The Door Is About to Shut For Americans

[Mark7]

I have felt like a "noose" is tightening around us here in America for some time.

I got a passport a couple of years ago, not sure why they are recommending getting a 2nd passport...

I've not watched it - short on time atm - but the second passport idea is rather ridiculous. You can only get a second passport if you provide proof that you travel a LOT and have to get multiple visas for multiple countries at the same time, thus need two passports to do that. The second passport is only valid for 2 years at a time and in order to get it renewed, you have to provide proof again that you're traveling to multiple countries that require visas and doing so at the same time, so need two passports to get all necessary visas. Regarding the title of the video - the door shut for Americans quite a while ago, those who think it didn't just haven't tried the door...

My partner's son took Chinese at BU and went to China to teach English, he's been over there now for about a year and a half and working for a financial firm at present. I have looked into ways to get out of the US long term and have found that it is very difficult for sure but It seems that there are a few opportunities left - if you know Spanish or Chinese for example, there are some TEFL (teach English as a foreign language) options. Volunteering is also a possibility - knowing the language at least some is required for that as well, and also willingness to live without some of the amenities that Americans are used to.

Edit: spacing

 

[Pagan]

On the topic of debtor prisons, here is a link to a RT article.

http://rt.com/usa/news/resurgence-america-debtor-prisons/

In principle, I am not actually against this, as I know people who intentionally rack up huge debts that they have no intention of ever paying back. They then just declare bankruptcy and walk away. It has been too easy to get away with this in the recent past.

 

[mcb]

...Regarding the title of the video - the door shut for Americans quite a while ago, those who think it didn't just haven't tried the door...

Possibly. I haven't traveled in decades now. My housemate is in Great Britain now and has not encountered unusual difficulties, but she is not trying to stay for very long. I also have friends that live part of the year in Paris, and they have not been able to stay for more than a limited number of months. I think it will be resolved, but it has not been a matter, for them, of p simply picking up and moving.

I can imagine reasons why other countries might not want us moving there.

Things are changing, but an awful lot of what we see today, politically, in the US has been around for as long as the country has. The view of it that we receive of it in school is not very helpful. I learned more from having a friend in high school that was black than I did from my classes. We talked very little about it, but the hopelessness I saw in this person faced with having to return home to Mississippi (in 1966) told me a great deal.

I have been reading Making Our Democracy Work by Stephen Breyer. I have personally met Justice Breyer and while I question everything I read, I have a lot of respect for him. The book is about the US Supreme Court, its history and rulings. It is not possible to read the chapters about the Cherokee and about racial integration without noticing some of the same key political issues driving what happened then and the wrangling in Washington today. I suppose I knew this already, but so much of what I learned in school was sanitized to the point of being useless.

Some of what we may tend to see as new and menacing, then, is actually old and menacing. The fact that we have made it this far is encouraging. Still, we have grown larger, and the evil has grown too. I can't imagine how it won't reach a critical mass at some point and explode upon us all. The way that creation evolves, however, is inherently unpredictable, and I will go on doing what I need to do without presuming to know precisely what is coming or when. The most important thing seems to be that I am still able to act.

(The best exposition about I have encountered to date about the limitations of "natural law" to predict what will evolve/emerge is Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman. It was fascinating the first time through, but a heavy read, and I am planning to read it a second time.)

 

[Al Today]

[...] I know people who intentionally rack up huge debts that they have no intention of ever paying back. They then just declare bankruptcy and walk away. It has been too easy to get away with this in the recent past.

This is so typical to me. How some abuse a situation and blow the opportunity for those who truly need help. Principles on Ponerology and desire for control come into play here. TPTB uses these tools to keep us divided and angry against each other. Divide and conquer is an old tool that seems to work. They will do everything to not allow peace, harmony, or AnyThing that appears STO in nature. For they know, awakened people cannot be controlled.

 

[Pagan]

I agree with you, Al Today. It is always a few jerks who see an opportunity to abuse the system that screw it up for everyone else. But what can be done about it? Allowing abuse just encourages more of the same. I have nothing against helping ethical people of good will who find themselves in a tight spot. At the same time it annoys me greatly that abusers of the system not only get away with theft but drive up costs for people like me who pay their own way.

 

[Guardian]

I agree with you, Al Today. It is always a few jerks who see an opportunity to abuse the system that screw it up for everyone else. But what can be done about it? Allowing abuse just encourages more of the same. I have nothing against helping ethical people of good will who find themselves in a tight spot. At the same time it annoys me greatly that abusers of the system not only get away with theft but drive up costs for people like me who pay their own way.

Yawl just hit a pet peeve of mine too, I'm sick and tired of watching my taxes go up and up, basically to support a bunch of psycho deadbeats who feel entitled to live off the hard work of the rest of us.

I just finished an evidence packet and complaint I'm sending to SSI for this very reason. This woman Barbara Camwell claims she's "disabled" but she has a "coaching service" she charges $75.00 an hour for, numerous websites, blogs, chats, etc. ...and she's too "disabled" to work??
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=8379.210

Excuse me? The fact that she has the time and skills to be a cyberpath PROVES that she has the time and skills to WORK an ordinary on-line job. She can take all those hours she's spending at the keyboard lying about people and GET A JOB...market research, proofread technical manuals, build websites, whatever. I've done all that, and even more boring work, to pay my bills and contribute into the system she's milking.

It's disgusting, and it seems to be a basic psychopathy trait.

 

[go2]

I read some of the posts here with sorrow, as the posters blame the victims of financial warfare for being indigent or forced to guerrilla economics to survive. Allegiance to a vast system of financial slavery is the endgame of psychological operations designed to conceal a cosmopolitan tyrannosaurus of finance by diverting attention to a few mice stealing grain to feed their families. People have become slaves of the predator's of finance and yet they defend their illusions of democracy and freedom. I wish more would take the time to understand the nature of the system they defend and less time studying the pathologies of a few human beings who are driven to lying and stealing to survive in a system of pathology on a scale so vast it beggars the imagination to see people of good will so deceived as to condemn their fellows to debtors prisons to enforce the usurious chains of monopoly finance.

Finance is a form of warfare. Like military conquest, its aim is to gain control of land, public infrastructure, and to impose tribute. This involves dictating laws to its subjects, and concentrating social as well as economic planning in centralized hands. This is what now is being done by financial means, without the cost to the aggressor of fielding an army. But the economies under attack may be devastated as deeply by financial stringency as by military attack when it comes to demographic shrinkage, shortened life spans, emigration and capital flight.

This attack is being mounted not by nation states as such, but by a cosmopolitan financial class. Finance always has been cosmopolitan more than nationalistic – and always has sought to impose its priorities and lawmaking power over those of parliamentary democracies.

Like any monopoly or vested interest, the financial strategy seeks to block government power to regulate or tax it. From the financial vantage point, the ideal function of government is to enhance and protect finance capital and “the miracle of compound interest” that keeps fortunes multiplying exponentially, faster than the economy can grow, until they eat into the economic substance and do to the economy what predatory creditors and rentiers did to the Roman Empire.

Labor's fraction of GDP is at an all time low, and the public demands debtors prisons for those who are trapped by usury.

_http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/images/Labour%20Share.jpg

 

[mamadrama]

In principle, I am not actually against this, as I know people who intentionally rack up huge debts that they have no intention of ever paying back. They then just declare bankruptcy and walk away. It has been too easy to get away with this in the recent past.

In 1833 the United States abolished debtor prisons for good reason. It makes no sense to jail a person who owes money. It costs more to jail them than could ever be collected from them. It breaks up families and subjects people to the humiliation and danger of jail. Often the people who are thrown in jail are destitute and can’t afford rent and food let alone these debts. And if they are incarcerated, how can they then pay off their debt?

There are other problems and iniquities as well. Debt collectors can easily make mistakes and have the wrong person or the wrong amount as they tack on all sorts of fees. They can also easily fail to serve a person the lawsuit so the jailed person may have no warning of what is coming. Debt collection companies use our taxpayer-funded court and prison systems to collect their private debts. It doesn’t matter to them how much it costs because they are not paying for it but they are eventually getting paid from it. It also is an easy way for the system to abuse people. Not so long ago debtor prisons were used by people to get their enemies out of the way.

Another factor is the shift in America to a private for profit prison industry. Chief of these is CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) who spend millions lobbying congress to make more and more things a crime in order to fill more prison beds. In case after case we find that judges are being paid off to unreasonably sentence people to lengthy prison terms in order for their donors to make obscene profit.

Disturbingly, The Wall Street Journal has found that US judges have signed off on over 5,000 warrants since the start of 2010 in nine US counties against debtors. _http://farquharlaw.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/update-on-debtors-prisons-wall-street-journal-confirms-they-are-returning-i-say-let-my-people-go

IMO, this is just another indication that we are sliding toward totalitarianism where the poor and the middle class will become convicted and incarcerated criminals for their inability to pay debts in the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression while banksters et al continue to receive federal bailouts.

 

[mcb]

I read some of the posts here with sorrow, as the posters blame the victims of financial warfare for being indigent or forced to guerrilla economics to survive. Allegiance to a vast system of financial slavery is the endgame of psychological operations designed to conceal a cosmopolitan tyrannosaurus of finance by diverting attention to a few mice stealing grain to feed their families...

I work within the US "safety net" healthcare system and we seem to be witnessing the waging of open class warfare against certain segments of society. It's more than financial, although money is the weapon of choice.

 

[anart]

In principle, I am not actually against this, as I know people who intentionally rack up huge debts that they have no intention of ever paying back. They then just declare bankruptcy and walk away. It has been too easy to get away with this in the recent past.

Do you really know people who intentionally rack up huge debts with no intention of paying them back? Really? I ask because this sounds like a sound bite bite from a far right wing mindset, quite frankly. I've never known anyone who intentionally got into debt, much less while thinking they would just walk away. It's not a very normal thing to do or think. In fact, it's not 'easy' to get away with, not with the change in the bankruptcy law of a few years ago. The vast, vast majority of people want to do well, pay their bills, and not owe anyone anything. The reason why the mortgage scams work is because the vast, vast majority of people take pride in paying their bills and feel terribly guilty if they don't - that's why psychopaths find us so easily manipulable. Big business walks away from their bills without a backward glance, the normal person does so (if they even can) while wracked with guilt. So, I have to call your statement into doubt, because it's not my understanding that many people at all ever rack up huge debts with no intention of paying them back. If they do, they're likely pathological.

 

[Pagan]

Quote from: Pagan

In principle, I am not actually against this, as I know people who intentionally rack up huge debts that they have no intention of ever paying back. They then just declare bankruptcy and walk away. It has been too easy to get away with this in the recent past.

Do you really know people who intentionally rack up huge debts with no intention of paying them back? Really? I ask because this sounds like a sound bite bite from a far right wing mindset, quite frankly. I've never known anyone who intentionally got into debt, much less while thinking they would just walk away. It's not a very normal thing to do or think. In fact, it's not 'easy' to get away with, not with the change in the bankruptcy law of a few years ago. The vast, vast majority of people want to do well, pay their bills, and not owe anyone anything. The reason why the mortgage scams work is because the vast, vast majority of people take pride in paying their bills and feel terribly guilty if they don't - that's why psychopaths find us so easily manipulable. Big business walks away from their bills without a backward glance, the normal person does so (if they even can) while wracked with guilt. So, I have to call your statement into doubt, because it's not my understanding that many people at all ever rack up huge debts with no intention of paying them back. If they do, they're likely pathological.

Anart, I can tell you for a fact that there are people who, as students, racked up huge debts, borrowing money from whatever source they could find, and then, upon graduation, declared bankruptcy. This was so common in Canada at one time, that the government had to change the law so that student loan debt would not be wiped out by bankruptcy.

 

[Woodsman]

Anart, I can tell you for a fact that there are people who, as students, racked up huge debts, borrowing money from whatever source they could find, and then, upon graduation, declared bankruptcy. This was so common in Canada at one time, that the government had to change the law so that student loan debt would not be wiped out by bankruptcy.

Ahh. So it's the evil 21 year-old who is the villain of your narrative. The con-job which is the education system and the con-job which is the student loan, and the con-job which is the job place all came with (secret) disclaimers which the, then 18 year-old child was simply not wise and capable enough to have understood and to have signed on board with responsibly, (unlike smart, careful you, I'm guessing).

Oh yes, I've known a couple of those nasty student types. Generally, I watched as they learned over the course of their college years the dire nature of the many cons played on them, everything from the humble text-book scam and up, but lo and behold, they also realized that they happened to be in a position where they had nothing to lose. And frankly, it seems downright heroic to me that they should give the banks one in the teeth for the massive fraud those organizations have perpetrated on the human race. And what better way to repay a debt to society and the world than to finance education? Sounds like "community service" to me. (Well, insofar as education actually educates, but that's a whole other ball of wax.)

Don't forget for an instant that the Banks owe the people everything. They have taken spectacular quantities of energy and resource from the common human without earning it. Why is this so hard for people to work out and recall when they accuse the "evil" students of trying to evade destruction through whatever rational means are available to them?

Another point: In Quebec, if you are a born native of the province, university is free to the student, paid for by the government.

Isn't that the same thing? -Excepting, of course, that the student doesn't have to play silly games in order to avoid debt slavery while obtaining an education and thereby bringing benefit to society. (Isn't it interesting that the French seem to have figured out some of the answers and that England and the Americas oppose them so fiercely?)

Government should be protecting us from the predatory banking system, not abetting it by making it illegal for kids to avoid crippling debt by simply doing what they have been told to do since birth.

 

[SolarMother]

I read some of the posts here with sorrow, as the posters blame the victims of financial warfare for being indigent or forced to guerrilla economics to survive. Allegiance to a vast system of financial slavery is the endgame of psychological operations designed to conceal a cosmopolitan tyrannosaurus of finance by diverting attention to a few mice stealing grain to feed their families. People have become slaves of the predator's of finance and yet they defend their illusions of democracy and freedom. I wish more would take the time to understand the nature of the system they defend and less time studying the pathologies of a few human beings who are driven to lying and stealing to survive in a system of pathology on a scale so vast it beggars the imagination to see people of good will so deceived as to condemn their fellows to debtors prisons to enforce the usurious chains of monopoly finance.

Well said, Go2--my sentiments exactly-- and thanks for the michael hudson quote and URL.

Woodsman

Oh yes, I've known a couple of those nasty student types. Generally, I watched as they learned over the course of their college years the dire nature of the many cons played on them, everything from the humble text-book scam and up, but lo and behold, they also realized that they happened to be in a position where they had nothing to lose. And frankly, it seems downright heroic to me that they should give the banks one in the teeth for the massive fraud those organizations have perpetrated on the human race. And what better way to repay a debt to society and the world than to finance education? Sounds like "community service" to me. (Well, insofar as education actually educates, but that's a whole other ball of wax.)

Don't forget for an instant that the Banks owe the people everything. They have taken spectacular quantities of energy and resource from the common human without earning it. Why is this so hard for people to work out and recall when they accuse the "evil" students of trying to evade destruction through whatever rational means are available to them?

Thank you for this balanced perspective Woodsman.
It's not just young people who do this, older ones do it too--sometimes with even more understanding and knowledge once they realize the dire straits they are in due to the nature of this con job...as you said,'give the [predator] banks one in the teeth.' It's creative in addition to heroic in my view.

 

[Buddy]

I just caught up with this thread and was curious about the banned Pagan's link to the RT article. Snippet from the article:

[quote author=article]
Bryce Covert, a senior communications officer at the Roosevelt Institute and the assistant editor of New Deal 2.0 said there is a clear jump in arrest warrants being issued to assist debt collectors by arresting Americans in debt, even though debtor prisons were outlawed years ago in the United States.[/quote]

Does anyone know exactly what the arrestees are charged with...how the States' "law" is worded or anything? I thought general debts were a civil matter? Is this for real?

Edit: I mean, I know fraud is a criminal offense and stuff like writing bad checks can get you arrested where you have to post bond and such...I'm just wondering what exactly changed?

 

[mamadrama]

Does anyone know exactly what the arrestees are charged with...how the States' "law" is worded or anything? I thought general debts were a civil matter? Is this for real?

It's my understanding that the main way they are getting this accomplished is by failing to properly notify the debtor of the court action against them. Then when they don't show up for their court date, (because they don't know there is one) the judge rules they are in contempt of court and issues a warrant for their arrest. Supposedly, they then get picked up for contempt charges and thrown in jail until they pay the debt. Please do let us know if you find out more about it, Bud.

Just to show where this could easily be heading...

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/229717-US-SWAT-team-busts-into-house-over-student-loan-default

US: SWAT team busts into house over student loan default Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:04 CDT
Acting on orders from the U.S. Department of Education, a S.W.A.T. team broke into a California home Tuesday at 6 a.m. and reportedly roughed up a man - all because of his estranged wife's defaulted student loans. She wasn't there.

Yet, Kenneth Wright of the city of Stockton was grabbed by the neck by handcuffed before he and his three young children were put in a police car as the officers searched his house, he told ABC News10. He said he was in his underwear the whole time.

"They busted down my door for this. It wasn't even me," Wright told the local news station. "All I want is an apology for me and my kids and for them to get me a new door."

Local police were reportedly not involved in the incident.

Unbelievable!