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's 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.