TOMATO/TUHMAHTO: They call it digital currency. I call it a credit card.

  • TOMATO/TUHMAHTO: They call it ‘digital currency.’ I call it a credit card.

Visa, the credit card company, and Arkansas Treasurer Martha Shoffner had their media event yesterday and, courtesy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and other media, got some good free branding for themselves by associating themselves with an NFL star playing a video game said to teach youngsters better financial management.

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I noticed the Democrat-Gazette dutifully repeated the new-age euphemism for the credit card company being used by Visa these days to distance itself from the financial debacle with which most people associate plastic — “global payments technology company.”

Don’t know why the DOG didn’t go ahead and use the rest of Visa’s jargon — that the company “enables consumers, businesses, financial institutions and governments to use digital currency instead of cash or checks.”

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Otherwise known as credit cards.

I don’t think that phrase — credit card — appeared in the story, though the NFL player, Christian Ponder, talked about how he’d once spent too much money dining. What do you bet he used Visa or other plastic on those outings?

No mention in the story either of Shoffner’s own messy financial life — questionable campaign finance reports, charges to the state for vehicles, charges of favoritism in investment practices. I’m surprised Republican Rep. Nate Bell didn’t interrupt the media event to raise the questions he’s been posing about Shoffner on his Twitter account. He says her failure to file required forms on time cost a number of counties federal turnback money for road work. More later on that.

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Maybe if Shoffner used global payments technology …

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