Well, he’s at it again. I’d forgotten all about adding Thomas Suddes to the Payday Loan Opponent Dunk Tank, but given his clownish behavior, he certainly belongs there. Sudden just can’t stand the fact that he isn’t smarter than other people – namely, people who recognize that when THEY have a need for […]

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What backroom dealings are going on in Ohio government these days? Could it be that the forces opposed to payday lending (PDL) have given the nod and wink to the Ohio Division of Financial Institutions (DFI) to create a chilling effect on lenders? There’s certainly an argument to support that position.
A quick recap of Ohio […]

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Elyria, Ohio - Daniel Petric, 17, was convicted on Monday of aggravated murder, and attempted aggravated murder along with other charges.   The state prosecutors said that Daniel planned to kill his parents over a disagreement about the video game “Halo 3″.  Daniel’s defense attorney said that because he of his age and his addiction to […]

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Couldn’t help but ho ho over a Reuters report that New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was among a group of governors urging the federal government to provide the nation’s states with a $1 trillion special stimulus package. The money would be used for general fund purposes (education, unemployment benefits, etc.) as well as for public […]

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Pilot Mike Connell, Karl Rove’s computer guru and a key witness in a potential criminal case against the long time Bush political operative, died instantly when his Piper Supercub crashed and exploded in a neighborhood near Akron, Ohio one week before Christmas.
Mike Connell had been caught up in at least two major legal probes, one involving the disappearance […]

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Article removed at authors request

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They’re at it again. The Center for Responsible Lending, the corrupt “charity” that consistently and fraudulently attempts to ban payday loans to fill their own coffers with competing products, has released the results of another “Study”. This time, in an attempt to remove consumer choice from Ohio and Arizona, they trot out a […]

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By Honey Gillard
Legendary US rocker Bruce Springsteen wowed an open-air crowd of 80,000 on the White House campaign’s final stretch in Cleveland this past Sunday, with a moving set at a campaign rally for Democrat Leader Barack Obama.
With his acoustic guitar and harmonica in hand, Bruce Springsteen sang through a play list that included […]

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M.I.T. graduate Will Bradshaw is co-founder and President of Green Coast Enterprises, using innovative procedures to rebuild New Orleans homes devastated by Katrina. He is pro-life. He is voting for Barack Obama.
When Bradshaw describes himself as “pro-life,” he is speaking about an issue that goes beyond the simplistic code word that usually refers only […]

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Ohioans who believe in consumer choice, and that government should not meddle in the affairs of citizens, must vote NO on Issue 5.  This referendum seeks to overturn portions of HB 545, legislation that unreasonably caps short-term loan rates.
How unreasonable are the rates? They were designed to be so low that lenders who offer this life-saving […]

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The Columbus Dispatch reports that OH officials are looking into whether state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed to dig out personal information about Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (AKA “Joe the Plumber”), some of which was used  by the MSM to damage the credibility of this private citizen who dared challenge Sen. Barack Obama on […]

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Within a few days of the “Joe the Plumber” incident, I was reading about his tax lien, that he lacked a full plumber’s license, and that
the plumber currently has an income level that would make him eligible for Obama’s proposed tax cut rather than the tax increase.
ABC news then found quotes a lot of […]

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Difference in Turnouts for Biden and Palin Interesting
Ohio Claimed to Now Be Obama Blue

Ohio is considered one the key battleground states in the upcoming 2008 Presidential election. While the polls are predicting Obama is ahead of McCain in Ohio, the low numbers of supporters at recent Ohio Biden rallies tell a different story: Sarah Palin […]

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By Cynthia Ruccia, Special to The Stiletto Blog
Wow … flying to St. Paul, MN, for the Republican National Convention. I still feel like I’ve fallen down that rabbit hole in “Alice in Wonderland” and the world is upside down.
Honestly, when 2008 started, I had a whole set of New Year’s resolutions just like everyone […]

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When Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) took the stage to deliver her remarks before the DNC, the enthusiasm of the crowd and the applause she got rivaled that of the iconic Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who perhaps delivered his last address to convention delegates on Monday.
Hillary gave one of the finest speeches of her political career. […]

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By Cynthia Ruccia, Special to The Stiletto Blog 
It was with very mixed feelings I travelled to Denver yesterday. On my plane from Columbus, OH, were Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner - a woman who just might be one of the biggest figures on election night, if the results in Ohio are close - and the state […]

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Let’s take a minute to discuss the blatant duplicity of Ohio’s Rep. Chris Widener (R – Springfield).  During the Assembly’s consideration of HB 545, which nobody except obtuse politicians and corrupt charities wanted passed, Rep. Widener met with several mom-and-pop payday lenders.   He told them, to their faces, that he liked their honest business models […]

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By completely ignoring the pleas of thousands of payday loan borrowers, putting 6000 Ohioans out of a job during a recession, and costing the Ohio economy millions of dollars, I hereby sentence the Gov. Strickland and the Ohio Legislature to Civil Disobedience Torture.
That’s right, since Ohio’s politicians decided to act in their own best interest […]

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By Matthew Mayer
 
As payday loans vanish from Ohio storefronts in the next few months because of HB 545, I thought I would provide some perspective on the issue. 
 
The great irony here is that prostitution is illegal, yet Ohio’s legislators have lawfully rented themselves out in exchange for votes.
 
Darn.  I promised myself I wouldn’t get puerile.  […]

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By Matthew Mayer
This article isn’t about the pros and cons of payday loans.  For that discussion, just read this or this or this.  The facts about payday loans are clear.   They work.  They’re needed.  They need some reform, but not run out of the state.
So this article is directed at the self-serving, self-dealing politicians that […]

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Generally speaking one expects our politicians regardless of political color to do their very best for all sectors of the population. Not so in Ohio. Yesterday the Republican heavy Ohio Senate voted to change the Payday Loan industry. And change it in such a fashion that the vast majority of the 1600 or so Payday […]

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New Jersey art dealer, George Wieschenberg of Lambertville, was sentenced to six years of prison for being a marijuana “farmer.”
According to MSNBC, Wieschenberg, pleaded guilty to “operating a marijuana production facility,” in which he grew marijuana plants, said State Attorney General Anne Milgrim.
Back in October of 2007, New Jersey State Police officers saw large marijuana […]

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An estimated 2500 people rallied outside of the Statehouse in Columbus Ohio to protest new legislation aimed at curtailing the loan practices used by the Payday loan industry.
Ohio lawmakers have passed House Bill 545, which sets the maximum annual interest rate on payday loans at 28 percent, this is a far cry from the current […]

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John McCain (R-AZ) swept OH, RI, TX and VT by huge margins to secure his party’s nomination for the presidency, while Hillary Clinton (D-NY) staved Barack Obama (D-IL) off with double-digit margins in OH and VT and a narrow win in the TX primary (as of this writing, the TX caucuses have not been called, […]

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There’s a poll out there saying that the majority of Americans feel that the press is out of touch, and that the majority get their news from the internet.
Yet this year’s primary elections have managed to have the normal voters smash the preconceived notions of the chattering class, who backed one than another candidate, only […]

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Senator Clinton was civil until she started losing. Obama is answering her, charge by charge. This is not going to be enough. The Clintons have a veritable Kitchen Sink Factory to create weapons to hurl at their opponents. But Hillary’s own tub is full of dirty bathwater. Maybe it’s time for Obama to throw the […]

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Earlier this month, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan told The New York Times that the choice that Jewish voters had in the Dem primary was “almost an embarrassment of riches” and that they felt “a certain amount of distress that they have to choose […]

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Since when does a dying campaign inspire a sudden cash infusion of 35 million dollars?
In a conference call pep talk to contributors, that’s what the sputtering Clinton machine announced Thursday. They claim that in February, they have suddenly received $35 million from 300,000 people, two-thirds of whom were new donors, and that most of the […]

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So who was the mysterious oppo researcher who gave Matt Drudge that photo of Barack Obama dressed in a turban and Somali garb on a trip to Africa in 2006? And why does his campaign consider it a “smear photo?” For that matter, why did John McCain apologize after one of his surrogates kept referring […]

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A Mixed Bag…

…But not as bad as Clinton or Obama
“He is really hard to get a fix on with gun rights.”
John McCain and the Second Amendment: how does he stack up?
When we tackled the question, we have to confess, we didn’t know. We assumed that McCain’s record on Second Amendment issues would be the […]

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