MIT study finds that black homeowners pay over $13,000 more on their mortgages than their white counterparts, amounting to a "black tax" on those homeowners. Why? Because of "risk-based pricing," which saddles black homeowners (who have lower credit scores and smaller down payments, for reasons I trust I don't have to enumerate) with higher interest rates and higher incidence of mortgage insurance. If you're still saying well, no duh, one of the study's authors will remind you that risk-based pricing has only been around for two decades, and if we can insist on preexisting condition protections in health insurance, we can do it here, too.
Speaking of health care, Facebook and Google ads constantly advertise for a certain named-after-our-President health care product that does not exist, but is merely a bait-and-switch for suspect health insurance plans. Facebook and Google have no shortage of excuses for letting the ads go up, but really, stamping out inaccurate ads is their job. Remember when it was conservative to protect consumers from misleading ads? I guess it's not "conservative" anymore to hire the people who would properly scrutinize the ads, though one might reasonably call that job creation.
You've no doubt seen all the photos of long voting lines in black neighborhoods, but you know vote suppression is even worse than that, as this article about a Tennessee poll worker who turned away voters with Black Lives Matter slogans on their T-shirts demonstrates. Of course I don't buy that this poll worker was merely confused about the law against expressing a preference for a candidate on a T-shirt, and I would say it's a good thing that his bosses didn't buy it, either, but his actions still managed to suppress some votes from "those people," so we can't discount the possibility that his bosses are saying job well done! to him when no one's looking.
Ho hum, right-wing "patriot" who used to yell RESPECTZ OURZ LAWZ!!!! at supposedly criminal immigrants now faces a felony identity theft charge, after allegedly using her former father-in-law's reward points to get herself a room at a California music festival, which suggests she's not even particularly good at identity theft. Also, she threw a tantrum when arrested, and now blames a "jealous" ex-husband, which isn't exactly a way to deny the charge. Ladies and gentlemen, your law-and-order right-wingers!
We tend to imagine that he's some kind of evil genius, but Mitch McConnell telling the White House not to pass any COVID-19 stimulus legislation because it'll interfere with getting Amy Coney Barrett on our Supreme Court sure looks like an unforced error of the first kind, which should remind you how you ought to feel about "evil geniuses" (i.e., they're so not geniuses -- if they were, they'd do something else with their lives!). Now the question is: will Amy McGrath run ads about this? Or would she find that too "uncivil"?
Finally, I was today years old when I remembered that criticizing some billboard operator's apparent inability to spell "dementia" (as "dimensia") when accusing Joe Biden of having it is not "elitist"! Yeah, I've ignored misspellings in emails and comments because I don't like giving my opponents an opening, but you know what? Evil people pretend anything is an opening anyway, and really, if you want to say things in public, you ought to observe basic rules of spelling, grammar, and syntax. And if being told that feels like a violation of your free speech rights, well, fuck your feelings.
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