Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Credit Card Bill HR 627 Is A Sham Without Usury Protection

From the "PeaceTeam" People; (with corrections re: bill # S 627 to HR 627)

The headline today read "Reform may mean good card users pay more",
even as the Senate passed their totally phony credit card bill, HR
627. The one thing that actually mattered, an amendment to limit
interest rates to a very generous 15 percent was killed. With the
government bailing out some of these same companies, and giving them
money for zero interest, how greedy can they possibly get? Oh, but
they had no problem tagging on a totally unrelated Wild Bill Hickok
in our national parks provision.

How stupid do they think we are? What we are left with is a cosmetic
makeover which will continue to bless outrageous interest rates with
no real protection for the American people at all, another charade of
reform which actually changes nothing of substance. In fact, the bill
expressly gives credit card companies an additional 9 months to rip
us off without any new restrictions whatsoever. Congress needs to
know they are not fooling us one little bit on this one.

No Usury Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum986.php

Besides submitting the action page at the link above, we are asking
our participants to also call their members of Congress toll free at
800-828-0498, 866-338-1015 or 866-220-0044 (all numbers just checked
good) to protest their failure to actually confront the core problem
.. unrestrained interest rates. They will be voting in the House in
a matter of days.

So what if they must give at least 45 days notice before raising our
interest rates to the sky. Where are we the American people to go, as
the job market collapses around our ears? The credit card "industry",
just like the medical insurance "industry", is just a giant leech
sucking the lifeblood out of our economy, without adding anything of
value to it.

The reason we are making such a point of this action is that they
have the same phony reform routine planned for health care, in trying
to perversely ban from public debate the one thing that would
actually cure the patient, single payer universal health care.

The 30% eaten up by paper pushing, claim denying, overpaid medical
insurance company bureaucrats, has already got the rest of us barely
holding on to life support. And here especially, we need to demand
that we get legislation that isn't just written by corporate
lobbyists to preserve their power to take an arm or a leg for
themselves.

So if you have not yet submitted the action page for single payer
health care, please do that as well.

Single Payer Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum982.php

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so by clicking on the title above;
http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

2 comments:

  1. Do you have your Senate Bill numbers confused? S.627 is "Fast Track to College Act of 2009". I just read the entire text and didn't even find the words credit card.

    I'm as angered and concerned about the lack of interest in Congress about re-instituting usury laws as anyone, but failure to fact check yourself is self-defeating.

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  2. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. To err is human, to forgive, devine. The correct bill is . H.R.627 : To amend the Truth in Lending Act to establish fair and transparent practices relating to the extension of credit under an open end consumer credit plan, and for other purposes.
    Sponsor: Rep Maloney, Carolyn B. [NY-14] (introduced 1/22/2009) Cosponsors (128)
    Committees: House Financial Services
    House Reports: 111-88
    Latest Major Action: Became Public Law No: 111-24 [GPO: Text, PDF]

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