In a stunning display of partisan cooperation, Republicans and Democrats have banded together, falling in line to support new bankruptcy legislation.
Those freaking sheep.
The Senate passed the bill 74-25 on March 10, and it’s been worming its slime-ridden way through the equally slimy House since, only to have been voted on Wednesday.
As an aside, the only abstention in the Senate vote? You guessed it, Hillary Clinton, Senator of New York.
Rumor has it that Hillary was having reconstructive surgery on her foot after nearly breaking it off in ex-president Bill’s derriere. Thank you, Hillary, for Excedrin headache number 42.
Bankruptcy protection is there for a reason. For example, it’s a resort for when an unexpected medical emergency hits a household. It could also help out when a job is lost in an unstable economy.
Filing for bankruptcy is even useful in more likely scenarios, like when debt begins to spiral out of control because of what can truly be attributed to as a mistake.
In these situations, bankruptcy is there as a last resort to help people get back on their feet.
That’s how the theory goes, at least.
Of course, the caveat here is that if you’re going to file, you have to file right.
Like any other law designed to protect, it is easily perverted into something that leaves us little choice other than tears or laughter, like a manic without his medication.
Take Andrew Fastow, former Chief Financial Officer of Enron, who built a multimillion dollar mansion in Florida where the homestead protections save their little “cottages” from liquidation in chapter 7 bankruptcy.
At least we can appreciate the fact that he’s a good planner and managed to find a rather clever way to protect his own hinder. We don’t appreciate it a lot, but you know …
The goal is to prevent our future Enrons, Adelphias and WorldComs from spawning more rich white guys who like to play the system, screwing over the creditors while living high and dry in that nice new 14-story mansion at the end of the block.
Obviously, the current legislation could stand to be revised. So our legislators — in their infinite wisdom — saw the problem, formed a plan and then let the credit card companies elbow their way in with several million dollars in 2004 campaign contributions and write a 500-page bill that makes the latest edition of the US tax code look like something you’d read on the john.
Thanks guys, we appreciate that.
Bankruptcy is tricky ground, a seminal example of a grey area.
It deserves to stick around to protect the people it was designed to protect — individuals who have been hit hard by Lady Luck’s fickle whims — while flipping the proverbial bird to the old rich white guys of the planet who find it funny to build a home worth tens of millions of dollars and sit on their solid gold throne, reading the next edition of the tax laws to find out ways they can screw just a few more pennies out of the rest of us.
Obviously, something needs to be done, but we demand balance in whatever legislation they recommend. Here’s to our legislators getting off their powdered posteriors and actually fixing the problem for a change.
Originally printed in the Daily O’Collegian, April 14th, 2005
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