A friend of mine has been sober for a couple of years now but back when she was struggling with her drinking she also ran up some debt. She told me that she started taking out loans at the payday lending stores that are on every corner in South Carolina, a recent report puts the number at 1,200. Pretty soon she was taking out loans to pay the interest on her existing loans. After she got sober it took her over a year to pay off her debt. Some of her interest rates were in the triple digits. My friend isn’t alone. Payday lenders are virtually unregulated in South Carolina. Other states including neighboring North Carolina have begun cracking down on these legal loan-sharks that prey on the poor and our military families but as usual South Carolina lags behind the rest of the nation and has let the payday lenders ring up big profits at the expense of hardworking folks living paycheck to paycheck.

I was disgusted to hear that former Democratic gubernatorial nominee and state senator Tommy Moore was leaving office to take a job with the payday loan industry’s trade association in Washington. This self-proclaimed ‘man of the people’ was going to work full-time to make sure that payday lenders remained unregulated and unrestrained in South Carolina and across the nation. I was also sickened to learn in a recent editorial opinion column by Warren Bolton in The State Newspaper that Steve Benjamin, chairman of the Richland County Democratic Party, is a member of Advance America’s board of directors. Advance America, the nations largest payday lender was co-founded by Billy Webster a long-time Democrat. It would appear that payday lenders have deep financial ties to the Democratic Party and that sickens me.

I had high hopes at the start of this legislative session that there would be some attempt at reforming the business practices of payday lenders.According to Bolton these attempts were beaten back by high-paid lobbyists and their legislative allies in the South Carolina legislature, which we know, now include former Senator Tommy Moore. Bolton reports that “Between 2000 and 2006, South Carolina ranked No. 8 in the amount of money payday and title lenders gave to campaigns. During that period, party committees and candidates for legislative and statewide offices collectively received $293,225 in donations from payday and title lenders and other predatory businesses, according to a report released by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which tracks contributions in all 50 States.” It’s called vote buying and this is business as usual in the South Carolina legislature.

Instead of reasonable legislative oversight like other states have enacted like limiting the number of loans an individual can have at any one time the payday lenders advocate ‘responsible lending practices.” Yeah, right. Kind of like those health care savings accounts that poor people are supposed to set up for themselves in lieu of employer provided health insurance. A fantasy that sounds good but can’t really happen in real life. Instead of working toward a reasonable legislative compromise and truly protecting people from harm, the payday lending industry has chosen to spend $10 million on a public relations campaign to warn them to borrow responsibly and reassure them how wonderful and helpful these legal loan sharks are, how nice.

I often wonder how people like Tommy Moore who ran an entire campaign on his image as a common man from a mill worker’s family can sell himself out and sleep at night? Do they not know anyone who has fallen victim to these predators? Have they never actually examined their business practices or seen the amount of interest they charge on these loans? Or do they simply not care? If business practices no matter how outrageous and detrimental to vulnerable, hard working people are legal does that still make them acceptable to people like Tommy Moore?

The first time I met Tommy Moore, I had a visceral gut reaction that he was a typical good ole boy. His line about being from a mill village and coming up from poverty was all too pat and I just couldn’t buy into it. I didn’t trust him and I thought his primary opponent Frank Willis the mayor of Florence was a much more believable and trustworthy candidate. Turns out I was right all along.