DSU Gives Big Plaques to Janklow, Prostollo

Front-pager on tonight's Madison Daily Leader: the reason we shall not speak ill of the greatest governor since Peter Norbeck (says my friend Nicole), William John Janklow:


We're such a forgiving people. Good for us.

Minor media critique: did Jon Hunter really think it was a good idea to refer to the new inductees as people who blaze trails?

Janklow Speaks at DSU Today

Watch out at the intersections: former governor, congressman, and inmate William Janklow is coming to Madison today. He'll be speaking with DSU students and faculty about government, politics, management, business law, and technology policy.

Janklow's visit is part of a series of open fora being held on university campuses around the state thanks to a statewide grant from the Great Plains Education Foundation, Inc., but I'm told Janklow is not taking any pay for his appearances around the state. Janklow will also be the featured speaker at tonight's faculty awards banquet at DSU.

Janklow Sues Dell -- Media Casts Felon as Everyman

KELO beat me to the obvious headline...

Most convicted man-slaughterers don't get gentle, positive press like this. KELO features former South Dakota Governor and Congressman Bill Janklow as he epitomizes the everyman struggle against big business. Janklow is suing Dell over the non-functional computer they sold him in May. KELO helps turn the screws of bad PR on Dell by showing him going through the lengthy and futile maze of telephone tech support.

This lawsuit is one nearly everyone can sympathize with. A company produces an inferior product. The company makes it nearly impossible to get service to solve the problem. The consumer's only recourse is expensive legal action. (Bonus philosophical inconsistency of the day: Some of Janklow's Republican friends argue that we need to limit lawsuits. Discuss.)

I'm betting the initial reaction of nearly every South Dakotan watching is the same as mine: "Go get 'em, Bill! Make 'em pay!"

But I see another angle here. Consider how Perry Groten (of course Perry would do this story! I still love you, Perry!) frames the narrative:

Not even a former governor and U.S. Congressman has the kind of clout to fast-track a lengthy journey through the customer support maze.

What if Groten had chosen an alternative framing:

Not even a convicted felon has the kind of clout to fast-track a lengthy journey through the customer support maze.

Hmmm. KELO and the rest of the mainstream media make plenty of hay keeping us scared of the bad, bad people in our midst. But Bill Janklow gets press like any decent ordinary Joe.

I know, Bill Janklow is anything but ordinary. He's darned interesting. He makes good press. He is a historic figure. He still has valuable contributions to make to South Dakota.

But he also killed a man through sheer recklessness.

How to properly allow Janklow into the public sphere is a complicated issue. The way we treat Janklow is also worth keeping in mind as we consider the place we allow all other felons in our community.

New Federal Credit Card Rules Won't Kill Jobs, Will Restore Fairness

So Bill Janklow, a Harvard prof, and the Madville Times walk into a bar....

The Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights, which is headed for the President's desk, may be a bigger deal than I thought. No, not because it will kill thousands of South Dakota usury jobs, but because it will restore fundamental fairness to the credit industry, and maybe even help the free market.

Former Governor Bill Janklow, the man who brought South Dakota the credit card boom, doesn't see any job losses coming. He apparently disagrees with current Governor Rounds's assertion that Premier BankCard et al. won't be able to compete without their current preadatory lending practices:

"I don't think the people in this state are going to have any trouble. Citibank is an honorable credit card company this mothership they have in Sioux Falls is the best in the world. The same thing is true with First Premier and First National in Yankton," Janklow said.

The former South Dakota Governor says this bill levels the playing field for all the companies across the country.

"So, as long as everybody in the NFL, everybody in Major League Baseball, or everybody in the credit card industry have to follow the exact same rules I don't think it makes any difference. It's when you have an un-level playing field where they give an advantage to one player, or one set of players over another, it becomes a problem" [Ben Dunsmoor, "Janklow: SD Credit Companies Will Adapt to Rules," KELOLand.com, 2009.05.20]

Speaking of a level playing field, Tony Amert rightly directs our attention to Elizabeth Warren. She's a Harvard law prof and overseer of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. She emphasized the need for a level playing field between lenders and borrowers in a Frontline interview in 2004:

[Question]: So the credit card industry says ... "We provide the credit, in many cases, for people to start businesses ... to buy more, to live a better life, to do things that they could never do any other way." So what's the problem?

[Warren]: There is no problem if they would do it on terms that are fair and if they would make their contracts transparent so that the person who's borrowing the money is borrowing it in a way that he or she understands and appreciates the risks.

I believe in free markets. I teach contract law; I believe that value is created when two people come together, and they understand a contract, and they say, "I think if I borrow this much money at this interest rate, I can do better than that; I can start a business; I can buy something I want to buy that's going to be important to me, and I can make money out of this proposition." That is a good use of credit. It's a use of credit we've had in the United States since colonial times.

What's changed is [that] when credit was deregulated in the early 1980s, the contracts began to shift. And what happens is that the big issuers, the credit card companies who have the team of lawyers, started writing contracts that effectively said, "Here are some of the terms, and the rest of the terms will be whatever we want them to be." And so they would loan to someone at 9.9 percent interest. That's what it said on the front of the envelope. But it was 9.9 percent interest ... unless you lost your job, or 9.9 percent interest unless you applied for a couple of other credit cards, or 9.9 percent interest unless you defaulted on some other obligation somewhere else that doesn't cost me a nickel. And at that moment, that 9.9 percent interest credit suddenly morphs to 24.9 percent interest, 29.9 percent interest, 36.9 percent interest. Well, you know, ... nobody signs contracts to buy things that say, "I'm going to pay you $1,200 for the big-screen TV unless you decide, in another month or two months, that it should really be $3,600 or $4,200 or $4,800." But that's precisely how credit card contracts are written today.

...But [the credit card companies] would say they're just making capital or money available to people in a convenient way.

Well, in a convenient way, and changing the price after people borrow it. You know, that's a heck of a deal. I don't know any merchant in America who can change the price after you've bought the item except a credit card company. After you have borrowed the $5,000, they can change the interest rate from 9.9 percent to 29.9 percent. I just don't know anyone else who can do that.

Contrary to the curmudgeonly (and implicitly self-righteous?) grumblings of various arch-conservatives, the new credit card rules aren't about giving handouts to irresponsible borrowers in the name of wimpy liberal "fairness." They're about making credit card companies play by the rules of the free market that we expect every other player to follow. Transparency and honest dealing—not so novel concepts.

(Tony also points to a couple of intelligent videos with Prof. Warren's insight: This 2007 lecture at UC Berkeley on "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class," and this 2007 NightLine feature. Warren is an engaging and passionate speaker about economic topics that many folks would consider dry.)

"Sioux Falls: The Town Credit Built"... or Bilked?

Sioux Falls gets some national coverage on public radio: Marketplace is reporting on "The Town Credit Built." Last night's program (audio archived here) featured former Governor Bill Janklow* touting South Dakota's embrace of unfettered usury and Citibank's move here as "a heck of a deal for my state." Lincoln County Commissioner Jim Schmidt tells Marketplace reporter Stacey Vanek-Smith that Sioux Falls went from almost no white-collar jobs in the 1970s to 20,000 jobs—15% of the metro workforce—in the financial sector today.

Marketplace plans more Sioux Falls coverage tonight, with a discussion of the flipside: what happens to Sioux Falls's house of cards when credit freezes and no one can take on any more debt. Should be interesting! If you're interested, listen tonight on MPR at 6:30 or SDPB at 7:00.

Janklow on Daschle: "What Else Do People Want?"

I yield the floor to former Governor and Congressman (and convicted felon) Bill Janklow, who can still be one of the straightest shooters in South Dakota politics:

"Tom has been held up to a lot of ridicule. Tom has been held up to a lot of obloquy. He's been held up to a lot of criticism over this but he said he was sorry, what else do people want?" Janklow said.

Janklow thinks it's a mistake that Daschle stepped down because he believes the former senator truly wanted to help make a difference in healthcare.

"The news says he's making $2 to $5 million a year. He's going to walk away from that to go make $150,000 a year. Why? Because it's something he liked doing," Janklow said [Ben Dunsmoor, "Janklow Reacts to Daschle's Withdrawal," KELOLand.com, 2009.02.03].

Some commenters keep clamoring for a post on Tom Daschle's withdrawal from consideration for Secretary of Health and Human Services. They don't really want to hear my thoughts on the topic; they just want to "generate some Daschle clutter," as one deleted foul-mouthed commenter admitted.

Daschle has no one to blame for this political defeat but himself and his accountant. But his loss is also our loss, as Daschle was the right man for the job of moving health care reform through Congress. It's also made South Dakota look bad, giving commentators the opportunity (as I heard on NPR Tuesday) to suggest South Dakotans are unsophisticated rubes who can't handle finances more complicated than a 1040EZ.

The only victors in Daschle's defeat are the political grandstanders who have no interest in or capacity for intelligent discussion of health care policy and reform. They are more interested in scoring points in the very childish game they make of politics.