More GOP punish-the-poor legislating deserves thumbs-down verdict

Always check your b.s. detector's batteries when Walker or one of his GOP legislative water carriers say the law needs more "certainty" for corporate Wisconsin.

Happened again late Tuesday as the GOP-run State Assembly, driving to adjourn for some pre-primary campaigning and having already targeted poor people this session with food stamp restrictions and mandatory drug testing, decided to add some fresh certainty for owners of 'rent-to-own' firms' by exempting them from disclosing to customers who may be low-income or poorly-educated that items they're buying on time can come with interest rates as high as 350%.

...Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said the goal of the legislation is to "create certainty for the industry but also have world class consumer protections."

 

Vos also claimed that this bill would still provide "world class consumer protections," while another Republican legislator touted an amendment which "will require rent-to-own companies to contribute $1 for each rental-purchase agreement to financial literacy programs."

A whole dollar! Could finance some educational stickers which say:

Don't Sign Here!!

This bill and all the b.s. it's soaked in me reminded me of the heart of Paul Newman's famous summation in "The Verdict." 

I saw the movie again the other night and thought you might want to see a clip of his courtroom speech, too.

This little portion certainly encapsulates not only this horrible Assembly bill, but also much of politics and life and law in Wisconsin under the ruling party's deadened, donor-driven, conscience-free Republican governance:

I mean there is no justice. The rich win; the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time we become dead, a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims -- and we become victims. We become weak; we doubt ourselves; we doubt our beliefs; we doubt our institutions; and we doubt the law.