Can’t call it ‘bribe’

Any federal law that would impose a national 36 percent A.P.R. limit on our services, if enacted, would likely eliminate our ability to continue our current operations.

— Advance America, largest payday lender in the U.S.

By Joel Thurtell

Can’t call it “bribery.”

U.S. Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, did not take “bribes” from the payday lending industry in return for watering down legislation to regulate the loan sharks.

The sharks like to charge — annualized — 400 percent interest on short-term loans. Congress might cap that figure at a still usurious 36 percent, but the sharks are trying to block that.

And it’s true that the sharks paid Corker and other congress people money, real money.

But you can’t call it “bribery.”

What is a “bribe”?

According to answer.com, a “bribe” is a noun: “1. Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person’s views or conduct. 2. Something serving to influence or persuade.”

Now, it is true, according to the March 10, 2010 New York Times, that Bob Corker took $31,000 in U.S. currency, or maybe a check, but certainly it was forked over in some form readily negotiable at a bank, from his old pal, W. Allan Jones, and his relatives and buddies. Jones is founder of Check Into Cash, the nation’s third-largest payday sharking institution which has 1,100 loan shark storefronts in 31 states.

Jones has also given money to senators Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, and Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama. Dodd is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and Shelby is the leading Republican on that committee now writing a bill that might regulate payday loan sharks.

Jones and other payday sharks in 1999 formed a lobbying organization called Community Financial Services Association to oppose regulation of sharks. CFSA gave $1,000 to Corker this year.

But the thousand bucks from the lobbying organization was not a “bribe”, either.

Wait a minute, you say: Corker took $32,000 from people connected to loan sharking and then he persuaded Dodd, in charge of writing a bill to regulate sharks and who also took money from the sharks, to water the legislation down. They pulled its teeth — left the regulation on paper, but erased enforcement.

Isn’t that the textbook definition of a “bribe”?

Didn’t the loan shark industry use money to influence these people we elected to positions of public trust?

As they might say in Tennessee, “negatory, good buddy.”

Why not?

Because the good senator says not.

“Categorically, absolutely not,” Corker told the Times.

But the Times didn’t actually use the word “bribe,” either.

Look at how politely the Times phrased the question: 

Asked whether the industry’s campaign contributions to him had shaped his thinking about the issue, he replied, “Categorically, absolutely not.”

While the Times didn’t actually utter the word “bribe,” they used its definition to word their question.

Cute. The Times got Corker to deny taking a “bribe” without either of them using the word.

Everybody is just so polite.

Amazingly, the leading loan shark company, Advance America, seems to think it would be a loss if this pernicious, parasitic industry were banned from charging 400 percent interest:

Any federal law that would impose a national 36 percent A.P.R. limit on our services, if enacted, would likely eliminate our ability to continue our current operations.

If these greedy leeches can’t make it on 36 percent, they deserve to shrivel up and die.

In another time, when people were honest at least about their actions, Senator Corker might have simply answered in the words of George Washington Plunkitt of New York’s immensely corrupt but totally frank Tammany Hall Democratic political machine: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”

The good senator seen his opportunities, and while tacitly acknowledging that he took the money, he denies it had any influence on him.

Therefore, it could not have been a “bribe.”

Categorically, absolutely not.

Now you understand why we can’t call it a “bribe.”

Ain’t that a corker?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com