I received an email this morning from my Hawaii congresswoman Mazie Hirono, entitled “Credit Card Reform – Protecting Consumers from Abusive Credit Card Practices”. Ms. Hirono explained that the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act was passed by Congress last May, but “Soon after this law was enacted… some credit card issuers rushed to raise minimum payments and pull back credit offerings in anticipation of the law’s implementation.”
The email said further: ”Unfair and deceptive practices by credit card companies remain widespread in the market and continue to plague struggling consumers….One constituent reported that she works three jobs, pays her credit card bills on time every month, and maintains her credit card balance well below the limit only to see her credit card interest rates go up into the double digits in the past two months. Another stated that his credit card company hiked up his minimum monthly payments and arbitrarily increased his interest rate from 4 percent to 30 percent. Unfortunately, such practices have become standard operating procedure for many credit card issuers, making stories like these more and more commonplace.”
Sound familiar? Anybody else out there having the same problems?
Today I am moved to propose a class action movement, a massive act of financial civil disobedience against all those banks and credit card lenders who 1) got us into this mess in the first place, 2) received huge bailouts from our tax dollars, and 3) overpay their executives as everybody knows.
Let’s talk about numbers for a minute. If 100 people refuse to pay their credit card bills, they will ruin their credit and get some nasty phone calls. But, hey, if you get a few “plus 30’s” on your credit report, it’s shot for 7 years anyway, so why not go for it? How about if 1,000 people or 10,000 people joined the movement? Probably the same result. How about 100,000 people? Now somebody is going to sit up and take notice.
I remember the 60’s (yes, I WAS there), and we had a movement back then to leave the postage stamp off your utility bills, phone bills, etc., so that “The System”, “The Man”, would feel the pain. Well, the U.S. Post Office changed their policy and stopped delivering mail without a stamp. But there was another movement, one to Stop the War in Vietnam. That one worked — people demonstrated, heads got busted, it got on television, and eventually America woke up!
Ms. Hirono went on to say: ”Along with 44 of my colleagues in the House, I also sent a letter to Bank of America and Citigroup last week expressing concern about their new policies.” How nice. They expressed their concern. Like, that’s going to influence the banks?
We are at war here, and the only thing these megacorps understand is brute force. In the immortal words of Nancy Reagan, “Just Say NO!” Just say no to the banks that just raised your interest rate to 30%. Just say no to a lifetime of debt. Just say No Way, We Won’t Pay!
We need a Boston Tea Party, we need a Civil War, we need a Labor Movement, we need a massive demonstration, we need an insurrection. We need to stand up for our rights now! We need to hang together, or we shall all hang separately.