To fellow veterans and active duty military re: House GOP blocking protections vs lenders

[stevenleser]

Fellow military vets and current active duty, if you don't know this already, you need to understand that Republicans say they love military folks but that love manifests itself like how ticks love dogs.

Sure, they will fight to get you the most expensive weapons systems, because the defense contracting firms are donating tons of money to their campaigns so that they do, but the fight isn't nearly as hard to make sure those weapons systems actually work once delivered.

Then, when it comes to ponying up to pay for health services for veterans after they've served, or protecting active duty military from predatory lenders, or just plain not throwing military personnel into meat-grinding conflicts that didn't need to happen in the first place? Republicans don't have much love for active duty or veterans at all, just the opposite.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/29/predatory-lending-military_n_7171748.html?ir=Politics&utm_campaign=042915&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-politics&utm_content=FullStory&ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

House Republicans Want To Block Predatory Lending Protections For American Troops

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are pushing legislation to block predatory lending protections for American soldiers, under pressure from the banking lobby.

GOP lawmakers tucked the deregulation item into the National Defense Authorization Act -- a major bill setting the military's funding, along with a number of other controversial terms on Guantanamo Bay and other issues. If the banking item is enacted, it would impose a one-year delay on new Department of Defense rules meant to shield military families from abusive terms on payday loans and other forms of high-interest credit. The bill is being considered Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee.

The military has been struggling with the financial impact of predatory lending on service members for years. A 2014 report issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau documents a host of abuses targeting troops. One family that took out a $2,600 loan ended up paying back $3,966.84 over the course of a year. Another borrower spent $1,428.28 to pay off a $485 loan in just six months. Thousands of service members receive short-term, high-interest loans each year.

In 2006, Congress passed legislation imposing a 36 percent cap on interest rates for payday loans, auto title loans and tax refund anticipation loans to military families. Lenders responded by slightly tweaking the terms of their loans to avoid the limits. Since the law applied to payday loans with terms of 91 days or less, and amounts of $2,000 or less, credit companies were able to shirk the rules with 92-day loans, or loans of $2,001.
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(more at above link)

[underpants]

1. Not surprising

But still sad

[Recursion]

2. Stay classy, GOP

I remember in boot camp we got the briefing warning us against payday loans. I wonder if they cut that program too...

[stevenleser]

3. Same here, got the same briefing about that and basically any payment plan.

And like you I wonder if that continues.

[Recursion]

4. I think it was the Marine Corps Association rather than our Drill Instructors who gave that one

Though this was 18 years ago... Christ... is that right? *looks at calendar* yup, 18 years ago.

I remember learning early on you can always tell a base town by three things:
1. Strip clubs
2. Used car lots
3. Payday loan outlets

So I guess that briefing didn't really take hold.

[stevenleser]

5. USAF gives or at least gave multiple briefings on financial responsibility. In them they cover

1. Basic budgeting
2. How to balance a checkbook
3. Don't get payday loans and beware of all kinds of things being sold on payment plans.
4. If you don't pay your bills the USAF will kick you out. They don't play games with this at all. (and this did happen to a couple of people I knew).

This was all by Training Instructors at BMTS (Basic Military Training School) but those TI's were not the ones that handled each unit on a day to day basis.

[Recursion]

6. Oh, yeah, we had those too, by correspondence course

It had a quaint 1950's feel to it; the booklets were still manually typed in a typewriter.

Personal Finance was required to make corporal, and I'm fairly certain they included payday loans.

A friend of mine who works in the Chicago commodities exchange says that the explosion of payday loans in the 1990s was because of one Chicago banker who looked out of his window at Cabrini-Green and saw what was pretty clearly a drug deal happening. He looked up on Lexus-Nexus (that dates the story if nothing else does) how much money the drug trade in Chicago brought in (it was something like $1.2 billion that year) and realized that there was in fact money in these neighborhoods that banks had been avoiding. The rest is pretty easy to guess. And it's a sadly appropriate parallel between two kinds of parasite...

[giftedgirl77]

7. They don't give them in the Army but...

As the unit paralegal I always had it set up as part of my newcomer's briefing to let the Soldier's know about the off-limit areas then a different class that was given quarterly regarding fiscal responsiblity & predatory lending practices.

[Mr Dixon]

8. Just saying

Can’t say I remember a briefing on the subject while I was in the army, those payday loan spots were everywhere outside of post to include USA DISCOUNTERS. As far as I can remember while I was in; there were plenty of Soldiers voting for the GOP to honor and protect the country mostly kids from middle class families, my reasons were strictly to have a job and get the hell out of Compton, CA before my number was called to be murdered in a drive by. The longer I stayed in the more I realized that the Rich were getting richer off the blood of the poor and middle classes children’s desperation to serve and survive. Now days the situations has not changed in fact I think it is worst with a larger majority of the Soldier’s on food stamps and other assistance programs which is wrong. It would seem as if in the hierarchy of priorities the Soldier’s rank very low, and the defense contracts are the priority IMO.

[stevenleser]

9. Same thing with USAF bases. Lots of payday loan spots, pawn shops, etc., right off base.

Vultures is what they are.