Usury, Lust, and Power

 

Chorus:  

    Waste and void.  Waste and void.  And darkness on the face of the deep.

    Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?

    When the Church is no longer regarded, not even opposed, and men have forgotten

    All gods except Usury, Lust, and Power.

    - T.S. Eliot, from The Rock, VII

An Open Letter to Kaye Kory

DelKKory@house.virginia.gov

Dear Representative Kory:

Hi there!  Our neighborhood association recently circulated one of your emails, one in which you highlighted all of your legislative accomplishments over the course of the last year.  It was a good, solid list, one that generally represented your moderate/progressive record.  Education, transportation, and the environment are clearly important to you.

At the end of the letter, you invited feedback/responses/input, which is why I felt the urge to pitch you this little missive.  I'm sharing it with my small blog audience, too, as much as I struggle with the "open letter" as a tired and hackneyed net-theme.

My interest, as a progressive and a pastor, is the spread of title-lending companies in your district.  I've lived in this area for nearly forty years, and watched as Northern Virginia has grown and changed.  It's only within the last five years that title-lenders have started becoming a significant presence.  There are now four active title-lenders in the center of Annandale alone, and this is not a positive development for Northern Virginia.  It is a mark of blight.

Why?

Because these are predatory businesses.  There is no other way to accurately describe what they do.  They exist to lend desperate people money at outrageous rates, meaning annual percentage rates that are close to ten times what you'd pay on credit card debt.

The owners of these highly profitable "businesses" will argue that they're just meeting a need in the community.  This isn't true.  Like their payday-lending cousins, they are preying on the struggling and the weakest, with a "business model" that traps the vulnerable into an often inescapable cycle of debt.  Unable to pay interest exceeding 300% APR, these individuals lose their vehicles to title-lenders, a loss which drives them further into a cycle of poverty.

I'd encourage you to read this report from the Center for Responsible Lending, which details the impact of these "businesses."  Or this article at Bankrate dot com, which steers citizens away from these businesses.  Or this investigative piece from CNN.

But this is about more than just data.  As a pastor, I know the people who are impacted.  These "businesses" destroy lives.

I bring this to your attention...and to the attention of any Virginia progressives who might read this blog...because the rise of title lenders has been significantly supported by Virginia Democrats.  A review of the legislative history of the growth of these businesses shows that they have a powerful champion in your friend and Democratic colleague Senator Dick Saslaw, who within the last several years has sponsored legislation to allow title-lenders to lend on out-of-state titles.

You voted in favor of that legislation, Kaye.  

As a progressive pastor, let me tell you what your vote did.  It took a car away from a young addict who was struggling to pull their life back together.  It drove a recovering ex-con into a debt cycle that compromised his ability to pay child support.  These aren't canned anecdotes or hypotheticals.  These are people I personally know and pray for.

Not all Democrats have given legislative aid and comfort to these businesses.  Those who represent communities where the malignant presence of title-lenders has been felt...particularly African American Democrats in Norfolk and some of the progressives in Northern Virginia...have voted against the legislation that the Democratic leadership in the Senate has sponsored.  To be fairly nonpartisan, some of those who vote against the spread of these businesses are conservatives, who find their abuse of the poor to be against biblical values.

I realize that you generally champion progressive causes.  Your support of this "industry" seems out of keeping with the rest of your record.

So my question to you is simple: what are you, as my progressive state representative, going to do to defend the vulnerable from these predators?

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. David Williams

I Steal From the Poor, and You Can Too!

My wife and I have one credit card between the two of us. We have one other fallback card in the event something goes wrong with the first one, but 95% of our day to day expenses get slapped onto plastic. I use it for gas. For getting a soda at Sebbin Lebbin. For groceries. For pretty much everything.

Then, at the end of the month, we pay it off. Every last dime. In the nearly 20 years we've been a joint socioeconomic unit, we've paid credit card interest precisely twice, and that was just because we'd flaked out on paying the bill on time. We don't use our "credit." We just use it to make life a little easier. That's largely because incurring debt at obscene, usurious interest rates for day-to-day expenses is worth steering away from. And yeah, it is usurious. When bank CDs are paying out 2%, mortgage rates stand at around 5%, and interest rates for credit card debt are between 10 and 20%, that's taking advantage.

Here's the thing that gnawed at me this week. Our primary credit card is a "benefits" card, meaning we get a small percentage of our costs returned to us in the form of gift cards at a range of different retailers. Because all of our household expenses are channelled through this one card, that starts to add up, to the tune of several hundred dollars a year of free stuff.

Only, like most things in life, it isn't really free. Those benefits are, for most human beings, the thing that makes them look at a credit card bill that significantly exceeds their monthly income and say, "Awesome! Now I can get a $50 gift certificate to buy even more crap I don't need!" Those people ultimately get punished economically. They tend to be less educated, or young, or struggling.

So as I looked at the nice little benefits balance that's build up for us over the last few months, my reveries about new speakers or a nav system for our van were interrupted by the pesky voice of the Spirit. Where does the money that makes those benefits possible come from?

It comes from the single mom who maxed out her cards a year ago when her son broke his arm. It comes from the twenty something who dug himself into hock trying to live the lifestyle the world told him was his birthright, and now lives in mom and dad's basement while climbing a Sisyphian mountain of credit card debt, school loans, and a loan for that Camaro he thought might get girls to notice him. It comes from that family that two years ago went from two incomes to one, saddled with a mortgage they could no longer afford, with their savings burned through and plastic the last, razor wire rope slipping through their hands to as their hopes for the "good life" sail away into the darkness.

Those benefits aren't just given because I'm such a great customer. They're a tiny shaving off the top of a giant mountain of profit, repackaged as a little taster offered up by your local pusher. Enjoying them without falling into debt may well be my cut for being wise as a serpent. But for some reason, I no longer feel as innocent as a dove.