Credit card firms try out new squeeze tactics

Judged:

Plus the US taxpayer bailouts to the tune of $14 TRILLION to the banks only made the big ones bigger and more powerful.

The only solution is for consumers to simply stop buying which will, of course, set the economy more firmly into the second Republican Depression in a century.

Thanks Reagan, thanks Bush, thanks you rightwingers...this is all on your collectively stupid heads.

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Judged:

Hey, didn't the Demoscat congress & Obama just pass a credit card "protection" Bill?

Guess that worked really well, eh?

What did you expect from a group of bought & paid for politicians in the pockets of Big Banks & Lobbyists.

Thanks Obama.

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Judged:

Delaware's Plastic Engine 'Running Out of Gas'

October 10, 2008
Credit card companies are to Delaware what cars are to Michigan.

More than a decade ago, the little state, home to Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, banked much of its economy on credit card deregulation -- hoping to attract major credit card companies by loosening the rules.

"They've said,'Come here. If you're located in Delaware, we're not going to restrain you. You can charge the interest rates you want, the fees you want and you can export them anywhere in the United States,'" said Jim Campen of Americans for Fairness in Lending.

The credit card companies did come, putting a hurt on consumers, but greatly helping the state's economy.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/5050/story...

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Judged:

Oregon Is Disgusting wrote:

Plus the US taxpayer bailouts to the tune of $14 TRILLION to the banks only made the big ones bigger and more powerful.
The only solution is for consumers to simply stop buying which will, of course, set the economy more firmly into the second Republican Depression in a century.
Thanks Reagan, thanks Bush, thanks you rightwingers...this is all on your collectively stupid heads.

Joe Biden's Bankrupt Vote

When researching the Democrat Senators that voted for the Bankruptcy bill, I found that the Senators from Delaware were the top recipients of campaign cash from the Finance/Credit Card industries. And I found that neither of them had any press releases explaining their votes for this bill.

Today, Senator Joe Biden finally gave a reason for the vote he took as he responded to the charge that Jonathan Chait had made in his column, When Democrats Join the Dark Side.(via Dkos' dday) Biden's letter to the editor castigates Chait for not realizing that this was a well-balanced bipartisan bill.

JOE BIDEN: "In his zeal to attack the bankruptcy reform bill, Jonathan Chait's March 4 commentary, "When Democrats Join the Dark Side," mischaracterizes the legislation. In 2001, a similar bill passed the Senate 82 to 16. The provisions affecting consumer bankruptcy were identical to those Chait criticizes.

"At the outset, I refused to support bankruptcy reform until fundamental changes were made. I fought to establish a "safe harbor" for those below their state's median income. I also insisted on a provision requiring lenders to post a clear warning about the dangers of making minimum monthly payments, one of the worst debt traps for consumers."

"This bill establishes unprecedented protections for child support and alimony, making bankruptcy part of the enforcement system for women and children, who now will be at the head of the line, in front of every other creditor. Is this bill perfect? No. But over several congresses it has earned the kind of bipartisan consensus only balanced legislation can achieve." END JOE BIDEN.

Oh, gee, isn't that nice?

The bill is a peach of a bill with all kinds of protections for consumers who find themselves in trouble.

All those little gems stuffed in this bill like the fact that credit card companies can charge rates that would make the mafia loan sharks look like pikers.

http://www.pacificviews.org/weblog/archives/0...

OUCH!

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Judged:

Oregon Is Disgusting wrote:

Plus the US taxpayer bailouts to the tune of $14 TRILLION to the banks only made the big ones bigger and more powerful.
The only solution is for consumers to simply stop buying which will, of course, set the economy more firmly into the second Republican Depression in a century.
Thanks Reagan, thanks Bush, thanks you rightwingers...this is all on your collectively stupid heads.

Joe Biden's pathetic letter to the LA Times

Sun Mar 13, 2005

Joe Biden (D-MBNA) has decided to attack back at those of us sane people who see his vote on the bankruptcy bill as a cynical cash payout to Delaware-based credit card companies.

He responded to a week-old Jonathan Chait article called "When Democrats Join the Dark Side," which used Biden and the bankruptcy bill as an example of how Democrats with narrow home-state business constituencies can get peeled off into Republican-backed measures.

Biden's retort is called "Bankruptcy Reform Bill Is A Bipartisan Effort" and it's sure to make you hurl.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/13/16205...

OUCH!

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Judged:

Oregon Is Disgusting wrote:

Plus the US taxpayer bailouts to the tune of $14 TRILLION to the banks only made the big ones bigger and more powerful.
The only solution is for consumers to simply stop buying which will, of course, set the economy more firmly into the second Republican Depression in a century.
Thanks Reagan, thanks Bush, thanks you rightwingers...this is all on your collectively stupid heads.

Biden's Link To Credit-Card Firm Questioned

NPR
All Things Considered, August 25, 2008

· Sen. Joe Biden was one of the few Democrats who sided with credit-card companies that were trying to make it harder for people to declare bankruptcy.

At the time, his son was a consultant to Delaware-based credit-card company MBNA. MBNA employees also contributed heavily to the senator's election campaigns.

Jeffrey Birnbaum, managing editor of digital news for the Washington Times, says the issue raises questions about whether Biden is as much of an outsider to Washington's ways as the Obama campaign portrays him to be.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php...

Ooooooooooooouch!

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Judged:

Oregon Is Disgusting wrote:

Plus the US taxpayer bailouts to the tune of $14 TRILLION to the banks only made the big ones bigger and more powerful.
The only solution is for consumers to simply stop buying which will, of course, set the economy more firmly into the second Republican Depression in a century.
Thanks Reagan, thanks Bush, thanks you rightwingers...this is all on your collectively stupid heads.

Why we call him Joe Biden (D-MBNA)

The Bankruptcy Bill:
Biden and Carper (both DE Senators) were two of the 14 Democrats who thwarted efforts to prevent passage of the federal bankruptcy bill.

Biden's been carrying MBNA's water on this issue for years. In 2000, when the plan was effectively stalled because a real Democrat named Bill Clinton was in the White House, he even tried to attach the bankruptcy changes to a foreign aid bill.

Campaign Contributions:
MBNA does employ a lot of people in Delaware. True -- but could it also be because MBNA is Biden's biggest contributor -- by a good margin. According to Opensecrets.org , Biden raised some $147,700 in contributions from MBNA employees from 1999-2004, his biggest source of campaign cash.

Private Personal Profits:
If you're not troubled by campaign contributions, there's more. Eyebrows were raised in 1996 when Biden sold his house for $1.2 million -- his asking price and more than a couple of a similar neighboring homes went for around the same time -- to an MBNA executive named John Cochran.

Family Employment:
In 2003, the New York Times reported this:

The company also has ties to Senator Biden's son, R. Hunter Biden, a lawyer in Washington. Hunter Biden joined MBNA as a management trainee after graduating from Yale Law School and rose to be an executive vice president. Now a partner in Oldaker, Biden & Belair, a lobbying and law firm, he receives a $100,000 annual retainer from MBNA to advise it on "the Internet and privacy law," Mr. Freeh said. He added that Hunter Biden was not a registered lobbyist and did not lobby on legislation for the company.

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/arch... ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/...

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Judged:

Son's fees cloud Biden's bankruptcy bill push

New York Times
Posted: Monday, Aug. 25, 2008
By Christopher Drew and Mike Mcintire

During the years that Sen. Joe Biden was helping the credit card industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection, his son received more than $400,000 in consulting fees from one of the largest companies pushing for the changes, aides to Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign said Sunday.

Biden's son, Hunter, received the fees from MBNA Corp. from 2001 to 2005 for consulting work on online banking issues. Aides to Obama, who announced Biden as his vice-presidential running mate on Saturday, said the younger Biden, who is a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, never lobbied for MBNA and that there was nothing improper about the payments.

Biden's support for the bankruptcy changes, signed into law in 2005, puts him at odds with Obama of Illinois, who opposed the bill and has criticized the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, for supporting it.

In late 1996, MBNA (which was bought in 2006 by Bank of America), hired the younger of Biden's two sons, Robert Hunter Biden, known as Hunter, who had just graduated from Yale Law School, as a lawyer. The company promoted Biden to senior vice president by early 1998. And after the younger Biden worked at the Commerce Department on electronic commerce issues from 1998 to 2001, MBNA hired him back on a monthly consulting contract, aides said.

Consumer advocates say that Sen. Biden was one of the first Democratic leaders to support the bankruptcy bill, and he voted for it four times – in 1998, 2000, 2001 and in March 2005, when its final version passed the Senate by a vote of 74-25.

Hunter Biden, through his assistant at his law firm, Oldaker Biden & Belair, referred a request for comment to the Obama campaign. James Mahoney, chief spokesman for Bank of America, said the consulting arrangement had ended by the time Bank of America took over MBNA in January 2006.

Aides to the Obama campaign said Sunday that Sen. Biden sought several changes in the bill to protect consumers that upset MBNA executives, then the largest employer in Delaware, while acknowledging that he also voted against other amendments proposed by other Democrats.

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Oregon Is Disgusting wrote:

Plus the US taxpayer bailouts to the tune of $14 TRILLION to the banks only made the big ones bigger and more powerful.
The only solution is for consumers to simply stop buying which will, of course, set the economy more firmly into the second Republican Depression in a century.
Thanks Reagan, thanks Bush, thanks you rightwingers...this is all on your collectively stupid heads.

MBNA Paid Biden’s Son As Biden Backed Bill

Hunter Biden Paid Undisclosed Amount As Consultant While Joe Biden Supported Legislation Backed By Credit Card Industry

(AP) A son of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was paid an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant by MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.

Barack Obama's presidential campaign said Biden helped forge a bipartisan compromise on the measure, which is now law and makes it harder for consumers to obtain bankruptcy protection in the courts.

MBNA's consulting payments to Hunter Biden, first reported by The New York Times, followed his departure in 2001 from the company, where he had been an executive.

Obama opposed the bankruptcy law, enacted in 2005, while Biden supported it.

David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said that "after working in the Clinton administration in the Department of Commerce on Internet privacy and online commerce issues, Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking."

At the time Hunter Biden was receiving consulting payments from MBNA, he also was a Washington lobbyist at a firm he had co-founded.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/25/pol...

OUCH!

Oregon Is Disgusting

Judged:

The laughing liberal wrote:

Hey, didn't the Demoscat congress & Obama just pass a credit card "protection" Bill?
Guess that worked really well, eh?
What did you expect from a group of bought & paid for politicians in the pockets of Big Banks & Lobbyists.
Thanks Obama.

Your obsession with the Vice President (you think he's cute don't you) is a pretty severe addiction. Have that looked at.

I am for 100% publicly funded campaigns. Why aren't you?

The F-22 that the military doesn't want has its tentacles in 44 states. It's the project that just keeps coming up time and again even though the DOD says to can it.

That's the way things work. Republicans want to make the situation with health insurance work like Delaware. The state with the fewest regulations would house all the insurance companies who would then be free to sell in any other state.

Oregon Is Disgusting

Judged:

The laughing liberal wrote:

<quoted text>
Biden's Link To Credit-Card Firm Questioned
NPR
All Things Considered, August 25, 2008
· Sen. Joe Biden was one of the few Democrats who sided with credit-card companies that were trying to make it harder for people to declare bankruptcy.
At the time, his son was a consultant to Delaware-based credit-card company MBNA. MBNA employees also contributed heavily to the senator's election campaigns.
Jeffrey Birnbaum, managing editor of digital news for the Washington Times, says the issue raises questions about whether Biden is as much of an outsider to Washington's ways as the Obama campaign portrays him to be.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php...
Ooooooooooooouch!

1. No kidding.
2. Washington Times = moonies
3. Biden isn't an outsider.
4. I am for 100% publicly funded campaigns.
5. I am for legislating that campaign contributions, parties, junkets, jobs, etc. for any public official is BRIBERY.
6. The extreme right wing Roberts wants to have a case so the SC can make campaign finance reform a thing of the past. How's that for opening up the floodgates to bribery, er, campaign money?

Danny_Livewire

“Love of $ is the Root of Evil”

Joined: Sep 24, 2008

Comments: 3419

Gotham City

ISP: Chicago, IL

Looking for a good way to jump start your local community???

Create your own currency!!!

It's called "Local Currency" and is a great boom for local communities all across the globe. Check it out!

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp...

lily boca raton fl

Boca Raton, FL

Oregon Is Disgusting wrote:

<quoted text>
Your obsession with the Vice President (you think he's cute don't you) is a pretty severe addiction. Have that looked at.
I am for 100% publicly funded campaigns. Why aren't you?
The F-22 that the military doesn't want has its tentacles in 44 states. It's the project that just keeps coming up time and again even though the DOD says to can it.
That's the way things work. Republicans want to make the situation with health insurance work like Delaware. The state with the fewest regulations would house all the insurance companies who would then be free to sell in any other state.

That's exactly right

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Stone Mountain, GA

Judged:

Oregon Is Disgusting wrote:

<quoted text>
Your obsession with the Vice President (you think he's cute don't you) is a pretty severe addiction. Have that looked at.
I am for 100% publicly funded campaigns. Why aren't you?

The F-22 that the military doesn't want has its tentacles in 44 states. It's the project that just keeps coming up time and again even though the DOD says to can it.

That's the way things work. Republicans want to make the situation with health insurance work like Delaware. The state with the fewest regulations would house all the insurance companies who would then be free to sell in any other state.

Biden is ugly. Michelle isn't bad looking though.

For 100% publicly funded campaigns?

NOT WHEN THE MAJORITY or ANY OF THAT FUNDING IS FROM CORPORATIONS & LOBBYISTS. If you can't vote, you shouldn't be able to donate. THAT would take the "I bought Obama" money out of the equation.

Delaware? You mean Biden's state where he's in bed with Lobbyist, Credit Card Co's and Banks? Bad idea.

Joined: Apr 19, 2007

Comments: 34570

Stone Mountain, GA

Oregon Is Disgusting wrote:

<quoted text>
1. No kidding.
2. Washington Times = moonies
3. Biden isn't an outsider.
4. I am for 100% publicly funded campaigns.
5. I am for legislating that campaign contributions, parties, junkets, jobs, etc. for any public official is BRIBERY.
6. The extreme right wing Roberts wants to have a case so the SC can make campaign finance reform a thing of the past. How's that for opening up the floodgates to bribery, er, campaign money?

1- Agree that Biden is in the pockets of CC companies & Banks.

2- Didn't know all of the journalist are moonies.
Does that make CNN all Hanoi Jane's?

3- Biden is outsider to smarts.

4- 100% public funds from people who can vote. No Corporations, Groups, Lobbyist representing others, etc.

5- RIGHT ON!

6- Current CF Reform isn't reform. Way too many loopholes.

Indigenous

“Today, Forever!!!”

Joined: Mar 13, 2008

Comments: 9738

Philadelphia, PA

Sudden Death imminent, cause: Overdose of Plastic!!

Plastic, the new money, is choking the life-blood out of society, what can be done when plastic is the only currency that is left to use?

And people will use the plastic!!

laughingiris

Ypsilanti, MI

I can't wait to send HSBC their last payment. I'll put a smiley face on the memo part-like I do every time I pay off a bill in full!:)

centereach ny

“hellshade”

Joined: Jul 5, 2007

Comments: 764

centereach

ISP: Brooklyn, NY

just goes to show you how goverment is still f*cking us all over.
we the taxpayers spent how much money to bail out the banks?
and now they say "well america, thxs for helping us out, now bend over so we can f*ck you harder and deeper now..."
and obama let's them do it.
we need another revolution folks and it's not just from the repubs and dems it's from the corporate masters. it's these people that are the biggest threat to real americans....

Oregon Is Disgusting