{"id":8518,"date":"2006-09-20T13:57:43","date_gmt":"2006-09-20T17:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8518.html"},"modified":"2006-09-20T13:57:43","modified_gmt":"2006-09-20T17:57:43","slug":"standing-with-predatory-lenders-instead-of-us-troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/standing-with-predatory-lenders-instead-of-us-troops\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing with predatory lenders instead of U.S. troops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just a few weeks ago, USA Today ran a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/nation\/2006-08-30-military-loans_x.htm\">very disconcerting story<\/a> about predatory lenders who target our nation&#8217;s military servicemembers, and which have &#8220;sprung up by the thousands around military bases.&#8221; The results have been awful &#8212; one in five servicemembers have become victims of ridiculous interest rates (sometimes higher than 400%) and many suffer from &#8220;bankruptcies, divorces and ruined careers.&#8221; It&#8217;s become such a widespread problem, the Pentagon listed predatory lending as &#8220;one of the top 10 threats to members of the military.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The USAT story caught the attention of several lawmakers, and despite limited time on the calendar, Congress appeared ready to address the problem: Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.) co-sponsored a measure that would cap interest rates for short-term payday loans to military members at 36%. The Pentagon endorsed it; the proposal drew raves from consumer and veterans groups; and the measure had strong bi-partisan support.<\/p>\n<p>Problem solved, right? <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2006\/09\/20\/predatory-lending-action\/\">Wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[O]ne conservative congressman, Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY), is trying to gut the amendment. Davis has proposed his own language &#8212; praised by the payday lending industry &#8212; that sets no real limits on predatory lenders.<\/p>\n<p>One of Davis&#8217;s aides admitted last week that he consulted on the legislation with &#8220;CNG Financial of Mason, Ohio, one of his top campaign donors and owner of national payday lender Check &#8216;n Go.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Seriously, don&#8217;t congressional Republicans have any shame left?<\/p>\n<p>Nico at TP is trying to rally some interest in this <em>today<\/em> because it may be the last day to save the bill. <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2006\/09\/20\/predatory-lending-action\/\">He has some contact info<\/a> if you want to try and help out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just a few weeks ago, USA Today ran a very disconcerting story about predatory lenders who target our nation&#8217;s military servicemembers, and which have &#8220;sprung up by the thousands around military bases.&#8221; The results have been awful &#8212; one in five servicemembers have become victims of ridiculous interest rates (sometimes higher than 400%) and many [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}