Having a long political memory comes in handy when one is a journalist, but it can be both a blessing and a curse. Some things you want to remember and other things you can’t forget.
Back when Nina Turner served in the Ohio legislature, the Ohio Black Legislative Caucus (OBLC), a group she belonged to and once chaired, was approached by lobbyists for the payday lending industry. That group of greedy robber barons who were routinely charging a whopping, ungodly, 391 annual percentage rate for loans to people in dire financial straits — many of them persons of color.
Outfits like CheckSmart were (and still are) subsidiaries of major banks in Ohio that don’t want their “good” names and reputations associated with such scurrilous financial gouging so they do it under another name. A bill was being proposed in Ohio to cap the amount of interest that could be charged to financially disadvantaged individuals, similar bills were be enacted in other states and by the federal government due to the fact these vultures operated with impunity right outside of every military instillation in the country, praying on and ripping off our soldiers.
In order to block the bill from passing in Ohio, the lobbyists for the industry needed the votes of black legislators, so they did the American thing, they bought them. Yep, a group of black legislators not only took money from these bastards, they also brought them by the hand into black communities where staged events were held so these shady operators could host “Free Seminars on Financial Education.”
In other words, these pieces of shit wanted to explain to black and poor folks how great it was that democracy was working in Ohio and how they should be downright happy to be fucked out of their hard-earned money. I was there, in the audience, so this isn’t something I heard, this is something I saw.
When the meeting was opened up for comments, I recall telling the lobbyists, “You guys have gone too far and are now are set to screw yourselves. As long as you only operated in black communities, no one in Columbus really cared about how much you ripped people off. But now you’re opening up storefronts all across the state, in white communities also — that’s why legislation is now being proposed to reign you guys in. This is Ohio, and while you can take advantage of black folk with impunity, the law is not going to allow you to take advantage of whites in a similar manner.”
Nonetheless, members of the OBLC (Nina included) took money from the payday lending lobbyists to, in essence, vote against their own constituencies to block the reform measure, which eventually passed. One state representative angrily told me that she took some of the money and bought school bags for children in her district, so I guess you could call her a “Bag Lady.”
I didn’t use that term however; I called the whole lot of them “political prostitutes” which they strongly objected to, as I knew they would (hey, that’s why I used the term). But my response was, “if the shoe fits, wear it.”
The problem for Nina in this upcoming congressional race is that a goodly percentage of her support comes from people who don’t live in the 11th Congressional District, and therefore can’t vote for her. But a lot of the people who do actually live in the district have gotten to know Nina over the years up close and personal (not just from TV sound bites), which doesn’t arguer well for her in the upcoming election.
More on Nina’s candidacy and the 11th District contest as the race heats up.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsIn