Borrow from a friend! No one puts a gun to your head! Dave flips these comments off so cavalierly. Such a superficial and uncritical response. The gun to the head, Dave, is the fight to stay alive, to stay just one full step ahead of the wolf at the door, when you are lacking skills to move up, adequate education to succeed, and income strength to stretch the dollars to fit around just the basics. At best, people WITH these gifts are struggling today. Someone born into poverty soon comes to learn that ladders leading up and out can rarely be climbed alone, so those that can soon go off the grid and join the underground economy in one way or another, whether it’s selling pot, or trinkets at flea markets, or local jitney services. People need help, and not in the form of these corporate predators who will smile while pushing you further down into the mud. These companies were once, and should again, be outlawed. WE have the power to do this, as we did it in the past. These companies began to flourish again after the Reaganites de-regulated the financial industry. Google his famous “trickle-down theory” and read all about it. Interest rates like these used to be illegal, but they are back now because WE THE PEOPLE allowed the lobbyists to push the corporate, not the people’s agenda. We need to stop blaming the victims and start organizing to turn this criminal activity around. If you don’t want to get political — and I don’t — I think it’s a step down professionally and personally — then get off the grid and use some of the smaller community based strategies that are beginning to work here and elsewhere in the world: modestneeds.org, which gives small loans to people in dire straits. kiva.org, which does online lending for entrepreneurs. Find others. Join the microlending movement on a local basis — start your own if you’re able — and tell these vultures to go to hell. We’ll all be better off.

So yeah, no one who’s actually poor can access the internet. Ever.

Uoh you tell her to keep her heat reasonable or not get a nickel, so where does she go? Right. Geezus what a heartless guy my Grandson is, and when I was chilled to the bone too.

We are wondering who you work for now Dave.

Because the government’s done such a good job running MediCare, Medicaid, the Dept of Energy, the Dept of Agriculture, etc, right?

And, as for one bank at least, I know that they are now sending out letters for people to “opt-in” for overdraft protection, and the associated charges.