You Are Stupid and We'll Take All Your Money.

Such is the sentiment of the credit card industry regarding the proles (i.e. us) in Lowell Bergmann's incredible New York Times/Frontline piece, "The Card Game".

Seriously, they're not even pretending they're not ripping us off in every possible instance. Congress legislates a strong consumer advocacy law to protect the public? They use the money from late fees, overdraft fees, inactivity fees, and any of the other industry 'resources' to pay lobbyists to water down said legislation until there is little that could be called teeth included. And that's just the beginning of it... This program is worth 55 minutes of your time, and you can see it here (embedded below) or at the Frontline page.

The sheer audacity of those in and representing the industry is both incredible and incredibly infuriating. I am not anti-capitalist, nor am I a protectionist, in the general sense. But what this shows is a level of dishonesty and greed that touches nearly every American's life. If you are one of these people, you deserve to know about it.

The essence, as paraphrased from Shailesh Mehta, the founder of credit card giant Providian (which he sold to Washington Mutual in 2005 for $6.5 billion), is that (in reference to the credit industry) 'you (the US Government) make the laws, and we'll outsmart you and take your money every time'.

And darn if that hasn't proven to be true. In fact, as Senator Dick Durbin (D, Ill.) said, regarding the United States' governing legislative body "the banks, even as unpopular as they are right now in this crisis, still own this place."

All is not well in Forest City...

Fresh off the heels of the New York Time's Sunday Magazine feature article on the foreclosure catastrophe befalling Cleveland, a terrible report hitting the national wires this morning about a man who, according to CPD, shot and killed his wife and four other people, including a pair of twin two year olds. This happened at West 89th and Denison, or approximately 10 blocks from my lovely home. My heart goes out to the families of those affected, and my utmost support goes out to the neighborhood and the Cleveland Police Department, who are still hunting down the suspect.

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It seems that of late, what was intended to be a pro-Cleveland site has become littered with tales of poverty, crime, and tragedy. It is terribly unfortunate that the city so many love is being demoralized and demolished, one police blotter item or news headline at a time. I have always been an ardent supporter of Mayor Jay Williams of Youngstown, whose approach to the city of Youngstown has helped to revitalize the community. His approach, to 'right-size' the city in terms of the reality of the population, not hoping for a return to its industrial heyday, could provide Cleveland with valuable lessons. A bright spot this past week has been the passage in the Ohio legislature of a measure to create a Cuyahoga County Land Bank that "allows officials in the state's most populous county to set up a non-profit land reutilization program to accept or buy foreclosed or abandoned properties." This will give the County much greater authority to tear down the hundreds of blighted shells, once homes, that litter much of the East Side, and increasingly, the West. What is to be done with those newly 'green spaces' has not been decided, but it gives everyone an opportunity to imagine the possibilities...