Two bills signed into law this year will have major effects on the average American citizen's life in the coming years. First, the Congress and the President gleefully passed the written-by-credit-card-companies bankruptcy bill. Soon after, RealID slipped through on the coattails of the appropriations bill for the next whack of change for Iraq. <h>Bankruptcy is Obsolete</h> <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0331-33.htm" title="Debt Slavery: What The Bankruptcy Bill Could Do To You by David Swanson" author="David Swanson" source="Common Dreams">Debt Slavery</a> provides some background on the recently passed bankruptcy bill. The bankruptcy bill was sold to us by our media as a way of keeping cheaters from constantly starting over, sticking it to the poor Mom & Pop credit card companies who are constantly sticking their necks out trying to help out the little guy. The thing is, bankruptcy law was already quite efficient; the <iq>American Bankruptcy Institute estimates that at most 3 percent of filers - and almost certainly less - are able to discharge debts they could actually pay</iq>. Contrary to popular opinion (seen in the media and heard from our loving representatives' lips), there isn't a lot of cheating going on. People generally don't just declare bankruptcy for the hell of it. Stories about people that do just that tend to spread like wildfire, but the ones that are true are statistically insignificant. <bq>About 50 percent of all families who are forced to file for bankruptcy do so as the result of medical expenses. ... Another 40 percent have suffered a death in the family, lost their job, or gotten divorced, or suffered some combination of these factors and medical costs. Almost everyone who files for bankruptcy does so as a last resort. Sixty-one percent of those who do so have gone without medical care that they needed but could not afford. Fifty percent have failed to get prescriptions filled. A third have had their utilities shut off. Twenty-one percent have gone without food. Seven percent have moved their elderly parents to cheaper care facilities.</bq> It doesn't surprise me to learn that people are generally too proud to admit that they've gotten somewhere from which they cannot return. The story told by the numbers is not the one we're hearing. Until this bill passed, a judge at a bankruptcy hearing was allowed to <iq>to distinguish between someone whose child has diabetes and someone who's been going on reckless shopping sprees</iq>. In fact, the bill stipulates that all decisions are made using <iq>standard government figures for expenses, regardless of what you're actually having to pay</iq>, judging people in large urban centers (where most of the minority poor are) by arbitrary standards that have nothing to do with their situation. No longer will bankruptcy for these people be an option. Instead, <iq>families and individuals will be placed on long-term payment plans to credit card companies, companies that will take their houses, their cars, their child-support payments, and their paychecks.</iq>, shooting us about three or four hundred years into the past, widening the gap between rich and poor. The rich need not worry about this bill, as it's tailor made for them (see the list of exclusions in the referenced article). The credit card companies themselves made a profit of almost <iq>$30 billion last year</iq>. They charge exhorbitant interest rates <iq>to cover the losses the lender will suffer when some of the riskier borrowers default</iq>. This bill closes that final loophole, allowing credit card companies to continue charging sky-high rates, but massively reducing the likelihood that a private debtor will be able to default on a loan. Rich individuals will continue to be able to make use of <iq>asset protection trusts</iq>, which are prohibitively expensive to establish, but are legally bulletproof and will be able to declare homes that they own outright as "homesteads" protected from liquidation. Most people do not own their own homes; those that have a home usually have an almost crippling amount of debt associated with it. This bill is a disgusting piece of legislation that will harm millions of average Americans. <h>Show Me Your Papers</h> <img attachment="mc9000rfid.jpg" class="frame" align="left" caption="RFID reader (MC9060)">With the bankruptcy bill putting a stranglehold on a country swimming in debt, there will be unrest. There will be resistance. The government will need to keep far better track of people in order to make sure they don't get out of line or avoid their debts to our new masters, the corporations. The solution slid in with the latest Iraq appropriations and is disengenuously called RealID. It's the holy grail of a nosy government, a national ID card, and as detailed in <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67471,00.html?tw=wn_story_top5" source="Wired">No Real Debate for Real ID</a>, it passed with nary a whimper from our representatives. It's naturally defended as a measure in the war on terrorism. We are naturally expected to believe this. The much more immediate purpose already has marketers and corporations slavering. Given that <iq>officials would likely require states to embed a contactless RFID chip in licenses at some point</iq>, anyone with an RFID scanner will be able to "ping" an American citizen and know everything on their ID card. With a standardized card, it will become more and more common to check it, resulting in people generally carrying their cards, being "pingable" and therefore eminently trackable. It's not an invasion of privacy to read an RFID tag, so the police state would have a field day. As would any organization or individual with an RFID scanner (buy now for about <a href="http://www.barcodediscount.com/catalog/symbol/mc9000rfid.htm">$4000</a>). Since it's ostensibly an anti-terrorist measure, anyone caught with a falsified card would be immediately suspect of much more than a requirement for more privacy than the US government wants to allow. The <iq>National Council of State Legislatures say it will more likely cost between $500 million and $700 million</iq>, so we may just be protected by the government's ineptitude in being able to fund anything. They decree that states put a new system into place, but <iq>the bill provides zero federal funds to help</iq>. It may just starve to death just like most Bush-era programs. <a href="http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/05/real_id.html" author="Bruce Schneier">REAL ID</a>, a reknowned security expert, says that the card will make America less safe, in that the required <iq>'common machine-readable technology.' ... will make identity theft easier</iq>. Here's an excerpt from the article; Schneier puts it context as just the latest non-security security measure rammed through by clueless legislators. <bq>One of my fears is that this new uniform driver's license will bring a new level of "show me your papers" checks by the government. Already you can't fly without an ID, even though no one has ever explained how that ID check makes airplane terrorism any harder. I have previously written about Secure Flight, another lousy security system that tries to match airline passengers against terrorist watch lists. I've already heard rumblings about requiring states to check identities against "government databases" before issuing driver's licenses. I'm sure Secure Flight will be used for cruise ships, trains, and possibly even subways. Combine REAL ID with Secure Flight and you have an unprecedented system for broad surveillance of the population.</bq> If you think this sucks and it's going to suck worse in a few years, when it starts to go into action, you're not alone. <iq>Americans overwhelmingly reject national IDs in general</iq> and are generally pretty prickly about surveillance. Of themselves, that is. Everybody else is fair game if it "makes America safer" and "stops the terrorists". When will people wake up and realize that no one profits from this kind of police state except the government and the corporations to which they are beholden?