Letter to Bob Hurt, re: USPS financial services.

Predatory lending is among my greatest concerns for what's wrong about America.  And I'm not at all sure how to fix things.  I don't think financial services through the USPS will be a remedy without dangers... specifically the danger of systemic collapse should this "too essential to fail" institution have collection issues.

I developed a certain affection for Tom Bliley, when the Clinton impeachment circus destroyed my faith in Congress and I became something of an active correspondent.  I had hoped that my Delegate, Paul Harris could replace him.  I hoped he might have replaced Virgil when the district lines were drawn that way after the 2000 Census.  Anyhow, I voted for Martin, not Cantor.  Both had their issues, but I trust a man of faith more than an acolyte of Objectivism.  You seem to be something of both, but I hope sometime to appeal to the former.  Often, I see something in the Sunday texts that might serve to persuade you to follow Jesus, not Ayn.  Anyhow -- back to predatory lending.

Cantor was only my Rep for his first term.  I didn't write much, and his correspondence responses paled to Bliley's exemplary staff work (as do yours, though meritorious, relative to Virgil's -- I never cared for Perriello's).  I recall writing against his signature education tax credit, for the designation of the Falls of the James as an historical treasure, for Bliley's signature Liberty Dollar, and for developing means for reputable financial companies to better secure debt to displace collateralized usury (pawn, title, and paycheck loans, also rent-to-own).  I think perhaps Cantor read "securitized" instead of "secured" and "mortgage" rather than collateral, and tongue-in-cheek blame my emails to Cantor for America's economic collapse. (As I tongue-in-cheek imagine Lewinsky as a correspondence clerk reading my letter to the President mentioning his boring neckties (Rush, at the time, was selling neckties), then selecting her initial gift to Handsome).

The point being -- the clients of predatory lenders don't deserve too much consideration.  Consumer lending in general is symptomatic of the cancer in our culture that creates desperation (which RHINOS love) and dependency (which Democrats love).  A consumer culture is a sick culture -- an exploitative culture.  It is the culture you, Rep Hurt, pander to every time the price of gas rises at the pumps.  It is the culture those offensive internet campaign ads, funded with public money, appealed to.  Our aspirations, not our appetites, ought direct our energies.  That is authentic Republican culture -- nothing RINO about it, though too often dismissed as such.

But, our God accommodates the hardness of our hearts.  He's a God of harm reduction. (I welcome the opportunity to expand on that theme, but I've diverged enough already).  So we work to (treat the symptoms) thwart the exploitation and income inequality and compensatory socialism of a culture of consumer debt (including the National debt for recurring expenses), while seeking to identify, understand, and cure the illness.  USPS financial services will likely be a more socially healthy response to consumer lending than Paycheck lending -- but bears the same risks.  The risks, and means to lessen them (and not systematize them, as happened with mortgage lending) must be addressed.  The public treasury and national economy cannot be held hostage to the insatiable hungers of a sick society.

What I hope to see more of is aspirational lending -- enterprise lending.  What you, Rep Hurt, are championing (or seem to be) in your appeal for unfettered and unmonitored private equity funding.  I see where micro-lending by faith organizations is something I'd like to explore.  People with dreams need someone other than Gordon Gecko and the Shark Tank to support those dreams.  And, despite your fine rhetoric, they need their Gordon Geckos to be licensed, registered and regulated.