Indentured Servitude

Support the Franken/Dodd bill (Fairness for Struggling Students Act (S 3219)) and the house version (Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act (HR 5043)) which will stop the discrimination against students and allow private student loans to once again be dischargeable in bankruptcy. HR 5043 has been voted out of subcommittee and is now in the House judiciary committee. S 3219 has also been voted out of subcommittee and is in the Senate judiciary committee.  Call your Congressmen, Senators Franken and Dodd and members of the House and Senate judiciary committee to show your support.  Time is of the essence.

A good example of how the banks actually write legislation is the bankruptcy reform legislation of 2005. In the bill Congress produced, private student loans were no longer dischargeable in bankruptcy. The banks were able to write this bill because students have no organization or lobby paying favors to congressmen.

I have seen it done with mine own eyes. The bank's inside counsel draft the legislation and then pass it on to congressional staffers that they have quid pro quo relationships with, often the staffers and bank's attorneys went to the same schools, and the bills are then introduced into committee in the form drafted by the banks.

No national purpose was served by this legislation. In fact, the bill has served to cause many who tried to better themselves through higher education to wind up as indentured servants slaving away for banks. American's families are impoverished and generations will live in poverty because the banks pay legislators lucrative rewards in the form of campaign contributions and high paying jobs.

These private loans, because of little regulatory oversight, often become unpayable because the interest and fees increase to an amount larger than the original loans. The only reason former students are discriminated against in bankruptcy (other bank loans and even gambling debts are dischargeable) is because students have no lobby, and the corrupt political process favors the disproportionate influence of the banks which use the legislative process to do their own bidding.

Americans should not have to live in indentured servitude because the economy cannot provide a job for them at a living wage, often because the banks and corporations use their undue influence in the political process to shape the economy for their own purposes, not for the good of the country.

"We The People"

If Madison is to be believed in Federalist #37 then, in an age of political campaigns funded by corporations, banks and hedge funds, a revolving door between the executive and legislative branches and corporations and banks, and a Supreme Court ruled by idealogues in support of corporations and banks, our political system is functionally broken. 

It is now up to "we the people" to fix the system because the corporate interests using their considerable financial resources to influence Congress to pass legislation in their own favor are too self interested to care about the health of the nation or its people.  It is now up to us to affect the necessary changes to counteract the influence of money in this era of systematic governmental failure.  What this means is that people have to get involved with the political process by writing their state and federal representatives, running for office, petitioning the government and using whatever media necessary to make their voices heard.  Getting involved now is the only thing that will stop the societal disentegration and disequalibrium of power that has taken hold.     

"A Spirit Which Nourishes Freedom"

In Federalist Paper 37 James Madision presents the question:

                    "what is to retrain the House of Representatives from making legal
                    discrimination in favor of themselves and a particular class of society?  I
                    answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and
                    constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which
                    actuates the people of America-a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in
                    return is nourished by it."