Republican operative Jason Glodt handed Secretary of State Shantel Krebs just about 53,000 signatures yesterday on a petition to place a costly and unnecessary “crime victims’ bill of rights” on the ballot on behalf of his out-of-state partners.
Defying the unseemly association with the payday lenders’ sleazy petition drive, Glodt’s petition was not accompanied by the payday lenders’ fake 18% rate cap petition, which still had circulators in front of the Madison Post Office and elsewhere yesterday. The fact that the payday lenders are still working the streets indicates that either…
- …they wanted to give Glodt cover and avoid further appearance of damning association;
- …they want to make a big media splash by submitting even more signatures to demonstrate the false impression that their fake 18% rate cap has enormous grassroots support; or,
- …they haven’t been as successful at tricking South Dakotans into signing the fake 18% rate cap as they have in luring signatures to the Glodt amendment with, “Do you care about domestic abuse victims?”
Pastor Anna Madsen hosted a press conference last Saturday on the need to pass a real 36% rate cap on South Dakota’s loan sharks. She appealed to the Christian conscience not just of voters but also of Lisa Furlong, the shadowy, media-averse sponsor of the fake 18% rate cap petition. Pastor Madsen urges Furlong not to sign the affidavit that must accompany the fake 18% rate cap petition for Secretary Krebs to consider placing it on the ballot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkWQ4EJTkJU
…You have tremendous power in your hands either to help the least of these, the poor and the hungry and the homeless and children or to help those who wantonly exploit the least of these.
Ms. Furlong know too that there is honest concern about you broadly and most certainly in this room
we doubt the degree to which this role was either well explained to you and the degree to which you understood the document to which you yoked your name
your petition Ms. furlong will truly harm the least of these.
We urge you to reconsider, to have a metanoia, and to know that your change of mind will be greeted not with sneers but with thanksgiving and with respect for your courage and with great, great joy [Pastor Anna Madsen, press conference, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 2015.10.31].
One signature, Ms. Furlong. Your one swoop of the pen stands between good and evil. Think about that.
Pastor Erika Lehmann joined Pastor Madsen to talk about the desperation that payday lenders exploit for profit and the duplicity of the fake 18-percenters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsNyxKCuXu8
Ballot initiative petitions are due Monday, November 9. Let’s hope we see just one rate cap petition come to Pierre by that date, the real 36% rate cap that will check usury in South Dakota.
I want to repeat here, an observation that I made at the Saturday gathering at Dr Madsen’s home. I grew up in Sioux Falls and as a teenager more than 50 years ago, there was one pawn shop, that at the corner of 8th and Dakota. To my memory, other than banks and credit unions there was only one place to borrow money, that was Time loan plan on the corner of 8th and Phillips Ave.
Then in the 1980s, in spite of the best efforts of a lady from Wessington Springs, South Dakota instituted video lottery gambling as an effort to ease the paying of taxes by homeowners and those who have. The resulting gambling, understandably caused financial problems for those who were living paycheck to paycheck and even some who hadn’t been.
Soon the pawn shops sprung up all across towns and Cities, to the point that they like the video lottery gambling establishments became as numerous as gas stations and churches.
Then as the trickle down economics of the 1980s actually had the opposite effect because of the tax cuts, the trickle went up and those closer to the bottom than the top of the trickle found themselves having to avail themselves of the services of payday lenders. Those companies then proliferated the same way that the video lottery and pawnshops had.
So, as we sewed, so shall we reap.
And where is the Catholic Church and it’s vocal support of the real 36% rate cap? They should be up there front and center supporting these other pastors. I’m really not surprised, they’re more obsessed with promoting their hatred of homosexuals.
Lanny is right about the seeming correlation of gambling and payday lending. Hmm… maybe if we can’t pass a rate cap, we should pass a tax: income from any loans charging more than 36% will be taxed on a progressive scale, with half of the proceeds going to education and the other half going to treat addiction. (Hey, didn’t someone float that idea on an earlier thread?)
I was at Scheels/All Day Cafe in Sioux Falls on Sunday when I noticed someone going around petitioning among cars in the parking lot. Judging by the distance they were keeping from the building and the individual holding back, watching her, and occasionally talking to her, I made an educated assumption that it was someone up to no good.
I wonder what the Western Mall’s policy is on petitioning, I would imagine if they had permission, they would have been standing up closer to doors rather than circulating among cars in the parking lot.
Echoing off of other statements, North Dakota does not have video lottery, and if you drive around Fargo, you only see a handful of Pawn Shops and Payday loan locations. I wonder if there is a correlation?
The legal form of gambling in ND aside from lottery is charitable gaming. You can go to a bar and play blackjack or pull tabs with the proceeds going for non-profit organizations. I wonder how a model like this could be more beneficial to the state rather than the corner taco bell turned casino?
While I try to avoid gambling, it is much nicer to play a live game than stare at a screen. The screens seem to attract compulsive gamblers versus your average occasional gambler.
In red states the wealthy are the non-profits. All the largesse wingnuts hand out to the koch bros is only their just desserts.
It is clear that no matter what clergy could have said regarding the collection of this signatures, that horse had already left the barn. There is a year to go before this comes up in the election. The pressure to bear should be placed where it belongs, on the attorney general. What clergy can do is apply the pressure for him to make an explanation that truly explains the difference between the two. As a matter of clarity, clergy should be mentioning that to their flocks how that has an effect on each congregation with the theft, ask what would Jesus do to help prevent the misery.
Jenny, Lisa Furlong is a Catholic (or at least her husband was). Let’s see if her priest can get the message across.
I don’t know if being a Catholic or being self identified with a religion makes any difference. I know of one owner of a payday loan center here in SD that is Catholic and he and his wife are very active in the Catholic Church and Catholic school system.
Maybe in their minds they have a business that provides employment, pays taxes, donates to the community and provides a valuable service to those who’s options are limited. That is their justification.
We all need the justifications and rationalizations that let us sleep at night. Rationalizing Catholic faith and deceit and exploitation of the poor should be a challenge.
Saying one is Catholic or even Christian, does not make it so. If it did, the things I outlined in my first post on this thread would not exist, since we claim to be a Christian Country and or State. Usury is against God’s scriptural teaching.
We have plenty of posters on here, and citizens of our state, who claim to be Christians, that think that it is perfectly okay to pay a minimum wage of 8.50 or less per hour, when we have CEOs and others making in the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars per year. If a person challenges them on it, all of a sudden you are a socialist (which I am), but not because of that, and don’t believe in capitalism (which I no longer do) because it has turned into greed.
Ben Carson said America put a man on the moon because America was founded as a kristian nation and the great pyramids were made to store grain,even though Egyptians and the bible disagree with Carson.
Isn’t it funny that a capitalist person’s deeply held religious beliefs never seem to get in the way of their exploiting people for money? Why is that?
Mike, you ask for consistency, and consistency gets in the way of profits.
Lanny, I can only say this: when I say I’m not even Christian, that does make it so. :-)