By PLS
Some people will do anything to protect a foetus. I find their theology and tactics repugnant, but they have been pretty darned effective in gnawing away at women’s abortion rights. So let’s borrow from the enemy, I say, to protect the family from financial predators.
Families are losing their homes right and left across this great country. This is a terrible threat to family values. A family on the street is a family truly in danger.
Conservatives have already laid the groundwork for this great cause. The Supreme Court has decided that grown women can’t be trusted to make intelligent decisions about their own bodies, and people who otherwise want to keep government out of our lives think they have the right to make reproductive decisions for people they aren’t even related to. It’s one tiny little step to agreeing that lots of people simply don’t have the education or experience to make good decisions about mortgages.
So let’s help the innocents who might be tempted by predatory lenders. I call it the Five Step Plan to Secure and Happy Familyhood:
1. The video: Our video won’t show cute little foetuses, it will show the destitute in extremis. Everyone about to sign up for a subprime loan will have to watch a tear-jerker of a video showing what can happen when you lose your house and can’t declare bankruptcy and your kids can’t go to school because they don’t have a settled address and your teeth drop out for lack of care. Etc. Etc.
2. The picketers: outside every subprime mortgage lending institution let's station aggressive noisy picketers with gruesome signs showing starving kids and crying mothers and fathers drinking their shame away. Etc. Etc.
3. The Written Warning: before anyone can sign for a subprime loan, he or she must read a precise description of terms and penalties in simple English—and in an easily readable typeface (no squinting allowed) and then pass a test* showing comprehension.
4. The Delay: potential borrowers should be forced to go home and cogitate for at least 24 hours after they receive the warning, during which time the little test can be graded by an incorruptible neutral party.
5. The Legislation: all of these procedures are palliatives. The only way to keep good but naive people from being taken advantage of and ruined is to pass legislation which will outlaw these predatory loans. The sooner such consumer protection legislation can be tested and declared constitutional by the courts the better.
There are of course some conservatives who think that people who sign up for bad mortgages have only themselves to blame, but surely we can count the on the family values lobby to support this initiative. What could be more destructive to family life than losing a home? Oh yes, a little rebalancing of the bankrupcy act to provide more consumer protection would also help.
*This was my bright little idea. It would be a bit of a nuisance, but it sure would help to keep people from signing impetuously, optimistically, foolishly on dotted lines they should avoid.