Thanks to Willamette Week, we now know that not all teachers are lounging in the lap of luxury on the public dime (PERS) after leaving the profession. Some are actually working for their mansions in the West Hills.
Take the case of former math teacher Luanne Stoltz. She retired after twenty years in the public school trenches to enter the private sector, where she's earned enough money to move into a 5000 square foot West Hills home valued at over $800,000.
Her newfound profession? Payday loans, which have APR's of nearly 500%. Rates like those by any other name are still usury, and there were once laws against them.
Stoltz and others in the loan shark racket plead "market forces" in defense of their usurious rates:
"Borrowers would not have signed up for nearly three-quarters of a million payday loans last year, she says, if they were unhappy with the product."
For opponents of rampant loan sharking in Oregon, help may be on the way. Karen Minnis has proposed that the upcoming legislative special session deal with the problem. Never mind that Minnis opposed such legislation in the regular session. And that she "...gets more payday loan-related political contributions than any other lawmaker... ." Her spokesman assures us that "nobody has puchased the speaker's vote."
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Yesterday I mentioned a cryptic reference to "market forces" on the Operation Lemonade website, an arm of the save Hollyrood Elementary campaign. Today's Willy Week has references to both "market forces" and Hollyrood, the first a letter about last week's feature on Wal-Mart, and the latter a short news article about the Hollyrood parent uprising.
The Hollyrood piece identifies the man I referrred to as the blogger "Bombay Lemonhead" as Prashant Dubey. He's the one I wanted to question about the "market forces" term on the website. Maybe his reported "hint" at checking out Catlin Gabel if Hollyrood closes is what "market forces" in education means. If you don't like a school, you just pack up for another. If you have the means.
I say chill, Prashant. Your children have to go elsewhere after third grade anyway. Not that I approve of any school closures, Hollyrood or any of the working class schools that are likely on Vicki Phillips' hit list.
The Wal-Mart letter doesn't address "market forces" directly, but it comes close, and I think what Peter Shaw writes about Wal-Mart also applies to equity in educational opportunities. Or payday loans:
"The real bottom line is us. This is our country, and it is our economy. That we can decide what these mean is both the hard-won privilege and the responsibility of living in a free society. We can continue allowing companies like Wal-Mart free rein in lowering wages and benefits, hastening our race to the bottom. Or we can make our economy one that values humans not because they produce financial wealth for others, but because life is sacred and any system resulting in its desecration is unworthy of existence."
That seems as direct a challenge to the bondage of "market forces" as any that I've read.
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