BuckeyeBlog

The debate about payday lending has been notable for the anti-lending forces as well as those in the press (am I being redundant?) fail to grasp basic facts about the payday loan industry. I have documented that repeatedly on this blog. It seems that I have more work to do, however, based on today’s editorial in the Dayton Daily News. Let me just comment on a few of the more egregious departures from reality the editors make:

There are alternatives to payday lenders. Credit unions, for instance, and even some banks will make short-term loans for much more reasonable rates.

Really? Then why do people choose payday lenders who, in the view of these editors, rip them off? Are these consumers idiots? Well, no, since the notion that credit unions or banks are going to be making high-risk, unsecured loans at low rates to a large number of people is ridiculous. It isn’t happening now and it won’t happen when the ban goes into effect. The fact is that these high rates are necessary to provide the product that borrowers want and need.

After Sept. 1, short-term loans simply would be capped at 28 percent on an annualized basis, versus the 391 percent that can be charged now. Borrowers would pay $18 for a two-week $300 loan, not $45.

No. A 28% APR on a two-week, $300 loan is $3.23. Would you loan money to someone for that low of a rate? Would you make a profit if you did?

But when lawmakers looked into the payday businesses’ practices, they found that many customers were being encouraged to take out loan after loan because high fees were trapping them in debt.

That sounds like lawmakers actually did a study of the issue and discovered the borrowing patterns of those who take these loans. That didn’t happen. They heard from a handful of people who needed a payday loan at the time but, in retrospect, didn’t like the price they paid. But these borrowers agreed to pay the price at that time, indicating that the viewed it then as a fair price. Furthermore, there was no evidence that people were being encouraged to take out more than one loan. The plural of anecdote isn’t data. (more…)

Frank S. Meyer is a somewhat forgotten figure in the conservative movement today (compared to, say, William F. Buckley or Barry Goldwater). But he was an important conservative philosopher who did his best to unite the libertarian and traditionalist wings of the conservative movement by showing how a belief in God and a respect for human liberty come from the same source and cannot be separated.

I’m reading his book The Conservative Mainstream right now. There are nuggets of wisdom on every page and I’d urge everyone to find a copy and read it closely. In lieu of that, I feel obliged to share these two quotes with readers of this blog because they seem especially relevant to the present political debate, although they were written decades ago. The first, written in 1965, seems a perfect prediction of what has happened to the GOP under the Bush Administration and the recent leadership in Congress:

If the [conservative movement] allows fascination with methods and techniques to become primary in its thinking, it will inevitably succumb to the temptation of gaining power for the sake of gaining power. If it wins, those who achieve power will be the prisoners of their methods, little different in essentials from the men who hold power today. Concentration on method without the greater emphasis on transforming popular consciousness can only lead to rivaly with the Liberals in appealing to the baser instincts of the people. The conservative movement has a more difficult task: to appeal to the higher instincts and beliefs that survive, half smothered, in the American people. This is the only foundation for a victory worth winning.

(more…)

Ohio native Drew Carey has a great new video discussing the advance of the nanny state and the loss of our liberties, courtesy of the Reason Foundation:

In honor of Independence Day, here is the full text of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is always worth reading on the Fourth of July between the picnics and fireworks just so we remember why we are celebrating.

Thomas Mitchell wrote an interesting column this week in the Las Vegas Review Journal placing the Declaration of Independence in its historical context and then wondering whether the American people still share those same ideals today.  Mitchell writes:

Today Americans whine about FEMA not coming quickly enough to the rescue, demand bailouts for those who took out home loans they could not afford, complain about Congress and the president letting gasoline prices soar, cheer a candidate who talks about the nation in collectivist terms, and are ready to raise taxes on everyone else.

At the time of the Revolution, it is estimated the typical tax burden — with or without representation — was 20 cents per capita per year at a time when annual earnings were somewhere between $60 and $100. Today the total tax burden is upward of 40 percent.

We plan to reprint the Declaration of Independence Friday on the editorial page. But I must wonder if we have lost that American mind-set that Jefferson cherished. How many of us are still willing for the sake of true liberty to pledge “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”?

Since we will be celebrating American independence tomorrow, where the theme of “no taxation without representation” played prominently, this video illustrating the opressive nature of high tax rates seems appropriate:

In anticipation of the Fourth of July, Steven Chapman at Reason magazine has an interesting article about how freedom (specifically economic freedom) is essential to the pursuit of happiness:

Two things, it appears, are needed to increase the supply of happiness: freedom and money. As it happens, a substantial amount of freedom is crucial to the creation of wealth. There is no such thing as a rich totalitarian country, as even the onetime totalitarians in Beijing finally realized. So in a very real sense, freedom is the key to happiness.

The survey, by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, involved asking people in 97 countries two simple questions: “Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy or not at all happy?” and “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”

What the researchers found is that in the 52 countries where the poll has been done over the last couple of decades, the percentage of people giving upbeat answers rose in 40. Among the places where smiles have been spreading are such developing countries as China and India, which have grown freer as well as more prosperous.

Today’s Columbus Dispatch ran E.J. Dionne’s screed about the conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court engaging in activism to reach the decision in the Heller case, striking down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban as unconstitutional. While he throws the term “activism” around, Dionne does not define the term in any meaningful way. Fortunately, the Federalist Society’s blog regarding the recent Supreme Court term includes an interesting discussion about “activism.” Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, provides a useful definition: “the term ‘judicial activism’ succinctly captures the Court’s wrongful invasion of the realm of representative government and the injury that invasion inflicts on the powers of American citizens.”

Under this definition, the U.S. Supreme Court has engaged in liberal judicial activism on numerous occasions, including perhaps most prominently in Roe v. Wade. Regardless of how you feel about abortion as a policy matter, the Roe v. Wade majority went out of its way to invent a right to abortion that is nowhere to be found in the text of the Constitution and effectively struck down state laws regulating abortion across the country. Even liberal scholars agree that the reasoning of Roe is indefensible. (more…)

Mike Maurer is right about the fact that follow-up litigation will be necessary to define the scope of the Second Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms. While Heller is a landmark case in that it recognizes the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right, it also is fairly limited, at least on its face, in its application. In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia writes that “since this case represents this Court’s first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field.” In discussing regulations of the right to keep and bear arms that might be permissible, Scalia avoids speculating about them, writing “there will be time enough to expound upon the historical justifications” for such regulations “if and when those exceptions come before us.”

The ban struck down in Heller was a District of Columbia law. Another issue left undecided by Heller is whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms against state or local regulations similar to the DC law.

We may get answers to some of these questions sooner, rather than later, as lawsuits are planned challenging gun restrictions in Chicago and San Fransisco.

Thomas Suddes wrote this op-ed in Sunday’s Columbus Dispatch regarding the Ohio Supreme Court’s recent decision to compel Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to appoint Brian K. Daley to the Summit County Board of Elections. The Summit County Republican Party Executive Committee recommended Daley after Brunner refused to appoint the committee’s first choice, Alex Arshinkoff.

Despite Suddes’ claim that the court deployed “activism” in reaching its decision, the reality is that the court was presented with a statute that is ambiguous as it relates to the relative roles of the county political parties and the secretary of state in appointing members of the county boards of elections. The justices used their interpretive skills to effectuate an outcome that is consistent with the text and intent of the statute.

This is nothing compared the court’s past activism. During the 1990s up until 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court regularly found itself in protracted battles with the General Assembly by striking down laws related to school funding, tort reform, workers’ compensation reform and other public policy matters. Today, following a series of retirements and subsequent elections, a majority of the court has emerged that respects the doctrine of separation of powers and recognizes the authority the Ohio Constitution gives the General Assembly to enact public policy. Two justices – Maureen O’Connor and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton – who are part of that current majority – are up for re-election this year. Accordingly, the November election will help determine the future direction of the Ohio Supreme Court, including whether it will maintain its current path of acting with restraint from the bench or return to its activism of the past by regularly second-guessing the policy decisions of the General Assembly.