Tag: John Oliver

On HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” John Oliver took on the predatory Pay Day loan scams which he described as the “circle of debt” and is like trying to regulate “Wack-a-Mole.”

Payday loans put a staggering amount of Americans in debt. They prey on the elderly and military service members. They’re awful, and nearly impossible to regulate. We’ve recruited Sarah Silverman to help spread the word about how to avoid falling into their clutches.

On Monday it was announced that New York prosecutors were going to take another wack at them.

New York Prosecutors Charge Payday Lenders With UsuryNew York Prosecutors Charge Payday Lenders With Usury

By Jessica Silver Greenberg, The New York Times

A trail of money that began with triple-digit loans to troubled New Yorkers and wound through companies owned by a former used-car salesman in Tennessee led New York prosecutors on a yearlong hunt through the shadowy world of payday lending.

On Monday, that investigation culminated with state prosecutors in Manhattan bringing criminal charges against a dozen companies and their owner, Carey Vaughn Brown, accusing them of enabling payday loans that flouted the state’s limits on interest rates in loans to New Yorkers.

Such charges are rare. The case is a harbinger of others that may be brought to rein in payday lenders that offer quick cash, backed by borrowers’ paychecks, to people desperate for money, according to several people with knowledge of the investigations.

“The exploitative practices – including exorbitant interest rates and automatic payments from borrowers’ bank accounts, as charged in the indictment – are sadly typical of this industry as a whole,” Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said on Monday.

In the indictment, prosecutors outline how Mr. Brown assembled “a payday syndicate” that controlled every facet of the loan process – from extending the loans to processing payments to collecting from borrowers behind on their bills. The authorities argue that Mr. Brown, along with Ronald Beaver, who was the chief operating officer for several companies within the syndicate, and Joanna Temple, who provided legal advice, “carefully crafted their corporate entities to obscure ownership and secure increasing profits.”

Now if they had just done the same with the CEO’s of the Too Big To Fail banks.

Now here is something that should make the hair on the back of you neck stand up.

[..]Last Week Tonight on HBO, host John Oliver took up the very important, but much ignored, topic of America’s aging nuclear arsenal. Oliver noted  our weapons facilities are plagued by crumbling infrastructure, suspect military oversight, politicians refusing to cut-off funding, and computers so old they run on floppy disks.

Pointing out that, despite cut backs in our nuclear arsenal, America still maintains 4,804 nuclear warheads, Oliver notes that is enough to “not only destroy Earth, but provide 4th of July fireworks for Martians.”

With nuclear ICBMs located in silos in Wyoming, Montana, and North Carolina, Oliver shared a wealth of clips describing poor maintenance and computers designed to launch the missiles using ancient software still contained on 5.25-inch floppy disks.

“Holy shit!,” Oliver exclaimed. “Those things barely look powerful enough to run Oregon Trail, much less earth-ending weaponry.”

John Oliver outlines what, exactly is problematic about Dr. Oz and the nutrition supplement industry. Then he invites George R.R. Martin, Steve Buscemi, the Black and Gold Marching Elite, and some fake real housewives on the show to illustrate how to pander to an audience without hurting anyone.

This government should be afraid of internet trolls. Very afraid.

On his June 1 Sunday night show “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver made an impassioned plea to angry internet users to “focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction” and “prevent cable company fu*kery.”

Well we did and on Monday June 2 an army of Jon’s internet “trolls” crashed the Federal Communication Commission’s web site with e-mails demanding they protect net neutrality.

This is John’s call to action: Stop Calling It Net Neutrality; It’s ‘Preventing Cable Company F**kery’

And I can’t believe I’m going to do this. i would like to address the internet commenters out there directly. Good evening monsters, this may be the moment you spent your whole lives training for. You’ve been out there ferociously commenting on dance videos of adorable three-years-olds, saying things like: “every child could dance like this little loser after 1 week of practice.” Or you’d be polluting “Frozen’s ” Let It Go with comments like, “ice castle would giver her hypothermia and she dead in an hour.” Or, and I know you’ve done this one commenting on this show: “f*ck this asshole anchor…go suck ur president’s dick…ur just friends with terrorists xD.”

This is the moment you were made for, commenters. Like Ralph Macchio, you’ve been honing your skills waxing cars and painting fences, well guess what? Now it’s time to do some f*king karate.

For once in your life we need you to channel that anger. That badly spelled bile that you normally reserve.

H/T John Amato @ Crooks and Liars for the partial transcript

The FCC started taking public comments, nearly 50,000 have been posted in the last 30 days. Undoubtedly, those number will rise after John’s brilliant rant.

You still comment to the FCC at their site, here or use the easier EFF interface at DearFCC.org.

The Daily Show celebrates John Oliver’s final night as a correspondent

New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner uses his time in a televised debate to announce his name.  

Anthony Kennedy becomes the father of Constitutional gay rights, and Antonin Scalia employs obscure legal jargon.

Republican lawmakers react to the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling, and Rand Paul warns of human-animal unions.