POLITICO NIGHTLY: Sick, hot American summer

BY RENUKA RAYASAM

Presented by

With help from Myah Ward

AMERICAN HOLIDAY — Americans treasure their chance to trade in sweltering heat for breezy beaches every August. This year, the regular rhythms of the traditional summer are colliding headfirst into peak Covid season: About 1.9 million of the country’s 4.7 million infections occurred in the month of July, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Travel is down broadly this summer, the first decline in more than a decade, according to AAA . But that data point isn’t slowing the pandemic: Many Americans are still traveling, and the coronavirus has become an unfortunate part of their baggage.

An interstate rest stop in Kansas has been a hub of cases. Out-of-state travelers have been blamed for virus surges in Myrtle Beach, S.C. A dozen cases in the Philadelphia suburbs were traced to Jersey Shore house parties.

America’s travel bug, heightened after months of being cooped up, undermines the competing desire to be done with the virus. Over the weekend, White House coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx warned the country is in a “new phase” with hotspots around the country not just in crowded urban centers, but also in rural areas.

“The situation on the ground is much worse today,” said Marta Wosińska, deputy director at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. “What is dangerous about this: If people get into the holiday mindset and let their guard down, that’s a concerning combination.”

Some popular summer holiday destination spots have already clamped down on out-of-state visitors and partiers. Maine and Rhode Island are among the states that require proof of a negative Covid test or a 14-day quarantine. Short-term rentals have been shut down in Miami. Beaches in Chicago are mostly closed.

New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy today placed new restrictions on indoor venues, capping capacity at the lesser of 25 percent or 25 people, New Jersey health care reporter Sam Sutton emailed your host today. Murphy attributed a spike in new cases to young revelers who’ve packed beach houses and party rentals. Jackson Township, the site of one such event that attracted roughly 700 partiers, is now exploring banning short-term rentals in an attempt to ward off travelers carrying the virus.

“Unfortunately, however, the actions of a few knuckleheads leave us no other course. We have to go back and tighten these restrictions once again." NEW JERSEY GOV. PHIL MURPHY

But the measures haven’t completely kept Covid out. Without a coordinated national response, states are still struggling to contain the virus within their borders. Officials at a Bar Harbor, Maine hospital blamed out of towners for spreading the virus in their town, saying they didn’t learn about the positive test results that travelers took in their home state because of delayed test results.

And the patchwork of state and local policies will lead to Covid spikes in places with less restrictive policies, said Marynia Kolak, assistant director for health informatics at the University of Chicago’s Center for Spatial Data Science. She said that hotspots have already cropped up in border areas between states with different policies, like along the Arizona and California border.

Now, with cabin fever setting in, she said holiday revelers will opt to travel to places where bars and restaurants and beaches are open or that don’t have strict quarantine requirements. Midwesterners are flocking to one Lake Michigan beach as others remain closed.

People cross state lines to pay less for cigarettes or alcohol, said Kolak. It’s no different with Covid.

“Areas that have laxer policies right now might get the brunt of infections in a few weeks,” she said.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Wow: This obituary of a Texas man who died from Covid written by his wife. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

A message from PhRMA:

America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials. Because science is how we get back to normal. More.

FIRST IN NIGHTLY

MORE MONEY, FEWER PROBLEMS — The last time Washington debated how much stimulus to inject into a moribund economy, the mantra inside the White House was: The more, the better. Former President Barack Obama agreed to go big, and in his first month in office, he signed an unprecedented $800 billion economic recovery bill — twice as large as a public request by hundreds of liberal economists, four times as large as Obama’s own campaign plan, writes senior magazine staff writer Michael Grunwald. In retrospect, most economists agree, more would have been better.

Now Washington is considering a fifth package that could add at least another trillion dollars to the tab. But with unemployment still in double digits, expanded benefits to laid-off workers expiring at the worst possible time, and the virus still on the rampage, economists are warning that far more stimulus will be needed to lift the country out of the abyss.

Nevertheless, stimulus fatigue seems to be spreading on Capitol Hill, especially among Republicans, and negotiations over the next package seem to be going nowhere fast. There’s a tension between massive relief bills and President Donald Trump’s message that the recovery is already rocking — and Republican senators like Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ben Sasse of Nebraska are starting to express ideological discomfort with Big Government spending bills at a time of record-shattering deficits.

“How long can we just keep throwing money at the problem?” asked one Republican staffer on the Senate side. He then answered his own question: “Not forever.”

HAPPENING 8/4 @ 10 a.m. EDT - ECONOMIC RECOVERY IN THE MIDST OF A PANDEMIC: The coronavirus has caused a record-setting economic decline and tens millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Join POLITICO chief economic correspondent Ben White for an interview with LinkedIn chief economist Karin Kimbrough to discuss prospects for economic growth, the uptick in jobless claims after weeks of decline and how extending unemployment benefits could help in the economic recovery. REGISTER HERE.

Medical workers showcase designs during a virtual fashion show of personal protective equipment in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. | Getty Images

ON THE ECONOMY

END RUN AROUND CONGRESS — The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is calling on federal agencies to extend the eviction moratorium and looser lending rules that Congress established in March, as lawmakers and the Trump administration struggle to reach a deal on the next round of aid, financial services reporter Zachary Warmbrodt writes.

In a letter to housing and bank regulators that was obtained by POLITICO, Senate Banking Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) urged the officials to use their existing authority to continue eviction protections and less burdensome lending rules — in effect doing an end run around Congress.

"Although there are already early, encouraging signs that the U.S. economy is beginning to heal, federal financial regulators must remain diligent, and continue to provide relief in light of a pandemic and economic conditions that continue to evolve," he said in the letter sent Friday. The letter has not been publicly released.

 

FROM THE HEALTH DESK

PREZ V. DOCS — Trump slammed Birx today after the public health official said the pandemic was “extraordinarily widespread.”

Trump’s attack comes shortly after top White House officials admonished House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for undermining trust in Birx.

“So Crazy Nancy Pelosi said horrible things about Dr. Deborah Birx, going after her because she was too positive on the very good job we are doing on combatting the China Virus, including Vaccines & Therapeutics,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “In order to counter Nancy, Deborah took the bait & hit us. Pathetic!”

Trump did shift his tone during his daily coronavirus news briefing at the White House later today, saying that Birx is “a person I have a lot of respect for.“ He also said Pelosi was “very nasty” toward Birx.

At the briefing Trump again split with scientists on his coronavirus task force by endorsing the use of hydroxychloroquine. When asked why he still supports the drug despite pushback from task force members Anthony Fauci and Adm. Brett Giroir, Trump took the opportunity to distance himself from Fauci. “I don't agree with Fauci on everything,” Trump said, citing Fauci’s earlier resistance to mask-wearing and banning travelers from China. “It doesn't mean he's a bad person, because he's not. He's a good person, I like him. But we disagree on things.”

WHERE THERE ARE ZERO ICU BEDS — More than half of all rural low-income communities in the U.S. have zero ICU beds, forcing local hospitals to rely on transfers to wealthier communities for their sickest coronavirus patients, according to a new study.

The findings, published in Health Affairs, underscore the economic disparities shaping the nation’s coronavirus response, especially as the virus shifts from wealthier coastal metros to rural communities in the Southeast and West that have historically struggled with access to care, health care reporter Tucker Doherty writes.

Tucker Doherty | POLITICO

AROUND THE NATION

‘A HORRIBLE POSITION’ — States are preparing to pull thousands of National Guard troops off the front lines of coronavirus relief efforts with federal funding set to expire later this month and no response from the White House on governors' pleas to extend the deployments for the rest of the year, Alice Miranda Ollstein and Lara Seligman write.

State officials and lawmakers have been pressing the White House and Defense Department for months for an extension of the troops' federal status, maintaining that as the virus surges across dozens of states, they cannot support the Guard members who have been running virus testing sites, assisting with contact tracing, building field hospitals, sanitizing nursing homes and stocking food banks.

Federal support for the Guard response to the public health crisis is set to end on Aug. 21. That means states will have had to pull Guard personnel from their duties by Aug. 7 to give them two weeks to quarantine before returning to their home communities. While some states, including Washington and Arizona, have vowed to fully fund the troops' missions with state dollars if federal support disappears, other states cannot afford to do so.

Today, the National Governors Association released a statement slamming the administration for “unnecessary delays” that are creating “significant challenges for states and territories, which are amplified in the middle of a crisis.”

“Every day counts," said one Defense official, who requested anonymity to speak about ongoing discussions. "We are getting very close to when all the guardsmen and women have to start shutting down."

COVID-2020

THREE MONTHS TO GO — Time may have lost all meaning for most of us. But when it comes to the presidential election, the clock is still ticking. In the latest episode of POLITICO Dispatch, chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza brings us inside of Trump's and Biden's campaigns as they enter the final stretch — under circumstances unlike any election in U.S. history.

Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast

POLITICO'S "FUTURE PULSE" - THE COLLISION OF HEALTH CARE AND TECHNOLOGY : As the United States remains stuck in a screening crisis, a worldwide competition has been launched to find the top Covid-19 rapid testing solutions. The contest aims to find a system with a painless sample and quick turnaround for results. When will a breakthrough come? From Congress and the White House, to state legislatures and Silicon Valley, Future Pulse spotlights the politics, policies and technologies driving long-term change on the most personal issue for voters: Their health. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

NIGHTLY NUMBER

83 percent The proportion of New York City bars and restaurants that were unable to pay their full rent for July, according to a survey released today by the NYC Hospitality Alliance. Thirty-seven percent of these establishments paid no rent at all, as restaurants and bars, which were shut down except for takeout for months, have continued to struggle since outdoor dining started on June 22.

PARTING WORDS

TESTING GOES RANDOM AT 1600 — As Trump continues to downplay the need for increased Covid-19 testing across the country, White House officials were told today they will now be subjected to random testing for the virus.

According to an email sent to executive branch employees, which POLITICO obtained, the new policy will require “random mandatory Covid-19 testing” for officials working inside the White House complex. Limited exceptions are available to aides who have spent the last 30 days working remotely or are on previously approved leave, White House reporter Gabby Orr writes.

It was not immediately clear whether there would be consequences for aides who decline to be tested for the virus or fail to show up when summoned to the White House Medical Unit.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of the entire White House Complex, randomized testing of Executive Office of the President staff, which has been ongoing for several months, will become mandatory rather than voluntary,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO. “Failure to report to testing will be considered a refusal to test,” the email stated.

A message from PhRMA:

America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials.

And there’s no slowing down. America’s biopharmaceutical companies will continue working day and night until they beat coronavirus. Because science is how we get back to normal.

See how biopharmaceutical companies are working together to get people what they need during this pandemic.

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Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam

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RSN: FOCUS: Trump Forecasts His Own Fraud

03 August 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

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Donald Trump at a rally. (photo: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

FOCUS: Trump Forecasts His Own Fraud

Charles M. Blow, The New York Times
Blow writes: "This election is in danger of being stolen. By Donald Trump."

Trump is a win-at-all-costs kind of operator. For him, the rules are like rubber, not fixed but bendable. All structures — laws, conventions, norms — exist for others, those not slick and sly enough to evade them, those not craven enough to break them.

Trump is showing anyone who is willing to see it, in every way possible, that he is willing to do anything to win re-election, and will cry foul if he doesn’t, a scenario that could cause an unprecedented national crisis.

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RSN: FOCUS: Robert Reich | The Painful Truth About Covid and the Economy - Trump Is to Blame

03 August 20 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News FOCUS: Robert Reich | The Painful Truth About Covid and the Economy - Trump Is to Blame Robert Reich, Guardian UK Reich writes: "Lies about the economy are harder to spot than lies about the coronavirus because the virus's grim death count is painfully apparent while the economy is complicated."  he recovery has been very strong,” Donald Trump said on Monday. Then the commerce department reported the US economy contracted between April and June at the fastest pace in nearly three-quarters of a century, which is as long as economists have been keeping track. The drop wiped out five years of economic growth.

But pesky facts have never stopped Trump. Having lied for five months about the coronavirus, he’s now filling social media and the airwaves with untruths about the economy so he can dupe his way to election day.

The comeback “won’t take very long”, he reassured Americans on Thursday. But every indicator shows that after a small uptick in June, the US economy is tanking again. Restaurant reservations are down, traffic at retail stores is dwindling, more small businesses are closing, the small rebound in air travel is reversing.

What’s Trump’s plan to revive the economy? The same one he’s been pushing for months: just “reopen” it.

He wants the public to believe the shutdown orders that began in March caused the economy to tank in the first place, so reversing them will bring the economy back.

Rubbish. It was the virus that caused the downturn, and its resurgence is taking the economy down again. The virus is surging back because governors reopened prematurely, before the virus was under control – at Trump’s repeated insistence.

The sequence of cause-and-effect is clear. The virus has surged most in states that were among the first to reopen, such as Florida, South Carolina, Texas and much of the rest of the sun belt.

Because of this resurgence, many states are pausing plans to reopen and some are reimposing restrictions. But these restrictions are not the reason the economy is slowing. They are the necessary consequence of allowing the pandemic to get out of control.

Even the White House’s own coronavirus taskforce concludes that 21 states have outbreaks serious enough to justify more restrictions.

Notably, the economy is sliding again even though the government has pumped trillions of dollars into it. What happens when the money stops?

We’re about to find out. Senate Republicans can’t agree among themselves, let alone with House Democrats, about more funding, while Trump says “we really don’t care” about reaching a spending agreement.

That means starting this week more than 30 million Americans will no longer receive $600 in extra weekly employment benefits. As a result, tens of millions will not be able to make rent or mortgage payments. More will go hungry, including children. The economy is likely to slide even further.

The White House argues that the extra unemployment payments have discouraged workers from seeking jobs because some are receiving more money in benefits than they would earn by working.

“We don’t want to create disincentives to work,” says Trump adviser Larry Kudlow.

More rubbish. A study by Yale economists finds “no evidence” that people who have lost their jobs are choosing to stay unemployed because of the extra federal aid. In fact, “workers facing larger [unemployment] expansions generally appear to be quicker to return to work than others, not slower.”

People can’t go back to work because there is very little work for them to do. Fourteen million more people are unemployed than there are jobs.

In fact, the extra benefits have been keeping some 3 million employed because the money has gone into the pockets of people who spend it, thereby sustaining economic activity. Shrinking those benefits will put less money into consumer pockets, with the result that millions more jobs will be lost.

Lies about the economy are harder to spot than lies about the coronavirus because the virus’s grim death count is painfully apparent while the economy is complicated. But Trump’s economic lies are no less egregious, and they’re about to cause a great deal of unnecessary suffering.

Trump and Senate Republicans may not like it, but that’s the painful truth.

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RSN: The Coronavirus Is Airborne. Keep Saying It.

03 August 20

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The Coronavirus Is Airborne. Keep Saying It.

Michael A. Fisher, Slate
Fisher writes: "There is no time to waste. COVID-19 has already killed over 674,000 people, including more than 152,000 Americans."
READ MORE

A brush fire burns amid the Apple Fire in Banning, Calif. on Saturday. (photo: Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)

California's Apple Fire Destroys More Than 20,000 Acres
Christianna Silva, NPR
Silva writes: "Multiple wildfires are spreading across California, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes in the midst of a global pandemic."
READ MORE

A view outside the makeshift morgue outside of Bellevue Hospital during the Coronavirus pandemic on April 4, 2020 in New York City. Officials in Hinds County, Mississippi have run out of space to store their dead. (photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images)

Morgues Are Overflowing in Mississippi and Coroners Are Terrified
Larrison Campbell, The Daily Beast
Campbell writes: "COVID-19 deaths are exploding in the state - and it may be a massive undercount. One coroner put it simply: 'It's bad.'"
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QAnon supporters wait for a military flyover at the World War II Memorial during Fourth of July celebrations in Washington. (photo: Evelyn Hockstein/WP)

How the Trump Campaign Came to Court QAnon, the Online Conspiracy Movement Identified by the FBI as a Violent Threat
Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Washington Post
Stanley-Becker writes: "The viral online movement, which took root on Internet message boards in the fall of 2017 with posts from a self-proclaimed government insider identified as 'Q,' has triggered violent acts and occasional criminal cases."
READ MORE

Oportun boasted $600m in revenues last year - more than 90% of that from the interest rates customers pay on their loans. (image: Eric Pratt/The Guardian/Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

The Litigious Debt Collectors Targeting Latinos During a Pandemic
Raheem Hosseini, Guardian UK
Hosseini writes: "A California lending company that targets Latinos with high-interest loans is dismissing thousands of lawsuits days after the Guardian questioned the volume of actions against customers."

Oportun, a California loan company that filed 14,000 lawsuits in six months, has dismissed thousands of claims after a Guardian investigation

An investigation by the Guardian has revealed that Oportun Inc is one of the most litigious debt collectors in California, accounting for at least 15% of all small claims filings from July 2017 through June 2018. The company advertises a path to the American dream, but an extraordinary number of its clients end up facing punitive legal action.

According to an analysis of available court records in 20 of California’s 58 counties, the San Carlos-based company filed more than 30,000 collections lawsuits in 2019 and at least 14,000 through the first half of 2020, a period in which the coronavirus outbreak shattered unemployment records and pushed millions of Americans to the brink.

“The number is astounding,” said Noah Zinner, a consumer attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid. “Why are you suing people in small claims? Why are you suing people during a pandemic?”

The company, which sells unsecured personal loans in 12 states and auto loans in California only, declined to provide the total number of lawsuits it filed this year and last in California and Texas, where it has a robust process for filing small claims actions against customers who fall 60 days behind in their payments.

But four days after the Guardian contacted Oportun about its litigious practices, the company announced it would dismiss all pending small claims lawsuits and suspend legal collection efforts during the pandemic.

The company also said it would reduce future collections lawsuits by 60% and cap interest rates at 36%.

Raul Vazquez, Oportun’s CEO, told the Guardian last week that his company was spurred by recent media inquiries to examine how Oportun’s debt collection practices compared with larger financial institutions.

“The fact that we were even near the top … and in some counties, we were the top, was not consistent with the way that we seek to position our business as a mission-driven company,” he said.

But suing customers in small claims courts has been a consistent practice for Oportun. At a time when debt collection lawsuits represent the single most common type of civil litigation in America, Oportun stood as a leader in California, deluging Los Angeles county with more than 15,000 lawsuits last year, or one for every 667 residents in a county of over 10 million.

“They’re by far the largest segment of the small claims hearings here in San Diego,” said Alysson Snow, a legal aid attorney. Snow, who serves as the senior consumer protection attorney at the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, said Oportun had inundated her county courthouse with small claims lawsuits because that was the easiest way to secure indefinite monetary judgments against vulnerable people.

“Most of the time they win by default,” Snow said of Oportun. “They know the community they’re targeting, so there’s a lot of people who have questions of legality regarding citizenship status.”

In California, small claims courts do not have to provide interpreters and do not permit legal counsel, which is why even most legal aid organizations have not come across Oportun. If defendants do not show up to court, judges award default judgments against them in favor of the plaintiff. While damages are capped at $2,500 for anyone who files more than two small claims lawsuits a year, Snow and Zimmer said any judgments allowed Oportun to garnish its customers’ wages and pad on interest for at least 10 years.

Two sides of Oportun

It’s difficult to determine how much small claims judgments affect Oportun’s bottom line. The company boasted $600m in revenues last year – more than 90% of that from the interest rates customers pay on their loans.

According to company lore, Oportun was founded in 2005 by three college-age guys who wanted to help their Latino community members build their credit history. The company was called Progreso Financiero back then and, legend has it, distributed its first loan from a folding card table in a Latino grocery store.

In its 15 years, the company has weathered an economic recession, a name change and a bitter lawsuit from one of its founders on its way to becoming a quiet titan of high-interest loan debt.

In 2018, Oportun issued 374,488 unsecured consumer loans worth $1.1bn in principal, according to a report submitted to the California department of business oversight. Nearly 43% of those loans, all for amounts under $2,500, were charged an annualized interest rate between 40% and 69.9%. (California actually permits payday lenders to charge far more in some cases.)

The vast majority of Oportun’s customers fall behind on payments. At the end of 2018, Oportun collected nearly $8.2m in late fees from over 545,000 loans, roughly 75% of its customer portfolio, which numbered more than 743,000 active customers at the end of April.

According to the company’s filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Oportun has customer contact centers in Mexico, Colombia and Jamaica, as well as a robust process for filing small claims lawsuits in California and Texas against customers who get too far behind.

Snow said Oportun’s interest rates did not do much to differentiate it from the predatory lenders it claims to be an alternative to.

“This is a desperate person’s type of loan,” she said. “You take out a loan to help pay your electric bill and then all of a sudden you have a [small claims] judgment that puts you in a worse position than you would’ve been without the loan in the first place.”

The loyal customer

That’s what happened to David Barrera, an Oportun customer of two years who was served papers in June.

The 49-year-old El Salvadoran lives with his wife, son, daughter and two granddaughters in a two-level apartment that sits a five-minute walk from Oportun’s office in San Francisco’s Mission District. Barrera works as a desk clerk at a residential hotel in the city, where he makes $16 an hour and tries to stretch his salary to keep a roof over his family’s head. His daughter was laid off during the pandemic and his wife, who has worsening diabetes and painful arthritis, can no longer work.

Like a half-dozen other Oportun customers interviewed by the Guardian, Barrera said he desperately needed a little help to pay his bills. Barrera says a friend told him about a place that lends money to people like them – working-class immigrants with dismal or no credit scores, who don’t have access to traditional loans. It was called Oportun, which means “opportunity” in Spanish.

Spanish-language loan documents show Oportun issued Barrera a $6,500 loan in 2018, which he would have to pay back in biweekly installments of $135 with fees and a 33.9% interest rate. Even if everything went as planned, Barrera would remain in debt to the company for 156 weeks and pay it $4,040.32 more than he borrowed.

But then the pandemic hit and Barrera fell behind. Then came the phone calls, no longer friendly. Then came the lawsuits, one for him and his daughter, who had taken out her own loan before she lost her job.

“If before I was barely making it, now I’m struggling very bad,” Barrera told the Guardian. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it.”

A day after Oportun announced it was suspending all small claims actions along with capping annual percentage rates at 36%, Barrera hadn’t yet gotten his reprieve. In fact, he was sinking deeper into debt to the company. He owes $4,900 on his loan, more than when he first signed his name two years ago.

“I already paid $2,000 and that barely scratched my loan,” he said.

In mid-July, Barrera worked out a weekly payment plan to pay $135 every Saturday. Or thought he did. Two weeks later, he received a letter informing him he was being sued and setting his court date for November. His daughter is due in court the month before.

Vazquez, who joined Oportun in 2012, said his company’s pledge to lower interest rates and wipe out customer lawsuits show the company is serious about helping people like his parents, who are from small mining towns in Mexico. He said all customers have to do is text “defer” to a company representative to get a 30-day grace period.

“As we took a look at what’s happening in our country and around the world, we know that low- and moderate-income communities and communities of color – again, my friends, parents of friends, aunts, uncles, cousins – they’re being hit among the hardest of anyone,” Vazquez said. “So we decided that this was the right time to take a big step forward.”

Snow is not impressed by the recent announcements. She said she first encountered the company when it was still calling itself Progreso Financiero and taped a fake legal summons to her client’s front door “to scare them into paying their debts”.

A company spokesman declined to address that specific allegation, saying in a statement: “We have continually transformed our collections practices since our founding, and we haven’t utilized in-person collectors for over four years. We’ve already taken action on the commitments we announced earlier this week to further evolve our approach.” 

Snow said she only learned the company had rebranded but maintained its rapacious collections appetite when she tagged along with an active-duty service member to his small claims hearing and heard one name dominate the docket: Oportun. “And [I was] like, ‘What the hell is going on? This is crazy,’” she recalled.

According to figures provided by the San Diego superior court, Oportun Inc has sued more than 6,500 people in the county between 2017 and 30 July of this year.

During the 2018 financial year in Sacramento and Orange counties, Oportun filed between 14% and 16% of all collections lawsuits and was the single largest source of small claims filings, outpacing housing agencies, bail bonds agencies and other payday lenders.

The company was responsible for nearly half of all small claims lawsuits in Madera and Tulare counties, and more than a quarter of small claims lawsuits in Fresno county.

In Tulare county, which is 65.6% Hispanic and where Oportun accounted for 46.6% of the 1,507 small claims lawsuits filed in 2017-18, the lending company won uncontested judgments in 38% of the 755 small claims lawsuits it filed in the 2018 calendar year.

In an email following Oportun’s announcement, Snow said the company was “still doing more extensive litigation than any other debt collector at the moment”.

The company has taken a financial hit during the pandemic. Oportun Financial Corp reported a net income loss of $13.3m at the end of March and its publicly traded stock was selling for a high of $15.23 a share on 27 July, down $8.54 since January.

As for Barrera, he was planning to call Oportun on Friday to let them know he wouldn’t be able to make his next $135 payment. He sighs when he thinks of his mounting bills.

“I can tell you, I’m behind on everything. I’m behind with my rent, I’m behind with my bills, my phone bills, I’m behind with everything,” he said. “We are not making it. I mean, we are barely surviving.”

The family has started frequenting food banks to stretch what they already don’t have. Barrera noted that it may actually be cheaper for him to lose in small claims court, where Oportun can obtain a maximum judgment against him of $2,500.

“It’s like way lower than I actually owe,” he said. “I thought about it.”

But Barrera quickly dismissed the idea. He said he’s not one to break his word.

“I never been a person who hides from my duties, my bills, and yeah, I will try to pay them off,” he said.

Oportun’s top executive will probably appreciate it. Vazquez only cleared $3.5m in salary, stock options and incentives last year, down from $4.5m the previous year.

READ MORE

Voja Antonić and his colleague Jova Regasek (left) putting together the Galaksija prototype in 1983. (photo: Jacobin)

The Lost History of Socialism's DIY Computer
Michael Eby, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The Galaksija computer was a craze in 1980s socialist Yugoslavia, inspiring thousands of people to build versions in their own homes. The idea behind them was simple - to make technology available to everyone."
READ MORE

Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, feeds a cheetah rescued by the organization. (photo: Sigi de Vos/NBC News)

Demand for Cheetahs as Pets Is Leading to Their Extinction
Keir Simmons, Sigi de Vos and Henry Austin, NBC News
Excerpt: "A baby cheetah named Vickey, plucked from her mother when she was just a few weeks old, was among hundreds of big cats taken by traffickers to be sold as pets in illegal online markets."

“When they hear the cheetah is expensive, they say, ‘Wow, we must catch them and sell them,’” veterinarian Muse Saed told NBC News earlier this year.

 baby cheetah named Vickey, plucked from her mother when she was just a few weeks old, was among hundreds of big cats taken by traffickers to be sold as pets in illegal online markets.

One of the lucky ones, Vickey was rescued from traders in the East African self-declared state of Somaliland. She would otherwise likely have been shipped to the Middle East, where many cheetahs are kept as pets — status symbols for the rich, who flaunt them on social media, according to the Cheetah Conservation Fund, or CCF, a charity dedicated largely to rescuing and rehabilitating the animals.

She would have been worth thousands of dollars on the open market. And even though the traders from whom she was rescued would only have seen a small percentage of that, it would still have been a small fortune in Somaliland (which, despite a declaration of independence, is internationally recognized as part of Somalia).

The traders in Somaliland make only a fraction of what the online brokers make, but it’s still a lot of money to them.

“When they hear the cheetah is expensive, they say, ‘Wow, we must catch them and sell them,’” Muse Saed, a veterinarian based in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, told NBC News earlier this year.

So the mothers are killed and the cubs taken from their dens, some of them only a few days old.

Saed, who works for the CCF said he cried when he saw Vickey for the first time. She was imprisoned in a small enclosure of rocks, and was “physically very poor and dehydrated.”

For the first five months of her life, she was fed meat just once a week on a starvation diet that stunted her growth. Her diet consisted primarily of camel milk. She barely survived.

The conservation fund believes she was destined for a buyer on the Arabian Peninsula. The cheetahs, stored in cardboard boxes or crates, are shipped across the Gulf of Aden, often to war-torn Yemen, before being transported to their final destinations.

Many end up in Middle Eastern countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, where their owners often brag about them on social media, despite laws forbidding their ownership.

Fewer than 20 percent survive, the conservation group estimates.

Laurie Marker, an American who founded the CCF in Namibia in 1990 after years of researching cheetahs with the Wildlife Safari in the United States, said Vickey’s survival was “a miracle.”

“Her’s is the worst story ever,” Marker said. “She’s a sweetheart, which is amazing after what she’s been through.”

In May 2018, the Cheetah Conservation Fund began operating in Somaliland, on the Horn of Africa, where it estimates between 300 and 500 of the creatures remain.

Somaliland effectively broke away in 2000 after an internationally backed government struggled to wrest control from clan-based fiefdoms that emerged following the overthrow of the military regime of President Siad Barre in 1991.

Although it has been inching toward stability since another internationally backed government was installed in 2012, the new authorities still face a challenge from Al Qaeda-aligned al-Shabab insurgents.

Confusion surrounding Somaliland’s status means it does “not really have foreign investment,” according to Minister of Environment and Tourism Shukri Haji Ismail Bandare.

That, she said, was hindering progress in the region.

However, Somaliland’s government, which made trafficking the creatures illegal in 2015, was putting “much effort and time to save the cheetahs,” she said.

“It’s a huge challenge because, as the demand is there, the supply will be there,” she said. Confiscating the cheetahs from traders, she said, takes “time, effort, money, everything.”

She said it was “beyond imagination” to think of how the baby cheetahs suffered due to the trade. “You can hold them in the palm of your hand,” she said. “They are our heritage. ... They could become our future if we can save them.”

The scars of Somalia’s violent past are easy to see along Hargeisa’s dirt roads, which are lined with high walls, often pockmarked with bullet holes.

Behind one of them, the conservation fund has set up cheetah “safe houses.”

“Safe House One,” a yellow single-story building lined with razor wire, has been partially turned into a clinic. Shelves are packed with syringes, eye drops and other veterinary essentials.

“Clinic supplies to buy: feeding tube,” read one of the many notes written on a white board.

In the wild, cheetahs, the fastest land animal in the world, reach speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. Keeping them behind walls strikes cheetah experts as torture.

“This is an animal person’s worst nightmare,” Marker said.

In Somaliland, the cheetahs often come to them younger, which makes it harder — and, in many cases, impossible — to “rewild” them, she said.

Vickey is among the cheetahs that cannot be rewilded. If she survives into adulthood, Marker said, she will be used as an ambassador for cheetah conservation.

Still, some of the areas in which cheetah trafficking is taking place are too dangerous for Marker to visit. Her volunteers move around in nongovernmental organization vehicles, identifiable by their red license plates. They are banned from driving at night.

“The one thing this region needs is peace,” Marker said. “And I can’t control that.”

The organization, which has an annual income of $3.5 million to $4 million, hopes eventually to create a reserve for the cheetahs.

It also aims to educate people about the dangers of the illegal cheetah trade.

“We have to educate people; we have to show them the value of wildlife,” Saed said. “You have to explain the law that bans the wildlife trade.”

In the meantime, the organization will continue to care for 41 cheetahs, eight of which it helped to rescue alongside Somaliland authorities in three separate missions over the last two weeks.

“Many people ask us if wildlife trafficking is still happening through COVID-19, and we know the answer is yes,” Marker said in a July 30 news release.

“We’ve become more aware of how coronaviruses can spread, which includes wild animals moving across international borders, so we must stop people from taking animals from the landscape,” she said. “For their health, and ours, too.”

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