INTEREST ONLY

"Just because a person is paranoid, doesn't mean that someone isn't watching them."
--Season 3: The Wire, HBO

I must say it was rejoicing to see my people come together for such a relevant cause like the Jena 6. My joy jolted when I swallowed the fact that for one day (at least), we put aside the community’s typical engulfment with the Jackson Five, the Fantastic Four, the Treacherous Three, 2 Pac or KRS-1. Although who could be mad at the latter?

In any event, as great a day as it was in Jena, Louisiana, I had an interesting passing thought about this (and other) large, predominantly black gatherings. I would love to see a crowd of that capacity pick a particular time of the protest, line the news media lenses up and all AT ONCE, pull out a major credit card and cut it in half. We can dump the depleted cards in a barrel marked INTEREST ONLY! By the way, that noise you just heard was some black republican who just shitted on himself. No worries his white wife will clean it up.... bet she can’t do the electric slide though.


You see the only thing that divides this country more than race, religion, or region is revenue. And, the foundation of revenue—or the lack there-of is credit. Credit card companies are making a KILLING, killing what is left of the middle class. And, whoever is left over, predatory lenders, public schools, and Pubic Hair Thomas will spend the rest of their life time appointments destroying.

Do you have any idea what Visa, MasterCard and Macy's call their cardholders that pay their bills on time? Dead Beats! Yep Dead Beats! Major credit card companies make the majority of your money (excuse me, their money) off the interest and to them Dead Beats (in their world) don't pay any interest. But, you probably already knew that, right?

So, humor me for a minute. Let’s say you get a (loosely-termed) "offer" in the mail to transfer your credit card balance from Card A to Card B. Card B has a 0% interest rate for 9 months. Hell, let’s make it an even year. So you take your $3,000.00 balance (with 15% interest, if you are lucky) from Card A and transfer it to Card B... as the gangsta mail offer suggested. Side note: black republicans think rap artists are the real gangstas! Yeah, watch your back, people!!! I think that’s Nelly and T.I. in the Bushes!

Now back to your 3-grand loss. If this balance is older than a year, it is safe to assume another year won't make much of a difference, right? Which is probably why you got the hostile offer in the mail to begin with.

[I wonder if Colin Powell is delivering mail these days?]

For the record, if you were going to pay this balance off within the 12-month, drug free zone (yet another excerpt from The Wire) that’s cool. Congratulations. But, for the other 99% of the Jena 6 Movement this applies to you... and you may want to get out the Vaseline for this one.

Once that 0% interest rate expires, your new rate(which could be anything) will INCLUDE all the interest that accrued during the 12-month “drug-free offer” plus 10-12% of the national average—which is what "variable rate" really means. So your original 15% interest rate (from Card A with the $3,000.00 balance) is now 25-30% or an additional $900.00 Well, at least your neighbor still has the house-warming toaster that you purchased on the card.

I remember after the second plane hit the towers on 9-11, one of the first things George Bush said (after the Floridian kindergarten class stop reading to him) was: “America will be fine. Americans should act natural and don’t change a thing, in fact.... go shopping.” I wonder if that was Bush's idea of a white sale?

click on INTEREST ONLY title for bonus track.

1 love,
Ray Lewis