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TODAY'S UNKNOWN NEWS


The road to slavery

by Underground Panther in the Sky, Unknown News

June 7, 2005

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and other aspects of the safety net are being cut, but you aren't disabled, so it's not your problem -- right? Think again.

The government gave us (disabled people like me) our checks, and some-
times when they could afford it our families put us away from interfering with the smooth operation of their lives with that 'help'. We get our SSI,
subsidized housing, and we don't become burdens on relatives. And if we are
lucky, while they try to "manage us," we can get helped.

Relatives everywhere may be in for a rude awakening as SSI gets cut. Things will become unmanageable -- fast. Some relatives already balk
at having to help house and care for old parents. What will they do with their sisters or brothers
with mental illness, autism, retardation, brain damage, cancer, work-related injuries, war
damage, or wheelchairs? What if the money is just not there any more, or not enough to care for disabled family members? When government budget cuts dump the disabled on their
unprepared, untrained, unfunded, sometimes dysfunctional families, and the family budget just can't afford the care a disabled uncle, or father, or sister needs, what do you think will happen?
Masses of disabled people with no help and no money will be out in the street, avoiding abuse, guilty, depressed, un-cared for. Fearful of being a burden or a victim, some will kill themselves. The disabled will become easy scapegoats for
frustrated, bored, neglected, sociopathic teens
and thugs
. This will eventually cause an outrage, because people who are "normal" can't stand to
see and relate to a human being who's
handicapped up-close, in their own neighborhoods or homes -- they certainly don't want to admit they helped them die.

When the middle class become poor themselves, they will resent their disabled relatives rather than resent the wealthy, just like the poor already. Would there be a great turning away?

When you have mental illness, for instance, and things get hairy at home ... your family can send you away to the hospital where "professionals" handle big problems. Most families can do this now, provided they can navigate the maze of SSI applications and bureaucracy.

But what if they can't do this anymore? What if families are barely able to handle their own dysfunctions? Imagine what stressed out, overworked, dysfunctional families who have to deal with suicidal family members all by
themselves will do. Families living paycheck to paycheck, who cannot afford a disabled person's medication -- what would they do, watching their child or sister deteriorate? Or watching a loved one who needs dialysis, with no money or Medicaid to pay for it, horribly, painfully, pitifully, dying at home for want of an hour once a day on a
machine in a doctor's office? Or living with a
person who is immobilized, unable to buy the medicine or have the state help them to control the pain so they can live? What would families do?

Would Futility of life laws become more tasty ... for a solution? Would that be "better" than denying the wealthy their fees and the credit companies their interest and the rich their stolen wealth gained on the blood-sweat-tears and broken dreams and lost happiness of billions?

What if all these stressed-out families are forced to deal with a loved one with disability issues, personally, all by themselves, all of a sudden?
How would they cope? What would their reactions be?

Get real! Families that can function or care will make a stink about it, because they still like the idea of the state helping them take care of the more difficult tasks of a child, mother, or other relative in their care who's living with a disability. Parents and relatives of disabled people like having the state take up the care and financial slack, so they can work without having to stop to tend to the routine crises that people go through when they are mentally ill or otherwise disabled.

Some families don't care, and would rather their disabled relatives be dead than have them live in THEIR home. And some dysfunctional families, or families with abuse histories or sociopathic family members, will take their anger at the state out on the disabled family members.

They will be beaten, abused, starved, ignored -- don't pretend this will not happen. Mental illness and other kinds of disability can strike ANYONE down at ANY time.

No-one is immune to potential disability. With SSI being cut, more families will be forced to go into debt, much faster, much deeper, so Bush can fill up all those shiny new debtors prisons. So people can be forced to work for free, to work off obscene "interests" that never will get paid down, debts and interest caused by hospital bills from families struggling to pay what SSI once paid.

The noose is closing in on the wage-slave system. Soon credit lords will create a never-ending excuse for the continuing debt slavery of the American people. Don't believe me? Why was the bankruptcy law changed for the poor, but not for corporations? Why have credit card companies been allowed by law to become more predatory, allowed to hike fees and charge hidden fees at a whim? It's almost as if they want people to STAY in debt. Almost as if.

Charging up the interest on debts will make sure that the debts people incur for medicine or medical emergencies are NEVER paid off. And when good Christian liberals too scared to throw away the Bible, unwilling to offend social Darwinists cry "Slavery is unChristian," they will have no place to turn in the Bible or in the law code -- because the Bible is OK with slavery, and so are the corporate ass-sucking cheap labor neocons.

The Neocons are creating all the conditions it will take, for our system to become one of endless debt slavery. This is their reason for cutting SSI, for tort reform, for rewriting bankruptcy laws, for fucking with interest rates, etc. Medical debt and credit card debt will be a tool used to screw us all into slavery.

The illusion of the legitimacy of owing interest on a loan has created debt slavery. Usury is a sneaky slavery scam that is very effective in getting people to work for longer than it takes to repay the debt, long enough to pay the debt over and over again, for nothing in return. Debt slavery has kept generations of Indian families under the yoke of their masters, giving them free labor. If it works in India, it will work here.

Debt slavery is "legitimized" by playing a scam based in interest, a scam based in rationalizing why you owe more than you were given when you borrowed. This scam exploits things like basic human decency, misery, the puritan work ethic, desperation, desire, addiction, our self-sufficient pride, reinforcing our cultural denial over whatever non-existent work the rich do in gaining their wealth they lord over us.

It's insane, but it has been internalized so deeply it's often unquestioned, and there is no limit how much others can take and have from a society that deprives all to ensure the obscene power, leisure, and wealth of the few.

This scam exploits our honesty in deal-making, and the urge for repaying "kindness," and a blind gratefulness for help in a desperate situation, misdirected to those who help us in desperate times but only for a big fee that keeps us paying forever. That is a scam, and that (among other things) is how we are being exploited.

I fear a debt slavery scam will dupe us just as bad as it does in India and other places. How many people DARE to refuse to pay usury, the unconscionable interests on loans? How many people seek to improve their "lot in life," and when that lot gets worse will risk everything for their kids? How do you think slave recruiters in disaster areas get people into slavery and human trafficking? What do you think is the bait they use, to lure people in? Misery, desperation, and the love of family and improving their lot in life with JOBS.

How many Americans have the guts to refuse to pay those sudden interest hikes or hidden fees credit companies put in the fine print, clauses and subclauses written to make sure you NEVER pay them off? How many Americans refuse to pay taxes to a government that clearly, obviously, no longer represents us?

Remember when millions protested before the invasion of Iraq, and how Bush and his gang blew off those huge protests as "a focus group"? That is NOT representation. With this rightward tilt, the church infiltration into state affairs, and corporate lobbyists who own Congress, real people like you and I have no representation in our government any more. Yet we pay taxes out of fear. This is extortion without representation.

And cutting SSI is just another way this Maladministration is closing the noose on the American people -- slowly, imperceptibly tightening the rope around our necks, while distracting us with issues like abortion. What they've done and what they're doing seeks to create situations that generate personal debt so huge it can never be paid off, and it can no longer be defaulted (bankruptcy has been effectively killed). How else will our infinite debt be collected, except to send us to work in debt prison, or send us to war to 'work it off'? Ever wonder why the draft has not been revived, and the states are starved of funds?

Bush wants the South to rise again, only this time it's not racial, it's class-based. This Bush mis-administration has passed laws to set up the entire country (all except the top 1 or 2% of the wealthiest) to become a debt slave state.

What better way to dupe the over-obedient people already willing to pay half their yearly earnings to this government that doesn't represent them, without questioning how that money is spent. People who willingly carry and pay outrageous credit card debts to buy shit they don't need will never get to pay off their debts, but they pay without contest, without recourse. The addicted American consumer is ripe for accepting the chains of debt slavery, especially when the social safety net is gone.

Bird flu or some other engineered bio-weapon from Fort Dietrich will hit, and nobody except the well-off or preferred people will have insurance to help. The poor and working classes will rush to emergency rooms to get help, and be buried in debt, and soon it will dawn on them that they can't pay it off.

Then comes the new "solution." If you work a year in debtors' prison, your debt is paid. Or maybe two years. And the fine print says you owe for your own upkeep in prison, where all your wages pay off hospital bills and you are set up to NEVER leave...

There may be an outcry for national health insurance, but by the time it's enacted, if ever, we will have become the institutional/slave/prison industry state. It is a perfect set-up for feeding the wealthy. Slave maintenance is very cost effective for the rich, much more cost effective than letting us be free to disobey and cause uprisings. People who don't go along with the "program to heal America" and pay up one way or the other, will mysteriously disappear and be found dead.


© by the author.


What do you think?
 
Then ...

Bush says
disability benefits
won't be cut


Washington Post

Jan. 16, 2005

Excerpt:  "[Bush] said he has no plans to cut benefits for the approximately 40 percent of Social Security recipients who collect monthly disability and survivor payments as he prepares his plan for partial privatization."

As originally published
Now ...

Bush administration
won't protect
disability benefits


Associated Press

May 13, 2005

Excerpt:  Future Social Security retirement benefits for disabled workers is a matter for negotiations with Congress as it drafts solvency legislation, the Bush administration said Thursday, declining to say whether they should be raised, lowered or left unchanged. ‘Any plan that maintains current disability benefits will need to address the transition to retirement, and those details will be worked out through the legislative process,' said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

As originally published

White House moves disability
benefits to the chopping block


Wall Street Journal

May 13, 2005

A day after the chief White House economist admitted that the Bush plan to privatize Social Security would include cuts to survivor benefits, the Bush administration also acknowledged that it would not protect disability benefits despite earlier assurances that these earned benefits would remain untouched. This is the latest trial balloon in the Bush administration's real plan to dismantle Social Security. The announcement may help explain why a new Harris poll found that only 36 percent of Americans think President Bush's "comments on saving and strengthening Social Security are his real motives for changing the program, while 49% believe his real agenda is to dismantle it."

"For the second day in a row, the Bush administration has admitted that despite past assurances, they never intended to protect Social Security disability and survivor benefits,"said DNC spokesman Josh Earnest. "From steep benefit cuts for the middle class, to risky private accounts, and now no protections for disability or survivor benefits, it's becoming clearer every day that Bush's real plan is to dismantle Social Security.”

As originally published

Teens accused of killing
homeless man for fun


Associated Press

May 30, 2005

HOLLY HILL, Fla. -- Two teenagers have told Volusia County sheriff's investigators that they killed a homeless man for fun and something to do.

Christopher Scamahorn, 14, and Jeffery Spurgeon, 18, confessed to beating the 53-year-old victim with their fists and sticks and kicking him, sheriff's spokesman Brandon Haught said Sunday. They went back to the woods three times after the initial attack to beat the man again.

The teens said they attacked the man "for fun" and "to have something to do," Haught said.

A group of teenagers found the victim Saturday, and the condition of the body indicated he had been dead for several days.

Spurgeon's mother told investigators Saturday that she heard there might be a body in the woods. She later told investigators that her son might have been involved.

The teens found the man in the woods Wednesday and harassed him, Haught said. Spurgeon said he punched the man in the face and left. The pair returned a short time later and kicked the man and beat him with sticks, Haught said.

Scamahorn also told investigators that he dropped a large log on the man's ribs, and Spurgeon jumped on the log several times.

An autopsy performed Sunday determined that the man died from blunt force trauma to the head and body, Haught said. The victim's name has not been released.

"We're trying to find next of kin," Haught said Monday. "He apparently doesn't have any next of kin nearby."

The pair were charged with murder Sunday. Spurgeon was being held without bail at the branch jail in Daytona Beach. Scamahorn taken to a juvenile jail.

Investigators said there may be more arrests.

As originally published

Recent articles by this author:

May 3, 2005:
Bread and circuses ... at home
by Underground Panther in the Sky


March 22, 2005:
The underside of the Terri Schiavo case
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Nov. 5, 2004:
Where comes Justice?
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Aug. 22, 2004:
Abusive fathers,
in Heaven and on Earth

by Underground Panther in the Sky


Aug. 10, 2004:
The election and the nature of shit
by Underground Panther in the Sky


July 12, 2004:
A sane voice shouts NO
to Bush's 'mental health' plan

by Underground Panther in the Sky


June 22, 2004:
Damn nation
by Underground Panther in the Sky


March 5, 2004:
Dear Mr/Mrs. Heterosexual
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Feb. 27, 2004:
The mystery of identity
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Feb. 26, 2004:
Write with no regrets
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Jan. 31, 2004:
A comfortable state of mind
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Jan. 26, 2004:
A surprise in a Wal-Mart shirt
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Jan. 16, 2004:
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Jan. 14, 2004:
Sekhmet visits the White House
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Dec. 30, 2003:
I am afraid for their minds,
their characters, their sanity

by Underground Panther in the Sky


Dec. 18, 2003:
More dangerous than Osama bin Laden: Chemical pollutants near U.S. military bases
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Dec. 8, 2003:
Making monsters
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Dec. 3, 2003:
Answer to a military man
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Nov. 26, 2003:
Military morals
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Aug. 29, 2003:
Takin' out the trash
by Underground Panther in the Sky


Aug. 5, 2003:
Gay rights:
A threat to the traditional insult

by Underground Panther in the Sky


May 16, 2003:
We are all flames here flickering
by Underground Panther in the Sky


May 5, 2003:
The paradox of privacy
by Underground Panther in the Sky


April 28, 2003:
Forever wild
by Underground Panther in the Sky


April 9, 2003:
Have you ever
yellowed your own smile?

by Underground Panther in the Sky


March 24, 2003:
Terror alert! (a poem)
by Underground Panther in the Sky


March 19, 2003:
How to be a good kitty
by Underground Panther in the Sky


March 17, 2003:
Neocon irk
by Underground Panther in the Sky


March 8, 2003:
Losing your religion
and gaining your soul

by Underground Panther in the Sky


 


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