This article isn’t about the pros and cons of payday loans. For that discussion, just read this or this or this. The facts about payday loans are clear. They work. They’re needed. They need some reform, but not run out of the state.
So this article is directed at the self-serving, self-dealing politicians that comprise most of the Ohio Legislature.
Because they have voted for a de facto ban of payday loans in Ohio. They did this despite:
1) Receiving 30,000 letters from payday loan borrowers telling them not to vote for this bill;
2) 2,500 payday loan employees chanting outside the Capitol telling them not to vote for this bill;
3) Multiple hours of testimony from the nation’s top economists, top policy analysts, payday lenders, borrowers, and mom-and-pop entrepreneurs telling them not to vote for this bill;
4) The fact that the bill will cost 6000 Ohioans their jobs during a recession;
5) The fact that the bill will cost Ohio millions in unemployment compensation as well as tax revenue
6) That the bill will cost associated vendors countless millions.
What these politicians did was simply to ignore what everyone had to say. They ignored what their constituents said. They ignored what some really, really smart people said.
They told 6000 Ohioans, in an open forum, “We do not care that you are going to lose your job”.
They told thousands of Ohioans, “We do not care if your grandmother needs emergency medicine, that your car needs repairs so can get to your job, or that you just need to make ends meet this week and are a little short.”
They told dozens of small businessmen who put everything they had into their stores, “We do not care if you go bankrupt”.
They told everyone even remotely involved in the payday loan industry in Ohio, “We do not care that we are taking away your choices”.
What they told all these people, and even those Ohioans who had never heard of a payday loan, “We only care about being re-elected or holding another elected office”.
“We only care about ourselves”.
In other words, the politicians who were voted in to allegedly represent the people of Ohio and act in their best interest have totally and utterly betrayed their voters. They put in earplugs as their fellow human beings desperately begged for their jobs, or to hold onto the one outlet that gave them a loan on nothing more than a promise to repay.
Source : http://www.bloggernews.net
