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Congress conducted hearings recently concerning the practices of credit card companies. It resulted in a bill to curb some of the nasty practices outlined in this article--a bill that won’t take effect for a full year! I could not help but notice that this comes under a Democratically controlled congress. (The Republicans held hearings and passed legislation on how to prevent people from legally discharging their debt.) With 660 million credit cards in American wallets, and over $800 billion in revolving debt now crushing the lower and middle income citizens of this country, the “Bank Robbery” will continue unabated for another 12 months. This article, originally published in 2005, details the game the banks have going, and shows why they were so desperate to put off the day of reckoning for another long year. Most Americans are worried about things like terrorism, crime, swine flu and the threat they may pose to their families and children. But the sad fact of the matter is that you are far more likely to be politely robbed; victimized in subtle, devious ways that only your banker would know about...or the Senators that pass legislation to support them. Find out how… In the post-9-11 era we are constantly bombarded by the latest intelligence warnings about bridges, airports and nuclear power plants. Americans are urged to be vigilant as they go about their daily lives, and to report anything “suspicious” to their local authorities. In spite of all these dire warnings, and the continual love affair that the media has with violence in our daily news, the average American has only a tiny chance of ever being a victim of a terrorist attack. (If you want the odds, read this article.) While this is small consolation to those who died on 9/11, is it nonetheless true. Americans would do far better to worry about a very real threat of harm that affects them every day. Strangely, it is directed at them from an entirely unforeseen quarter, and one they rely upon for their freedom, power and sense of well-being in the world every day. A Perfect Scheme… Imagine the perfect terrorist attack… How could you find a way to affect the lives of millions of average American citizens, while reaping immense profits? Beyond that, your perfect plot would go virtually unnoticed by the victims, for months, or even years after you carried it off. In fact, your victims would be made to feel they have been somehow rewarded by your efforts. Yet, the effect of your plan would actually cost these hapless victims thousands of dollars. It would ruin businesses, force the loss of property, place marriages under intense financial strain, and limit opportunities for the millions of people targeted. And for each and every victim, dollars would accrue in your account, giving you more and more power to work similar harm! Who would do such a thing, you may wonder? If an organization like Al Qaeda could pull this sort of attack off, it would do immense damage to this country, affecting the American economy not in one concentrated blow as in the 9/11 attack, but by subtly damaging millions of individual points—its consumers. Consumer spending and confidence, consumer power, is the very heart of the American economy. Every corporation, bank, insurance company and industry in America relies upon a healthy, active class of spending consumers with reasonable access to capital and credit. Destroy this, and you will have destroyed America and the “American Way of Life.” Thankfully, Al Qaeda does not have such power...But your friendly Banker does! Therein lies the rub! The Great Credit Game…
Let’s face it …Everyone in this society lives by virtue of another man’s dollar. The average American has a home mortgage, two car loans, school loans for children, seven credit cards and any number of other credit accounts. In short, the banks and lending institutions that loan this money actually own your home, car and most major property purchased on credit. Your name may be on the deeds or loan papers, but only to identify you as the “debtor of record.”
This credit profile on each American is so vital that virtually every decision to either grant or deny credit, and access to capital, is made by first reviewing the information in your electronic file—by scrutinizing the digital doppelganger that masquerades as YOU in the world of bankers and credit card companies. The effect of these decisions is staggering. You can be denied a home loan or a car loan, have applications for apartment rentals refused, be denied a simple credit card of bank account! You can also have the interest rates on all your existing credit card accounts raised to dizzying heights, making it virtually impossible for you to ever repay the debts you owe and adding thousands and thousands of dollars in added interest payments. Polite Robbery
The bank’s logic is that if they perceive a greater risk, you should have to pay a higher interest rate for borrowing money from them. The problem is that these hikes suddenly apply to the entire balance on the account, raising the actual price the consumer has paid on item they charged at lower rate years ago. Most consumers will try to make major purchases for things like computers, appliances, auto repair, etc., on cards where they have a lower interest rate. They are budgeting that they can best pay back the money borrowed at that rate. Then, when the bank suddenly applies an arbitrary “risk based” rate hike, the consumer suddenly finds they will pay hundreds, even thousands more on the the items they purchased years ago on that account. In some instances, a high interest rate will effectively prevent the consumer from ever paying off the account at all. In fact, if you make the minimum payment on $5000 (without charging anything more on that card) at 29% interest, you will pay on this bill for 30 years and end up paying over $16,000--more than three times the amount borrowed. The banks know this. They know exactly how much you earn, and what you pay out each month on your bills. They know full well that a wage earner making $27,000 per year cannot ever repay $10,000 in credit card debt if they raise the interest rate to somewhere between 24% and 29%. Once they do this to you, you are hooked for life. You will pay on that revolving account, given your annual income, for 30 years before the $10,000 is retired! This is what burdensome and outrageous interest rates insure--a continued debtor, (and source of income for the bank)... for life. Is that fair? Is it just? Does it help America? Is it patriotic? If sounds more like financial slavery to me. Every time banks do this, raising interest on an account balance by 5 to 10 percentage points or more, they reap enormous interest profits. Some consumers are suddenly slammed with rate hikes in the range of 15+ points. In short, the banks politely rob the American people on a daily basis....And then they have the temerity to offer us credit cards draped with images of the American flag, as if they had our best interest at heart. The truth is they have interest at heart...percentage point hikes that translate into plain old fashioned dollars and cents. And they have no shame. They think of all this as a “Best Business Practice.” They harm countless thousands each day, heartlessly and with no more conscience than a suicide bomber. At least the terrorists don’t try to hide the fact that they intend us harm. Many of our own lending institutions, the heart and soul of American Capitalism, are not even that honest. They “reward” us for using their card. They keep extending the line of credit. They flood you with balance transfer checks to accumulate the balances owed on your account. Then---wham! They amend their agreement with you and raise the interest to a level that protects the principle owed from ever being seriously reduced. You now work for the bank, and Americans devote more and more of their monthly wages to debt service that will never end.
The system of banks and credit card companies burglarizes people like this every day, and accumulates great wealth in the process. No act by a terrorist like Osama Bin Ladin could do such harm to our economy. This greed and avarice, reflected in the news these days with stories about Worldcom, Enron, Adelphia Tyco, MCI, Martha Stewart and other “insider trade deals,” is devouring the good will of investors and consumers all across this country. In a recent merger, Bank of America and Fleet agreed to pay $675 million to resolve charges that they helped "favored clients" trade mutual funds improperly. Bank of America, the No. 3 bank in the country, agreed to pay $125 million in fines and $250 million to reimburse investors, while Fleet said it would pay $70 million in fines and $70 million in restitution. (Bank of America shareholders recently approved a merger with FleetBoston.) Well... If they quietly "agreed" to pay such huge amounts in fines, one must ask just how much greed, graft and profit those fines protect? Who were these "favored clients"? Why can't we demand a list of their names? Where are the reporters?
The New “Ammendment” In October, 2005, just after the new Bankruptcy bill made it more difficult to discharge credit card debt, the banks began raising the minimum payment due each month from 2% of the balance owed, to 4%. This was a regulation imposed by the Treasury department, (not congress), in an effort to reduce the 2 trillion now owed by consumers in this country. For many that meant their credit card payments doubled as the banks tried to slam on the brakes and correct their own bad driving. They were the ones who pumped out credit, raised your spending limits, and wrote all those iffy home loans. They were the ones who advertised so heavily that you should use all this new spending power they gave you. They were the ones who crammed your mailbox with balance transfer checks each month and cajoled you to use them for that vacation, the new TV, etc. Were they suddenly surprised to find that people did use them? Now those who can least afford a higher monthly payment, those with high revolving card balances, saw their payments virtually double overnight. The struggling middle class became the new poor in America as the banks demand this higher payment. Anywhere from 25% to 39% of all cardholders are just barely meeting their minimums now, or perhaps they pay a little above minimum. The banks have known this for years, and never took any action to moderate such consumers. Instead they just extended their credit lines and sent them balance transfer offers to run up the card balances, cap and protect the principle owed, and then they raised interest rates after the teaser transfer expired--to levels that made it impossible for the cardholder to attack the balance owed. In short, the banks knew exactly what they were doing, and they are as much to blame for the economic storm coming as the consumers who used their credit. For many people, it will be impossible to come up with the extra money required, and this burden will be added to the rising cost of fuel and utilities. Say goodbye to a merry Christmas in years ahead. Do you think these people will be rushing out to the shopping malls with their plastic? Isn’t it odd that the banks can “amend” their contract and agreement with you like this at any time while you can do nothing of the sort? You know something? …There aughta be a law against this! Unfortunately, most laws dealing with lending practices are there because the powerful lenders have lobbied to get them just the way they want. The “Consumer Protection Act” was supposedly passed to protect American citizens from this sort of financial greed and extortion, yet it really has very few teeth. All it says is that you have a right to be told which credit reporting agency a lender relied upon when they make a decision that harms you financially. This takes 30 to 60 days after the damage is done to you. If you find that the information the bank relied upon was false…Good luck. It will take six months to a year, considering the bureaucratic sloth of the credit reporting agencies, before you can do anything about it. In the meantime, get a helmet, read the fine print and brace yourself…you are about to be robbed. In their own defense, bankers say that these payment hikes are meant to impose “financial discipline” on a spend happy public. They say that the higher payments will retire the debt sooner, and lower the interest paid. That may be true-- assuming you have the money in your budget to make the new higher minimums. If financial discipline is to be imposed, perhaps the banks should look to the shoddy practices outlined below as a starting point. Perhaps they should restrict credit to a safe percentage of a debtor’s proven income. Perhaps they should offer fair interest rates, and not use the interest system as a whip to punish people who have good payment histories but who may have been late once a year. (Sometimes a single late payment will cost you thousands of dollars in interest hikes....and all that late payment meant was that the bank got their money on the 3rd that month instead of the 1st.) In fact, if you add up the total days late for a typical good cardholder it may amount to little more than 7 to ten days in a decade. Yet for this they were saddled with penalties and interest hikes that added more than a decade in payments to their debt load. This is shameful. Dirty Tricks (Things the bankers call “best business practices”) Here’s just a few of the dirty little tricks that get played on consumers every day. Most people are dimly aware of these tactics--until they fall victim to them. 1) Checking the Net: Banks routinely troll through data in the credit profiles of millions of Americans to look for potential new customers. (did you ever give permission for your private financial data to be viewed by strangers?) The data they find shows the high balance on every account you have ever had, so they can get a sense of what kind of debt you can handle. They call these “promotional inquiries” and then they send you TONS of credit cards offers in the mail, over 8 billion pieces of mail annually. 2) Buyer Beware: Watch out! The large colorful print on the promotional offer touts the benefits of the credit card account and often offers “teaser rates” where your interest is very low for the first few months of the account. Read the fine print! On the back it will tell you, in very small text, what the actual interest rate will be just a few months after you open the account--usually ten or more points higher than the teaser rate. And even this rate is subject to arbitrary increase if the bank wishes. 3) The Tiny Truth: When you get your card you will receive a very plain looking paper with extremely small print that outlines the actual agreement that will be binding on you. (It’s usually separate or printed in faded ink on the back of a glitzy Welcome letter.) It will very often say that: “Payments you make will be allocated in a manner that we determine.” (See Number 5 below) It will also usually say: “We may amend this agreement at any time...” Gotcha! The front of your agreement will shout in large type that you are getting a FIXED low interest rate...But the back, in tiny type, will say the bank can amend this agreement at any time. And if you disagree, the bank slips in an arbitration clause forcing you to get a decision from an “independent” arbitrator... Now, where do these arbitration companies get their business from? You guessed it, the banks. So who do they favor in their decisions? You guessed again! The banks. 4) The Money Shuffle: During the promotional period you will be flooded with “Balance Transfer Checks” so you can “take advantage of these low interest rates, and your new spending power.” Many will say: “Use these checks for anything at all!” The idea is to get you to transfer as much money to this account as possible. Then, the rate hike goes into effect and the bank begins reaping its interest profits and moving to lock in the debt over the longest possible term as described below. Don’t get me wrong, balance transfer offers to fixed low interest rates for the life of the balance owed are a good thing...but they become awful when the bank can arbitrarily void that agreement and switch you to a higher interest rate on a whim. Banks get to count balances owed as assets on their books...you get to count them as liabilities. Typically, before a bank merger, the bank being acquired pumps out balance transfer offers to beef up its booked assets and strengthen their position. Then... 5) Lock ‘em in: Here’s a bank favorite - Once you have transferred a lot of balance to the new account they raise the interest. After some time, particularly if you begin to reduce the balance owed, you will be offered new balance transfer checks with another low promotional interest rate. The idea here is to transfer a little more balance to the account on top of the higher interest debt. You get a low rate on these transfers, but because the bank determines how all your payments are allocated, any payment you make is applied first to the lowest interest rate balance on the card. These offers are therefore used to “cap” the higher interest debt and protect those balance principles from being reduced by your payments. In short, the money is applied to the low interest debt and the high interest debt is untouched. Wouldn’t it seem fair to have your payment allocated equally to each balance owed on the account--both high and low interest rates alike? Well surprise! Most banks are not fair. 6) The sell off: Banks often merge, or sell your account, lock, stock and barrel, to another bank! The new bank then slaps down a completely new set of rules and interest rates on you, adding hundreds or even thousands to your long term debt due to interest rate hikes that apply to purchases you may have made years ago at a lower interest rate! That computer you thought you paid $2000 for is now going to cost you $7000 before it’s paid off. 7) Agree with us or get lost: In many cases you will be given an opportunity, again in very fine print, to avoid the negative impact of these “amendments” to your account. If you ever see them, and exercise your option not to accept the amendment, the bank will immediately close your account, and you will have no further access to that credit line. This closure will reduce your debt to credit line ratio and lower your credit score--and you will suffer financial hardship as a result, as more banks raise their interest rates on you. In short, you must either agree with the amendment, put up with the polite robbery like a good consumer, or get lost and endure the penalties. You have done something no bank ever really wants you to do--you read the fine print! 8) Gangland treatment: Banks have a tacit agreement with each other called “universal default.” This means that if you are late on a payment with one bank, ALL the others may raise their interest levels on you, even if your payment record with them is flawless. Stuff like this used to be called collusion or racketeering, but this lock step practice is seen as a powerful whip in the banker’s hand to enforce good on-time payments The trick is, that even if you mail your payment 5 days before the due date, the US post office is almost guaranteed to get at least one payment delivered late in any given year. Then the lock step universal default can kick in and do tremendous damage to an otherwise good customer. 9) Fee Festival: banks have a dizzying array of fees and charges, so much so that commercials often make fun of this by showing a dull headed consumer haggling with a teller and being assessed fees for sneezing in line, asking a question or some other innocuous activity. Favorite bank fees apply when you are late, even if your payment arrives at say 4pm when the bank closed the deadline at 3pm the same day! Over limit fees are another great banker’s pastime. One hapless consumer reported a total of $1500 in over limit fees when he went $200 over his credit line. (Of course the bank allowed him to cross the line, approving the charge they knew was over limit because it is so profitable to do so.) 10) Give us your house: The “housing boom” has seen a massive transfer of wealth from consumers and homeowners to the banks and investment companies and their fat-cat owners. With low interest rates in recent years, bankers reduced their lending standards to enable millions of first time buyers to enter the market and own a house. The only catch was this: while they made it easy to buy a house for people with weaker credit and income stats, they made it much more difficult for these buyers to hold onto the house and keep up the payments. Adjustable rate mortgages, Options ARMS, and other zero down mortgage tricks flooded the boom market, and now, as these loans adjust (as they were intended to do) the buyers are getting into deep trouble. As many as 15% to 20% of homeowners in states like Illinois are now at least a month behind as payments balloon up while their income remains static. The bankers knew this was going to happen. In short, the saddled the little guy with the biggest interest and penalty point load they could, and then set it up so that these loans would eventually become unmanageable. They are professionals at assessing risk, and they knew exactly what the likely outcome of their loans would be. This is why they bundled up these bad loans into investment options and moved the bad paper as fast as they could. Now they are shutting down operations, their work done, and incalculable damage done to the heart of this nation--the American family. Aren’t they wonderful? The sub-prime mortgage business is dead, and the pain is moving upward into more traditional financial markets--all things the bankers could easily foresee. This housing meltdown comes as no surprise.
The New Bankruptcy Bill (S 256) But banks aren’t interested in self-discipline. They see the problem as one of uneducated creditors who are out of control. Never mind that they are the ones holdings the reins to that credit, as the tactics above clearly illustrate. Major corporations go bankrupt to the tune of billions, and their executives skip off to homestead states and sink their loot into protected estates. When the little guy gets burdened, however, and turns to the bankruptcy courts for relief, that is seen as “abuse.” To correct this, and assure their ability to discipline all us bad consumers, the bankers pushed hard to demolish the current bankruptcy protections, argued so ably by Thomas Jefferson, and a new law took effect on Oct 17th, 2005.
Well... too bad, because there’s more bad news for you. The new Bankruptcy Bill (S 256) made it more
difficult for individuals to obtain protection under Chapter 7. It imposes a “means test” before filing a
bankruptcy to prevent someone from filing Chapter 7 if they meet an established income threshold. It also mandates a 6 month credit counseling program prior to filing, removes protections on certain assets,
makes a number of debts non-dischargeable, requires small business debtors to file a reorganization plan, mandates that you must live in your home for at least 40 months to exempt it from asset seizure, limits
claims on certain unsecured debt. In short, this bill sounds like a banker’s dream come true. In fact, it is exactly that, as it was lobbied and heavily supported by the banks, credit card companies and S & L
lenders, while being opposed by a number of consumer advocacy groups.
Every one of these amendments were introduced by Democratic Senators…and every one of them was voted down by the Republicans when they held the majority, voting as a block, to prevent the amendment aimed at helping common people in unusual circumstances and to protect the banking industry interests instead! But there was one amendment the Republican juggernaut did allow to slip through—in fact they insisted on it. It was an amendment to exempt funds placed into asset protection trusts allowed in just 5 states, whether you are a resident there or not, (UT, FL, TX, etc.) Such trusts cost over $100,000 to set up, meaning they can only be used by the wealthy, and they were key ways in which the corrupt senior executives at Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco protected the enormous loot they made off with when their companies collapsed after doctoring their accounting records and mis-reporting their assets, bilking hundreds of millions of dollars from their employees and shareholders. They all went to Florida and Texas, the home of George and Jeb, and began building lavish personal homestead estates, some valued over $16 million, to hide their assets from the bankruptcy courts. An exemption to make sure they can still do this was passed, by unanimous Republican vote. It was the only amendment that the Republicans allowed to be attached to the bill. Soapbox Time:
And there is something about the way you will get it that adds insult to injury. The minimum payment rate hike on credit cards was kept very hushed up until that new Bankruptcy bill took effect on Oct 2005. Their intention was to slip the new payment regs in under the smoke and fire of the new law change. This surreptitious, sly, political sleight of hand may seem clever to them, but if you think President Bush’s ratings are low now, just you wait until the howl rises up from Middle America as one hard working family after another suddenly realizes that they are broke, insolvent, and unable to make even their minimum payments due on bills--with a series of new legal hurtles to jump if they seek relief in the courts. Who will they blame ? The Democrats? I think not. The dark crows from these measures, and the economic hardships that lie ahead for the little guy out there, will have only one place to roost. Bush’s ratings will take a real beating again, and he will become an albatross on the party’s neck--or to mix metaphors, the Herbert Hoover of our time. When will voters wake up to the fact that these powerful men, beholden to other powerful and wealthy men, do not have the interests of the common people at heart? They are too busy making sure the wealthy and powerful stay that way. When will all of you decent, honest, hard working Republicans out there wake up and see what is going on? (For your information it is televised from the Senate floor daily on a channel called CSPAN). Perhaps, just perhaps, when something like the subject of this article happens to YOU, then you will do something about it the next time you go to the voting booth...(as tens of thousand did in the mid-term election which saw the Republicans; lose control of both houses of congress.) Will banks get nervous in this environment of increasing financial risk? 24 sub-prime lenders have gone bankrupt and ceased operations in the first two months of 2007 alone as the “housing boom” continues its meltdown. The pain has rippled up to industry giants like GMAC (General Motors credit outfit. The company started to lend auto loans and then jumped on the home loan business boom as well.) Lax lending standards have hurt the industry, and more pain is in the pipeline. The lesson? “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” If there is one thing you can do to help you prepare for the difficult times ahead that are surely coming, it will be to reduce or eliminate debt. The only people I personally owe money to are the phone and utility companies for services rendered each month. I ditched all credit cards and opted to be my own creditor with debit cards instead. What a difference it has made in my life! For the first time in decades I can actually say I have real financial freedom--using only the money I earn, and borrowing not a single cent. If you can possibly get to that place in your own financial life, the benefits of being debt free could make the difference between life and death itself in the years ahead. Please try to end this interest based game of credit spending in your life. It’s the best thing you could do to provide for the security of your life and family in the years ahead. Article by: John Schettler - 2005
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Look closely at the image that leads this article. It’s the latest trend in credit card marketing, really an old selling technique the politician learned long ago—Wrap
your product in the flag. I suppose the bank who thought this one up actually believed they would help boost morale in these trying times by giving Americans a
way of showing their patriotism every time they slap down the plastic to buy something. (Sure they did, Wink..wink...) It’s a pity, however, that the bank has
no real sense of patriotism at all in this scheme. It merely wants to take advantage of a current sentiment to push out more plastic—to recruit more debtors and feed the fires of interest generated profits.
Information concerning exactly what accounts each person has, and how they have been paying them back is compiled in three large bureaucratic credit
reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian and Trans World Systems. This data is entered into a “credit profile” by clerks at these agencies, and serves as a kind of
electronic doppelganger, a digital mirror image of each consumer in America. Unlike a true mirror image, it is often distorted—littered with false information.
Worse than that, the odd thing about this electronic version of YOU is that it is editable! It can be changed by someone without your knowledge or approval. Information that is entirely
false can be added without you even knowing it, and the result can be devastating. Why? Simply because the world will choose to believe the information in your electronic profile, and act upon it as if it were true. They
will believe it first and foremost, your sworn testimony coming a distant second.
Each day thousands of Americans are literally robbed by banks and credit card
companies by the simple manipulation of the interest rate they are required to pay on existing debts. Look at your billing statements. Banks often slip in little “Amendments” to
the agreements they make with you when you first open a credit card account with them. These amendments are written in fine print, sometimes as small as 6 point type so you will
not easily see or read it. While they may follow all existing laws in the way they implement these changes, the spirit of their method is devious, surreptitious and reprehensible. With
slick industry terms like “risk-based re-pricing,” banks raise the interest on people who can least afford to carry this extra burden, and they often do so because of erroneous data that their own
credit reporting system enters at a whim. 
As an example
of this, a consumer who always had good credit in the past was recently hit with a 5% increase on a credit card account that will end up costing them an additional $3500 in interest payments. The bank “amended” the
agreement they had with the consumer for a “Fixed” interest account. They did this because of information in a credit profile that was entirely false! It seems
that some enterprising clerk at the credit bureau inadvertently merged data from another person into the victim’s account. Of 45 credit items appearing in this report, only 9 were accurate! The remaining 36 items
, which included home mortgages, car leases, and even tax liens, were from another person altogether! Sadly, it will take months and months of wrangling with the credit reporting agencies to get this information
corrected and, in the meantime, the polite little letters in fine print arrive with the impact of someone holding a gun and demanding money. This consumer saw his interest rates skyrocket, and was never able to get
them reduced again.
Burdens imposed on American citizens, (investors and consumers) have been so onerous
in recent years that bankruptcies have been soaring. Oddly, interest rates charged to banks by the Fed have been at an all time low. But look at your credit card statements! Is
there any reason why you should be charged 19-29% interest on an account when the prime rate is so low? The reason is that the banks are greedy, and they use the system
they have created to rob you day in and day out. The sad fact of all of this is that people saddled by increasing debt stop buying and investing. They get shut out of the
capital/credit system and cease to be a vital contributors to the American economy. They end up struggling, month after month, to just make ends meet—a vast class of debtor slaves who must give
more and more of their hard won income to the banks each month—and the system is rigged so that they will never get out of debt. 25% of credit card users fall into this category--usuallly the people who really
need that extra bit of buying power just to get by, and getting by will soon be much, much harder.
For those with better credit, the banks
found a nifty way of getting their hands on the primary middle class asset--your home. Any homeowner with a pulse could pull money out of their bricks and boards for extra cash when they wanted
it. People did, to the tune of billions, and this is the money that has been keeping the US economy afloat these last 5 years. People took out home equity lines to try and pay back all this
credit card debt the banks worked so diligently to create, and then to buy that new car, TV, kitchen remodel or what have you. Americans have been on an unprecedented spending spree, all financed by the banks. 
Ok… If you are a Republican, perhaps living in the heartland of America, (in a state
colored bright red on the election map), I have just one question for you… Why? Your Republican representatives have told our servicemen and disabled veterans tough luck.
They have told our low wage earners and minority groups, get lost, they have told people too poor to afford health insurance with big medical bills for themselves or an elderly parent, too bad. They have told our seniors that their homes can be forfeit while
protecting the lavish estates of big corporate executives. They have told victims of identity theft and predatory lending practices: so what? And, oh yes, they have told the credit card companies to go ahead
and continue hiking those interest rates...no 30% cap. And they have undoubtedly told the banks to keep those contributions coming so they can have all the money they need to convince you to vote for them
(because they are moral, god fearing, decent men who believe in American family values, right?) Guess what... The largest single contributor to the Republican Party is a bank... and the big oil companies are
right behind them. Does the current domestic and foreign policy agenda start to come into a little better focus for you now? This is what you voted for. This is what you will get.
