Small wonder

In an hour or so I will cross the border from Pennsylvania into the strange, alien world where I work.

The picture here, from the paper's website, conveys some of the through-the-looking-glass perspective of the tiny state to our south.

The possibility of consumer protections against predatory, arbitrary and unfounded rate-hikes and fees from credit-card lenders is covered as a threatening storm cloud on the horizon.

Bought-and-paid-for politicians screwing over their constituents to side with the credit-card lenders against consumers is reported on as something to celebrate.

It's true, I suppose, that the readers of our paper pay lower taxes than they otherwise would thanks to the state collecting a share of the vigorish from these fees and unlimited interest rates. And it's also true that several thousand readers of the paper are employed by Plastic Inc. and they might reasonably perceive any extension of the rule of law to cover their industry as a threat to their livelihood.

But I'm not sure any amount of legislative irresponsibility and blind-eye-turning can long preserve an industry based on a business model of extending noncollateralized credit at exorbitant rates to people who can't afford to repay the loans. The possibility of additional regulation doesn't seem like it's really their largest problem.

And speaking of flawed business models, I also have this theory that there exists a potential newspaper readership made up of consumers who might favor more legal protection. There might actually be a group of such potential readers who would view siding with the consumer against Plastic Inc. as a Good Thing. Those readers might have done the arithmetic and concluded that paying a state sales tax might actually be a whole lot cheaper than the premiums they're now paying for consumer credit. And they might actually prefer a paper that covered their side of this story once in a while.

But it's just a theory.

Anyway, it really is an odd place to work.