Friday, March 29, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor
Credit Card Companies:
Take Your Usurious Interest
Rates and [Bleep] Them

JULY 11, 2007 --

Hey American politicians -- have you anything to say about 30.29 percent interest rates on credit cards?

Or are you too busy running for president to notice?

Hey American media -- have you any questions of the presidential candidates about 30.29 percent interest rates on credit cards, or of such questions below your radar.

How about this American politicians and media -- s l o w l y people are realizing that our high gas prices are not helpful to our economic well-being, as they siphon money to just one economic sector. Do you think 30.29% credit card rates are helping the economy grow?

Government does not abuse
people. How about this approach, American politicians and media. It is 15 years from now and you are well off, but many people are not. Your grandchildren ask you how you reacted when capitalism got inflicted by the double meanness whammy from oil companies and banks.

What are you going to tell them: it was fun to crush people, or will you just brush them off, with a lie or two?

What if your grandchildren ask how you reconcile what you did to the middle class and the counsel in Federalist 57 that leaders should work for the common good? What will you answer -- that the Founding Fathers were a bunch of pre-Marx commies who did not understand economics?

LPR is honored to report to its clicksters that it learned recently how credit card badgerers, like some New York City parking violations people, thrive on schadenfreude. This writer had been getting morning calls from HSBC and Chase requesting payment of credit card balances.

The day after remitting payment at local bank branches, the phone rang before 8.30 a.m. with the announcement that this was a call to collect a debt.

Those HSBC and Chase reps apparently had too much fun with their collection calls to see, first, if payment had been made.

And isn't it interesting that their phone calls ask for us by our first name, as if we were acquaintances of some duration. Try to phone them, of course, and see how many menu hoops you have to jump through to reach a voice -- which, of course, will be artificial when located.

A few years ago, a book appeared with this title: "The Triumph of Meanness." LPR has no quarrel with the title, just with all that it covers, the writer, alas, apparently saw things in terms of right against left, and not right against wrong.

That, sadly, has been the difficulty with the left since November 8, 1994, and this view is now apparent in the call to revive the Fairness Doctrine to curtail the influence of talk radio.

LPR wonders: if talk radio is so powerful, how did the Democrats gain majorities in Congress, last election? Seems to LPR that the left in America would like to open schools of government teaching Mugabeism.

Their silence on credit card cruelty suggests that they already approve business schools that advocate usury.
Some quick observations that are not, LPR believes, likely to be found on Huffington, or even Drudge: There is no such thing as a Republican Party in the City of New York.

It is unclear if there is even a Republican Party in New York state, outside NYC. (Would a Democratic governor of New York have no hesitation keeping the Republican leader of the state senate under surveillance if Republicans had any power in the state (apart from participating in the spoils system--in some measure?)
Government does not abuse people.

People acting under cloak of governmental authority abuse people. When you hear the term "bureaucrat" -- just think of this: bully in government. Realization that the source of woe is a person, not a cog in a machine, tends to lower the odds, LPR believes.

Concerning the Bloomberg candidacy: LPR recently mentioned a couple of horror stories at the hands of Parking Violations to two plain citizens of usually pleasant disposition.

On hearing of another's PVB travail, each acknowledged his and her own experience resulting in their use, each confided, of language they do not ordinarily express.

LPR has previously suggested that the media ignores the PVB outrages because of the special treatment given the press.

Accordingly, the press in NYC does not know that there is no way all the Mayor's money could ever get him elected president.

He would be undone by the question from an elderly, but still alert, driver concerning his draconian parking fine policies which are, of course, an alternative method of regressive taxation.

Oil, banks and NYC itself, have turned our streets quite mean, indeed. The continued decline in support for President and Congress tells LPR that the people are ready to give their support to politicians and media that support right against wrong, not left against right -- that are representatives, not rulers, that are not ashamed of our founding legacy of public service in an atmosphere of justice and liberty.