A General Assembly panel began work this week to determine what, if anything, to do about car title lenders charging 300 percent interest to people who can least afford it. The panel needn't labor long; the solution is easy: Ban these types of loans. Or at the very least require that they charge no more than the 36 percent interest limitation imposed on other types of lenders.
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U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, DAlbemarle County, who has already been the target of hostile campaign ads after his surprise victory over Virgil Goode last year, is bracing for more. The National Republican Congressional Committee is preparing to target House Democrats in swing districts who voted for the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation -- and Perriello fits the bill.
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William Hunter
Hunter, of Roanoke, is an IT manager for Roanoke County and a retired Air Force master sergeant.
As we celebrate the Fourth of July, I wonder what our forefathers would think of our actions today. Fifty-six men had the audacity to dissolve their allegiance from the British throne, pledging their "lives, fortunes and their sacred honor" for what they believed in: that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" and when government went astray that consent could be removed. This was not a letter to the editor but a treasonous declaration dissolving a colonial relationship that surely would bring military action from what was then a world superpower.
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Today's letter writers discuss the energy bill, health care, the Bible and Michael Vick.
Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free.
Happy Fourth of July, everyone. Have a great weekend.
First, officers' safety was compromised; then, public confidence was shaken in the Roanoke sheriff's leadership of her department after news broke of its participation in training that intentionally put officers downrange of live gunfire. Now, Roanoke County has decided to end joint operation of its training facilities with city law enforcement agencies. In an editorial Sunday, we'll write that the training fiasco should be a central issue in Sheriff Octavia Johnson's bid for re-election in November.
Some area lawmakers spoke out against Applachian Power's request for a rate increase saying it could devastate the elderly and jobless. Unfortunately, the rate increase is just a matter of the math as the electric generators is permitted to be reimbursed for the price it pays for coal to run the plants.
In an editorial, scheduled to run Monday, we will suggest lawmakers do more to help their constituents than make impassioned pleas. They could do more to encourage renewable energy generation, and they could add money to a fund to help lower-income residents pay the heating bill.
We were heartened to hear that the European Union and cell phone manufacturers have reached a deal for the companies to standardize the chargers for cell phones. In the future, all European cell phones will be compatible with Micro-USB chargers.
In an editorial we're writing for next week, we'll express tremendous hope that the same standardization comes to American cell phones and other rechargeable electronic devices.
It isn't time to start panicking about the state's computers, but it's getting close. Lawmakers heard testimony this week that the public-private partnership to run the commonwealth's government technology is a disaster. A few years ago, the General Assembly and then-Gov. Mark Warner worked out the deal creating the Virginia Information Technologies Agency to take care of the details. The commonwealth would pay $2 billion over 10 years to military-contracting titan Northrop Grumman. In return, the company would modernize state computer systems, manage them and become the information technology provider across all of state government.
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The Obama administration proposes creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency with broad powers to regulate any lender in an industry whose products range from mortgages to credit cards to payday loans. "This agency will have only one mission -- to protect consumers," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote in a statement Tuesday that coincided with delivery to Congress of a 150-page proposal to change the way the lenders do business.
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