Posted on 06/08/2011 10:52:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Via JWF and Reason, we now present this instructional video from the Department of Education. Now that the government has for all practical pruposes nationalized the student-loan industry, the DoE would like to educate recipients on new loan-collection processes. The banks used to send bill collectors and file claims in court, but the Obama administration doesn’t like those kind of harsh private-sector measures to retrieve lost capital. Instead, they’ll send a SWAT team to kick in your door and frighten your children — even if you don’t live with them anymore:
Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.
“I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers,” Wright said.
Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.
“He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there,” Wright said.
According to Wright, officers also woke his three young children ages 3, 7, and 11 and put them in a Stockton police patrol car with him. Officers then searched his house.
Why did a SWAT team treat Wright like a drug kingpin?
The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife’s defaulted student loans.
Ah, yes. Thank goodness that Stockton sent heavily armed men into a house with three young children, forcibly entering and seizing law-abiding citizens, to demand payment for a student loan from someone who no longer lives in the house. That’s precisely the kind of customer service and competent administration we expected when government monopolized the student-loan industry in the first place.
Say, here’s a question: did anyone on the SWAT team think to knock first and wait for someone to answer?
Matt Welch asks a good question:
[I]f this story isn’t a wake-up call about the militarization of police and criminalization of everything, then I’m afraid the patient is even deader than the Fourth Amendment.
It’s also a wake-up call about the nationalization of what should be entirely private transactions. If the DoE hadn’t handed out direct loans in the first place, then the “suspect” would be dealing with her default in civil proceedings, where the dispute belongs.
bfl
Well said but I’m sure the government would say,
Because it’s how the Feds define who are Terrorist...
Don’t pay your student loans.. The government says you are now a Terrorist.
Bump for later
Isn’t there something in the Constitution that forbids criminalization of private debt and debtor’s prisons?
Sooner or later this will end with armed citizens killing one of these SWAT team thugs.
I have some others:
Since the story says the warrant was for the apprehension of the person, why did it take several officers more than ten minutes to search the house and not find her there?
What did they take/damage/destroy in the more than six hour search?
When does "being detained" become "arrest"?
The second revolution is ninety-eight years late!
Or this?????:
Is It Time to Re-Think EVERYTHING You’ve Ever Heard about a College Education?
Or those suspected of being drug kingpins.
Or those who did things that a suspected drug kingpin would do.
Or those who carried cash.
Or those that lived near suspected drug kingpins.
Or...
...Or those RELATED to suspected drug kingpins.
Ironically, student loans are one of the few debt not released by bankruptcy.
Or those who have ever heard the words ‘drug’ and/or ‘kingpin’...
I h ave read this story a few times now, seems to me the problem is the Title, it should be something like:
Armed Gunmen wearing Masks Broke into a House and Terrorized a Family including 3 children for 6 hours today, Police Refuse to Investigate.
RE: the Title, it should be something like:
Armed Gunmen wearing Masks Broke into a House and Terrorized a Family including 3 children for 6 hours today, Police Refuse to Investigate.
________________________________________________________________________
That would be a summary, but it would not fit the limited number of characters allowed in the FR title box.
Local SWAT was called out to assist the Federal agents.
So are taxes.
BTW, they are thinking about having the IRS collect overdue Federal Student Loans and putting those who default through US Tax Court.
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