I HAVE REMOVED THE AUTHOR'S IDENTIFICATION. (IT APPEARS AT THE END....BUT NO PEEKING!) AS YOU READ THIS COMMENTARY, TRY TO IDENTIFY ITS AUTHOR. IS IT...
(A) Jim Hightower? (F) Elaine Bernard? (B) William Greider? (G) Ralph Nader? (C) Angela Davis? (H) Tony Mazzochi? (D) Jesse Jackson? (I) Helen Caldecott? (E) Bernie Sanders? (J) None of the Above?
Enjoy! Michael E. ================================================
How Can We Make A Difference?
[BIG SNIP]
Yes, we should support the UN directly, and lobby for an International Criminal Court and the payment of arrears. But as long as governments hold power in the UN, our primary task is to reform our own government. Maybe we should start a new organization -- the Campaign for US Reform. I've got six tasks for it, for starters.
1: We can no longer accept a government which allows us to be number one among industrialized nations: number one in child poverty, number one in the gap between rich and poor, number one in unimmunized children, number one in teen pregnancy, number one in deaths by gunfire, number one in poverty among the elderly, number one in citizens without medical coverage .?. and yet has a trillion dollars worth of new weapons on the books at a time when we just ran out of enemies. It's time for our priorities to change.
2. We can no longer accept a government which promotes and subsidizes arms sales around the world, especially to dictators who use our weapons to control their own impoverished people. Our government didn't listen to Oscar Romero who pleaded for us to stop sending weapons to El Salvador. Well, we hear you ? and it will stop.
3. We can no longer accept a government which uses our money to train death squads in the techniques of torture, intimidation, and assassination. The School of the Americas must be closed.
4. We can no longer accept a government which gives Most Favored Nation (MFN) status to the butchers of Tianenmen Square and places an illegal secondary embargo on the impoverished people of Cuba. We must repeal the Helms-Burton law, end the embargo, and establish normalized relations with Cuba.
5. We can no longer accept a government in which our relations with the rest of the world are held hostage by the likes of Jesse Helms. We can't free East Timor unless we first free North Carolina!
6. We can no longer accept a government which promotes instability, insurrection, tyranny, torture, terrorism, and murder around the world in our name and with our money through the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA must be abolished once and for all.
The six tasks outlined above will only be accomplished by a reformed government which serves the people. With campaign finance reform and media control, we can return power to the people. Only then can these tasks be accomplished. Only then can the priorities be changed, the wrongs righted, and the people served. And only then will it be even remotely possible to make the UN what it should be, and make the world what it can be.
We must build an America at peace with the world ? and with its own people. We must build an America that leads the world - not by dominating and manipulating other nations, but by earning their respect and admiration.
We must build an America that strives not to be king of the hill, but to be a responsible member of the family of nations. We must build an America that leads the world - not with military might, but with its vision, its compassion, its democracy, its productivity, its standard of living, its treatment of its own people, and its goodness.
That, my friends, is how we can make a difference.
=============================================== HAVE YOU FIGURED IT OUT? CORRECT ANSWER IS (J) None of the Above.
HERE IS THE AUTHOR'S IDENTIFICATION:
An address given by Most Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF (retired) to the World Federalist Association and the National Campaign for UN Reform, at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL, May 17, 1997
(This article appeared in S&SN Vol XIV No 2, August 1997)
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Personal Bankruptcy Filings Hit Record Easy Credit Blamed, Congress May Act
By Peter Pae and Stephanie Stoughton Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, June 7, 1998; Page A01
Despite a booming economy, the number of personal bankruptcy filings keeps escalating, hitting record numbers last year for the third consecutive year and again in the first quarter of this year.
>From 1996 to 1997, filings jumped 20 percent to 1.35
million, or one in every 70 households. Maryland and
Northern Virginia, two regions at the forefront of the
economic boom, had some of the biggest increases in
bankruptcy filings in the country, with one in every 58
households filing for bankruptcy protection.
The numbers are causing concern in Congress, where the House and Senate are expected to vote in the next few weeks on legislation cracking down on those seeking to wipe out their debt. Some lawmakers -- backed by banks, credit card companies and retailers -- say the process is too easy and that too many people with the ability to repay creditors are seeking this relief.
Miguel Rodrigues is one who recently got a new lease on life when, in less than five minutes, a bankruptcy trustee wiped out $49,000 in credit card bills, or more than $2,000 in monthly payments, allowing Rodrigues and his family to hang on to their Germantown town house.
"It's an embarrassment to my family but I needed help," said Rodrigues, 33, an automobile repairman who, despite having household income of $55,000, turned to credit cards whenever he got into a financial bind. That happened when his two children were born and when his wife crashed the family car.
"I wish I didn't have to do it [file for bankruptcy] but I couldn't make the mortgage payments because I was always trying to catch up paying the credit cards," he said. "It just got out of control."
Consumers such as Rodrigues filing for bankruptcy protection are creating a furor on Capitol Hill. The changes to bankruptcy laws that lawmakers are considering would mostly make it harder for people like Rodrigues to so easily wipe clean their financial slates in bankruptcy court.
"It was something you just didn't do, something you didn't want your family or your friends to know about," said Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), a key supporter of bankruptcy reform legislation in the House. "But now it's no big deal. It's a way of doing business. I can't completely explain why the stigma is gone, but it's gone."
Consumer groups and economists say banks and credit card issuers are to blame. Credit is too easy to obtain and available even to those who already are financially strapped, they say, arguing that tightening bankruptcy laws would do little to stem the flood of such filings.
Filing for bankruptcy isn't painless. A record of the filing could stay on a person's credit record for up to 10 years, which would make getting a loan difficult.
"Those who want to say [that] the way to solve rising consumer bankruptcy is by changing the law are the same people who would have said during a malaria epidemic that the way to cut down on hospital admissions is to lock the door," said Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard University law school professor who studies bankruptcies.
"Bankruptcy is only the symptom, not the problem," she said. "The problem is the amount of consumer debt we've got and the way families are failing because of it."
The debate has intensified in recent years because personal bankruptcy filings are rising rapidly in the midst of a booming economy, which has been creating more jobs, increasing wages and putting more spending money in the pockets of consumers. Bankruptcy filings by businesses, in contrast, have remained relatively constant.
Among the proposals being debated in Congress is a "means test" that is intended to move some filers from a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing to a Chapter 11 filing, which requires a repayment plan.
The measure has stirred criticism from a variety of fronts including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said the legislation would hurt single parents who are owed child support. Such payments would have to compete with credit card debt in collections from parents who file for bankruptcy protection.
But proponents of the bill said child support payments would continue to be a priority and only after the support had been paid would credit card debt be considered for payment.
"The bills currently under consideration on Capitol Hill would in no way change the priority of those payments," a coalition of banks and retail groups said in a statement.
Six hearings have been held in the Senate and the House. The last time the law was changed, in 1978, Congress spent nearly five years and held three dozen hearings on the matter.
"Other than the IRS tax code and Social Security, more American families are affected by the bankruptcy law than any other federal law," said Brady Williamson, chairman of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.
At the heart of the bankruptcy reform debate are people who defy stereotypes. They are mechanics, Marines and computer programmers. They are single urban residents, baby boomers with children and senior citizens. They are white, black and Asian.
"The increase has been across the board, geographically, socially and demographically," Williamson said. "There is no one set description for an individual who files for bankruptcy."
But what they increasingly have in common, bankruptcy attorneys and economists say, are huge credit card debts and a sudden downturn in their lives, such as divorce or illness. Many racked up tens of thousands of dollars on several cards, some to maintain their lifestyle while others viewed credit cards as life preservers until they could get their finances in order.
"It helped pay for groceries and clothes. It let us go on for a little longer," said a Landover medical technician who filed for Chapter 7 liquidation last month after he couldn't pay his $900 monthly mortgage. A credit card company had garnisheed $400 a month of his $1,800 monthly paycheck. He requested that his name not be used because he didn't want to jeopardize future job opportunities.
But many bankruptcy filers recently interviewed at trustee hearings in Alexandria and Greenbelt said the availability of credit wasn't their entire problem. It was the ease of using credit cards at places such as gasoline station pumps and supermarket checkout lines, which allowed these consumers to rack up debt quickly, almost without realizing it.
Though many of these filers blamed their spending habits, they also said situations in their lives that were out of their control helped cause their finances to crumble.
"We were paying off what we could, but it really got out of hand," said a 40-year-old Arlington hotel manager, who, with his 38-year-old wife, earns $45,000 a year. They had amassed $35,000 in credit card debt, mainly to pay for their college tuition and expenses for their two children.
"When we were single, it wasn't so much of a burden. But now we have two kids and all of these children's expenses," he said. "We can't catch up."
William and Sylvia Evans of Wheaton found that they couldn't afford to make the payments on more than $12,000 in credit card debt after Sylvia was laid off as a secretary six months ago, cutting their combined income by one third. For the first few months they managed, but soon they were on the verge of being evicted from their apartment as they struggled to pay their bills.
"I had nothing to borrow against and the bills kept piling up," said William Evans, a mailman who earns about $34,000 a year. "We just couldn't work it out and that's why we're hanging on the mercy of the court."
Rockville bankruptcy attorney Jon D. Pels said consumers don't have much room to make a mistake because many incomes have not budged despite a robust economy.
"Even people in the middle and upper middle class are living paycheck to paycheck," Pels said. "When something unexpected happens that is outside their control, it makes them fall behind on payments and then it snowballs."
Ironically, an economic boom contributes to more busts as families spend more and in turn incur more debt, said Samuel J. Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute.
"Like overeating causes obesity, rising consumer spending is adding to the debt burden," Gerdano said.
Lawrence E. Ausubel, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, said household debt as a percentage of disposable income has risen dramatically, to 83 percent last year from about 58 percent in 1984.
The rise in household debt was particularly dramatic shortly after the credit card industry was deregulated in the early 1980s and the ceiling on interest rates crumbled, Ausubel said. Soon, massive credit card solicitations and loosening of credit requirements followed.
Ausubel contends that the proposed changes to the laws may have an unintended effect of increasing filings. By making it harder for individuals to wipe out unsecured debt such as credit card bills in bankruptcy, bank profits would rise, enticing banks to expand consumer lending rather than shrink it.
"In our effort to reduce the number of personal bankruptcies we only increase the number of overextended consumers," Ausubel said.
Credit card officials, who have been leading the push for the changes in the law, said the industry is being used as a scapegoat. The officials contend that credit cards have helped individuals ride out financial difficulties. The changes they are seeking would weed out individuals who are abusing the bankruptcy laws to skirt paying back their debt, they say.
"What the reform effort is all about is to ensure that people get the amount of relief that they actually need, no more or no less," said William Binzel, senior vice president for MasterCard, the world's second largest credit card brand.
Meanwhile, bankruptcy filings keep rising and filers say they view this as an opportunity to start over.
Erica Harper, a 25-year-old Bowie resident, said making the bankruptcy process harder would have slammed the door on her future. Harper said she was never employed long enough to collect unemployment benefits or health insurance and as a result when she got ill recently she relied on emergency care.
She accumulated $20,000 in medical expenses, which she tried to repay by borrowing from her grandparents, one of whom died recently.
"Lots of people think filing for bankruptcy means you've got something to hide," she said. "I have nothing. I'm more worried about living."
SEEKING PROTECTION
As household debt has risen . . .
Debt as a percentage of disposable income
1992: 76.6%
1997: 83%
. . . so has credit card delinquency . . .
Average rate of credit card delinquency for bank-issued credit cards
1992: 4.1%
1997: 4.9%
. . . as has the number of bankruptcy filings . . .
Bankruptcy filings, in millions
1992: 968,700
1997: 1.4 million
. . . with Maryland and Virginia reporting bankruptcy rates higher than the national rate as well as D.C.'s rate.
Percentage of households filing for bankruptcy
U.S. 1.43%
Maryland, Virginia 1.72%
D.C. 1.10%
SOURCES: Professor Lawrence E. Ausubel, University of Maryland; Administration Office of the U.S. Courts; the Nilson Report
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company