Bankruptcy Helps Regular Folks - So Let's Kill That, Too

From the Pen of: John Sherffius

These are unquestionably the toughest times the American public has ever faced. Healthacre costs, unemployment, reduction or curtailing of workers' benefits, continued tax cuts for the wealthy, continued paying of those tax cuts by the working class...and the last shred of compassion for the little guy now is on its way to being extinct.

I know so many people who were able to get a frest start and take on a new responsibility for their fiscal picture through filing for bankruptcy - my own family included. But since people who make tons of money can't relate, we must make it go away. And as we do in the New America, we take away the life preserver for the little guy so the big guy can keep more cash. Exactly when did we become pure 100% assholes?

Bankruptcy terms toughen

For better or worse, the use of personal bankruptcy to make a fresh start is about to be sharply curtailed.

Legislation moving through the Senate this week is, to backers, a long overdue tightening in an era of rising indebtedness and bankruptcy declarations.

But even as it promises to make it harder for debtors to "game the system," the policy change will fall heavily on Americans who face illness or sudden healthcare costs, which some experts say account for roughly half of personal bankruptcies.
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"It will affect people's ability to raise children, educate them and afford medical care," says Marc Abrams, a bankruptcy lawyer at Wilkie Farr & Gallagher in New York. "When bankruptcy was conceived, it was supposed to give an individual a fresh start. This is the end of the fresh start."

Comments

[Debra in SF]

Oh, people with lots of money can relate, alright, just for different reasons. That's why this bill doesn't prohibit rich people from using special trusts to shelter their assets from bankruptcy and why the attempt to limit the homeowner's exemption to $125,000 under the bill was voted down. In this brave, new world some people are way more equal than others. Remember Biden's unqualified support for this bill written by the credit card companies if he attempts to run for president in 2008.

[Steve]

This is just plain gross. I mean, they've already set up the credit companies with these ridiculous rules, whereby they get to pick the state with the most usurious laws and "base" their business there, no matter where the company's offices really are, and where the customer and the merchant live.

These people already charge ridiculous interest rates, have built in fees and penalties, for just about every time you breathe; now they're saying, if you make a mistake, your family starves.

And I was so sure Hoover was dead.

And Bush didn't have to do this. This is just another example of piling on. Being mean because you can, to further feed the already well-fed. Because that second yacht ain't gonna build itself.

And I hate to think of a religious family, struggling with meeting their house payments or other loans, having been sold a bill of goods by the Bush resurrection, now getting their butts kicked by this stupid stupid law.

I disagree with the Christian right on just about everything, but I don't wish them any harm. I think it's unnecessarily cruel for their guy in the White House to be so virulently wicked to people who supported him and have faith in him.

For someone who was a total failure in the "private sector" this president puts an inordinate amount of faith in it.

And you'd think, of all people, this bozo of a president would understand the concept of people going too far into debt; he's been in a big hurry to bankrupt our Treasury, trying to "starve the beast."

How much more of this Calvinist "God wants you to be poor because you're evil" crap are we gonna have to go through before someone develops a solid strategy to restore reason, compassion and the value of human beings to their honored place at the center of our government?

[Mark Richards]

I can just smell the compassion.

Or, perhaps another way of saying it is, "Wake up, America, and smell the compassion".