September 30, 2009 04:39 PM UTC

Attention Payday Loan Comment Spammers: Wrong Blog

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• by: Colorado Pols

It seems like every morning we wake up to a fresh round of comment spam from the payday lending industry. We’re tired of it, and we’ve decided to take a new approach.

The blog system we use is pretty good about filtering spam, primarily by requiring commenters to register with a valid email address. There are no automated methods of spamming our site that we’re aware of, which means that the people posting these subtly-worded ads for payday loans are physically present and reading the discussions they’re spamming.

Well, we have a message for you, payday loan spammers: in return for your unwanted solicitations, we’re going to help put you out of business in Colorado.

The Colorado state legislature has tried several times in the last few years to curtail the payday lending industry, which charges exorbitant interest rates to hard-up customers for short term loans–loans that are usually rolled over for additional two-week periods, frequently leading to a cycle of crushing interest obligations and inescapable debt. Many payday loan customers end up paying hundreds of dollars more in interest than the amount they originally borrowed.

Recent bills intended to rein in the excesses of the payday lending industry failed each year after intense lobbying campaigns, abetted by certain legislators who acted out of the blue to gut or kill reforms without adequate explanation (see: intense lobbying campaign).

Unfortunately for the payday lenders, Jennifer Veiga resigned from the Colorado Senate this year. She won’t be there to kill a payday lending bill in 2010, and the bill is definitely coming back.

We’re not about advocacy here at Colorado Pols, but we’ve been supportive of payday lending reform as a common-sense consumer protection measure ever since the subject has been up for debate in Colorado. This is not some LiveJournal about kitties and teenage angst–this is the biggest political blog in the state of Colorado, safe to say payday lending spam is not reaching its intended audience here.

But thanks to their spam, we are going to make it our mission to help pass tough payday lending legislation in Colorado next year. We’re going to talk about the bill every chance we get. We’re going to link to all the studies showing what a cancerous scam payday lending is on the most economically vulnerable. We’re going to do much more than simply delete comments and ban these spammers–we’re going to make them pay dearly for spamming you.