September 26, 2009
ALABAMA ARISE, CENTER FOR RESPONSIBLE LENDING, CONSUMER
FEDERATION OF AMERICA, AARP AND OTHERS HOLD LENDING SUMMIT IN
MONTGOMERY
On September 24, 2009
Alabama Arise,
the
Center for Responsible Lending, the
Consumer
Federation of America,
Appleseed,
AARP and a whole host of others held a "short term credit"
summit in Montgomery (click on image to read more or
click
here
for the meeting agenda). It turns our
that the primary goal of this meeting was the repeal of the
states deferred presentment statute. It was a well
organized event with legislators and adversary activist from
around the country. In fact, it is incredible that all of
these actors appeared in one single place at one time to fight
for our demise! What is even more incredible (or strange)
is that a similar conference was held on the same day in
Mississippi (click here to see comment below).
We had a representative in the meeting for most of the day and
below are the important points from that meeting from notes
taken throughout the day:
- It is clearly payday lending that is in the crosshairs. They
want the law repealed in this upcoming legislative session.
Of course, if they are successful, other short term lending will
not be far behind.
-One presenter produced a map that clearly showed that payday
lenders were concentrated in the larger cities in our state.
But then they manipulated the colors and shading of the map to
make appear as though the great majority of payday lenders were
located in the Black Belt. This, of course, was used to
"prove" that minorities were targeted by the payday lenders!
- We had our own representative at the meeting who was
"discovered" at about 3 PM and asked promptly to leave. We
were able to garner a good bit of information about their plans
as reported here.
- With the CRL, the Consumer Federation of America and other
members of the same crowd you can imagine what the rhetoric in
the meeting was like. Imagine what is was like and that is the
way it was.
- Borrow Smart members approached all of the legislators ahead
of the meeting. We met with two legislators; Senator Quinton
Ross and Representative James Busky. It is clearly Senator Ross
(26th district in Montgomery) who spoke at the meeting most
aggressively against us.
- There is absolutely no doubt that Arise and their national
cohorts (AARP,CRL, Appleseed & others) are focused on this
issue in our state. It is also clear that most of them have
been highly successful in demolishing the industry in other
states. If this group is successful here, we can expect the
same action plan right here in Alabama. Suffice it to say,
this group will work aggressively in every way imaginable to
achieve their goals. That is everyway up to and including
publishing false and highly misleading information that we must
be prepared to deal with! And with the national players behind
them, they certainly have the massive resources to do all of
this. Their plan will include very successful "community
organizing" and media techniques that have proven to be highly
effective in so many other venues. These are venues that today
no longer offer payday loans based precisely on what they
achieved in these other states.
Here are a couple of examples of using all available resources
and their planned tactics: One of the presenters pointed out
that University of Alabama students planned to produce a "shock"
video of "horror" stories of those who have used payday
lending. One of the legislators mentioned using Facebook to
create awareness and to motivate the masses to action. Clearly,
this effort will be much more than just a lobbying effort -- as
we at Borrow Smart have attempted to convey since we launched
Borrow Smart almost two years ago. The big difference now is
that it is here today and it is in our own state of Alabama!
On a final note, we find it interesting that our friends in
Mississippi are faced with a similar event on this very same day
by another "social justice" group in their state. Although
their focus was not 100% payday loans, it was listed as one of
the main discussion points of the agenda (see announcement
here). And, we know that the forum was first announced
as a "payday" summit only and did not include any other topic.
However, because of political pressure other issues were
included to more than likely camouflage the event. It seems our
adversaries may now have our region in their crosshairs.
To sum all of this up, it is quite clear that the national and
local activist have joined together in an incredible effort to
eliminate payday lending in Alabama just as they have done in so
many other states.
www.BorrowSmartMississippi.com
www.BorrowSmartAlabama.com
www.CouncilForFairLending.com
