Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle November 13, 2024
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
Bernie Foster
Founder/Publisher
Opinion
Donald Trump Rides Patriarchy Back to the White House
Bobbie Dore Foster
Executive Editor
A
Jerry Foster
Advertising Manager
Patricia Irvin
Product Manager
Graphic Designer
Saundra Sorenson
Reporter
Mary Reischmann
Digital Content
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Seattle Office Coordinator
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Photographer
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cross the country, mil-
lions and millions of
citizens who supported
Kamala Harris’s presi-
dential campaign are no lon-
ger walking around in a haze,
instead moving toward the
light.
Still, there is emotional fall-
out that needs our attention.
Our nerves are frayed; it’s im-
possible to ignore the stress.
It’s a good time to sit quietly,
take deep breaths, and feel
our bodies.
After nearly a decade of
growling and bombast, Don-
ald Trump rode a patriar-
cha-saurus back into the
White House. Why that dino-
saur wasn’t winded, exhaust-
ed, and ultimately defeated
will be studied by historians
for a long time. Even as we
nurse our psychic wounds,
the responsibility of redou-
bling our efforts to hasten the
end of patriarchy is still on
us. Dinosaurs just aren’t that
smart.
Voters who thought that
January 20 would see the na-
tion’s first female president
begin work on her “to-do” list,
remember well her warning
that Trump would be work-
ing on an enemy’s list. Per-
haps she would have added to
her list holding a series of na-
tional town halls about patri-
archy and manhood, perhaps
Rob Okun
Voice Male
magazine
coordinated by the White
House Gender Policy Council.
Instead, that o ce will sure-
ly be disbanded immediately
after Trump’s inauguration.
Nevertheless, it would be-
hoove all of us, regardless of
our political views, to listen
to the frustrations and fears
“
objective—to further expand
male entitlement, privilege,
and power—is getting fresh
wind in it sails; most likely,
powered by oil.
Going forward, what was ac-
curate before election day is
still true: the type of manhood
we choose will contribute to
determining what kind of a
nation we will be: It now looks
more like Proud Boys’ coun-
try than a land populated by
compassionate men; a Hand-
maid’s Tale world of subjuga-
tion rather than a nation of
empowered women and girls.
Half the country thought we
It now looks more like Proud Boys’
country than a land populated by
compassionate men
of disenchanted, underem-
ployed and unemployed men,
knowing they’ll discover
soon enough that they voted
against their own self-inter-
est.
White male supremacy,
which Trump ran on, contin-
ues to play an outsized role in
exacerbating the divide that
a icts our nation. While not
widely understood, men, too,
are damaged by patriarchy;
it diminishes us, undermines
our humanity.
Trump’s election means
that patriarchy’s poisonous
would be welcoming a First
Gentleman, Doug Emhoff, and
Vice President-elect Gov. Tim
Walz, representing a 21st cen-
tury expression of manhood,
emphasizing
compassion,
empathy and care. Instead,
we got a heaping helping of
Trump’s Archie Bunker’s
20th-century masculinity—
gripes and grievance.
Too often, men particularly
don’t acknowledge how much
courage it takes to embody
compassion and empathy, and
conversely how cowardly it is
to rely on meanness and bul-
lying. Yet, those repugnant
qualities are holding sway
now.
It’s on us to find new ways
to connect with and mentor
young men, bringing into fo-
cus a new boyhood, a trans-
formed manhood.
Despite facing strong head-
winds, we must continue
to urge parents, educators,
coaches and other mentors
to develop and promote pro-
grams that nurture young
men’s emotional growth and
well-being. We can’t afford to
rest right now.
Kamala Harris’s candidacy
was supposed to be an anti-
dote to Donald Trump’s white
male supremacy. She didn’t
need to talk about feminism;
she embodied it. Perhaps
that was the problem. Under-
playing her gender, race, and
ethnicity didn’t protect her
from a continuous onslaught
of ugly sexist and racist slurs
that contributed to her defeat.
While feminism simply
denotes believing in the po-
litical, economic, and social
equality of the sexes, Trump
and his allies viciously de-
meaned it at every turn. They
still do. This is not the mo-
ment to invite men to learn
what feminism really means;
that’s for later.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
A Loan Shark in Your Pocket: Cash Advance Apps
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Many Americans contin-
ue to find it challenging to
keep up with the rising cost
of living. Despite economic
reports attesting to a growing
broad economy, the majori-
ty of Americans’ household
finances feel insecure – es-
pecially people who live pay-
check to paycheck with little
or no savings.
The financial marketplace
has responded to this ongoing
consumer cash crunch with
an emerging predatory lend-
ing product designed to take
full advantage of consumers’
financial mismatch: earned
wage advances (EWA). These
cash advance products are
small, short-term loans, typ-
ically ranging from $40 to
$200, that are repaid on the
consumer’s next payday ei-
ther directly from a bank
account or as a payroll de-
duction. They’re also conve-
niently available with a few
clicks on borrowers’ smart-
phones.
But as with other predato-
ry loans, wage advances also
create a deceptive and highly
profitable cycle of debt built
upon repeated reborrowing
with interest equivalent to
300 percent annual percent-
age rates or more. In most cas-
es, these cash advances also
lead to frequent overdraft
fees. The combined repeat
borrowing and high costs re-
sult in unsuspecting consum-
Charlene
Crowell
Guest
Columnist
ers learning the so-called con-
venience brought more – not
less – financial hardship.
This summer, the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau
shared its early analysis of
this growing market segment,
including key data points:
• The number of transactions
processed by these provid-
ers grew by over 90% from
2021 to 2022, with more
than 7 million workers ac-
cessing approximately $22
billion in 2022;
• The average transaction
amount ranged from $35 to
$200, with an overall aver-
age transaction size of $106,
and the average worker ac-
cessed $3,000 in funds per
year.; and
• The average worker in
their study had 27 earned
wage transactions per year,
and a strong growth in fre-
quent usage of at least once
a month rising from 41% in
2021 to nearly 50% in 2022.
More recently, the Cen-
ter for Responsible Lending
(CRL), released a new policy
brief entitled, Paying to be
Paid: Consumer Protections
Needed for Earned Wage
Advances and Other Fintech
Cash Advances.
“By offering predatory
credit with just a few taps on
your cell phone, cash advance
apps are a loan shark in your
pocket. This report shows
many cash advance app bor-
rowers are trapped in a cycle
of debt like that experienced
by payday loan borrowers,”
said Candice Wang, senior
researcher at CRL. “Cash ad-
vance app companies issue
loans with triple-digit annual
interest rates in nearly every
corner of America – even
where those rates are illegal-
ly high – inicting financial
pain on a growing number of
consumers.”
CRL’s analysis of EWA
harms wrought in 18 states
from January 2021 through
June 2024, led to three key
findings on its impacts on
low- to- moderate-income
consumers:
• Many cash advance app bor-
rowers are trapped in a debt
cycle and the heaviest users
drive the business model.
Repeat use of advances is
common and high-frequen-
cy users accounted for 38%
of users and 86% of advanc-
es. Many users borrowed
from multiple apps simul-
taneously. Nearly half of all
borrowers had used multi-
ple companies in the same
month.
• App use is associated with
increased overdraft fees
and payday loan use.
• Consumers across states
are experiencing similar
harms. The eighteen states
analyzed had similar pat-
terns of repeat borrowing
and overdraft use.
States studied included:
Arkansas, Arizona, Califor-
nia, Colorado, Connecticut,
Georgia, Illinois, Massachu-
setts, Maryland, Michigan,
Minnesota, North Carolina,
New Jersey, New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
Washington.
An earlier and related CRL
report released this April,
cited the federal Government
Accountability O ce (GAO)
finding that the share of users
earning less than $50,000 a
year ranged from 59% to 97%
across four different advance
companies that separately
provided these percentag-
es. A survey of low-income
workers receiving govern-
ment benefits found that 51%
had used or downloaded di-
rect-to-consumer apps and
16% had used them once a
week.
Most importantly, this re-
port included comments by
consumers who used cash
apps to make ends meet.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
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