Finally, Cracking Down on Payday Lending

Not the official campaign HQ of Rep. Pete Sessions

Payday lenders like CashAmerica and ACE Cash Express often make loans with annual percentage rates of 350 percent or more. They prey on the poor, trapping borrowers in debt they can never pay off. Sixty percent of borrowers are repeat borrowers who string together loan after loan, using the proceeds of the next loan to pay off the last.

But help is on the way. Finally.

POTD: Every Which Way

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from a street in Agra, India. The automobile hasn't taken over the streets in that country — yet. There's still room for auto-rickshaws, motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, even cows. I wouldn't recommend it as an urban planning ideal, but neither do I recommend, say, Central Expressway as an urban planning ideal.

Castle Ruins

The City of Dallas has a problem with rental homes.

"Several of the occupied properties do not have running water, at times there has been open sewage, much of the wood subflooring in the properties is rotten, and makeshift supports seem to be all that are preventing two houses from collapsing into each other," [Dallas's first assistant city attorney Chris] Bowers said via email.

Source: The Dallas Morning News.

There's so much about this Robert Wilonsky story that could and should be talked about. How individuals find themselves living like this. How a society as rich as ours ends up letting the poor live like this. Where, if we condemn and demolish these homes, the tenants are supposed to go. As one tenant who has been homeless before says, his house "is better than nothing." But, this being a Richardson blog and all, I'm drawn to talk about an issue that's been papered over here at home.

The "I" in Richardson ISD

The Richardson ISD is in a tough spot. Enrollment is growing in Lake Highlands. Schools are overcrowded. Expansion could make them unmanageably large. Land for new schools is expensive. Making the issue pressing is an upcoming bond election in less than two months. Money is set aside in the bond for dealing with this, but exactly how to spend it is not yet determined.

What to do? The RISD has established a "Lake Highlands Reflector Committee" made up of parents, staff members, community members and students to research, discuss and recommend options to the board of trustees. Others are freely offering their own advice as well. There's a Facebook group, "Lake Highlands Schools Plan 2030", that has offered a comprehensive long-range plan. And there's even a Dallas city council member, Adam McGough, who has offered his own plan.

OTBR: Perpendicular Point in New South Wales

Latitude: S 31° 38.508
Longitude: E 152° 50.700

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".