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03/17/2005: dKos forwards a nifty idea....
for grassroots rebellion over the recent changes to the bankruptcy laws:
By my junior year of college I'd had enough of the credit card advertisements.Source: the slacktivist
They were on every bulletin board on campus. They were on the boards in the mailroom, in the dorms, even on the boards of the various academic departments [...]
I didn't like the way those ads were luring so many of my friends and classmates into perpetual debt. And I didn't like the way all this increasing debt was changing the nature of higher education into a kind of glorified vo-tech system that was meant to do little more than enhance your future earning potential.
So like I said, I'd had enough.
I took down the ads. Every last one of them. I recycled all the posters, the fliers, the business reply envelopes.
They replaced them, of course, but I got rid of all of those as well. It became a weekly ritual. I'd make the rounds regularly. I carried a staple remover wherever I went.
So the point here is, if you're a college student, or a college professor, or even if you're the parent of a college student: Get yourself a staple remover.
Kos himself comments:
One of the biggest failings of the Bankruptcy Bill currently making its way to the president's desk, is that it eliminated the credit card company's risk without forcing them to change their own self-destructive behavior.During my late but unlamented legal career, I spent a short (very short, thankfully) time doing collections. Based on my experience, I think it should be an affirmative defense to a debt collection action that the creditor, in granting credit to the debtor, was too fucking stupid for its own good. If that were enacted into law, I can guarantee you that One Big Consumer Credit Card Operation (discretion prevents me from stating their name, but it rhymes with "shittycrank") would never be able to collect one bloody nickel from the effective date of that act.
Why do credit card companies charge 12-25 percent interest rates? Because they are taking a risk in giving out their loans. There is a built-in assumption that they will lose some of that money as customers "default" on the loans.
Now, credit card companies could reduce their risks two ways -- stop giving out credit cards to the biggest credit risks, like, say, college students, or they could buy themselves a gutting of bankruptcy protections in congress. They chose the latter.
Len on 03.17.05 @ 12:27 PM CST
