illustration by Norman Mallory
Bankrupt
by Lightning Rod
for release 03-11-05
Washington D.C.
Bushco is spending a lot of 'political capital' these days. In the first two months of his second term in office, Bush has used his new Republican majority in Congress to ramrod two pieces of pro-business legislation. Now that your right to file class action lawsuits has been successfully abbreviated, the boys with the deep pockets are about to buy another piece of legislation that lets them get their hands deeper into yours. I'm talking about bankruptcy 'reform.' For the last ten years, the credit card and banking industries have spent in the neighborhood of a hundred million dollars lobbying to secure this legislation. Their investment is about to pay off.
There were 1.6 million personal bankruptcies last year. That's up from 300,000 per year just ten years ago. This costs the credit card companies and banks billions of dollars and it also indicates how many people are feeling the crunch from a combination of falling wages and benefits, lacking medical insurance, high drug and care costs, higher gas prices and the bait and switch game that the credit card companies play. Approximately half of the bankruptcies that we see today are the result of catastrophic medical expenses.
Everybody pretty much agrees that you shouldn't be able to evade your debts through bankruptcy if you get unlucky at the blackjack tables in Vegas or max out your credit buying whores, whiskey, expensive cars and motor boats, but that is not usually the case in personal bankruptcy claims. In most cases it is health care costs, business failure or loss of job, or divorce that causes people to resort to Chapter 7.
In my days of crime, I ran with a white-bread gang that was referred to as The Lakewood Rats. It was a loose confederation of dope dealers and pimps and petty criminals. Uncle Syl was the savant criminique of the bunch. He taught us the rules of crime. One of the maxims he imparted to us was this: "Many times can you shear a sheep, but only one time can you skin him."
This picaresque variation on The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg fable is the same principle behind why Hindus don't kill cows. It's because cows can give you milk for years but you can just eat steak once.
The Poet's Eye notices that our politicians, working on behalf of their corporate sponsors, are coming dangerously close to skinning the sheep. They are eating steak right now.
Bush is feeling cocky. He can do anything. Just yesterday he reasserted his ambition to pillage the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Oh yes, he said, "we need to open up new areas to environmentally responsible exploration for oil and natural gas, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." "Environmentally responsible exploration?" Does that mean you wear a condom when you rape the caribou?
From a speech made by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia on the floor of the United States Senate this week
"Hitler's originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the state: The correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal." Sen. Robert Byrd from the US Senate Floor
Of course all the conservative radio hosts and bloggers and columnists have their panties in a wad about this obvious comparison between Bushco and the Nazi Party. Not that the comparison isn't real and hasn't been made before, but not from the Senate Floor.
Just as Hitler was financed by I.G. Farben, Ford/Volkswagen, Krupp, G.E., and Harriman banking interests, Bush, and our whole government for that matter, is owned by an oligarchy of corporate sponsors. Byrds comparison was not bold enough. Bushco is much slicker than the Nazis. Heinrich Himmler couldn't hold a candle to Karl Rove. All the jackboots have crepe soles these days. And the propaganda is flawless, the way it segues into fact.
Before your eyes, you are seeing the law being turned inside out. They are somehow helping our seniors by putting a blank check in the pockets of the drug companies. They will save Social Security by robbing it. They will preserve the environment by drilling oil wells and laying pipelines in Alaska. They will 'reform' the courts by restricting your access to them. They will snub your right to personal bankruptcy protection by lauding 'financial responsibility.' They will spread democracy by making war. It's a wonderful world we live in. Through the miracle of technology, we can turn the law and the language inside out.
The Poet's Eye sees that the sheep is about to be skinned.
"To live outside the law, you must be honest."--Bob Dylan
