Months ago a survey of SD Bread for the World members yielded strong support for endorsing a ballot initiative to limit payday loans and car title loans to 36% annual interest. (Current average annual interest is 574%.)  Thus, BFW-SD is one of the endorsers.
The organizers have been meticulous in their planning. Now the signature gathering begins.
3 ways you can help:
1. Find more endorsers.
Think of individuals or groups whose names would make positive influence in your part of the state, and ask for endorsements and let organizers know. (steve@hildebrandstrategies.com)
2. Contribute funds.
Every effort like this has expenses. Consider sending a donation (not tax-deductible) to South Dakotans for Responsible Lending, PO Box 709, Sioux Falls 57101.
One suggestion is to give as much as you would be willing to spend to get your granddaughter out of her payday loan.
3. Gather signatures. Lots of people are needed on this.
1. Ask if registered voter in SD. Â 2. Offer the Attorney General’s explanation. Â 3. Watch the signing of all 12 signatures on the page. (Don’t sign it yourself. Sign someone else’s petition.) 4. Sign at the bottom as circulator only before a notary, and send in the page.
To get blank petitions and the little pads of info with AG’s explanation, email to steve@hildebrandstrategies.com
A SD-specific website will be up soon:Â http://captheratesd.com/
Already there’s info on facebook: Â https://www.facebook.com/southdakotansforresponsiblelending
Already there’s info on facebook: Â https://www.facebook.com/southdakotansforresponsiblelending
It’s not a partisan issue. All sorts of people agree that exploiting the poor is wrong. Every day in our state, people are caught in these dramatic cycles of debt. Better alternatives exist and are developing in the country. Let’s join the growing number of states with a 36% cap. Your effort on this will have a huge payoff in terms of improving the lives of thousands of vulnerable people in our state!
Thanks for your help.
“When a family has nothing to eat, because it has to make payments to usurers, this is not Christian, it is not human. This dramatic scourge in our society harms the inviolable dignity of the human person.â€
-Pope Francis
-Pope Francis
This kinda also attacks the credit card loan sharks. They, teamed with the payday & pawn, could become a major ad and lobbyist campaign against the petitions and vote. I think they’ll lose because most overextended citizens don’t vote and voter citizens resent how theses businesses prey on the poor. I see credit cards becoming obsolete in favor of Paypal, Ipay, and Bitcoin. They’re immediate and convenient. It’s barter so no sales tax.
Where Jack Daniels is made in Tennessee is no alcohol sales. SD could become the credit card state where nobody has a card.
But these places must be good for you. I read the billboard sign “We’re Here For You When Life Happens.” The one I like the best is “Come in. We’ll pay off your pay day loan.”
I will definite sign a petition. The imitative should have wording about on-line lending also. I have to assume there are also many on-line lenders using our state.
Brennan better have funded his new ventures with his existing wealth as something like this would pretty much end the money train. Could be lots of empty store fronts in the strip malls around town also.
Many times this is not truly “poor” people as much as it is people who can not control their spending to income and already have very poor credit and can no longer get loans from the credit union or banks.
I also have heard a lot of big wheel gamblers use them to, to hide the money they spend on gambling from their personal bank accounts and ‘spouses’.
I think whoever writes the petition should be sure to distinguish between “interest rates” and “Annual Percentage Rates”. Fees enter into one, and not the other. Math examples would explain it best.