I've actually heard of people churning credit cards to help defray expenses of the overseas adoption process, so it doesn't seem too far off.

Glad to see this takedown of Gary's defense of predatory lending at absurd rates:
Gary Leff is right that a ban on usury will make his scam harder to run. But should you care? ? The Free-quent Flyer

Tempest in a teapot.

Never gonna happen.

Not much logic in that "takedown".

He should park his high horse and expand the shame to everyone with an affiliate link. And for that matter, those reaping the benefits of the system he bemoans, lkke me. And him.

Even less logic in your response.
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Not everyone else with an affiliate link wrote a piece lobbying against consumer protections without making clear that they have major self-interest of course.

How is his horse any higher than Gary's libertarian one, which doesn't make clear that if credit products were more heavily regulated, he wouldn't make the money he currently makes?

That you benefit from an unfair system doesn't really matter much. I benefit from low tax rates and yet I call for increased taxes. I know some of you don't believe in a social compact, though, and like Gary and the Kochs he works for, think the right to make money while standing on the backs of others is inalienable. One can be a frequent flier without sharing that belief. Indeed, Flyertalk was not founded on such principles.

I'm consistently surprised that Leff's Koch-backed libertarian propaganda masquerading as "points and miles expertise" garners as much attention as it does. It should have been filtered out ages ago.

Well, people are free to write whatever they want on their own website....? Nobody is forcing you to read it... this is not the 1930s. Even back then you could skip the article in your newspaper.

So you think there are people who don't know how Gary Leff makes money on the FF/Affiliate link/Blogging game and how regulation impacts that? Maybe he should have something like this on his posts that mention credit cards:

I receive compensation for content and many links on this blog. You don’t have to use these links, but I am grateful to you if you do. American Express, Citibank, Chase, Capital One and other banks are advertising partners of this site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners. I do not write about all credit cards that are available -- instead focusing on miles, points, and cash back (and currencies that can be converted into the same).

Oh, wait-he does. Connect the dots.

I get it-everything's political. But I've been reading Leff for 20 years and never knew he had anything to do with the Kochs. Because he didn't put that out there, because there wasn't a world of internuts who see the world in red and blue, and because it didn't matter.

And what exactly are the principles Flyer Talk was founded on?

Yes I don't think that's an adequate disclosure. Flyertalk was about people helping each other and a sense of community.
Gary's libertarianism is certainly reflected in the content of his posts over the years (I've stopped reading because of it).
Nice way of making it a personal attack on me as an internut for having the audacity to acknowledge politics when Gary literally posted about potential legislation.

TSA is bad, bad, baaaaaaaaad!

All that FT was, FT no longer is. FT got sold for money. FT wasn't given away to charity.

He does have a lot of expertise in the points and miles games. He also does have an ideological axe to grind and uses it when covering the points and miles games and the travel sphere. But I don't really see what more to expect from his mix on topics on VFTW, even as I take issue with some of his positions and with his seemingly default opposition to any and all legal and regulatory efforts to have stronger consumer rights in place and enforced.

Authors can't readily disassociate themselves from their writings, and so it's only to be expected that an author of a blog would cover the topics of interests to them in a way that aligns with their interests and thoughts.

I disagree on the subject of expertise. The main reason I stopped reading his blog after a few months was that it didn't publish anything youa couldn't find in a few minutes on Flyertalk. The added benefit of getting the information from FT as opposed to the blog was the absence of the ideological drivel and poor regulatory analysis.

I expect the level to which a particular ideology is reflected in a piece to vary with the nature of the piece. For an advisory or other non-advocacy piece, I don't expect the author's political leanings to be relevant. My issue with Leff is that a number of his posts read like client advocacy, and while he's free to advocate his and his bosses' positions to his heart's delight, that's just not something I read on my personal time.

gleff's been in the game long enough that I consider him someone that has a lot more expertise on the miles and points game than most FTers.

I don't read VFTW as often as I used to read it -- but that's because it's become less useful for me. It doesn't mean that its owner is any less of an expert in the area even as the blog is different than it used to be.