Dentists, good deeds and angels among us
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Senate on Wednesday yanked away one of the few remaining tools that consumers can use when banks and other financial corporations abuse their authority and unlawfully victimize customers.
Despite a growing list of such abuses, the Senate voted 5150 to prohibit consumers from joining in class-action lawsuits against those institutions.
Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote, which now awaits President Donald Trump’s signature. Republican maverick-wannabes — Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Bob Corker of Tennessee — disappointingly joined the pack on this one.
Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., previously led the fight for passage on the House side.
The effect of their prohibition is to force customers — folks like you — to deal individually with very wealthy and lawyerladen financial corporations when disputes arise. You cannot band together with other aggrieved parties and go to court, even if there’s a demonstrated pattern of abuse by the corporations affecting millions of customers.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, established after the 2007-2008 financial crisis to impose greater scrutiny on the banking industry, had determined that mandatory arbitration clauses gave big financial corporations an unfair advantage over consumers.
Such clauses typically are contained in the fine print of credit card or bank account agreements.
The CFPB in July declared that banks could not restrict customers from banding together in class-action lawsuits. It was a victory for the little guy.
Because of the Senate vote, big financial corporations will be able to behave with impunity. The worst that’ll happen to them is a few individual customers will get disputes arbitrated behind closed doors for a relatively small payout.
Consider a few of the recent scandals, such as Wells Fargo secretly opening credit accounts in customers’ names without their permission, then billing them for the service. Or Wells Fargo billing car-loan customers for insurance they didn’t need or want.
Or Equifax, the corporation that accesses your entire financial background to tell lenders whether you’re credit-worthy, allowing a data breach that exposed roughly half of Americans’ Social Security numbers and other vital information.
Whatever harm consumers suffer in future cases will have to be hashed out in an arbitration session instead of a court of law. The results of such sessions are sealed, so there’s no way to know how the little guy fares against corporations and their hordes of lawyers.
But rest assured, it’s an unfair fight from the start, and that’s by design.
Trump organized his presidential campaign to appeal to the Regular Joes and Janes out there who feel no one in Washington is fighting for their interests. But when he signs this bill, it’s the Joes and Janes who will suffer. The Republicans have declared with this vote exactly who they’re fighting for: Wall Street fat cats.
So last week I get in to work and there’s an envelope sitting on my desk. Someone has written on the envelope:
“He was the nicest man,” “and I remember thinking that if I still had my real teeth that I would love going to see him because of his sweet demeanor and kindness. But I have false teeth anyways, so oh well.”
The letter continues to say that some time later the lady was speaking with a friend who told her about a kind dentist who had pulled her teeth for free since she couldn’t afford it. She was in pain and he removed the tooth and “didn’t bother charging her a thing for it, saying it was the least he could do to help out a fellow human being.”
Turns out, the name of this kind dentist was again “Ellington.”
Now I happen to know a Dr. Kent Ellington who’s a dentist here in town and who I think is a pretty cool guy and this sounds like something he’d do. So I called him to ask if any of the lady’s letter sounded familiar.
He said he does remember taking care of an older lady at the hospital and waiting with her till her son showed up. And he said he can’t remember the other lady specifically because he has, on several occasions, done dental work for people who need it but couldn’t afford it. He was surprised that the older lady would make such a big deal out of their encounter when he thinks he did nothing special and that most people would help someone in need.
But the lady’s letter was very clear on what she thought about him. She ended the letter by saying: “If you’re out there somewhere Dr. Ellington, please know that I am thankful for your kindness to me and my friend who needed help with her tooth. I love you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. God bless you and your family. You didn’t have to help me and you did for no reason.”
The other day I was talking to a Rome Middle School class about finding the “gold” inside ourselves — the great things about ourselves that we can share with others. I told them it’s important to recognize those things in ourselves but it’s also really important that when we see those things in others, that we let them know. We’re always quick to call people out when we’re unhappy with something they’ve done. Let’s all (me included) be just as quick to let people know when they’ve done something we appreciate.
Now as y’all know from previous columns that my dentist is Dr. Kyle Rush and I think he hung the dang moon and I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere else. BUT it sounds to me like Dr. Kent Ellington is a pretty great guy too and our community is lucky to have him.
We can all stand to be a little more patient and a little more generous and a little more gentle with our neighbors. Be kind to each other. We’re all in this community together.