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Google Will Ban Bail-Bond Ads (arstechnica.com)
First Google banned ads from payday lenders in 2016, now it will no longer allow ads from bail-bond companies. Ars Technica reports: In a blog post, the company suggested that such ads constitute a "deceptive or harmful product," citing a 2016 study concluding that minority and low-income communities are typically most affected by such services. "For-profit bail-bond providers make most of their revenue from communities of color and low-income neighborhoods when they are at their most vulnerable, including through opaque financing offers that can keep people in debt for months or years," Google wrote. Also in 2016, another study found that "there are 646,000 people locked up in more than 3,000 local jails throughout the U.S.," simply for their inability to pay a bond, which is what drives many people to the services of a bondsman. The change will take effect in July 2018.
I learned a bit about the bail system and I think this is a pretty silly move on Google's part. As for who uses bondsmen - people in jail, that's who.
The choices are:
1. Pay the bail in cash.
2. Use a bondsman.
3. Sit in jail.
People who end up in jail are typically not people who have a couple thousand dollars to spare they've saved up. They're not going to bail themselves out in most cases, though they do have that option.
It's typically family members who feel somewhat obligated to bail someone out of jail. Their choice is pay the bail in cash, which might be about $2,000, or pay 10%, $200, to a bondsman. Since people who end up in jail are typically not the most reliable people, putting up $2,000 cash and hoping to get it back a year later if your drunk brother shows up to all his court appearances doesn't seem like a good idea.
I HAVE $2,000 in savings, I could *afford* to put $2,000 to bail someone out, but I'd rather just pay the bondsman $200 and not have to worry about it. The bondsman will have him call in a few times per week, and try to make sure he doesn't "forget" his court appearance. I don't want to do all that, hoping to eventually get my cash back from court. I'd rather let a professional handle that.
The bondsman isn't making some outrageous profit. If they were, more people would go into that line of business. The bondsman loses money on anyone who doesn't show up to court. If they use a recovery agent (bounty hunter) and successfully recover the fugitive, the bondman only loses a little bit of money. If they don't recover the fugitive, they lose a lot of money.
I can understand reasons people might point to problems with the bail SYSTEM, but bail is much older than bail bondsman. Bondsmen didn't create the bail system. Bondsmen make it possible for people who aren't rich to get out on bail.
The bail system itself has advantages and disadvantages. It allows people freedom while they await trial. That's good. It protects society in general by giving an incentive for professionals to make sure people charged with a crime actually show up to court, including tracking down fugitives who run. On the other hand, like everything else, money doesn't buy happiness, but it does make things easier. We'd like to have a criminal justice system in which nobody has any advantage, but the fact is there are advantages to having resources. Bail isn't perfect. On balance, weighing the positives and negatives, I think the bail system has more advantages than disadvantages.
What they fail to mention is that payday loans have a lower default rate than mortgages.
That is technically correct (which is the best kind of correct), but it's based on the kind of creative accounting that would make Hollywood blush.
Payday lenders make sure they are paid first whether the borrower has the money or not, so in many cases what would be a default is turned into an overdraft fee instead. The penalty for defaulting is still paid, it's just not recorded against the loan. Moreover, four out of five payday loans are rolled over. If you roll over a loan four times before defaulting, that would be recorded as a 20% default rate even though it's really the same debt.
For comparison, 46% of first-time mortgage holders don't default during the first two years. Payday loan borrowers do.
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Falsehoods, top to bottom.
Holder "stopped" a program that allowed the Federal Government to request civil forfeiture. However, as long as the state/local police requested that the Federal Government bring the charges, everything was fine. Notice that civil forfeiture rates didn't drop during Holder's "stoppage".
He told US attorneys not to overcharge crimes - against black drug dealers only. Non-drug crimes? Hispanics? Throw the book at 'em!
Fast and Furious was NOT started under Bush. This is a constant lie told by his defenders, but it simply is not true. The Bush Administration tried a program called 'Wide Receiver'. In that program, the ATF sold disabled guns with tracking devices to criminals, and cooperated with the Mexican police to track the guns into Mexico to launch raids targeting a specific drug kingpin. Unfortunately, even with planes following the criminals, the criminals kept getting away. So the program was cancelled, with a mere 400 guns sold over two years.
Holder's Fast and Furious did not disable the guns, did not attempt to track them, did not follow the criminals, did not coordinate with Mexican law enforcement, and did not have a target. Instead, from the investigation performed after the ATF's illegal guns were used to kill a US Border Patrol agent, we discovered that Holder wanted to use the program to drum up support for gun control laws in the United States.
Holder is lying racist scum that had no problem giving violent drug cartels working weapons, so that they would murder people with them, so he could use the propaganda to violate US citizen's rights. Beyond the wiretapping journalists and all that, I mean.