The Ethical Pluralist: March 2005

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Terri-torial Factions

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

40% Credit Interest and Climbing

A friend of mine got a cash advance from her bank card. When she got the bill, her interest rate was a whopping 40%. She was in financial straits, which was why she borrowed. This 40% interest pushed her over the edge rather than saved her.

The new Abu Ghraib mentality toward unsuspecting borrowers will drive many into financial ruin, a thing you'd think the banks and credit companies wouldn't want. If their customers go bust, how would they collect? The answer is the legislation laughably called the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. This piece of legislation would end the traditional protection that goes back thousands of years to forgive a debt after seven years. Outrage against usury burying people in unrecoverable debt goes back at least as far as Jesus casting the money lenders out of the temple. But that is a part of the Bible that Bible thumpers prefer to think of as quaint and outdated.

Credit card companies were some of the largest Repugnican contributors. They have been posting record profits while pushing Congress for legislation to guarantee them their pound of flesh even as they aggressively pursue poor-risk borrowers from whom they can flay unlimited penalties and fees.

This new Republican Bankruptcy Profiteering and Consumer Predation Act ( a better name in my opinion) that passed the Senate and is expected to pass the House refused to add Democratic amendments to cap interest at 30% or to raise the minimum wage by even one dollar. The other aspects of the bill as explained to my friend by her bankruptcy attorney would make it impossible for her to escape the payments and penalties for the rest of her life. She wondered how this could have come to pass and why she hadn't heard about it before. She is conservative in her views and so does not read the NYTimes. I, on the other hand, had been following the bill's course throught he Senate because I do read the Times, both LA and NY.

When I called the authors of this Senate bill before passage, their offices scolded me for believing the liberal press, and that this bill would not affect anyone but a small percentage of scammers. The man in Senator Grassley's office pooh-poohed my concerns as distortions and confidently told me I had been misled by the liberal hysterics.

$40% interest is not hysterics. It is not some wild exaggeration by the "left." It is here.

I want you to do three things. I want you to call your Congressman or Congresswoman about this. Capital switchboard: 202-225-3121. (You can find your Representative's name if you don't know it at House.gov) Tell them how terrible you think the Bankruptcy legislation is. Keep it to one issue. If you have another issue, make a separate call.

Second, I want you to call your State level politicians and explain that although you know they don't vote in Washington, you want them to use their position to bring it up with the state's representatives in Congress. They do talk, and this was suggested to me by my own Congresswoman's office as an effective way to bring pressure to Washington.

Third, I want you to forward this to all your friends, liberal and conservative, especially those who live in conservative states, and ask them to do the same.

If anybody says the Democrats are just the same, don't let it pass. Look below at the amendments they tried to add and that got swept aside. The votes were almost exclusively along party lines and the Dems who voted against are mostly from Heartlessland states like Nebraska and South Dakota.

40% interest. No forgiveness of debt no matter what the cause: illness, failure to receive child support, military service (see the failed amendments below.)

DEMOCRATIC AMENDMENTS THAT FAILED:

S.AMDT.16 Amendment SA 16 proposed by Senator Durbin. To protect servicemembers and veterans from means testing in bankruptcy, to disallow certain claims by lenders charging usurious interest rates to servicemembers, and to allow servicemembers to exempt property based on the law of the State of their premilitary residence.
3/1/2005: Amendment SA 16 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 38 - 58. Record Vote Number: 13.
3 Dems voted against, 0 Reps voted for.

S.AMDT.17 Amendment SA 17 proposed by Senator Feingold. To provide a homestead floor for the elderly.
3/2/2005: Amendment SA 17 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 40 - 59. Record Vote Number: 14.
3 Dems voted against, 0 Reps voted for

S.AMDT.15 Amendment SA 15 proposed by Senator Akaka. To require enhanced disclosure to consumers regarding the consequences of making only minimum required payments in the repayment of credit card debt, and for other purposes.
3/2/2005: Amendment SA 15 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 40 - 59. Record Vote Number: 15.
4 Dems voted against, 1 Rep voted for

S.AMDT.28 Amendment SA 28 proposed by Senator Kennedy. To exempt debtors whose financial problems were caused by serious medical problems from means testing.
3/2/2005:Amendment SA 28 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 39 - 58. Record Vote Number: 16.

S.AMDT.29 Amendment SA 29 proposed by Senator Kennedy. To provide protection for medical debt homeowners.
3/2/2005:Amendment SA 29 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 39 - 58. Record Vote Number: 17.

S.AMDT.32 Amendment SA 32 proposed by Senator Corzine. To preserve existing bankruptcy protections for individuals experiencing economic distress as caregivers to ill or disabled family members.
3/2/2005: Amendment SA 32 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 37 - 60. Record Vote Number: 18.

S.AMDT.31 Amendment SA 31 proposed by Senator Dayton. To limit the amount of interest that can be charged on any extension of credit to 30 percent.
3/3/2005:Amendment SA 31 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 24 - 74. Record Vote Number: 20.

S.AMDT.37 Amendment SA 37 proposed by Senator Nelson FL. To exempt debtors from means testing if their financial problems were caused by identity theft.
3/3/2005:Amendment SA 37 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 37 - 61. Record Vote Number: 21.

S.AMDT.42 Amendment SA 42 proposed by Senator Schumer. To limit the exemption for asset protection trusts. ( a way for rich people to protect their property from banruptcy liquidation )
3/3/2005: Amendment SA 42 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 39 - 56. Record Vote Number: 23.

S.AMDT.70 Amendment SA 70 proposed by Senator Dodd for Senator Kennedy. To exempt debtors whose financial problems were caused by failure to receive alimony or child support, or both, from means testing.
3/10/2005:Amendment SA 70 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 41 - 58. Record Vote Number: 36.

S.AMDT.119 Amendment SA 119 proposed by Senator Dodd for Senator Kennedy. To amend section 502(b) of title 11, United States code, to limit usurious claims in bankruptcy.
(withdrawn for lack of support)

The list goes on and on. Check it out yourself at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN00256:@@@S

Red and Blue Makes Purple

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Holy Hypocrites

Either Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader and Republican darling from Texas, committed an "act of barbarism" on his own father or he has been using the poor Schiavo family as a bit of lighter fluid on the flames of the emotional barbecue called Republicans-Uber-Alles.

He himself coined the impassioned phrase, "an act of barbarism," to describe the removal of the feeding tube that was keeping Terri Schiavo alive. But he, along with his family in 1988, agreed to remove his own father from life-support according to the LA Times today. What, oh what could have made him commit such an evil act on his own father?

Did he love or hate his father? If we say that love was his motiviation in his decision about his father, it implies an opposite motivation in his opposite position about Terri Schiavo. But surely he doesn't hate her. Yet hate is there, as sure as love figured with his dad.

I think hate is a strong word. Yet the viciousness of the Republican assault on one hundred years of growing freedom and equality are being shut down on a single President's watch. The Republican Hate Machine has had such success fanning emotional issues into flashpoint absolutes that they don't know where to stop.

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson is up for reelection and Terri Schiavo looked like a good way to start another blaze. Pour some gasoline on the poor girl's suffering and let the President light the match with a stroke of a pen. I wonder what Mr. DeLay's would have felt if the Congress and President had told him he could not relieve his father's suffering.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Judgment vs. Compassion

I look at the parents and the husband of Terri Schiavo and I see a microcosm of the cancer eating at the core of our society. They cannot come to an agreement, even for the sake of one they love. Meanwhile, all the rest of us are so sure 'our side' of this tragic drama is not only right, but that the other side is evil. This issue, the election, the social and political landscape, the world and our place in it. We are good and the other side is evil. How did this happen?

The parents of this girl seem evil to me. She was bulimic, an eating disorder that is a girl's way of exercising control over her life. The parents' behavior in the name of "love" over the last fifteen years, their intransigent absolutism, their willingness to spin the tale any way to make themselves seem right, their passionate embrace of their vegetative daughter who can no longer disagree makes my skin crawl. I imagine the horror of a daughter with such parents if she were trapped in a non-responsive body but still able to take the world in. I can imagine her inwardly howling with despair at the thought of being at their mercy for the rest of her life and having no way to escape. It is a hell that is much more believable to me than the fire and brimstone of the evangelists.

Then I read in the New York Times about two women whose children had been in the same state as Terri Schiavo. One mother had finally come to the decision that keeping her son alive was hurting him and another who brought her daughter home and has been caring for her for almost thirty years. Both women were still clear that their choice was the right one for them, and neither was willing to judge either the parents or the husband in the Schiavo case.

I felt then a bit of healthy shame. If these women can find it in their hearts to remain non-judgemental, who am I, having never experienced this kind of choice, to take sides.

Oh, a part of my brain will always yammer about the bulimia and its probable cause. But that is unknowable, and needs to be treated as fiction. The reality is the parties in this public parade are in pain. Whether they brought it on themselves or fell into this abyss through no fault of their own has nothing to do with me. My emotional response to them, judgement or compassion, has everything to do with who I am and what my county is as well.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

The Liberal Garden

I would like to rehabilitate the word 'liberal.' Liberal, according to my dictionary, means generous; noble-minded; broad-minded; not bound by tradiitional authority or orthodoxy; candid; free from restraint; looking to the general or broad sense rather than the literal. These are all beautiful ideas. Only one of the last definitions, free from restraint, could possibly be given a negative spin. It is this last and least meaning that has the conservative (tending to support the preservation of established views, customs, institutions, etc.; opposed to change) knickers in a twist. (Knickers being ultra-conservative)

Freedom from restraint means people can behave any way they like within the law. Social codes are broken right and left. I lose control over my children, my spouse. My neighbor doesn't cut his lawn. HIs dog pees on my petunias. The music on the radio hurts my ears. All the doctors at the hospital are foreign and they don't treat me right. Asian women should not be given drivers licenses. Hatred of difference blossoms in my heart. I don't want to face my own ugliness. It must be something wrong with THEM.

If we are liberal, we try to find ways to thrive that allow others the room to thrive as well. Tolerance is not easy, but it is very poor soil for hatred. Instead of seeing society throught he lens of the family, which presupposes adults knowing what's best and laying out rules for the children, liberals view it more as a garden, where hierarchy is irrelevant. In a garden, different plants require different soil, and changing the ph of the dirt is not moral relativism but sensible realism. In a garden, it would never do to allow one plant to grow like kudzu over the entire plot. The Christian Coalition is the kudzu of the American social garden.

Monday, March 21, 2005

The GOP Paradox

The GOP Leaders want it both ways. They want to save the Terri Schiavo's of the world whose costly care would be impossible without Medicaid, but they want to slash Medicaid. It's not okay for her husband to remove her feeding tube, but it's okay for them to remove funding for it.

Likewise, the part of Terri's care that was paid for by her husband came from a million dollar settlement against the doctors, a settlement that the GOP would like to make impossible in their plan to cap runaway malpractice settlements. Yeah, that settlement was ridiculous alright, ridiculously small given cost of her care for fifteen years.

Cynical Politics of "Life"

All the high-minded rhetoric about poor Terri Schiavo in the mouths of Republican legislators would be heartwarming if those ideas found their way into other issues. The reason that the Republican Machine has jumped on this issue is revealed in an eyes-only memo for GOP senators that described it as a "great political issue" because it played to the Christian conservative movement, which makes up much of the Republican base.

The GOP Bulldozer sees an opportunity to unseat Senator Nelson, a Democrat from Florida who has stood by the courts and due process in this tragedy rather than going apocalyptic about it. The GOP Bulldozer has such good control over its members that all, even the President, can be called in to play their part in the machinery. One more seat means that much more leeway in dismantling the Middle Class.

And once they have dismantled the Middle Class, there will be only Workers and Rulers, a cozy arrangement that has worked for millennia, except for that pesky 20th Century anomaly. In the 20th Century, the arrival of labor unions signaled a rise from Working Poor to Middle Class. The unions didn't come about because of liberal politicians. The unions came about because working conditions were unfit for animals, let alone humans, and pay was often not enough to live without debt. Listen to Johnny Cash's old songs. If trickle-down had worked at even a trickle, the unions would never have been born. But the rich don't believe in sharing the wealth.

The Middle Class, however, demanded the same quality of life as the Ruling Class. Having risen from the Working Poor, they also expected the same chance for others to move up as they have. For a few years, the distance between the richest and the poorest in America was such that a person could imagine we were all one people. Yet since Reagan, wages have dropped for wage earners, dropping many back down from Middle Class to Working Poor, while the wealthiest Americans have seen their income multiply a hundred-fold.

How can this be? Because the Ruling Class understood that the once-Working-Poor still felt more comfortable with the old ways and pandered to it. Somewhere in their hearts, the Poor accept their second-class socio-econominc status so long as they can have first-class spiritual status. This is why Bush can lie to the public but Clinton couldn't. The Bushes can pander to his rich buddies and chum with the Saudis so long as they foist the prole moral code on the rest of us.

Which brings us back to Schiavo. Righteous indignation, the tool of these Modern Pharisees, galvanizes forces even as is blinds them. They are shouting morality all the way to the bank.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

The Modern Pharisees

I am tired of the self-styled "Moral Majority." They are merely selectively moral and only superficially devoted to the democratic idea of majority rule. When the majority opinion agrees with theirs, they tout it with zeal. But when the majority opinion on an issue disagrees with theirs, they deny the majority voice for that Majority-of-One called God. Happily, God always agrees with them. And when he doesn't, well, secular humanists weren't the ones who lobbied for the crucifixion of Christ. It was the political zealots of his own religion who didn't like the message. Too liberal. Too permissive. We don't like what he's saying so we'll vilify him and destroy him. Truth be damned in the service of a higher good.

Fundamentalists use the so-called "Word of God" as a weapon to get their way with the rest of us. Scripture is the modern guillotine, clean, swift and cruel.

Yet, even the most literal adherents to the Word in the Bible find their lives at odds with the text. Take divorce. The Bible considers a divorced person who marries another to be an adulterer. It is very clear. Of course, the Fundamentalists condemn divorce and they do so loudly. Meanwhile, they enjoy the highest divorce rate in the nation. The distance between the beliefs they profess and the actions they live widens every day. So whom do they blame for their failings? Liberals and their moral relativism!

These people's hatred of moral relativism does not come from an understanding of what the phrase really means. It comes from self-hatred. Their own hypocricy must find a target outside themselves to attack and scapegoat. Self-reflection is lost in the frenzy of war on (you fill in the blank). This proved successful in Judea 2000 years ago. It proved successful in Germany in the 1930s. It proved successful with American McCarthyism in the 1950s. It is proving successful for the Christian Coalition.

Make no mistake. Liberals are not destroying America and everything we stand for. The Christian Coalition is.

Saturday, March 19, 2005