Anti-anti-CCCA, a "great spin" of a read, another zucchini recipe (of course), and hope from a blossom.
August 31, 2023
What’s Going On?
I keep seeing an ad on Facebook that urges consumers to sign a petition against the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023. Of course, I can’t find the ad or link to the petition right now, but I believe it is sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a non-profit libertarian think tank.
You can read all about CEI’s issues with this act via the following link that brings you to a letter that CEI sent to Congress last year about the 2022 version of this act: CEI Joins Coalition Opposing Credit Card Competition Act.
The short story: They claim that this act will take away our credit card rewards, which is not true.
(Noted below, see: No, Congress is not considering a law that would ban credit card rewards.)
Before I continue with links to the bipartisan acts in the House and Senate, both with more Republican co-sponsors than Democrat, let me present some of the signatories of this letter from CEI against this act:
Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform
Adam Brandon, President, FreedomWorks
Eli Lehrer, President, R Street Institute
Steve Pociask, President / CEO, American Consumer Institute
Heather R. Higgins, CEO Independent Women’s Voice
Tom Schatz, President, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
Pete Sepp, President, National Taxpayers Union
Andrew F. Quinlan, President, Center for Freedom and ProsperityFrom CEI Joins Coalition Opposing Credit Card Competition Act
You get the picture. FYI, you can read their 2023 letter by clicking HERE.
On the other hand, Senator Durbin and Representative Lofgren explain why they, and their Republican co-sponsors, support this act via press releases you can read via these links:
Short Summary of the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023 from Senator Durbin's website
Both documents provide the following list of organizations that support this act:
American Beverage Licensees, Armed Forces Marketing Council, Energy Marketers of America, FMI, Hispanic Leadership Fund, International Franchise Association, National Association of College Stores, National Association of Convenience Stores, National Association of Theater Owners, National Grocers Association, National Restaurant Association, National Retail Federation, National Wildlife Refuge Association, NATSO, NFIB, Retail Industry Leaders Association, SIGMA, U.S. PIRG, and over 200 state and regional business associations.
You can read the specifics of the act and see the cosponsors via:
Finally, here is an excerpt from an excellent article titled No, Congress is not considering a law that would ban credit card rewards, by Verify This.
The legislation that some people believe will ban credit card rewards is called the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023. It was introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate on June 7.
Both versions of the bill are identical. The bill bans payment card networks, such as Visa and Mastercard, from requiring payments made on their cards to be processed through only their networks. The intended effect of this law is to reduce the fees business owners have to pay for every card swipe by creating more competition between payment card networks.
The bill does not make any reference to credit card reward programs, perks, cash back or travel miles. It doesn’t even make any mention of consumers. The bill’s goal is to save businesses money on rising fees.
The article has all the details with multiple citations. This is one of my new favorite websites! 😊
What to Do?
DON’T sign any petitions against the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023!
So easy!
What to Read?
After all that, I am switching gears to recommend a book that seems a universe away from political issues. Although, perhaps not so far since Let the Great World Spin, a novel by Colum McCann, certainly provides us with a multitude of perspectives.
At first, I was rather confused by the book and was not sure if I would recommend it. I guess I was looking for a more typical plotline and I wasn’t getting any sense of any sort of plot at all.
Truth is stranger than fiction because the latter must have a plot.
(I think I came up with the second clause on my own but if you know of a source, let me know and I’ll attribute it!)
What finally hooked me was that the story, like much of the playwright Pirandello’s work, expresses how much we each have our own reality. However, Mr. McCann combines this concept in a novel ripe with connections.
Here is the standard marketing blurb that you will find at Bookshop.org and other bookselling sites:
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann's stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author's most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann's powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city's people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the "artistic crime of the century."A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a "fiercely original talent" (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.
I highly recommend this book. In addition to being a great novel, its chapters are vignettes; you can take a break between them without losing the plot since the plot is not linear per se.
To purchase a used copy, I recommend trying More Than Words first, then Thriftbooks.com.
To support the author and independent bookstores AND help support me so I can keep focused on writing, you can purchase a new copy via my bookstore page on Bookshop.org. I bet your local library has it, too.
Disclaimer: The book cover image and the title of the book, above, both use my affiliate link.
What's Cooking?
If you are in New England, the answer is zucchini! So, I have another recipe for you.
While zucchini bread does not use up all that much zucchini per loaf, at least, the following one does not, you can simply make multiple loaves and freeze them for mid-winter treats. Although, you can get zucchini year-round at most grocery stores, so if you don’t have tons of just-picked zucchini that need to be used up, you are in luck any time of year.
I really like this recipe: not too sweet, but oh so tasty! Caveat: both the plus and the minus are that it uses honey (unless you have agave syrup on hand) and, if you are like me, your honey resides as a solid crystallized block in your cabinet. But no mind. Just pop the jar in some hot water for a bit and it will get soft enough to use in this recipe. I didn’t even wait for it to become totally liquified before whisking it into the wet ingredients. By the way, I used the orange zest option and will continue doing so, unless I only have lemon zest available, in which case I will try that. I also added walnuts. Heavenly! If you like and can eat walnuts, that is. Otherwise, it will be just fine without them.
Here is the recipe. REALLY good!
Greek Yogurt Zucchini Bread from Sally’s Baking Recipes.
What Else?
My Mom used to say, quoting my Pappy, that you have to save some things until you are older. In my case, I had to wait until almost the end of summer (sorry for saying that!) for the sunflowers we started from seedlings, albeit not until VERY late June, to blossom. I am actually still waiting for this to happen as I write this, but, as the picture at the end of this newsletter shows, it’s looking good for it to take place soon.
But what a summer… The effects of climate change are certainly becoming more evident. Here in New England, it was too much rain. In other places, it has been too much heat. Some places have or are dealing with both and/or additional extreme weather or environmentally based issues caused by climate change.
But the flowers are still blooming.
In my 8/3/23 newsletter, I recommend donating to the Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund as it funds organizations that work to alleviate the fundamental causes of climate change.
If able and so moved, here is the link to donate: https://www.every.org/climate.change.fund
And keep the hope!
Be kind,
Wendy