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Appropriate response or overreaction?
Backing down on payday loan sharks
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Bristol
What’s on your mind?
Jun 03, 2008One of my faithful blog readers, Chris, inquired about a new topic. Nothing jumps to mind. Call it an early summer lull. Even the letters to the editor have dried up.
In my circle of friends, most folks are preoccupied with gas prices or figuring out what to do with the kids now that school’s out. Not very exciting topics. What about you? Got something to share. Feel free to do so here, and I’ll try to think of a more interesting topic later today.
Posted by Andrea Hopkins Ask the candidates
Apr 09, 2008The newspaper’s editorial board is preparing to interview four candidates for Bristol Virginia City Council and five candidates for Bristol Virginia School Board. Election Day is May 6.
This is your chance to pose a question to the candidates. What do you want them to answer? Offer your suggestions here and we’ll ask them.
Earth’s stewards
Mar 11, 2008In a heartening development, 60 religious leaders (representing a variety of Christian denominations and the Jewish faith) presented Gov. Tim Kaine a letter yesterday asking him to oppose the Dominion Virginia Power plant proposed for Virginia City in Wise County.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:
Roughly 60 Virginia religious leaders and scholars have asked Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to oppose Dominion Virginia Power’s plans for a coal-burning power plant in Wise County.
The proposed power plant will release an unacceptable amount of climate-changing greenhouse gases and will encourage more destructive strip mining in Virginia’s mountains, they said in a letter to Kaine.
“We do not want our energy to come from these immoral and destructive practices,” the authors wrote.
The Times-Dispatch article captures the thrust of the religious argument against the plant - namely that it violates the Judeo-Christian belief that we are stewards of creation:
Rabbi Ben Romer of Congregation Or Ami in Richmond said people have a moral and ethical responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth. Romer, a West Virginia native, said one only had to drive through that state to witness the destruction caused by mining.
People can find solutions to the problems facing the Earth, but they may not necessarily be the cheapest solutions, Romer said. The authors of the letter to Kaine said cleaner air and water would result by filling the demand for energy through conservation, efficiency and clean energy sources such as wind, solar and sustainable biomass fuels.
Read the full text of the letter here.
Christians believe that faith can move mountains. Perhaps it can save them as well.
Appropriate response or overreaction?
Mar 11, 2008The University of Virginia at Wise has stirred a bit of a controversy with its expulsion of student Steve Barber over a fictional essay for a creative writing class. Not only did the essay get Barber kicked out of school, but it landed him a psychiatric evaluation and cost him his guns and his concealed weapons permit.
You can read the entire story by Michael Owens and Kathy Still here.
Did the school and prosecutors (who went to court to take Barber’s gun permit) make the right call? Where is the line between sensible precautions and punishing thought or speech? As a society, we’ve crossed that line in the past (some of the post 9/11 terrorist scares and the public school zero tolerance policies adopted after the Columbine killings come to mind).
Where would you draw the line?
Backing down on payday loan sharks
Feb 26, 2008This can’t be good. The Associated Press (read the whole article at the Virginian Pilot’s Web site, pilotonline.com) is reporting that Virginia Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, a powerful Democrat, is threatening to kill payday lending reform, unless an industry-approved compromise is reached. How will that protect those who are lured in and then bled dry by the industry?
Meanwhile, House GOP Caucus Chairman Terry Kilgore, who was championing a decent reform bill, has indicated the House will drop its five-loan-per-year limit. That’s not a positive development either. That was the provision of the House bill that had the most potential to actually help the lower-income “customers” who are most likely to fall into an inescapable cycle of debt.
Photo of payday lending protest in Abingdon by David Crigger.
The Associated Press article gives a hint at the real motivation to scuttle compromise (at least on Saslaw’s part). It’s all about the money:
Payday lenders contributed about $310,000 to legislators in 2007, including $27,000 to Saslaw, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, an independent, nonprofit tracker of money in state politics.
I’ve differed with Terry Kilgore in print on other issues, but on the matter of payday loans, he’s been on the side of the angels. He should use his considerable clout to keep the loan limits in place. Absent a true interest rate cap (without all the additional fees tacked on), the limit is the best way to protect people from an industry that profits from the despair of others. Hang tough, Terry. Don’t compromise on this matter.
