Letters to the Editors

Payday loans have fee caps

The Times showed a lack of understanding about the payday lending industry in its recent editorial ("The financial reform test," Saturday, March 13).

Tennessee law does not allow payday lenders to charge one cent of interest and also does not allow loan rollovers. In fact, Tennessee has such a strong regulatory structure for payday lending that its laws have been copied by other states.

Payday lending is the most transparent financial product on the market with simple, one-time fees that are capped at $30 in Tennessee. These short-term loans cannot fairly be judged on an annual interest rate. In Tennessee, the cost of a payday loan is between $15 and $17 per $100 borrowed and the loans cannot be rolled over at additional costs. State law also limits the amount of payday loans to $300.

Any reduction in these fees would not allow lenders to cover the costs of overhead, bad debt and other costs.

The payday lending industry is regulated by the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions and similar agencies in other states. Adding a new layer of federal financial regulation to payday lenders does not make sense, especially since short-term loans did not cause the nation's financial meltdown.

RYAN H. HARRIS

Communications

Manager

Check Into Cash

Corporations are not people

Clarence Page is right in his thoughtful piece on the history of corporations claiming the right to become persons (Times Free Press, Perspective section, March 14). Corporations are not people.

They are claiming the same rights as the American people, but we must never forget that they are not people.

Corporations are legal fictions. They shrug off any personal responsibility for their behaviors.

We should not give these empty shells the same rights as American citizens.

CHARLES K. ZAMMIT

Sewanee, Tenn.

Bottle legislation won't achieve goals

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

This is true for proposed bottle deposit legislation, which was supported by a Times editorial (March 15). The legislation requires consumers to pay an extra nickel per bottled beverage, such as soft drinks or beer, and get their money back after returning the empty container.

Convenience store operators in Tennessee share the newspaper's concern for reducing litter and increasing recycling. A bottle bill fails to achieve these goals.

Bottle bills are expensive and ineffective. It costs $520 per ton to recycle containers with bottle deposits, compared to $150 per ton for curbside recycling.

A professional litter survey of Tennessee found that only 5 percent of litter comes from beverage containers. If every beverage container were eliminated from roads and parks, 95 percent of litter would remain.

Border cities such as Chattanooga suffer with a bottle bill because higher prices drive customers over-the-border, resulting in loss of customers, jobs and millions of dollars in sales taxes.

Let's stop wasting time on a bottle bill and look to the future for proven programs to reduce litter and increase recycling.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

EMILY LEROY

Executive Director

Tennessee Fuel and

Convenience Store

Association

Pass reform, watch negativism wither

With the advent hopefully of the passage of health care reform by reconciliation, I anticipate that once people get to know its benefits that all the negativism fostered by the right will begin to wither on the vine.

For me, it matters not so much if the Democrats lose seats or even retain control of Congress in November as much as passage of comprehensive health care reform.

The health insurance industry has held a death grip over citizens for too long, and now it is time for the pendulum to swing from the right back to the middle. For too long as well, there has been a self-serving public attitude and no sense of a national responsibly as a country toward those less fortunate. Indeed, the mindset of me, me, me, low taxes must be replaced by the "there but for the grace of God go I."

Indeed, somehow we clammor over the death of soldiers in Iraq, but at the same time are indifferent to citizens dying who have no health insurance.

MIKE C. BODINE

Stop playing games on voting process

Nancy Pelosi apparently is considering a procedure whereby the House "is deemed" to have passed the Senate bill. The actual vote of the House would be on the amendment to the original Senate bill. Many House members want to be able to say that they did not vote for the original Senate bill that had serious flaws like the Nebraska fix. This procedure has been ridiculed.

The usual procedure would be to appoint a conference committee with equal numbers of senators and representatives. Then the conference committee bill would be voted on by both the House and the Senate. There are technical problems related to this concerning the Byrd Amendment, the Senate resolution that authorizes the Reconciliation Process. Also, the Democratic majority has dropped from 60 to 59, and Republicans could and would filibuster a conference committee bill for months.

This is mostly procedural bunk that the public regards as "M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E." There is no substantive difference between the two procedures.

Why don't those statesmen and women in Congress (if there are any left) take off their Mouseketeer hats and put together a bill and vote on it? Can't those big black mouse ears hear the public?

BART BURNS

Ramsey response on mining is weak

Judging by his response to a question in Sunday's Times Free Press, it's probably safe to predict that this time next year Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, a candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, will still be ... Tennessee's lieutenant governor.

Candidates for governor were asked if they supported a ban on "mountaintop removal" mining techniques. Ramsey weaseled out, choosing to describe the technique as a "straw-man argument pushed by those who want to drive up your monthly energy bill by ending all coal and coal exploration permanently in the service of radical environmentalism."

That's nonsense, of course, but the larger questions is this: Does Ramsey believe in protecting Tennessee's mountains and waterways from that "mountaintop removal" technique? If not, he's hardly in a position to talk about "radical environmentalism."

Incidentally, fellow Republican Zach Wamp's response was almost equally as weak, saying only that technique isn't used in Tennessee, and that 95 percent of all coal mining here is occurring in old mines that are being reclaimed. Well, yes, but would he directly oppose efforts to bring "mountaintop removal" mining to the state?

MICHAEL LOFTIN

Hixson

When does house lower in value?

For over 40 years, I have never seen an appraiser on our home site, yet a new appraisal is always higher than the previous one.

I know the new appraisal has to be "tax neutral" for the first year of the new appraisal versus the old one.

My question: What happens the second, third and the fourth years which again have to be "tax neutral" to the new appraisal.

With property value on the decline and our home over 76 years old, the only new addition is the replacement of the roof; this is normal wear and tear.

Yet, when we started paying on the house, our monthly premium was $135. However, the final payment 30 years later was close to $300 a month. The insurance did not increase that much; the house got older. But the payment increased over 125 percent.

Mayor after mayor always says, "We have not increased property tax for (blank) number of years.''

Yet, when a person buys a vehicle or just about any property other than land or house, the value decreases.

How many times must a house be used before it is reduced in value?

EDWARD E. TINNEY