When lenders can legally charge rates of interest upwards of 1,000 percent, should Congress set a maximum interest rate cap?

Almost all states today restrict the maximum rate of interest that may be charged to a borrower by a creditor with the maximum rate often varying depending on the type of borrower involved, the amount borrowed and the purpose of the loan with wide-ranging differences among the states as to the maximum interest rate applicable to a variety of loans. The federal government has never imposed a general restriction on usury in the United States, leaving it up to the states to regulate the matter as they see fit. With the exception of loans to active duty military personnel and their dependents for whom a maximum interest rate of 36 percent is imposed by federal law, Congress has been more concerned with mandating transparency as to the cost of credit transactions than with regulating interest rates or fees as such. The Truth in Lending Act (TILA), for example, requires lenders to provide to consumers detailed information about the cost of credit that includes not only interest, points, and related charges but also service or carrying charges, any loan fee or finder’s fee, fees for investigation or credit reports, credit insurance fees, broker fees charged to the borrower, and insurance premiums included in the finance charge. Thus the emphasis is on providing credit to consumers with full disclosure rather than on protecting consumers from unfair or even unreasonable credit terms (with the noted exception of active duty personnel and their covered dependents.)

Nevertheless, federal law does impact state usury laws in ways that undermine or negate state efforts to protect their citizens against usurious contracts. Nationally chartered banks and lenders sponsored by Native American tribes, for example, are excluded from state regulation. This has allowed some lenders to completely skirt state usury laws and in many cases charge interest rates that are higher than those imposed by illegal loan sharks. And many of these sub-prime lenders target the most desperate and least informed consumers, saddling them by design with loans that they can never repay. Among these lenders, payday loan lenders have attracted the most scrutiny, though at present there is little that states can do to protect citizens within their borders from such lenders who are eitehr federally chartered or aligned with Native American tribes.

For a full discussion of this issue, you can access the full text of my recently published article by clicking on teh following link: López, V. D. When Lenders can Legally Provide Loans with Effective Interest Rates Above 1,000 Percent, Is it Time for Congress to Consider a Federal Interest Cap on Consumer Loans? Notre Dame Journal of Legislation (Vol. 42, Issue 1) 2016.

Traffic enforcement by camera: a public safety tool or just a cash cow for cash- strapped municipalities?

My friend and Hofstra University colleague Eugene Maccarrone and I published an article in 2015 on the popular trend across the U.S. of local municipalities resorting to traffic enforcement by the use of unattended cameras. Red light cameras, speed-trap cameras, stop sign cameras and even school bus cameras intended to catch violators. Under the guise of "traffic safety", cash strapped municipalities have rushed to install cameras in cities large and small--very often at no cost to them with revenue sharing arrangements that often allow vendors who own, install, calibrate and maintain these cameras to get a percentage of the ticket revenue they generate. Although the justification for what is a lucrative revenue generator for municipalities is accident reduction, the evidence does not always back up that claim. Red light cameras which represent by far the most ubiquitous use of this type of technology, for example, do tend to reduce accidents related to individuals running red lights--but they also increase the incidence of rear-end collisions as drivers stop short for fear of running a yellow light that may turn to red as the approach the intersection and are struck from behind by drivers following too close behind them and often accelerating to try to "beat the light" and avoid a ticket.

Nor is safety the only issue involved in traffic enforcement by camera as the technology raises issues of privacy, fairness, and due process (e.g., only drivers of cars and motorcycles are subjected to what has essentially become strict liability offenses while pedestrians, skateboarders, bicyclists and others can flaunt the law with impunity when cameras are present, but not when actual police officers are present to hand out citations).

You can read the entire article at the link below.

• López, V. D., Maccarrone, E. T. Traffic Enforcement by Camera: Privacy and Due Process in the Age of Big Brother Law Journal for Social Justice (Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University), Vol 5. Spring 2015.

The Day the Dolphins Vanished - SF Short Story Preview

The Day the Dolphins Vanished

(C) 2010,2017 Victor D. López

The following story excerpt is from my short story collection   Mindscapes: Ten Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories

Beatrice Benson, BB to her colleagues and friends, would be at home in any exclusive beach resort anywhere in the world tanning her perfect body while her long, lustrous light-brown hair absorbed and weaved the sun’s rays into auburn and blonde highlights as legions of men tripped over one another for the chance to fetch her a cold drink, a towel, sun block or anything else her heart desired in hopes of gaining the simple reward of the flash of her brilliant smile. If she were not preoccupied by more important things, BB would have been amused by these attentions of which she was largely unaware, in part because she was not the type to frequent beachside resorts or spend much time lounging on beach chairs, and in part because her preternatural beauty and credentials—Ph.Ds. in marine biology, electrical engineering and linguistics all earned by her 30^th birthday—quickly burned off the wings of desire of mere mortal men who were attracted to her like insignificant moths hovering about the seemingly friendly blue flame of a Bunsen burner, leaving them in a similar position in trying to hold a conversation with her as the average chimpanzee trying to grasp the finer points of the Allegory of the Cave from Plato’s Republic.

Fortunately for both moths and men, not too many moths fly about the average lab, and not too many men hang around the out of the way craggy beaches and immense stretches of ocean that BB made her home while working largely on solitary projects, conducting research, writing papers, and otherwise contributing to the advancement of her fields with an I.Q. that Einstein would have envied and a work ethic that would have made John Calvin proud. Her current project had taken her to Florida’s Gulf Coast, near Navarre Beach in Santa Rosa County, but far from the crowded condo-dotted beachfront. A generous grant from the National Science Foundation allowed her to take her floating laboratory, a modest converted cabin cruiser, wherever she went, carrying its precious cargo of high-end computer and electronics equipment with which she hoped to bridge the communications gap between dolphins and humans.

Her study of the available data had long before led her to the conclusion that dolphins have a highly evolved language. Computer analysis of sounds emitted in the audible spectrum alone showed repetitions that closely mirrored speech patterns that span across all human languages. Lesser intelligent mammals emit sounds that convey meaning to their own species, but these are typically limited to communicating very basic information essential to the survival of their species, such as calls warning about danger, or the availability of food, or simply warnings for others to keep away. Even insects evidence the ability to communicate that kind of information to their own kind. But Dolphins and most whales are in a different category altogether, possessing brains that are larger than the great apes, including Homo sapiens, and evidencing the ability for complex communication.

It is one thing to recognize the fact that speech is taking place, but quite another to be able to decipher that speech, let alone translate it in a meaningful way so that it can be understood in its proper context across species. Even when dealing with human speech, it can be quite challenging to interpret from one language for another, even for native speakers of the languages being interpreted. But our shared humanity allows us to at least understand certain emotions, such as anger, fear, pain, sadness and love without the need for a universal translator. Drop a human being with money in her pocket anywhere on the planet and she will have little trouble finding food to purchase, the shelter of a hotel room, and an endless number of consumer goods that she can easily purchase at the local market. Moreover, she needs no language at all to determine the intentions of people with whom she interacts as there are an endless number of non-verbal clues that all of us emit that can allow others to, for the most part, accurately gauge our intentions and label us as either as probable friends or foes. The best machine translation available today still yields results that can range from comical to tragic depending on their context and use. Anyone who has ever tried to decipher instructions accompanying low-cost, assemble-it-yourself furniture or other similar consumer goods imported from non English-speaking countries outside of the U.S. can attest to that fact. Even when dealing with a common language, the very real possibility for misunderstanding exists due to the regional usage, slang and pronunciation variances from in different regions of the same country, and especially when dealing from a common language adapted by countries for their own use. An American from Mississippi and an Englishman from Liverpool both speak English, but will likely have some difficulty understanding one another, especially if they possess only a rudimentary education. The same is true for a Haitian and a Parisian, a Puerto Rican and a Spaniard (or, for that matter, a Spaniard from Galicia and one from Seville, Valencia, Madrid, or Barcelona, even if they are all speaking Spanish rather than their local regional languages). Indeed, the simple verb “coger” in Spanish which means—and has always meant—”to get, or to grab” to a Spaniard, means “to copulate” to an Argentine. Thus, “coge las llaves” (take the keys) means f__k the keys in the vernacular in Buenos Aires, and “cógeme de la mano” (take my hand) means something equally obscene.

Fortunately, when it comes to human languages, we have native speakers, interpreters, dictionaries and, when all else fails, comedians and diplomats, to help bridge the potholes along the road of cross-cultural communication. No such tools are available for inter-species communications, making the process of communication infinitely harder for both species, even when our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, or other only slightly more distant, intelligent cousins, such as gorillas, are involved.

But what may seem like insurmountable challenges for the rest of us are only interesting, irresistible puzzles for the likes of BB who was uniquely qualified to tackle the problem because of her complementary competencies and inexhaustible patience. Using the resources of her university as a Professor of Marine Biology and her NSF grant, she had spent a one-year sabbatical working with a half dozen dolphins in an attempt to develop a dolphin/human speech interface. Aside from the dedicated software she had developed to achieve a real-time translation program, her equipment was relatively simple: a supercomputer, an all-weather outdoor, portable large-screen projection system and an extensive array of ultrasensitive microphones and speakers capable of recording and reproducing sound well below and above the normal range of frequencies audible to the human ear. With the equipment in place, the experiment methodology was simplicity itself: images—both still and video—were flashed on the screen with microphones above and below water recording the dolphin chatter while the English word or phrase accompanying the visual material broadcast in above and below water speakers. The overarching concept that BB banked on was that dolphins would be intelligent enough to make the connection of the attempt to communicate and be able to learn at least some rudimentary verbal concepts with the assistance of the usual reinforcements—treats, physical contact, and genuine care and attention being paid by a patient trainer. It was her hope that by recording and cataloguing the dolphin sounds that accompanied the flashing pictures her computer software would be able to distinguish the dolphin equivalents for at least some of these visual representations over time.

Her methods were simple, and they worked. . . .

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NOTE: The short story collection is available on paperback, audiobook and eBook versions from Amazon, Audible and most book sellers. The short story is also available in various eBook versions, including a Kindle version from Amazon and other book sellers as well. Both are also available to libraries at very low cost. If you like the preview and think you and others may enjoy reading the whole story or short story collection, won't you consider recommending them to your local library? All are available for library purchase, including through OverDrive for libraries that use the popular Live-brary platform.  Thank you!

Mergs or Why Godot Can't Come -- Short Story Preview

As a reader, I have very broad and eclectic tastes and read a lot of both non fiction and fiction. Over the past week, I finished a book on quantum mechanics, a shorter one on seven physics lessons, and am now reading (listening to on my commute, actually) a book on the singularity--the quickly approaching time when machine intelligence will not only equal but far exceed human intelligence. Maybe I'll tackle a good sword and sorcery book next, or perhaps a back title from Dean Koontz,  Stephen King, Larry Niven or Arthur C. Clarke that I have not yet read. When I read fiction, which is often, I like to be entertained of course, but beyond a good narrative I like novels and short stories that make me think. When I write fiction, which is not as often as I'd like due to time constraints, I often like to present the world from a different point of view--a world in which things are not always as they seem, in which our assumptions may be proven tragically wrong. We humans are a complicated lot. The profane and the divine is in each of us, though not always in equal parts. Our hearts seek to soar with the angels while our feet keep us anchored to the earth. Sometimes it is good to be reminded that even the weakest and most humble among us may be a god in his or her own right and a universe onto himself. This particular short story which like Eternal Quest is among my earliest, is in its own strange way intended as a reminder of this fact.

Mergs (Or, Why Godot Can’t Come)

(C) 1980, 2011, 2017

Something was definitely wrong with the world. The Provider appeared to have abandoned his children, and the cold advanced unchecked from the great beyond, even as the land lost its life-giving warmth. And, although every single being was aware of the incipient disaster, none could understand the reason for the inexplicable climate change, let alone think of a way to stave off the certain destruction of their kind.

Mergs, the dominant beings in a world of almost limitless bounty, are highly resilient, sentient beings who had evolved in an environment that offers no natural impediment to their growth and development. With no natural enemies to protect against and no need to marshal limited resources, Mergs, who are not by nature particularly gregarious, never developed a social structure or any concept of property; all the necessities of life are provided by the land in inexhaustible quantities. Each simply takes from the land in accordance with its needs or appetites without the slightest need for toil, industry or planning. Food can be found all around in limitless quantities and variety. All that is required to procure a meal is to bend down and scoop up tasty, highly nourishing morsels of delectable substances in endless varieties and inexhaustible quantities. Thirst quenching, delicious liquids quite nourishing in their own right are available in pools, lakes and rivers of various sizes scattered throughout the land. As with the solid food, the land offers up liquid nourishment in endless variety, some yielding intoxicating effects not unlike that of alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs in the human system. These intoxicating springs are particularly popular with Mergs who are not by nature temperate creatures.

Although the Mergs’ existence might seem a utopian one, there is, alas, a price exacted for such a life of perpetual ease and unending bounty. Endless leisure and an existence devoid of challenge had made the Mergs into a rather intellectually dull race. Intelligence is not prized in a land that so freely yields up its bounty, where there is no game to hunt or trap, no enemy to guard or plot against, and no need for shelter to protect one’s property or oneself from the elements, or the aggression and greed of others. Thus, while Mergs had the same genetically coded survival instinct as all other living organisms, the particular circumstances of their rather hospitable world did not necessitate that it give birth to science, mathematics, or the cultivation of knowledge that at its most fundamental core is born of the survival instinct. For Mergs, survival merely requires eating, sleeping and reproducing to take place. And, since Mergs reproduce asexually, that function is best served by eating as much as possible, thus obtaining the necessary mass and energy required by the reproductive function. Not surprisingly, then, Mergs spend most of their waking hours eating, or looking for new sources of food in order to find pleasure in what would otherwise be the tedium of their primary occupation.

Although the Mergs have no religion as such, they share a universal belief in the Provider, their creator who is the source of life and, in accordance with their belief system, constantly replenishes their supply of food and keeps the land warm for their benefit. Perhaps such a belief system developed due to the destructive floods and killing fumes that are inexplicably visited at least once on the land during the typical Merg’s life cycle. In the Mergs’ belief system, the Provider doles out such catastrophes as punishment for unknown transgressions of which they must surely be guilty, though they be beyond their comprehension. But, because such punishments are uncommon, they represent more an apocalyptic myth than a reality to be feared by the average Merg. 

When such disasters occur, the remarkable resilience of these creatures allows them to spring back undaunted to soon forget they had taken place. And if the Provider earned their respect  through the awesome power he wields, he also earns their unwavering devotion through his constant replenishment of their food supplies which miraculously appeared daily throughout the land, rumored to emanate mostly in a far-off region of the world, where they are said to gush forth in incalculable quantities, conjured forth by the benevolent Provider, erupting from the bowels of the land  and spread by Him to the four corners of the land through powers beyond their ken.

Although most Mergs spend their whole life in a relatively small area, some travel does occur in one of two ways: some Mergs literally eat their way from one place to another in search of different sources of food, and each recurring flood deposited a few hardy survivors in far-off lands. Additionally, some of the more adventurous Mergs--those not yet of breeding age who for that reason need not spend most of their time eating--sometimes venture to climb “the growing regions,” incomprehensively vast, dark mountains that rise upward slowly and inexorably as lava-fed islands do on Earth’s oceans, reaching for the heavens, stretching out endlessly into the Great Beyond. Unlike the beneficent land, these regions are largely bereft of food and contain no pools of liquid from which to drink.  Some Mergs believe that these massive desert regions are a link to the Great Beyond through which a brave Merg with a pure heart might travel, prove its worth and earn the right to meet the Provider. Few were brave or foolish enough to attempt the quest, and of those who did, fewer still returned to tell of it. The fortunate few who made it back alive uniformly reported that the warmth of the land did not reach into the higher regions, but clung close to the ground. Despite such discouraging reports, a few Mergs still ventured forth from time to time, convinced that none who had tried the ascent before them had been worthy, and taking heart in the fact that so many had not returned, believing these to be enjoying the unimaginable Epicurean delights awaiting in the Provider’s domain.

But then the cold began to spread over the land, bringing with it more death and devastation than had ever been visited by floods or noxious clouds. Many Mergs blamed the adventuresome youths for having angered the Provider by trying to venture into his realm, thus visiting upon them this new, harsher punishment. 

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