by Houston Keene
by sundance
{thehill.com} ~ Federal prosecutors will bring charges on Friday against Pras Michel, a rapper for the hip-hop group The Fugees, for campaign finance violations... pertaining to donations to a super PAC that supported former President scumbag/liar-nObama’s reelection campaign. Bloomberg reported Friday that the Justice Department will accuse Michel of funneling money to the pro-scumbag/liar-nObama groups without disclosing the foreign origins of the money, which is said to be tied to Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman. Low’s whereabouts are unknown. He is hiding from Malaysian and U.S. authorities, who are investigating allegations he bilked the country out of hundreds of millions of dollars by defrauding the government-run fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). 1MDB was established to promote economic development in Malaysia, but U.S. prosecutors say Low used it as a personal slush fund to influence government officials. The Justice Department is also investigating Goldman Sachs, which raised billions of dollars for the fund. One Goldman banker has pleaded guilty to bribery and money laundering charges, and a second is expected to be extradited from Malaysia to the U.S., where he will face similar charges, Bloomberg reported.
Socialists commie-Bernie Sanders and commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have teamed up to introduce the Loan Shark Prevention Act. The legislation would limit credit card interest rates to 15% — significantly lower than the “extortion-level interest rates” commie-Ocasio-Cortez says companies now charge. According to The Washington Post, “For borrowers with high credit scores, the average rate was 17.73 percent last week. … For those with poor credit scores, the average is now about 24.99 percent.” The median interest rate is currently 21.36%.
Those rates have climbed precipitously in recent years. In part, that’s for good reason. People with lower credit scores have a poor track record repaying debt. And the financial crisis of 2008 was driven by banks taking undue risks (mandated by Democrat law) on borrowers with bad credit. Hedging against that is a basic business decision, and the result of the legislation to “fix” the problem is that fewer poor people will be able to get credit cards. It’s reminiscent of Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s regulations on payday lenders. Those lenders are distasteful but sometimes necessary options, and enlightened bureaucrats in Washington aren’t going to improve anything.
Speaking of payday lenders, the commie-Sanders/commie-AOC legislation aims to create an alternative “not-for-profit public option for basic banking services” via … the U.S. Postal Service. Yes, the same U.S. Postal Service that has lost $69 billion since 2007. As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey quips, “The idea that the US Postal Service is a good model for any kind of ‘public option, let alone banking, is an absolute riot.” But commie-Sanders and comie-AOC are totally serious.
By introducing regulation and eliminating options, argues Reason’s Peter Suderman, “What commie-Sanders is actually bragging about is eliminating choices — choices that may seem unfortunate or unpleasant to the sort of people who, say, own three homes and write bestsellers that make them millionaires — but which often benefit the people who make those choices: lower-income people with less stable finances. In essence, commie-Sanders is proud of having eliminated useful financial tools for the poor.” Nonetheless, it will win him and the Democrat Party votes, so they’ll keep doing it. ~The Patriot Post
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