Kerry again presents a fudged story

[travelinman]

Another tall tale:
Kerry again presents a fudged story


UNTIL WE reported it last month, John Kerry had frequently gone on the stump and exaggerated a New Hampshire woman?s story to make her health insurance situation appear worse than it really was. He has since stopped telling that fib. Alas, he found a new one.

At an August 27 event in Daly City, Calif., Kerry was introduced by a woman named Lori Guy. She said that after her employer cut her pay in 2000, she piled up huge credit card bills and was regularly charged late-payment fees. Kerry used her story to attack President Bush for not protecting the middle class. He then claimed he would prevent credit card companies from charging large fees.

Sad story. Except, the San Jose Mercury News interviewed Guy after the event. Her tale is not so sad after all. She told the paper that she is still with the same company, and after several raises makes more money than ever before. Since all of this happened within the span of the last four years, her real story is that during the Bush administration she went from being heavily in debt to being in the best finanical shape of her life. Funny that John Kerry never mentioned that.

source

[Piña]

A little perspective might make the misleading article above more palatable.

Seems Kerry introduced Ms. Guy as an example of how credit card companies prey on consumers. Not as an example of how the economy has gone from good to crisis stage under bush the anointed.

<font size="3"><font color="pink">Source</font></font>

To help Americans reduce their debt, Kerry is proposing to cut credit card fees and rates, and put limits on below-prime or zero-interest loans, which Kerry said often hurt consumers when the rates rise or the principals come due. He also wants lenders to better disclose their policies for raising rates.

He described how credit card companies can increase interest rates up to 29 percent in some cases just for one late payment. "So all of a sudden, people get caught in a trap, the debt trap," he said.

At the Daly City event, Lori Guy, a 35-year-old high-tech worker from San Jose, was held up as an example by Kerry as a victim of bad credit card policies.

She told the crowd how her employer, a large semiconductor manufacturer whom she would not identify, cut her salary after she moved West in 2000 to take a job. Her credit card bills piled up and she got socked with late payments, but had no place to turn until she finally got back on her feet.

She blamed her company's outsourcing of jobs overseas for the cuts in salaries and she had left many in the crowd believing she had been laid off.

In an interview later, however, Guy said she is still employed by the company and after two merit raises in the past year now makes more money than she ever had there.

"I just want people to know there was no place to turn when I got in trouble," she said.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I guess you object to lowering credit card rates because you're just a big fan of usury, eh trav?

What a knob.