Category Archives: Marriage and Family

Issues impacting marriages and families

Marriage and Family, Public Policy Radar, Commentary, The Vote

YES On State Issue 5

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series 2008 Election Issues

Voting MachineOne of the two most contentious issues on Ohio’s Fall 2008 ballot is Issue 5. In 1995 Ohio’s legislature foolishly repealed the existing usury laws. In the wake of that action hundreds of so-called “payday” lenders popped up all over the state, usually in or near areas where predominantly lower- to lower middle class workers reside.

Just a few years ago, Ohio passed very tight new bankruptcy laws. The combination of tighter bankruptcy laws and the repeal of usury laws have created an economic atmosphere in which usurers can flourish. And have they ever flourished. The number of payday lenders grew by more than 1500% since 1996 from 107 to 1638 in 2007. Between 2006 and 2007 the number of Ohio’s payday lenders grew by 76 or over 5%1.

Taking advantage of Ohio’s current law which allows a 391% Annual Percentage Rate (APR) ceiling (this is for a two-week loan. A 10 day loan can be as high as 548% APR2 due to the decreased loan duration and subsequent increase in annual repayment periods ; to be fair a loan at the $800 cap is “only” 367% APR3) and an $800 borrowing cap, Ohio’s virtually unregulated payday lenders are reaping huge revenues from their chosen targeted customer base. And just who is that base? Those who can least afford it, naturally. People who have limited or no access to other kinds short-term credit- credit cards, equity in real property, acceptable credit rating (or in the case of young people new to the job market and college students, any credit rating) people in low-income jobs (seasonal employees, etc) or on a “fixed-income (retirees, injured and disabled workers4).” A favored target of payday lenders is families of enlisted military, whose pay rates tend to be dismally low. In many states payday lenders cluster near military bases. Or they used to. The federal government recently (2006) capped loans to soldiers and their immediate families at 36% and most payday lenders have moved on to greener pastures like subsidized housing.5 So much for noble payday industry claims of “just being there to provide a necessary service.” Only if the interest rate is in the triple digits as we will prove later.

What payday industry watchdogs say about the industry-

Morgan Stanley IPO Analysis of Advance America:

The Georgetown study reveals the long-term nature of much payday lending. At a 300 percent APR, the interest on a payday advance would exceed the principal after about four months. In these circumstances, the loan starts to look counterproductive: rather than bridging a gap in income, the payday advance may contribute to real financial distress. Advance America’s disclosures show that repeat borrowing is important. [emphasis added]

FDIC Center for Financial Research:

‘We find that high-frequency borrowers account for a disproportionate share of a payday store’s loan and profits.

Ernst & Young Analysis of Payday Lending Business Model:

The survival of payday loan operators depends on establishing and maintaining a substantial repeat customer base.’

Michael Stegman’s “Payday Lending: A Business Model that Encourages Chronic Borrowing” – Economic Development Quarterly:

The financial success of payday lenders depends on their ability to convert occasional users into chronic borrowers.

What the Payday lenders themselves say-

Stephen Winslow–Former Harrisonburg, Virginia Payday Store Manager:

This industry could not survive if the goal was for the customer to be ‘one and done’. Their survival is based on the ability to create the need to return, and the only way to do that is to take the choice of leaving away. That is what I did.6

My customers were not stupid or ignorant – they were in crisis. I ended any ability they may have had to overcome that crisis by putting the final nail in their financial coffins.7 [emphasis added]

Rebecca Flippo – Former Virginia Payday Store Manager:8

These companies feed on the people living on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis.The customers who do come in and repay the loans take out another loan right then almost every time.They want to create a dependence on their services so the customer is forced to reissue the loan on every payday.

We saw most of our customers every month.

We really played down the APR. We disclosed it, but we played it down.[emphasis added]

What the Bible has to say about deliberate gouging those who can least afford it-

If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. Ex. 22:25 ESV

Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your [poor] brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. Lev. 25:36, 37 ESV

You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. Deu. 23:19 ESV

Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit [That is, profit that comes from charging interest to the poor] gathers it for him who is generous to the poor. Prov. 14:31 ESV

Though the exegesis of this is well beyond the scope of this article (see Gary North and R.J. Rushdoony for an expansion), the Bible doesn’t condemn interest bearing loans for commercial purposes. The Institute For Principled Policy believes in the basic economic premise that market forces should set interest rates for commercial loans under normal circumstances. However, the Bible does strongly condemn the lending of money at interest, especially at rates that are condemned as usury under any circumstances except extreme hyperinflation, to those in society least able to repay the loan for reasons that are obvious. Truly, the book of Proverbs states it most eloquently

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender [emphasis added] Prov. 22:7 ESV

Compare the verse above with the highlighted part of Steven Winslow’s quote above. The payday lenders know they are a lender of last resort (i.e., the bad players are little better than loan sharks) and they are fully aware that most of their customers are unable to repay within the normal 2 week window without creating either a severe financial hardship or taking out another loan at the same usurous interest rate. That is why payday lenders specifically target a specific demographic of borrower. Why would anyone with a credit card or home equity loan capped at no more than 36% APR borrow from a payday lender at 391% APR in an emergency?

Currently there is no mechanism for making 0% bridge loans to needy borrowers. The Progressive movement and its influence on policy making, has resulted in the takeover of church functions like charitable loans, feeding, clothing, housing and educating the needy through the old church tithe agencies by the government, complete with gross over-taxation, nearly completely. Therefore, the biblical concept of equity provides for the private-enterprise establishment of a system to provide loans at reasonable cost and under reasonable repayment conditions for those who have fiscal emergencies but have no other recourse.

Unfortunately, the lenders have completely failed to govern themselves, as illustrated by the earlier quotes and, more importantly, the statistics which show that unscrupulous lenders know a cash cow ripe for milking when they see one.

Here are some interesting numbers9. Statistically, the average Ohio payday loan is $328. The average interest rate is 391% with a two-week interest due payment of $49.33. But as we have noted, the payday industry thrives on and cultivates repeat business. The average payday borrower visits a single location 7.4 times per year. This means that the average borrower pays out $365.01in interest alone on top of his original loan amount of $328 or more than 111% of the original. But that doesn’t end the story. That same borrower doesn’t just visit one payday store front. On average, he visits 1.7 per year. That means that the 7.4 times he visits a single shop has to be multiplied by 1.7 to get his total number of loans taken each year at the average $328. That brings the total to 12.6 loans of $328 each with an interest payout of $49.33 each, bringing the total interest only to $621.51or 189%  total interest paid. This also means that the average payday borrower is indebted to a payday lender for nearly 6 months per year!

But the situation is worse than it looks at first blush. Using data from Michigan , the state closest to Ohio’s demographic and economic numbers, we find that 94% of the entire revenue generated by payday lenders came from borrowers who had 5 or more transactions per year (pretty close to our example above and the equivalent of 75% interest only repayment). Seventy-seven per-cent of their revenue came from borrowers who had 12 or more transactions per year (very close to the example). Eight per-cent of Michigan customers had 30 or more transactions but they accounted for 27% of the revenue of Michigan payday lenders. In other words, a small but significant percentage of borrowers were indebted with one loan for the entire year, and a second loan virtually certainly with at least one other payday lender for at least part of the year and paid 450% or more in total interest. That’s $1476 or more in interest alone for a $328 loan. If that’s not usury then what is?

Here’s the bottom line. Low-income payday borrowers are easily trapped in a cycle of debt by extremely high interest rates and very short pay-off times from which there is virtually no escape.10 It’s designed that way by testimony of former and present industry insiders and industry analysts

The financial success of payday lenders depends on their ability to convert occasional users into chronic borrowers.11

Irrespective of whether the repeat transactions are cast as “renewals,” “extensions,” or “new loans,” the result is a continuous flow of interest-only payments at very short intervals that never reduce the principal.12

– Michael Stegman, “Payday Lending: A Business Model that Encourages Chronic Borrowing,” Economic Development Quarterly

Having put to rest the false industry arguments that it “isn’t really 391% interest” by showing that, indeed it can be 391% interest and more and that the APR is a reasonable description that allows loan comparisons with credit cards, banks and credit unions, we now must deal with the question that seems to have ruffled so many libertarian feathers- the loan registry.

An analysis of HB 545 shows the following information: Under the new law loans are capped at 28% APR and borrowers are permitted only 4 loans per year, only one at a time and only 2 in a given 90 day period (this final requirement is waived for borrowers who complete a state-approved “financial literacy” course to be offered at low cost at local community colleges). The repayment period must be longer than 30 days.

And, to insure that these requirements (and a number of others borrower safeguards including seriously restrictions to the loan shark-style harassment collection methods often used by payday lenders against those whose finances they have had a significant hand in ruining) are adhered to there is a provision for the creation of a loan registry. BUT, and this is important, the registry CANNOT be used by law for any purpose other than tracking the transparency of the loan transactions, CANNOT by law contain any private financial identity information (e.g., the Social Security number of the borrower, bank ID numbers, etc.) and CANNOT by law even be created if there are less than 400 licensed payday lenders. Industry sources have made it clear that 90-95% of lenders will leave the state if the law passes.

Taking the best case scenario given by lenders would leave 10% of the current number of lenders or about 164 proprietors left to pull licenses, well under 400. Therefore, no registry.13 And if there ever is one, it will most likely be under the supervision of a contractor with experience handling sensitive records- just like a bank, credit card company or credit union!

The loan registry is recommended by groups like The Ohio Coalition For Responsible Lending because it keeps the more predatory payday lenders from playing the corporate shell game of moving loans around to corporate subsidiaries and partners to hide them from regulators, hardly an unimaginable scenario for companies who have no qualms about targeting low- and fixed- income borrowers with 391% APR interest rates. The experience of other states proves the necessity of the registry.

Frankly, we’ve left out a lot of information regarding details like interest rate and cost deception and collection methods employed by the payday industry but you can research these yourself, especially by reading Stephen Winslow’s blog site and The Center For Responsible Lending website (see footnotes below).

It is clear that the current payday lender regulation is completely inadequate to control the rampant greed and usury that creates a cycle of debt in the low- and fixed-income community which the industry targets. While the Institute For Principled Policy applauds initiative and vehemently supports the right of businessmen to conduct their chosen business, we cannot sit on our hands and say nothing as social Darwinists actively work to allow the poor to be trapped into penury and wage slavery by unscrupulous lenders. To do so would be a dishonor and curse on our own heads.

The legislation which will be approved by a “YES” vote on the Issue 5 referendum will go a long towards keeping low- and fixed-income families from disintegrating due to debt and bankruptcy and the downward spiral of family despair and destruction that often follows. It will also allow the principled players in the industry who really do want to provide a needed service stay and run an efficient and profitable business to continue to operate. It is not an outright ban, as the industry has claimed. We know this from the several other states which have been forced, as has Ohio, to regulate corporations who have allowed themselves to become no better than the loan sharks the usury laws were passed to stop originally.

VOTE “YES” ON ISSUE 5

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

1 Rothstein, David & Jeffrey D. Dillman, The Continued Growth of Payday Lending, Policy Matters Ohio, The Housing Research & Advocacy Center, Mar., 2008, p. 1

2 Rothstein, p. 3f

3 Rothstein, P. 3, table 1

4 Rothstein, P. 8

5 Rothstein, P. 8

6 King, Uriah & Leslie Parish, Center For Responsible Lending, Springing the Debt Trap: Rate caps are only proven payday lending reform Dec., 2007, P. 12

7 Winslow, Stephen, Payday Lending: A practice whose end has come, Conservative Viewpoint blog entry for May 25, 2007

8 Center For Responsible Lending, Payday Loans Trap Borrowers, video at http://www.responsiblelending.org/issues/payday/inside-the-payday-industry.html

9 Ohio Coalition For Responsible Lending Trapped By Design: Payday Lending By The Numbers, Sept. 19, 2007

10 Rothstein, P. 10, Table 5

11 King, P. 11

12 King, P. 12

13 Gakh, Max, Ohio General Assembly Legislative Service Commission Final Analysis Sub. H.B. 545 127th General Assembly

Life Issues, Marriage and Family, Executive Usurpation, Gambling, Commentary

Vacation’s Over! Back To Blogging!

BeachThe webmaster (me) is back from vacation and all caught up with the avalanche of work at his real job. And nobody even tried to post while he was gone.

And wow! What a time to go out of town! The AG, Marc Dann, is revealed as a grafter! Well, no one here was shocked as anyone who has read any of our blog entries on Dann’s very suspicious “Tic-Tac-Fruit” tap dance knows (look under the archives under the “gambling” category). How long has the Governor known that there was a problem in the AG’s office or, even more importantly, the Dann campaign?

And isn’t it interesting that the Ohio Republican Party continues to do its best to commit political suicide, in a presidential election year where the national party stands poised to nominate a candidate that is sure to cause a significant percentage of the so-called “values voter” block to shrug its collective shoulders and stay home in the fall? For instance, what’s up with Republican State Senator David Goodman pushing a bill that would force places like Christian schools and day care centers to hire open homosexuals, cross-dressers, “trans-genders” (still don’t know how an XY can change to a XX or vice-versa; can someone explain it to this degreed biochemist?)? And what about Republicans working double-overtime to kill a human cloning ban bill? And how about the Republicans being so accommodating in the Governor’s plan to take advantage of the lack of inhibition of those who have over-imbibed by expanding gambling with keno slots in bars? I thought Ohioans had said “NO” repeatedly to these moves by private industry. Apparently, the constitutional restriction on gambling only counts for private industry, not government.

Yes, indeed, a bad time to go on vacation.

Watch this space.

Marriage and Family, Public Policy Radar, Commentary

What will you do when they come for you?

RadarThis article posted on Worldnetdaily has so many things wrong that I don’t know where to start. This all transpires because some paramedic has been indoctrinated into thinking HE is responsible for the welfare of the child…doesn’t matter whose rights are trampled on. Remember, it takes a village to raise a child…right?

Think about the following points:

The father is a paramedic…the ER physician found nothing wrong with the boy…the paramedic checked out the child, found nothing wrong, but STILL wanted to take the child to the hospital, just in case…even the sheriff said that he would want to have the right to make these types of decisions for his children…

I think the comment here that most concerns me is the following one…The sheriff said the decision to use SWAT team force was justified because the father was a “self-proclaimed constitutionalist” and had made threats and “comments” over the years.

So, if a citizen understands the rights and protections guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, he is a potential threat that requires a SWAT team?

Let us know what you think with your comments?

Marriage and Family, Education, Public Policy Radar, Commentary

Guest Blogger- Abstinence Education Begins At Home

Christians Should Stop Begging the State to Teach ‘Our’ Children Morality

Education In Crisis
Since his election in 2006, Ohio’s Democratic Governor Ted Strickland has been working to eliminate funding for abstinence education in state schools. In response, Christian organizations throughout the state have been urging citizens to write to the governor and ask him to reinstate this funding. In a recent email, for example, the Ohio Christian Alliance wrote

“We want our children to be exposed to the truth that it is in their best interest — physically, emotionally and spiritually — to abstain from sex until marriage!”

My first thought upon reading this was, “Well then folks… They’re YOUR children, so TEACH THEM already!”

When Christians send their children away to humanistic government schools and allow the state to take their money through taxation to fund “education” we should not be surprised that these non-Christian bureaucrats want to teach immorality.

The solution is not to keep sending the children to the humanist schools where they are being taught evolution, pluralism, and situational “ethics” and then BEG the bureaucrats to spend MORE money to teach morality on the side. What a waste of effort!

We’re fighting the wrong battle here! The solution is to take God’s children out of Satan’s schools and separate the school from the state. That is, we should PRIVATIZE education! Let’s demand that our elected representatives stop taking our money and spending it on “public education” – period! We cannot expect a humanist school system to effectively teach morality.

Check out the Alliance for the Separation of School and State to learn more.

Nathan Radcliffe

Nathan Radcliffe is a former Christian school teacher and a long-time advocate for home education and limited government. He is a husband and father of two young girls. Nathan and his wife, Rachel, live in Lancaster, Ohio and attend a local Vineyard Church.

Marriage and Family, Education, Events, Public Policy Radar, Life Issues

Voice Your Voice For Abstinence Education

RadarFrom a Citizens For Community Values (CCV) alert:

Pro-life and Abstinence-Until-Marriage advocates across Ohio are fighting to protect the physical, emotional and spiritual health of our children.

They are fighting against Ohio’s Governor, Ted Strickland, who since taking office has been systematically stripping abstinence education out of Ohio’s schools.

Were you aware…

  • that Gov. Strickland has refused free federal funds for abstinence education in favor of less comprehensive programs that don’t provide the tools and instruction to help students make the choice to develop healthy relationships and wait until marriage to have sex?
  • that Gov. Strickland has quietly abolished the abstinence education office for Ohio and wants to replace the strong message of abstinence with a risky curriculum developed at Ohio taxpayers’ expense that offers much less to Ohio teens?

The National Abstinence Education Association in conjunction with pro-abstinence organizations across the state has organized a Voice Your Voice for Abstinence event at the State Capitol Atrium on this Thursday, November 29 at 10:00 AM. If at all possible, please make plans to join us at this event.

Many organizations currently teaching Abstinence Until Marriage to public school students across the state will lose critical funding if Gov. Strickland continues along this course. This will be a travesty for our children. We must let the governor know that Ohio’s families want their children to understand that abstaining from sex until marriage is the only sure way to avoid the physical and emotional risks associated with casual sex.

Marriage and Family, Public Policy Radar, Sexually Oriented Business

Rand Corporation Report On Human Trafficking

RadarRecent Research on Human Trafficking in Ohio

A previous post on this blog introduced you to the topic of human trafficking and its prevalence, both internationally and domestically. Most policy-makers like to know its impact on their own state or local community.

As a result, the Rand Corporation was contracted to conduct a study on human trafficking, specifically addressing its impact in Ohio. They recently concluded their study and have published their findings in a report, aptly titled “Human Trafficking in Ohio; markets, responses, and considerations”.

Their research came from primary source documents (newspaper articles specifically related to human trafficking) and interviews with law enforcement and social service providers.

The goals of this research were three-fold:

  1. To describe the minimum extent to which human trafficking occurs in Ohio using concrete cases for which there is evidence supporting a trafficking offense


  2. To describe the awareness and response of the criminal justice community, focusing on such issues as how agencies become aware of human trafficking cases and what factors, facilitate or impede detection, investigation, and prosecution of human trafficking, and


  3. Explore how the social service community has responded to the human trafficking community, seeking to describe the needs that are critical to the trafficking victim.


Some highlights:

Research focused on two urban regions, Toledo and Columbus. Toledo research focused primarily on several underage prostitution cases. Columbus research addressed several brothels in the NE part of the city and also labor trafficking cases.

Juvenile victims of human sex trafficking in the case studies were exclusively female, ranging in age from 10 -17.

Recruitment of victims suggests that these victims are often runaways or are on the street due to family or substance abuse problems.

These trafficking victims made $300 – $1,000 per night (focusing on a Harrisburg, PA prostitution ring that originated in Toledo).

In Toledo, the criminal justice community has made significant changes to promote awareness, identification, and investigation of human trafficking cases. In Columbus, however, there is very little awareness of this issue.

Key Policy Considerations:

  • Need for greater awareness among the general public, potential first responders, parents, prosecutors, and other justice system personnel. This would be provided in two parts: general awareness information to all parties, and stakeholder-specific training (such as law enforcement, hospital workers, etc.).


  • Improved services for human trafficking victims. These could include safe havens, secure placement, short and long-term housing assistance, treatment and outreach, legal aid services, etc.


  • The need to address the “demand” side of trafficking. This may include john schools, increased penalties for johns and others who benefit from the trafficking of the victim, etc. Also, better mechanisms to prosecute the owners of various establishments if they are found to house illegal businesses.


  • Need for more personnel and resources (including financial) to address this issue. Human trafficking investigations consume significant amounts of time and are low-yield in terms of prosecution.


  • Refinement of departmental policies. There are at least three changes that should be made:
    1. a screening process and standard protocol for law enforcement personnel to follow when interacting with human trafficking victims (what questions to ask, what behaviors to watch for, etc.).


    2. addressing overlapping jurisdictional issues to assist victims – such as a shelter only serving a certain county, etc.


    3. helping child welfare and juvenile welfare agencies to see an underage prostitute as a victim, not a criminal. Make this person have a higher priority in the system.

For more information, or to obtain a copy of this report, please visit: www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG689/

Marriage and Family, Life Issues

Are You Still A Hero If Your “Heroic Cause” Kills Babies?

Unborn ChildWe simply could not let one of the most egregious examples of fact twisting in the name of propaganda in recent memory to pass without comment. On Thursday October 25,2007 a column by Joe Blundo ran in the Columbus Dispatch. The apparent purpose was to lionize Hattie Lazarus, who was instrumental in founding Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio (PP) in 1932, then euphemistically known as the Mother’s Health Service. Lazarus was married into the Columbus department store family and Blundo does his best to paint her as a courageous crusader for “reproductive rights” another euphemism for abortion.

It is interesting to note that the word “abortion” appears only once in the article, claiming that PP only does “first-trimester abortions,” as if an arbitrarily chosen time-frame makes a difference. Great care is taken to avoid discussing the fact that PP is one of the primary, if not the leading abortion mill in Franklin County, Ohio and the United States. Yet, the specter of the evil practice can be found everywhere in the article. Phrases like the aforementioned “reproductive rights” and “emergency contraception” take the place of words more descriptive of the actual practices. Words like “infanticide,” “poisoning,” “chemical burning,” “dismemberment” and others even more descriptive come to mind.

Blundo takes great pains to tell us that

Planned Parenthood calls itself the largest provider of health care for low- to moderate-income women in central Ohio. For most of its 16,000 clients last year, it was their only source of health care.

This is a lofty claim and no citations by way of proof are provided. But for the sake of argument lets grant this claim. If we grant the claim as true we have to ask so what? Al Capone ran soup kitchens for the indigent from the profits he made selling beer and bathtub gin to speakeasys over the dead and broken bodies of his rivals for control of the gang, his competitors and bar owners who dealt with those competitors. According to Dr. George Grant in his devastating book Grand Illusions (available in our store), the offering of free or low-cost health care is a strategy outlined by Margaret Sanger to do exactly what is being done by Joe Blundo in this column, i.e., create a smoke screen to obscure the truth about where the tremendous profits that allow PP to provide these services come from- abortions, the sale of condoms and birth control pills including to minors without the knowledge or consent of parents (see this Dispatch poll to see what others think of this common PP practice).

Especially egregious is the fact that PP has non-profit tax-exempt status and receives tremendous amounts of money from local, state and federal grants, despite making tremendous amounts of money from sales of items and “services” mentioned above. Probably the lowest blow however is that PP receives huge amounts of money from Christians who are duped or coerced yearly into giving to United Way. Christians are duped by being told that their United Way contributions can be designated. Of course, they can be but it doesn’t change how PP is funded, except perhaps to increase it. How’s that? A United Way board decides how money is distributed to charities by percentage of funds collected, and often forces pro-life groups to accept their funding as the sole source, thus restricting additional fundraising efforts and keeping them small and dependent. At the same time funds designated for these pro-life groups are simply subtracted from the money that would have come out of the general pot without the designations, actually making more money available for favored groups like PP.

Christians are also coerced to contribute to United Way by unscrupulous corporate heads who often compete among themselves for the prestige connected to having the highest percentage of participation or largest contribution amounts. This is communicated to department heads and managers who then pressure employees with veiled threats of career damage if the employee doesn’t donate (the author of this article was subjected to just this type of coercion while employed at a large Columbus corporation; He handled the problem by donating $5. This gave his manager his coveted 100% participation and the author the satisfaction that it cost United Way more money to process his contribution than he gave).

Blundo tells us that Hattie Lazarus passed on her zeal for “education, services and advocacy of reproductive rights” to her offspring and that her grandson has just finished a term on PP’s board. How nice that he was around to be able to perform this “service.” Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the thousands of central Ohio babies and the tens of millions of them in the United States who did not have a similar opportunity to reach responsible adulthood, having been the victims of the “services and reproductive rights advocacy” pushed by the likes of Lazarus and the eugenicist nurse and PP founder Margaret Sanger.

Contrast these two quotes from the article

She died in 1971, having done all that she could to make sure Planned Parenthood would endure.It not only lived on; it outlasted the department store.

and

As it turned out, her involvement in the cause did raise a few eyebrows in conservative Columbus but never seemed to affect the family business, Robert Lazarus Jr. said.

As firm believers in covenantalism we would disagree with Robert Lazarus Jr.’s conclusion on the Lazarus family’s support for abortion not having any effect on the family’s business. As the article points out, there is no such business as F&R Lazarus any more.

The answer to the opening question? No, You aren’t.

Marriage and Family, Public Policy Radar, Sexually Oriented Business, Public Policy Principles News

When Is Enough Not Enough- Update

RadarAn article in the Columbus Dispatch is helping connect the dots on the fraud-riddled campaign to kill the Community Defense Act (CDA), a law which puts restrictions on what dancers and patrons can do at strip clubs and also (finally) gives some power to local authorities in rural areas to pass effective local restrictions. A group known as the Vote No on Issue 1 Committee (the Committee) is using every legal maneuver in its bag of tricks (and its a very big bag full of tricks and illusions designed to fool the public as noted in earlier blog articles) to get more time to gather signatures for its effort to get its referendum to the ballot.

The Dispatch reports that attorneys for the committee are trying desperate maneuvers to get a few extra days of signature gathering time. They have sued to change the signature gathering deadline from Friday October 5, 2007 to Sunday October 7, 2007, an additional 2 days and really 4 days since the Secretary of State’s office is closed on Sundays and Monday is a holiday. The judge, Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Tim Horton, has refused to issue a temporary restraining order but is holding a hearing at 9:00 AM on Friday October 5, 2007 for an injunction.

Why are we concluding that desperation is behind these efforts? The Committee is arguing for just 2 more days (really 4) using an almost unbelievably vacuous legal argument. Attorneys for the Committee are arguing that an additional 10 day window for meeting the signature minimums required for ballot access (a standard practice) began not when the Secretary of State sent the letter but when representatives of the Committee received the letter. What makes this argument absurd you ask? First, because the letter is a formality. The Committee has known for some time that they weren’t going to make it. They didn’t need the letter from the Secretary of State to know that. Secondly, because the Committee never stopped collecting signatures after it turned in the original batch in September. They have had weeks to gather the nearly 400,000 they will need, if the previous valid signature rate of 31% holds, so two more days probably won’t make much difference if recent scuttlebutt proves true. And that scuttlebutt says that signature gatherers are having trouble getting people to sign. A lot of trouble. The bad publicity from earlier petition fraud has now caught up and is stifling additional efforts to gather signatures. People want to avoid being defrauded or being involved in fraud. The Dispatch reports that as of Tuesday October 2, 2007 the Committee had only added 150,000 additional signatures to their total. Assuming a 31% validity rate thats less than 47,000 valid signatures towards about 116,000 necessary. Pretty dismal.

An article in the Dispatch from Tuesday October 2, 2007 says that the Craig Group is “…no longer is collecting signatures…” a polite way of saying they’ve been fired. The article also says they were paid $1 million dollars, a million bucks (!), to get the job done. Who wonders out there if the check has cleared or even if it has been cut yet? Frankly, it is difficult to believe that any group that condones petition fraud by turning in signatures gathered under false pretenses wouldn’t also hesitate to stiff the people hired to get the signatures. Oh, yes and where exactly has all of the money to run the referendum campaign come from. Preliminary reports say that about 75% of the millions spent so far have come from out of state pornography producers. Nice allies, eh?

The Bottom Line

The bottom line on all of this is that, despite the bad news coming out for the Committee we must assume that this issue will be on the ballot. There are still lots of legal tricks and shenanigans available to the strip club executives and pornography producers behind this effort and the Secretary of State has proven to be at least “friendly” to the Committee, perhaps due to her husband’s cozy relations with the strip club owners.

So here it is-

On the November 6 ballot the ballot initiative will be Issue 1.

If you want the CDA law which regulates strip club and adult business hours and activities to take effect you must vote– YES

If you want strip clubs and adult businesses to continue to operate unregulated you must vote- NO

If you care about this issue- GET OUT AND VOTE ON NOVEMBER 6!

Marriage and Family, Public Policy Radar, Sexually Oriented Business

When Is Enough Not Enough?

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When it’s only 3% more than the minimum required number of valid signatures for a ballot initiative. The duplicitously named Citizens For Community Standards (CCS) is making sure everybody knows that they have exceeded their goal of 241,366 signatures on a referendum petition designed to bring the recently passed Community Defense Act (CDA) to the ballot for a yes or no vote in the November election. Media outlets are dutifully (and some joyfully) reporting that the Dancers For Democracy, a front group for the strip club and sex equipment and book shop owners, have achieved their goal and even exceeded it.

Left out of many of the major media stories, however, is the fact that 3% over the total necessary for the initiative will yield nothing close to the required number of valid signatures, unless a miracle of Biblical proportions occurs in the 88 county boards of election in Ohio. So what is a valid signature anyway? A valid signature is the legal signature of an Ohio citizen of majority age (18) who is registered to vote in Ohio or will be registered by the time the petitions are being validated. Very importantly, and virtually ignored by the media outlets is that in order for the signatures to be valid, the signers must have something approaching a true understanding of what they’re signing.

As we have blogged in the past there appears to be rampant fraud in gathering signatures for the petitions. Two of the previously blogged stories from Ohio Public Radio’s Bill Cohen contained recordings of the actual fraudulent pitches being made. In a follow up report on August 3, 2007 Cohen again reports that the fraudulent pitches are still being made and that unsuspecting Ohioans are being conned into signing petitions that will stop the implementation of a law that the signers actually want to take effect. This audio report is also accompanied by recordings of signature gatherers engaging in fraud. In one case the petitioner has told a signer that he is signing a petition to “…help kids in schools…” In another follow up report on August 9, 2007, Bill Cohen reports that CCS is making efforts to “stop the fraud” and have fired 10 petitioners and claim to have thrown out their petitions (with 4 fired in the Toledo area earlier with no promises of thrown out petitions). But, when aggregating the Columbus Dispatch and Bill Cohen’s reports, at least four separate examples of fraud perpetrated by different petition gatherers in central Ohio alone are identified, this effort appears to be a token release of the offenders who got caught. CCS would have you believe that all responsibility for what is being signed lies with the signer. And that’s true as far as it goes. But they forget to mention that the petition carriers have a responsibility to provide an accurate description of what is being signed, not a purposeful con job. Additionally, potential signers have the right to request a visual inspection of the petition and a right to read the full text of the proposal before signing.

This may seem like nit-picking to the casual observer, but it is becoming apparent that CCS chose its name to deliberately confuse the electorate into believing it is the same group (Citizens For Community Values or CCV) that helped push through the CDA into law in the first place. Why would this be the case?

You see, Ohio is a pivotal state for the adult business industry. Ohio has the dubious distinction of ranking number 5 in the states with the largest number of strip clubs. On top of this fact is the ugly reality that Ohio is a major hub for human trafficking activities, thanks to its proximity to legal and illegal ports of entry (Buffalo, Cleveland, Lake Erie, Detroit) and easy access to travel routes to end destinations (I-80-90, I-75, I-71, etc). The adult business industry, specifically the businesses regulated by the CDA- strip clubs, massage parlors, pornography, etc. are all recognized as entry portals into human trafficking.

What happens here in Ohio often leads the rest of the country. The CDA regulations, once they take effect, could act as a model for other states. Therefore, a little deception to delay or repeal the implementation of the law is no big deal to the sexually oriented business industry. The longer the adult business moguls can hold off the implementation of this law the better for their profits, and conversely, the worse for the victims of human trafficking. A review of the first PAC filing of this industry group reveals that nearly half of the $125,000 raised so far came from pornography production and distribution companies in California. Hmmmm, what was that about “community standards” that the porn and stripper groups are trying to hide behind?

And that’s the missing element in the debate over CDA. The sex trade isn’t just a libertarian lark where women do “what they please” with their bodies and no one gets hurt. When Ohio State Senator Steve Stivers (R) pulled a “John Kerry” and voted for the CDA before he signed a petition to stop its implementation (yes, he did sign one and he knew what it was for) he exhibited a deep lack of understanding or a callousness to the human trafficking issues lurking underneath the sleek libertarian exterior of “freedom of expression” arguments put forward by the sex trade. In either case he has proven himself unworthy to represent his district on this issue, much less to become the leader of the “upper chamber” of the Ohio legislature, the Ohio Senate.

The same can be said of State Senator Teresa Fedor (D) whom we have blogged about earlier on this issue. Her blatant hypocrisy is a stunning self-expose, or would be if major media would take the time and effort to connect the dots. Fedor ignored the true realities of the nature of the sex industry and voted against the CDA, then actually appeared with the “Dancers For Democracy” (a lobbying group of strippers) and spoke at their press conference as they were trying to kill the bill as it was being deliberated on in the Ohio House.

Later, Fedor fulminated with mock “outrage” and “embarassment” at Lucas County Democratic Party officials over that party’s golf outing fundraiser, where strippers from a local establishment “refreshed” party regulars at beverage stops on the course. Guess Fedor is OK with lap dances, but not with foursome flashing. Now Fedor is reportedly preparing legislation to address the human trafficking issue. Hmmm, wonder if the Dancers for Democracy will be invited to that press conference?

The bottom line is that the “Dancers For Democracy” (in reality, Ecdysiasts For Anarchy is a better fit) have about 20 days to get an additional 140,000 or so (and realistically probably more like 200,000) signatures, in order to overcome the fake names, fraud challenges, invalid signatures, forgeries, etc. that plague petition drives, especially this one. The noise the strippers are making now is to soften the public toward the inevitable legal clash over ballot access in the fall and potential federal lawsuits to kill the law should they fail in tricking voters into voting against their own best interests. The federal lawsuit is probably inevitable, because in truth, this referendum is looking at a likely 65-35% drubbing if it reaches the ballot, according to recent polls on the issue.

The strippers will try to spin the campaign as being the “only hope for the poor helpless moms who have to strip to survive.” Thus, they will face-slap the thousands of women who work at hard, honest labor to finish school or support their children after being abandoned by husbands driven by unrealistic sexual expectations formed in the culture created in large part by the sex-traffickers. This strategy will backfire, as it did when the CDA was being debated in the Ohio Legislature- where our laws are made. Enough is enough.

No, enough really is enough.

Marriage and Family, Public Policy Radar, Sexually Oriented Business

Human Trafficking – Closer than you think!

Policy RadarCCV partners with Statewide Coalition to battle Human Trafficking

What is it?

The fight against human trafficking is not just something that happens over there, wherever “there” is. It is found everywhere we look.

In the home…

Domestic servitude

On the streets…

Prostitution, truck stop solicitation, panhandling

Behind the door…

Massage parlors, Adult (strip) clubs, brothels, pornography

Among respectable businesses…

Sweatshops, construction, tourist industry, agriculture

The U.S. State Department has estimated that between 14,500 – 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. annually . Half of this number are children. In the Midwest prostitution, saunas, health clubs, strip clubs, escort services, and brothels to migrant workers are the predominant activities.

Ohio has become a significant hub of activity for human trafficking. Why? Geography and demographics. Lake Erie allows trafficking to move from Canada while the various interstate corridors allow movement of victims to cities throughout the country. The large number of colleges and military bases also contribute to this increase. Cleveland and Columbus have been identified as major cities popular among johns seeking Asian massage parlors acting as fronts for brothels. Toledo has been identified by the FBI as one of the top recruiting centers in the country for underage prostitution.

Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International, writes “Young girls are being sold at truck stops, strip joints, massage parlors, and often out of homes”. Kathleen Davis, who serves as the Ohio Director for the Polaris Project authored a report titled Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery in Ohio. In describing what people are trafficked for, she lists “commercial sexual exploitation, exotic dancing, stripping, and pornography”.

Human trafficking is many times confused with human smuggling. Under U.S. Code 1227, smuggling is defined as “knowingly [having] encouraged, induced, assisted, abetted or aided any other alien to enter or try to enter the United States.”

The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 defines human trafficking. The Polaris Project has put together a simple matrix to understand the broad scope of this definition. These elements (AMP) include:

The Action to…

recruit, harbor, transport, provide, obtain, subject

By Means of …

force, fraud, coercion, physical restraint, debt bondage, withholding documents, serious harm

For the Purpose of…

commercial sex act / labor or services – resulting in slavery, peonage, or involuntary servitude

Several myths are destroyed in this defining language:

  • Many trafficked persons in the U.S. are legal citizens
  • Trafficking does NOT require transportation across any state or national borders.
  • Prior consent or payment is not relevant (just because you agreed to come and/or were paid does not mean it is NOT trafficking).
  • Human trafficking does NOT require physical restraint (may only be psychological)

 

What is being done?

As CCV has battled the problems of sexually-oriented businesses for decades, they have recognized that human trafficking is one of the primary “feeders” that drive women and young girls into the sex industry. Many other national groups are also addressing this connection.

A press conference was held on July 31st in Columbus to announce a new coalition effort in Central Ohio. Rescue and Restore, a national outreach led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has helped establish 20 other coalitions around the country. They seek to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders, including law enforcement, health and social services, non-profits, faith-based organizations, legal aid groups, and others interested in eradicating this form of slavery. The primary tools to accomplish this goal are outreach, education, and victim assistance.

Members of this coalition are receiving training by various advocacy groups (Rescue and Restore, Polaris Project, Catholic Conference, and the Department of Justice). This training includes:

  • Increased public awareness
  • Provide training to various advocacy and social service groups
  • Develop outreach materials to educate the general public
  • Provide access to 24/7 hotlines for victim assistance
  • Identify and assist victims
  • Learn to ask the right questions to possible victim, get beyond the “coached” answers
  • Provide needed services (legal, health, and social care)
  • Identify temporary housing to provide a safe haven for victims

 

Further coalition meetings and advanced training will be occurring in the coming months. Also, many coalition members are beginning to meet and share about networking, resource development, and victim assistance services expertise.

How can I learn more?

Rescue and Restore
www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking
1-888-3737-888

Kathleen Davis, Ohio Director
Polaris Project
www.polarisproject.org
[email protected]

Shared Hope
www.sharedhope.org