th
 

The payday lending bans are outrageous. WTF is the matter with this country? We have to coddle our consumers so they don't get taken by financial outfits? If a payday lender discloses fully the terms of the loan, why on earth should the govt step in and play babysitter? I understand we need babysitters because Americans can't manage themselves, but its damned pathetic. These "regulatory" shackles the govt throws into the marketplace are soft forms of prohibition, and I think that over time, they've made people weak and dependent on courts and govt to get their back when they don't read the fine print.

I got mugged in the 2000 market meltdown. Buyer beware. You play, you lose, you learn not to play stupidly next time. I understand people who take out payday loans might be in duress, but if not a payday loan, they'd be putting themselves in hoc to Citibank or MBNA/BOA. Why should Citi and BOA have free reign to play that market sector while a smaller bank doing the payday loans gets jackhammered by regulators? I guess that's a function of who can afford the bigger lobbying firm.

The last thing we need in this country is to be stopping more areas of business by regulating/legislating them out of existence.

I know just how wildly unpopular this diatribe will be with just about everyone. But haven't we tried enough progressive fixes in this country over the past 50 years. People say "Oh, my, we can't have a fully free market where the people aren't protected by the govt." Really? How do you know that? We haven't tried, have we?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

So selling organs should be totally legal?

I don't want people to become totally destitute through these payday things, and really given the state of the schools and literacy, I'm not sure all people can do the math to figure out that at a certain rate of interest, they will end up borrowing every payday because each subsequent check is pretty much used up paying off the initial loan. I mean, people who become totally destitute frequently pee on the sidewalk and stuff, and I hate the smell of stale urine.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

did she show any remorse?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

Then why should the credit card issuers be able to do the same thing to these people? It seems wildly inconsistent that cc issuers should enjoy the new bankruptcy bill's protections while payday lenders engaged in the same business - just through a different vehicle - should be put out of business. If we must have regulation, which I do recognize (although I think it can and should be downgraded substantially), either everybody has to stop loan sharking the poor, or nobody has to stop. Selective enforcement is just not acceptable.*

*And in this case, that term is an undertstatement. Now, the CC issuers are getting a gift from Congress while the local regulators are being allowed to slam the payday lenders.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

as a first step to not victimizing the weak, would you be willing to not respond to spank's or nfh's posts?

More Republicans for states' rights
 

It takes a Republican to think that food-safety regulation should be a ceiling, not a floor.

India Nuclear Deal
 

I guess I view the whole nuke world a little more skeptically. My view is that countries are eventually going to get nuke technology, so I'd rather them have with some oversight then on the black market or through China, Iran, Russia, etc. The warmer ties with India, the world's largest democracy, also have many benefits for us. It's a potentially HUGE consumer market, plus having a strong ally in that region is a counter weight to the growing Russia/China alliance.

More Republicans for states' rights
 

And a Democrat to make regulation a one-way ratchet.

India Nuclear Deal
 

An important step towards what?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

One of my first projects as an associate (I started at a crim. defense boutique, doing mostly white-collar cases but some "panel" appeals) was an appeal for a child molester.

Didn't much like it.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

Ever try getting a teller at the local Citibank branch to perform one? Boycott!!!

More Republicans for states' rights
 

Hey, let the states compete with each other. If people in Nebraska don't want to pay the costs of having more food regulation, good for them. If people in California want to be more careful about heavy metals in their fish, OK. But let's have a federal baseline so that when I travel to Nebraska, I don't need to worry about whether they've completely surrendered to the greater profits of ConAgra, Hormel, etc.

India Nuclear Deal
 

Ties with India are a good thing. And I'm not saying the NNPT was perfect. But this was a lost chance to improve ties with India while fixing the NNPT. It's will unnecessarily piss off our allies in the anti-proliferation effort, and tells countries like Iran and North Korea that they should develop nukes outside the NNPT and just wait for everyone to accept it. Isn't this a big step backward if you're trying to convince Iran to comply with international standards? "India is our friend, so they don't have to comply, but you're not, so you do."

India Nuclear Deal
 

My personal view is that treaties are a joke because there really isn't an effective enforcement mechanism other than war. I realize that this also applies to the treaty with India, but at least when it's tied to an ecomonic and militarily strategic interest, there is some incentive for them to comply.

I will gladly give you my left lung on Thursday for a hamburger today.
 

Given that the annualized interest rate runs into the hundreds of percents, even taking into account administrative and collection charges, these outfits would have to have a failure rate of about 75% before they started seeing their earnings creep down toward the level of "regular" finance companies. It's as predatory as the old-fashioned street loan-sharking. The big difference is that these guys paid off enough legislators to legalize it and they may be less likely to break thumbs.

th
 

For some of these business arrangements, you only "play stupidly" and there's no such thing as "playing it smart". Take a look at many of the businesses you want to see thrive and not weighed down with government regulation. Their business model is to trap stoopid people into doing stoopid things. Why else wouldn't these companies be up front about their terms? Want to hose customers? Don't use .4 font size. Explain the deal accurately (disclosure) and if you get business - fine. Why would you object to disclosure rules? (Your post seems to say you'd be against disclosure rules too).

I see the protection argument differently. Take for instance a scam where a customer signs onto a credit card with zero interest for a year and so customer gets a 10,000 interest free loan for a year so he can fix up his house. The card terms say if he is late on a payment, he has to start paying interest and it is outrageously high. In a month or two, credit card company sends him his monthly bill late and when his payment is therefore "late", the company now gets to enjoy a really high interest rate from him and all the other customers they suckered (because it was in their business model all along that most customers sent late bills would make late payments). Company points to fine print that has a provision saying customer has to make payment every month even if he/she doesn't get a bill. If the customer doesn't know how much balance he has to pay, he should have called before the due date. You'd want all this to go on unregulated? Why? How about if the provision wasn't in the fine print, but the fine print simply said "if you want more details about payment terms, you have the right to contact us and we'll send more information."

Same bullshit applies when customers are tricked into buying insurance premiums they don't need when they can't see (just as the company planned) the reference that signing some other document (unrelated) means they are agreeing they want life insurance.

Think about the scams that could perpetrated on your grandmother, boy!

th
 

Its like porn channels. You don't like it? You don't want it? Change the fucking channel.

Nobody is forcing anybody into these deals. People will always have the option to just say "no, thanks." You throw away about five or ten financing offers a week, right? Well, so can everyone else.

Sales is a game of trickery. You are being separated from your money. Fraud is one thing, but I see tons of people who say "Yeh, but I didn't know that" when someone tries to enforce a contract aginst them. And they're not just disadvantaged folks. Businessmen claims stupidity as a defense to signing integrated agreements all the time. "Fraud in the inducement" is so forgiving and so frequently used these days that a lot of contracts aren't worth their paper's value.

People need to learn they cannot go out and grab fast cash from a loan shark, then cry "I was robbed" later and go running to a class action lawyer or regulator. We've traiend a lot of society to believe they have no duty to perform any of their own due diligence. No wonder we're such a fucked up pack of people.

th
 

I'm not sure you read her whole post. Dude, this could interfere with your inheritance.

More Republicans for states' rights
 

So Nebraska should be able to compete with other states on food labeling requirements, unless it's competing for your tourism dollar? Why should the ratchet be one way? If you trust states to impose higher standards, why not trust them to impose lower standards, if that's what their citizens want? And if you choose to go there, well, don't eat the fish, or don't go there, or take the same chances anyone in Nebraska takes.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

Only after the warranty expires.

S_A_M

th
 

That's pretty much how it was from, say, 1840 (or whenever the Industrial Revolution kicked in here) until about 1930 or so. We didn't much like the results. Thus, 50+ years of your dreaded attempted "social fixes", some of which work better than others.

Maybe in one sense it makes people "weak" -- just as I think enhanced technology has led to a proliferation of people with weak eyesight. So, should we kill everyone who needs glasses, or just sell hunting permits?

S_A_M

More Republicans for states' rights
 

Never mind Upton Sinclair -- let's not have food safety regulations at all. If that's what Congress decides, the food must be safe.

Don't make people need to read Upton Sinclair again. Or maybe Tom Lehrer can update his song.

• If you visit
  American city
  you will find it
  very pretty
  just two things
  of which you must beware
  don't drink the water
  and don't breathe the air

More Republicans for states' rights
 

Silly Ty. The heavy-handed goverment should simply let the market deal with this. People who want safe food will demand it, and companies will cater to this market demand. Meanwhile, those who make the rational choice to buy cheaper food continue to have the right to do so. Freedom of contract!

th
 

What inheritance? My folks are pissing everything they've got away, which would never be sufficnent to feed my appetitite for consuming to fill the void a point in life would provide anyway. They've told my sister and I that neither of us deserve a nickel of anything they have.

And they're right. I tip my glass to them. Die leaving nothing but bills. They earned whatever they have. I'm not entitled to shit. No one is. They've been more than patient and decent and frankly, princes about the two of us. If they can't have anything but selfish asshole kids, then they should at least get to waste their lives' earnings in peace.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

I'm not really sure that I am boycotting Iams and Gateway simply because I don't happen to use their products. That said, I think the reason pro-choice people are being asked to boycott these companies is because they pay some revenue to the state and a decline in their revenue may hurt the state. I'm not sure if it's "really stupid" or not. I agree it has a remote chance of actually doing anything. Why do you think it's "really stupid" other than the remoteness argument?

Why is the first letter of abortion capitalized?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

Like "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?", you have asked one of the great unanswerable questions in the world.

th
 

I recall as a child hearing a crazy very elderly great uncle rail about how things were much better before the income tax. The problem with unwinding all the social fixes of today are no one is alive to tell us whether it was better before thei implementation and so many people make a living based on those programs and laws today that to undo them would put a quarter of white collar workers out on the street. Those are, of course, not reasons to avoid a needed discussion about dismantling the bloated govt we have at the state and fed levels. So instead, we operate under the fiction that things are better than they were before income tax and govt regulation. There's a case to be made for either side, but if you try to argue against the present status quo, you'll be villified as an absurdist or mean hearted Darwinian prick. So the real merits of the debate are never fleshed out.

Bush has angered the piss out of the Beltway just for even suggesting we should hold such a debate. To people who live their lives dealing with the govt in all its forms, thats killing the golden goose. So they offer a moralist argument that any attempt to dismantle govt is an attack on the weak who need govt.

Bullshit. Its job protection.

th
 

Crazy old uncle's ramblings vs. Great Depression data

Ok.

th
 

Actually, there's a fair number of people alive (like my grandmother) who could tell you all about how much better things are today than they were before Social Security and other New Deal regulatory and entitlement programs were passed.

th
 

Yep. My theory is that between the cirrhosis, STDs, and lung cancer, Sebby's relations tend to die young.

S_A_M

At 95, who needs term limits?
 

Speaking of crazy old men, a 95 year old is running for Congress here in Texas. He's apparently pissed off about the redistricting. http://static.flickr.com/40/106400718_fa698ad6c6.jpg

Reason number 80182375610 I love being from Texas.

ETA: In the comments from the first link:

More Republicans for states' rights
 

No, it's that your argument is internally inconsistent. On the one hand you don't trust Congress to set standards that are strong enough. Yet you want them to have authority to set minimum standards. If Congress can reach a judgment as to what is a minimum standard, why can't it reach a judgment as to what is the right standard. And if it can't be trusted to reach the latter, why should it be entrusted even to set the former?

At 95, who needs term limits?
 

Nice comment -- makes me think he's related to Sebby: "Notice that both of his hands have permanently atrophied into holders for highball glasses. "

th
 

2. Did you ever read the Jungle? The FDA is good, good thing. You get rid of meat inspectors, I become a vegetarian.

th
 

But should the FDA prevent the states from imposing stricter regulations?

More Republicans for states' rights
 

Right. And if the federal Constitution can set a minimum standard for free speech, shouldn't it also tell the states that they can't provide greater protection for speech?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

You go after the people responsible not the innocent bystandards. Those companies had nothing to do with what the legislature did. If you don't like what the governor did send money to his opponent (or the legislators opponents) in the next election, but boycotting people or business just because they happen to be in South Dakota does nothing and punishes the innocent.

Gentlemen and ladies, start your thumbwheels
 

th
 

No.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

slave will tell you the innocent can vote with their feet.