Democratic (and bizarrely, it seems, Republican, too) Attorney general candidate John Kroger wants to put together a multi-state lawsuit against banks across the country to force them to stop cheating hard-working families out of debt through unscrupulous practices, he said last night.

Kroger, a charismatic Lewis & Clark professor who has prosecuted Enron and mafia bosses, held up a credit card offer received by his campaign at a Town Hall sponsored by economic fairness group Our Oregon, SEIU and OSPIRG, at Portland State University last night. The card offered an interest rate of 5.25%, or 9.24%, or 12.24%, or 15.24%, "as determined by us, based on a credit evaluation and a number of factors," Kroger quoted. "And it goes on to quote one other factor, including the size of your credit line. But the point is, the box that's supposed to tell you what you're getting doesn't tell you what you're getting."

"And then at the bottom of the offer in four point type, it says 'I acknowledge that any service or benefit may be modified at any time'," Kroger continued. "So the bottom line is, none of this counts."

"What angers me is the idea that consumers are blamed," he said. "I can't tell you what the legal impact of this offer is, and I'm a pretty reasonable lawyer. So what is the average consumer going to be able to do?"

"I don't think we in Oregon have enough money to fight the banks on our own," he said. "But if we ally ourselves with other states, just like with tobacco, we can have a huge positive impact."

A credit card company was the biggest contributor to the Bush campaign in 2000. In 2006, credit card companies charged consumers $36bn in fees. In 2007, they charged consumers $192bn in penalty fees, that's $872 for every adult in the US. You might like to check out the movie Overdrawn, by Portland director Karney Hatch, if you want to learn more.

Jeff Merkley, who is running for US senate, listed the ways credit card companies screw people over. From double cycle billing, which means you pay interest on a balance you've already paid off, to giving unfair notice to get your payments in on time. Then there's misleading terms, unfair payment allocation, so you pay off the lower interest debt before the screwy, high interest debt, not to mention inadequate notice of going over your limit. "This makes credit cards an 'I gotcha' type of operation," he said.

Our Oregon is looking for people to tell stories of getting screwed over by credit card companies. This is Blogtown: You know what to do...