Re: your credit check post. 
 
You said on http://www.ravnwood.com/archives/001061.shtml: 
"It would seem there are two schools of thought. I share Acidman's view that a good credit rating is an asset. It takes hard work and diligence to make sure that your bills are paid on time, you aren't over extended, and any problems are cleared up quickly and efficiently. I liken it to good grades in school. Whether or not you got an A in freshman English may not really matter a whole lot when you are applying for a job. But if a prospective employer wants to use it as a way to measure your personal habits, so be it. At the very least, it would seem to be a good indication of your personal habits. 
My perception of the opposing school of thought is that they seem to think that credit is something that just happens. People with bad credit are 'victims' of the system, and shouldn't be judged when applying for a job. 
There also seems to be an undertone that being considered for employment is an 'implicit right' that employers are clearly violating. Some readers have even gone so far as to try to liken the use of credit checks to racial bigotry. Dawn Olsen even called the practice 'morally reprehensible'. 
I don't really know what more to say about the issue. Still, you'll find plenty of wonderful comments in the posts on all three sites. 
UPDATE: Jack Cluth has rung in on this as well. I disagree with Jack's opinion. While I could care less if people responsibly use illicit drugs, I feel employers still have a right to test for it. The bottom line is that a person has a choice. They can use drugs, neglect their finances, whatever. But when it comes to applying for a job, they may have to pay the piper for their lack of responsibility." 
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Okay, Mister Raven "It's my job and I can do credit checks if I want to, hire who I want to, fire who I want to" Wood, since you don't care a whit what happens to anyone out there except your business, then I'll talk to you in your language. Being a former Rush Limbaugh fan of the most rabid kind, I still read, write and speak your dialect quite fluently. 
 
And I don't buy the "I'm not a Republican or Rush fan blah blah blah", what waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck *IS* a duck, and had better NOT come through Chinatown OR by my barbecue grill unescorted. 
 
Point by point. 
 
1) Credit scores are IN NO WAY ANY INDICATOR of the way someone manages their life. If you've been crushed by medical bills or you had to declare bankruptcy because the career you got a COLLEGE DEGREE for, all went overseas (see: COMPUTER ENGINEERING!!), this argument holds about as much water as a collander! Your body gets sick, you get bankrupted by a hospital bill the size of the moon, so you're a bad guy, and no job for you? What planet is that logic valid on, please tell me because I'm sending George Bush and his army of Playstation-trained Iraqi child killers over there to clean house! 
2) Hard working Americans get behind on their bills all the time because of layoffs, cutbacks of pay rates, skyrocketing gas prices, cars breaking down, and other disasters. The fact that people are one paycheck away from disaster is quite true, and the statistics are showing it more and more all the time. The middle class is almost on Al Gore's endangered species list at this point. HARD WORKING people, not your dope smoking hippie losers who skipped class in high school and declined to sign up for the Army and go burn the flesh off middle Eastern school girls for God, country and Halliburton. The argument that only irresponsible people have bad credit is so incomprehensibly stupid, it's amazing the author of this rancid river of literary sewage that I just stumbled upon, ever managed to wander anywhere near a school without GPS or his yellow limousine chauffer. 
3) A person with no loan or credit card history is ALSO an irresponsible person? Ok I'll give ya leeway on this one, since employers might choose to give this person a job. I have far better logical holes to exploit, and not enough time or cheap, big spurry cowboy boots to explore all of 'em. 
4) Credit checks DEPRECATE your credit rating. Do you know how many jobs most people apply to before they get hired? "You're overqualified", anyone? THAT many credit checks will drop your credit rating into the toilet. LOOKING FOR WORK COULD MAKE YOU UN-HIREABLE if this persists! 
5) Da Goddess is absolutely right. Buckle up, Sparky, because you ARE going to pay your dues on this one way or another. You're going to. Bottom line. Ixnay on the credit checks and hire the person based on their nonexistent criminal record and good work experience, OR pay out more in welfare taxes or you'll be hiring security staff and buying ammo to protect your business from the poor. The more desperately poor, the more crime. Them's the stats, that's reality. Butch up and deal, stop living in a Pleasantville state of black and white denial. 
5) YOUR COMPANY IS *****NOT**** YOURS. You might be the one hiring but you have higher masters than you in this world who decide whether or not your company survives. Hint. They ain't the Evil Communist Gub'mint. 
 
Oh my. 
Did I just say that?  
 
Now that you've just picked yourself up off the floor, here's reality again. Your business and its survival depends on the ability of your **CUSTOMERS** to buy your product.  
 
More employers than ever are now demanding credit checks as a condition of employment. 
Credit checks deprecate the credit rating of every person that has one done on them. 
Hard working people who are nailed by circumstance will be locked out of employment. 
 
Unemployed people are less likely to buy your stuff. Or your client's stuff. It's a food chain thang, you might not get it. 
 
Here's you future. 
People can't pay bills, or they can't get a job because of the credit rating you ruined by doing all these vanity checks, and thus they cut their spending. You chalk it up to irresponsibility. 
 
Others decide to (American Nat'l anthem)"ACT RESPONSIBLY"(/American Nat'l anthem) and cut their spending for fear of being rushed by bills, unemployment, etc. whatever. You don't even notice this is happening yet. Ignorance is bliss and all that. 
 
Meanwhile, consumer spending in general, goes down. Your clients' clients' clients start to lose profits, and then they go out of business. You light up a cigar - 
 
ok, you're a responsible man, so no cigar for you - 
 
You take a swig of Aquafina bottled water and say those stupid businesses were irresponsible, to heck with 'em. 
 
Then after a while your clients' clients go out of business. Then the caca rolls up to your clients. Same song, no compassion for those dorks. Then suddenly you're out of clients and - 
 
Woah, now how did that happen? - 
 
now it's your turn to close your doors! 
 
Finally, one day, you yourself will find your life savings gone and your own bank account overdrawn as you try and pay that $500 health insurance bill. 
 
Then you will decide to go out and get a job. Lo and behold, Raven "Mister Responsibility" Wood gets turned down because of 
*gasp* 
a bad credit rating. 
 
Whammo, you'll suddenly remember what your mother told you: 
What goes around comes around. 
 
Oh I'm sorry, rewind that, your mother was also a die hard Republican, it was probably her priest who said: 
"Judge not, lest ye be judged." 
 
The end. 
 
 
 
 
Not that I expect a response. I've heard all the arguments of the "forget God, in money we trust" crowd and you'll just post a whole lot of dodges, denials and boring whatever. 
What I predicted will happen. Have a nice day at the golf course, it won't last forever. 
 
Signed, 
A near-800 credit rating, well to do Tech guy with a house of his own and an impending marriage Dec 11th.