It's Personal Debt and Usury, Stupid. In 1992, Bill Clinton won the White House with a simple slogan that everyone in his camp kept ever in mind: "It's the economy, stupid."
+
While very insulting to the people working for him, that slogan made the point that the single issue most likely to win the White House for the Democrats was the economy.
+
Today, we need everyone in this country to think of an equally simple, powerful sentence as we enter the last days before the election: "It's personal debt and usury, stupid."
+
The people who run this country are, alas, all rich. Even John Edwards, who prides himself for having escaped poverty, is RICH. Has he forgotten what it was to be poor?
+
Kerry was never poor. Nor was Dubya. This race is THE BATTLE OF THE BRAHMINS. Dubya likes to present himself as an ordinary guy, a working-class stiff, so AFFECTS rolled-up sleeves on EXPENSIVE shirts (the one I saw him in today on TV was BEAUTIFUL, and probably cost him $100 or $200), but he rolled up the sleeves, as his handlers told him to do, to appear working-class. Yeah, right. Wear a $200 shirt and roll up the sleeves. Good move, Georgie Boy.
+
The politics of the United States have been fundamentally corrupted by money. Almost no one can run for public office now who is not rich, in part because no one but the rich can afford to take off a YEAR from their job to run for office. So we get, as candidates, rich people who haven't the vaguest idea what life is like for the rest of us. They need to ask their staff or hire professional advisory services to find out what most concerns ordinary people. Oddly, despite all the MILLIONS or TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars that the Democrats MUST have spent on "focus groups" and market research, they seem not to have even the vaguest of ideas as to what worries most Americans most.
+
I tried to tell them, by email to the Democratic National Committee and the Kerry campaign, but they have paid NO attention to me. What do I know? I'm just a GENIUS (at least in statistical terms) who lives in THE REAL WORLD, unlike the class that the rich and SUPER-RICH that both present candidates for President come from. What would I know about what ordinary Americans feel? Surely the super-rich, men born with a silver spoon in their mouth, into families of wealth and political influence, know better than a working man what voters want. Of course they do. The rich are absolutely tuned in to what ordinary people care about. Of course they are.
+
There is one issue, and one issue ONLY, that can trump all others, including the fear-mongering of the Bush Administration: DEBT, with its Siamese twin, USURY, and its escape clause, BANKRUPTCY — which the Republicans want to TAKE AWAY from the poor and hard-pressed middle class.
+
Watch cable television, if not even over-air television, for a single nite, any nite you choose, and you will see commercial after commercial for services that promise to free viewers from DEBT. The candidates for high office don't see such things of course, because they are too busy to watch the television that ordinary people watch, and even if they did see these spots -- five and ten a nite -- for programs to wipe out debt, they WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY'RE SEEING.
+
They have no idea that ordinary people in this country are required to pay 19% or 21% interest for the PRIVILEGE of having a charge card for Sears or the Home Depot — downscale stores with upscale interest rates on their charge cards. Nor do these RICH candidates know that ordinary people are hit with LATE FEES and OVERLIMIT FEES and DEFAULT RATES if they miss a payment. Our RICH candidates have no idea of the kinds of interest and fee upon fee upon fee that ordinary Americans are charged — which fees raise the already-usurious interest rates they pay to EXTRAORDINARILY USURIOUS RATES. How would they know about such things? They pay their credit-card bills on time every month so don't incur any such interest charges or fees.
+
Do they even care about the interest rates and fees ordinary Americans are charged?
+
Plainly, Republicans LOVE the fact that the poor and middle class are paying over BILLIONS of dollars in interest and fees to the rich who own the credit-card companies that their vict ... customers use, not so much because they want to but because they have to.
+
But why are Democrats almost entirely SILENT on personal DEBT, the ONE issue that could win both the White House AND CONGRESS for them?
+
I must seriously wonder if Democrats at the highest level have been told to write off the poor and middle-class of the South to implement some new Grand Strategy, in order to feel better about what is, at present, almost certain to be a vicious electoral beating by Republicans. They have let the super-rich of the Republican Party (RICHpublicans) establish both the agenda and the terms of the national debate, and the Democrats keep having to scramble to counter the preposterous and ugly charges Republicans make
+
I just recently got out of deep personal debt, thanks, alas, to money I came into when my late mother's house was sold, and thought I had forcefully ended my own connection with an abusive credit-card issuer, Citibank, when I sent off a big check and told them to close my MasterCard account, after having ended a relationship of some 20 years a few months earlier with its parent bank, because Citibank has become inexcusably exploitative. But before my letter — enclosing my cut-up credit card — could be acted upon, some automatic recurring charges were entered, so I have one last payment before I am free of Citibank forever. Alas, the Home Depot has stupidly hired Citicards to run its credit-card program. So now I must cut off my Home Depot credit-card relationship. I might also close out my relationship with the Home Depot, except that Lowe's has not yet built a store near me. I have heard that Lowe's is planning to open a store within a few miles of my house, and I may very well transfer my slight loyalties to Lowe's from the Home Depot thereafter.
+
The Home Depot should NOT allow Citicards to run its credit-card operation. Citicards is an abusive and offensive outfit that will drive away customers. I paid off my balance at the Vauxhall store last nite, and will now CUT UP AND RETURN my Home Depot credit card to Home Depot management, because I DESPISE Citicards, but other people may have more difficulty closing out their Home Depot credit-card account and end up HATING Home Depot. Citicards telephoned me at home THREE TIMES over $20 overdue! AND sent me a LETTER by U.S. Postal Service. Over $20! I' m not exactly rich, but I do presently have FAR more money than time with which to pay bills, and have recently arranged to have most of my bills autodebited from my bank account each month, but not my Home Depot bill, because it varies in amount, whereas most of the bills I have arranged to pay automatically are the same amount each month.
+
The Home Depot and every other retailer that offers their own credit card but charges customers outrageously high interest and/or hassles customers over TRIVIAL amounts are STUPID, and deserve to LOSE the customers they ABUSE. Alas, a great many American retailers today are stupid, and they turn over their reputation to credit companies that are recklessly and infuriatingly abusive, as turns many customers into enemies of the very companies they once had good thoughts about. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
+
So too are the Democrats stupid, stupid, STUPID in not landing hard on personal debt and the Republicans' clearly stated intention to make it almost impossible for ordinary Americans to escape oppressive debt (while permitting corporations to declare bankruptcy easily, as to void labor contracts). In these last few days before the election, the Democrats should be reminding Americans of the 19%, 21%, 28.740% interest rates they are charged; of late fees and overlimit fees and ATM fees; of bill collectors and dunning letters and phone calls at home and at work harassing them over debt. Of interest being charged ON late fees and overlimit fees! Of thousands of dollars of debt piling up further hundreds and hundreds of dollars of debt from the punitive and malicious behavior of the credit-card companies and banks that the Richpublicans own. Remind them of the oppression of debt, and they will vote Democratic. Stay silent on debt, and lose the election. It's that simple, because it really is debt and usury, stupid.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:53 AM