Wasserman Schultz Has a Change of Heart, But Too Little, Too Late

Bill Moyers, Michael Winship – Return with us now to the saga of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the soul of the Democratic Party.

First, a quick recap: Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), chair of the Democratic National Committee, also has been an advocate for the payday loan industry. The website Think Progress even described her as the “top Democratic ally” of “predatory payday lenders.” You know — the bottom-feeding bloodsuckers of the working poor. Yes, them.

Low-income workers living from paycheck to paycheck, especially women and minorities, are the payday lenders’ prime targets — easy pickings because they’re often desperate. Twelve million Americans reportedly borrow nearly $50 billion a year through payday loans, at rates that can soar above 300 percent, sometimes even beyond 500 percent. Bethany McLean at The Atlantic recently reported that the government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) studied millions of payday loans and found that “67 percent went to borrowers with seven or more transactions a year and that a majority of those borrowers paid more in fees than the amount of their initial loan.”

Yet when the CFPB was drawing up new rules to make it harder for payday predators to feast on the poor, Rep. Wasserman Schultz co-sponsored a bill to delay those new rules by two years. How, you ask, could the head of the party’s national committee embrace such an appalling exploitation of working people?

Continue reading

“We Stand With Our Incumbent Members” (Outsider Access Not Allowed)

Opponent of Wasserman Schultz in Florida Denied Access To Democratic Voter Data

florida
Tim Canova

Jonathan Turley – Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been widely accused of being a key architect of “rigging” the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. Among the various controversies surrounding Wasserman Schultz was her blocking Bernie Sanders’ campaign from accessing the DNC’s voter data files, which contain email addresses and telephone numbers for constituents.

Now Tim Canova, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University who is running against Wasserman Schultz for her seat in Congress, has revealed he found out that he too is blocked from accessing Democratic voter data. Mind you he is a Democrat but the state Democrats confirmed that only incumbents can gain access to the valuable resource in what critics have said is a blatant effort to favor such candidates. Canova has made the denial to the VAN system part of his campaign while various groups and individuals have campaigned for her to be removed as DNC head.

Florida Democratic Party spokesman Max Stelle is quoted as saying that the Florida Democratic Party does not offer data access “to candidates challenging incumbent members of Florida’s Democratic congressional delegation. This policy has been applied uniformly across the board since 2010. We stand with our incumbent members of Congress and we’re proud of the job they do representing the people of Florida. The Voter File is proprietary software created and owned by the Democratic National Committee that is maintained and operated by the Florida Democratic Party here in state.”

Continue reading