This morning, the Senate passed the steaming pile of excrement known as bankruptcy reform legislation. The votes of individual Senators can be found right here. I am willing to cut Ms. Clinton of New York a bit of slack for not voting only because her husband is in the hospital. Notice that not a single Republican voted against this gift to the credit card industry at the expense of taxpayers. Then notice the number of “Yea” votes that came from people with a “D” after their name. These people will henceforth be known as Democrats In Name Only, or DINOs. And just like DINOsaurs, they need to be on the lookout for mass extinction.
Make no mistake, this thing is bad, bad, bad. It means that if a judge thinks a person filing bankruptcy can come up with $100 per month, he will be paying most of the mountain of debt that he is buried under. It makes no difference whether he racked up those debts because he was called up to National Guard active duty in Iraq and therefore wasn’t working his regular job despite the fact that his family had their regular bills. It makes no difference whether he had a catastrophic illness that limited his ability to work and drained his bank account. It makes no difference that he is one of the many people who have been unemployed for over six months. It makes no difference that thanks to the magic of compound interest, he has paid several times what he charged on his credit cards and still owes as much as he charged. It makes no difference that she is a single mom working 2 jobs, worrying about reliable childcare, and unable to afford a lawyer to go after the deadbeat ex-husband who hates her more than he loves his own kids. It makes no difference that he lost a lot of money trying to start a business that would have given jobs to people in his community if only it had succeeded.
Oh, none of this applies if you are wealthy enough to set up an asset protection trust.
Yes, there are a lot of bankruptcies in this country. A Senate that really wanted to lower that number would be thinking about regulating credit card interest and creating more quality, good paying jobs (the kind that include health insurance for the whole family).
Shame, shame on every one of the 74 Senators who voted for this stain on the American Dream.
But back to the DINOs, the most shameful of the bunch. I have a message for them: Don’t think that the “New Democrats” over at the DLC will save you. And don’t sit back and smugly remark that it will take more than a couple of bloggers to bring you down. The guy you need to worry about is the head of the Democratic Party. I finished reading Howard Dean’s book earlier this week, along about the time you voted to stop debate on amendments. It’s a little fluffy — if you are pressed for time, flip to chapter 6 — but it had some really good points, the best of which is that everybody in the Democratic Party needs to remember the people. Here’s a little quote from page 170:
For one thing, there is no reason not to pose primary challenges to Democratic incumbents who vote with the Republicans on critical Democratic priorities.
Biden and company, you’ve got almost a year to straighten up and try to get the target off your back. Not even Lieberman voted for this dog. We The People don’t care how much money the credit card companies gave you, the fact is they can’t vote.
The credit card companies CAN vote for Biden and Carper. MBNA and a number of other very large CC companies are headquartered and have tremendous work forces in Delaware, where Biden and Carper hail from. I’m sure that the employees of the companies are heavily encouraged to vote along the party line.
That said, I voted for Biden once, in an era that I hope was before he turned into a chickenhawking financial ‘ho’.
While it is true that credit card companies have employees who vote, I am willing to guess those employees are outnumbered by credit card customers, who also vote.