Posted on 04/26/2012 7:39:45 AM PDT by ex-Texan
How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs."
Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff's deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.
Under the law, debtors aren't arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing "contempt of court" in connection with a creditor lawsuit. * * *
"Creditors have been manipulating the court system to extract money from the unemployed, veterans, even seniors who rely solely on their benefits to get by each month," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last month * * *
Such practices, heightened in recent years by the effects of the recession, amount to criminalizing poverty, say critics in urging federal authorities to intervene. "More people are unemployed, more people are struggling financially, and more creditors are trying to get their debt paid," Madigan told the AP
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
This is similar to saying that Clinton was impeached for sex.
I’m agreeing with you and adding the fact that politicians, banks and Washington have created massive debt and are walking away from it, sticking you and me with the payments.
My experience is yours, regards the IRS. Even when i screwed up my payment agreement, they worked with me to reinstate. They are not quite as evil as expected. Nice, even.
I'm not so sure it's the banks doing as much as it is the fault of Washington DC. The banks were coerced into making loans to uncreditworthy people by the fed. Of course when the bottom fell out, then the government was there with it's hand in our pockets. The bottom line is that the banks relaxed their lending standards for minorities due to pressure from the government, and plenty of people who knew they had no chance of paying wht they owed took advantage of the situation.
If you go and pick somthing up that belongs to someone else, the crime is "theft by taking." As far as I'm concerned these people who had no intention of paying back their loans are guilty of fraud at least, and should NOT be allowed to declare bankruptcy
As a typical example look here
No, the car dealer would have not only had to pay a fee (tho’ 3% is pretty high), but getting you to take out a car loan would have instead got him a commission!
Excerpt:
* * * It is illegal for debt collectors to make empty threats about serving people with a lawsuit or seizing their home. And it was especially galling to Mey, who says she is debt-free.One of my favorite radio shows is Dave Ramsey Where people call in with debt collection horror stories and also shout out "I'm debt free !" LOL !"They threatened to take legal action against our property and it wasn't even our debt," Mey said.
Millions of Americans are victims of this kind of mistaken debtor identity, partly because of a new breed of collectors called "debt buyers." They purchase old debts for pennies that the original creditors have given up on and then try to collect them for a big profit. Critics say debt buyers sometimes use outrageous tactics to get the money where others have failed. RFA is a debt buyer. * * *
“I walked away from my student debt. They caught up with me. I’m slowly repaying.”
They occasionally catch tax cheats, too, and the IRS has a whole big enforcement section to go after them. But there’s no Student Debt Task Force. Thing is, there’s so much student debt, so many people unwilling to pay, and so few Eliot Nesses or Melvin Purvises of the debt world that it’s a stealer’s market.
“God himself approves of debt cancellation”
One thing you have to bear in mind about the Bible is that it takes place long ago. That’s why, for instance, we don’t get so uptight about its endorsement of slavery or how it suggests people who don’t keep the Sabbath should be put to death. Rich people in the olden days were less likely Warren Buffets or Mitt Romneys. They were not hedge fund managers nor corporate raiders. They were more likely guys who hired people out to bash your brains in and take your stuff.
Think of olden time money lenders as loan sharks. Unlike banks and such, loan sharks operate outside the law and therefore feel free to employ what in civil society, excepting cases of self-defense, only the government can employ only for just purposes: violence. Unalienable rights, of course, never can be sacrificed, but we do give up various privileges to belong to civilization. One of these is the privilege to bash people in the head whenever we feel like it. In return, we receive various civil rights, among them the right to receive police protection from people bashing our brains in.
Now, debt can be onerous. It can lead to something like slavery. Especially if you’re dealing with an organization outside the law, like for instance the mafia. They will make an indentured servant out of you. Banks, belonging to civil society, cannot. They can employ the courts to hound you, and the courts can imprison you, but only with due process.
Do you think the biblical rich cared about due process? Unlikely. They were part of a civil society of sorts, but not like ours. Not one that respected natural law in the same manner. Comapring the two is tricky. Pretending the same sort of debt you got into in year zero and last year is a cheat. It’s like how Marxists call employment wage slavery, even though you get paid over mere subsistence and are free to go when you please. That’s not slavery, nor is debt servitude. Even if you can wind up in prison over debt (indirectly), contemporary debt does not lead to servitude.
There is the issue of unalienable rights, of which I touched on earlier. Some natural rights you sacrifice in exchange for civil rights; some you never can give up. You cannot, for instance, enter into a contract for perpetual slavery. Can you enter into a contract that dooms you to the sort of servitude that results from being imprisoned indirectly over $280 dollars? Libs and apparently Bible fans want to think no, because debt is bad; ancient people used and mafiosos use it to enslave people. I say surely, why not? It’s so easy to avoid jail over $280 that it’s a non-issue.
If you want to Jubilee out debt after 50 years, whatever. This woman has several decades to sweat it out, then.
“The charges may not say ‘Failure to pay debt’ but they are a direct result of failing to pay the debt or of being poor.”
I’m not opposed to people being able to plead poverty, but you have to be there to plead it. Also, perhaps if you’re poor you should be extra careful not to get into debt in the first place. Also again, is poverty really the issue? It was more that she didn’t think the debt was hers. She might’ve been easily been able to pay it had she recognized an obligation.
Also again again, we’re talking about $280 here, not tens of thousands. There may exist people unable to pay that. Those people probably have bigger problems, like not being able to function as adults.
I’m sure he got his commission anyway but he told me that the Visa cut would be 3% of the total charged. The total was just under $20,000. I was in a position to just write a check, so that’s what I did.
He tried to get me to finance it at something like 3.9% but I hate paying interest and I hate making payments.
“Pretending the same sort of debt you got into in year zero and last year”
Pretending they are the same, I mean.
“Furthermore, if we had such a periodic reset, think how it would curb undue reliance on credit markets. Lenders would have to be planning for the reset by coming up with realistic assessments of creditworthiness and repayment plans that could actually work.”
Firstly, Keynes said that in the long run we are all dead, and 50 years is too close to life expectancy to make enough of the difference you want it to make. More frequent debt relief would certainly tighten credit, but how much? You say reliance on the credit market is undue, and it is, but some level of reliance is due. Modern civilization runs on credit; it is the economy’s oil. How much is too much? No one knows.
That’s why, instead of further centralizing the economic decisions of a ridiculously overregulated industry, perhaps the credit market should instead become a free market. You know, like everything else is supposed to be (to an extent). That way credit could represent actual savings, and demand would be tempered by how much people are actually willing to pay for it.
There is an extra commission for the car loan, beyond the commission for the car sale. You did good.
I know an ex-wife who hasn't received any child support payments for the past three years nor the demanded health insurance coverage for her 14 year old daughter. The EX actually had the guts to take her to the Friend of the Court last summer requesting a reduction in his child support as well as forgiveness for his past non payments.
The ex-husband has been out of work for all that time but yet had the money to put a down payment on his latest house.
She solicited the help of a "Family Law" attorney last summer but that was going to cost her an immediate out of pocket cost of $3,000.00.....which she did not have. The court ruled in his favor and she was stuck with having to continue to pay for her daughter's insurance.
The system sucks and people on both sides get screwed, that's just the way it is.........
That's not always the case, see my last post......
The criminal banks were not innocent bystanders that had their arms twisted by Barney Frank.
They indulged this mortgage scam with relish and gusto with the idea to rape the middle class of every dollar they owned.
The criminal banks owe Americans hundreds of billions for their criminality.
Here’s a start:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2877368/posts
I just can’t figure out how the banks worked the scam if the individuals defaulted. The bankers didn’t hold a gun to the defaulters’ heads and force them to borrow more than they could ever repay. I also can’t figure out why the banks totally changed their approach from only loaning money to credit worthy to dumping billons on scumbags in the late ‘90s unless the government put them up to it.
I didn’t even get into parental alienation and its endorsement by our courts or the affect on the children. That’s another huge topic!
I too went through hell, with my husband, over child support, visitation etc. He didn’t see his daughter from the time she was 2 years old until she turned 18 and he contacted her. They are now so close it is unbelievable, but her mother did everything she could, including lying, fabricating addresses, schools etc to keep hubby our of his daughters life.
Today, my step-daughter is closer to her father than her own mother; so in the end everything turned out for the best. Still, it was painful for 16 years with both my husband and his daughter carrying scares from it.
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