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Complete Relief

“Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

--Friedrich Nietzsche--

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”

--Voltaire--

“The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.”

--William H. Borah--

We have heard a lot of talk from both candidates for the Democratic Nomination for the Office of the President of the United States of America about the need for government action to address the mortgage crisis that is sweeping across this country. However, I have yet to hear about a part of the solution that must be included in order to give relief to millions of home owners. That is an immediate repeal or amendment of the Bankruptcy Act of 2005.

Both candidates for the Democratic Nomination have talked about the need for a bail out for home owners that have sub-prime loans where their payments have exploded to levels where they can not afford to make them and pay the rest of their bills. I do believe that something must be done to specifically address the issues that were created by an industry that wanted to prey upon a simple need to own a house. However, there are plenty of home owners as well as renters that are being pushed to the wall of homelessness or forced to retreat back home with their parents or other family members because they can not afford to pay all of their bills and they have no workable recourse under the law. They have no recourse under the law because the current Bankruptcy Law favors creditors and makes it difficult to discharge debt especially if you are a home owner.

Due to the current law people are locked into a debt structure and have no opportunity for relief so they could be forced to choose between paying their mortgage payments or their grocery bill. People are losing their homes because they can not afford to make their mortgage payments and the rest of their daily bills. One good way to give people permanent relief is to give them a chance to get out from under their debts if it becomes too much for them to bear. That is why the current Bankruptcy Law must be changed.

Under the current Bankruptcy Law many hard working people that can no longer pay all of their bills are forced into a Chapter 13 repayment system that may still saddle them with a repayment plan that they still can not make. This should be changed immediately!!!

A few changes to the current Law could mean relief for millions of people that are being forced out of their homes because they can no longer make all the payments on their daily debt. 1) The Law should be changed to provide a federal homestead exemption of at least $25,000 or the state exemption, whichever is higher. The homestead exemptions could also be increased at the state level by the state legislatures. 2) The Law should be changed to shift the burden of proving fraud from the filer to the creditors by eliminating the means test. 3) The Law should be changed to remove the prohibition of people with “high incomes” from being able to file bankruptcy under Chapter 7 when they have high non-dischargeable debts such as student loans and/or child support. 4) The Law should be changed back to valuing property by what it could be sold for at an emergency sale. 5) The Law should be changed to remove the requirement that people that file bankruptcy under Chapter 13 have to give a portion of their income to the IRS, instead of just submitting a repayment plan to the trustee.

The American people should require all of the Presidential Candidates to address the Bankruptcy issue along with the mortgage crisis. We should also make every senator and representative that voted for the current Bankruptcy Law to explain their vote. They should also be required to explain why they voted for a law that was labeled as The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, but instead was the Credit Card Industry Protection Act of 2005.

The Banking and Credit Card Industries gave more than $100 million dollars in political donations to lawmakers between 1999 and 2005. The credit card and banking industries said they needed the changes because they were saddled with annual losses of $3-4 billion due to well-off consumers taking advantage of loopholes in the old law to rack up and walk away from unpaid loans. Yet, they still retained enough profits to be able to make such huge political donations over a six year period. The reality is that the lawmakers that voted for the current Bankruptcy Law chose moneyed interests over the best interests of the American people and now we as a country are suffering the consequences. Maybe it is time that we as a country turned the tables and forced our lawmakers to correct their mistake.

All About the Delegates

“People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.”

--A. J. Liebling--

“Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.”

--Norman Mailer--

“I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.”

--Thomas Jefferson--

The Clintons have done it again with a little help from Saturday Night Live (“SNL”). They have somehow turned water into wine. They have spun straw into gold. They have made mountains from mole hills. They have cajoled, prodded, and bullied the media into doing their dirty work. They did it while accusing the media of being biased against them. The Clintons have baited the media into turning away from the real story that Hillary Clinton did not close the gap in pledged delegates and instead focused on her wins in states where she was supposed to win.

The Clintons have played the media like a musical genius using a finely tuned instrument. They have used the media to define her as the experienced candidate, although in reality she is not. They have used the media to define Barack Obama as a man of rhetoric instead of a politician with some experience and a will to return the process back to the American people. They have used the media to define which states matter and which do not. And they have done all of this while playing the victim.

Hillary Clinton has the benefit of all the resources of an incumbent President that was hugely popular. She was the frontrunner a full Presidential cycle before she ran. She started with a huge advantage over everyone in the field in name recognition, in addition to having the last name of the last Democratic President and also a two term President. She also had a favorable primary schedule that front loaded many of the larger states in the primary process that gave her the advantage since she was the frontrunner. And even with all those advantages, she still has the audacity to play the victim card and actually get away with it. On Tuesday, March 4, 2008, she pulled off her biggest slight of hand. Her campaign was able to maneuver the media away from discussions about the numerical reality that she faces and instead focused on the bottom line of who won which race instead of the all important delegate count. The media did this even though Hillary Clinton won in states where she was supposed to and saw huge leads in Ohio and Texas evaporate. That is not a bad deal for a candidate that claims to be the victim of media bias.

Prior to the SNL skit that portrayed the media as being hard on Hillary while being soft on Barack the media discussed Hillary Clinton’s Herculean challenge. After the SNL skit the media discussed Hillary Clinton’s comeback. By the way, Tina Fey, one of the writers of SNL, is a Hillary Clinton supporter, but no one from the media took the time to point that little fact out. An objective numerical analysis of the delegate count prior to Tuesday’s primaries demonstrated that Hillary Clinton needed to win all four states by a very wide margin in order to have a chance of earning her party’s nomination via the electoral process. The truth is that she did not come close to achieving any of those objectives in any of the four states, but it did not matter because the media shifted its coverage from the delegate count to the portrayal of Hillary Clinton as an underdog. After the SNL skit the media curiously adopted the Clinton spin line that a win is a win. I guess timing is everything.

Hillary Clinton is a long shot to win the Democratic nomination via the primary process, but she will never quit. Hillary and Bill Clinton know it but they also realize that they, like their pal John McCain, have nothing to lose by fighting to the last man because Hillary Clinton is a little long in the tooth (she will be 61 this year) to risk having to wait eight years for another shot at the White House. They know that a lot of things can happen in eight years like another woman running for President that actually had to work her way up through the ranks or the American people may start to get over their love affair with Bill Clinton and the memory of the 1990s.

Regardless of what the Clintons try to peddle to the American people, Hillary Clinton is not about to give up unless she is forced to walk away. To the extent that she was on the “ropes” before Tuesday’s primary, she is still on the “ropes.” That means that it is an incorrect analogy to compare her to a boxer that has gotten up off of the mat to keep fighting. She is more like a wounded animal that is cornered that will fight to the death. That also means that the Clintons probably do not care about playing with the future viability of the Democratic Party because of their lust for the White House. Yet, I doubt that this story angle is likely to be explored.

The Clintons will continue to move the goal posts as long it is convenient for them and as long as the media allows them to do it. They will continue with that tactic regardless of the fact that their tactics will either allow them to steal the game or eventually ruin the field.