyclical. It doesn't say what happens to the people once they run out of the number of payday loans, which is also not addressed by the bill in 2010. In both of your links, it doesn't say what happens to the borrowers, if they declared bankruptcy, or if they lost their houses or what.

Corporate Democrats frequently pass Feel Good laws like this also neglected to put in safeguards for people who fall prey to what is still legal predatory behavior. Frank Chopp is one of those who represents that. When I asked Frank Chopp why he voted for (not just allowed to pass) a bill making it harder for Washington State workers to get unemployment while reducing corporate taxes, he wrote "Why should I have to answer for bills I voted for?"

Fuck Frank Chopp. A Corporate Democrat who is fully in the pockets of Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, and Moneytree.
29
@24: Numbnuts, nobody is BANNING people from offering short-term relatively high-interest loans. What's actually being banned is the super-high interest rates of typical payday loans. The industry isn't being eliminated; it's just having its profit margin smooshed down.
Who's got shit for brains now? DEEZ NUTS, C_S, DEEZ NUTS.
30
Wow. People are rude. You can't express a contrary opinion without a slew of pejoratives being unleashed. I don't know how these people were raised.
31
@29 Wrong as well. We didn't even ban the high interest rates.

We just limited the number of loans one could take out over the course of the year to 8.

Then the poor people can go die for all we care. But, it does ruin the business model of cyclical borrowing.
32
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