For the last three years I’ve been friends with a lovely ‘little old lady’ from southern California.
I won’t go into all the sordid details of how this came about. Suffice to say, she found me, and at the time I was involved in work I thought might be helpful to her. She didn’t have a penny to her name, and we’ve never exchanged more than words and phone calls and endless reams of paper which supposedly ‘defined’ her position, but none the less, we have become friends.
She thinks I’m very smart, and in some ways I am, but I am not smart enough to overcome the massive corruption and illegal activity of a whole cadre of mega banks and their government servants, and to date, all my ‘help’ and advice and love has done nothing but postpone the inevitable in her case.
Oh, I’ve petitioned and introduced her to many credible people and knowledgeable sources for guidance and assistance, but none of them has been worth more than the same to her.
It seems no one can help this dear woman, regardless of their intent or her willingness to be helped.
She does not live large. She lives on less than $600 a month in social security pension that will not rise regardless of the deaths of her former husband, son or anyone else connected to her who paid into the system for decades.
How she manages to eat at all amazes me. She no longer pays her mortgage, ever since the bank of New York (aka BOA aka Chase aka a hundred other fictitious and fraudulent named entities) ‘foreclosed’ on her over a year and some ago. she used to pay her ‘condo fees’ but she figured out about six months ago that if she doesn’t own the place, why should she pay them and she stopped.
I saw a program recently from a San Francisco radio station that proposed that “How nations treat their animals is a measure of how evolved they are” or something to that effect. I wonder, does ‘how a nation treats its own elderly human population figure into that equation? Seems not.
I saw an interview with one of the nation’s top legal defense attorneys in the foreclosure crisis over two years ago warning that the next to go are the elderly and infirm and all I can say is “Boy was SHE right.” but it doesn’t change anything.
Our elderly are being booted out of their meager condos, apartments and substandard living quarters on the basis of mortgage bubble loans and hyped up property values. Those with family to support them are falling back on their children for housing and care, those without are … what? hitting the streets? entering state run facilities which get paid by the bed and head count? I don’t know and it scares me to think about it because i know these places too well. What happens to a wild spirited 84 year old who is pushed into a mandatory medication facility? Nothing good.
When do we recognize and rebel against a pharmaceutical, agribusiness, predatory finance and resource stripping corporate system which transforms us all into lifeless consumers and dependents?
My 84 year old friend is no more willing to be a dependent than she is to take any drugs. She’s sharp as a tack and ready to fight anyone who even considers the idea of ‘helping’ her by any of these means. She would no more submit to medical testing for anything than she would hand over her home to rapist banksters and she is no dummy on either account.
So what do we do here? Do we simply let these oldsters be swept up and swallowed by a system that is built on greed and maximized profits or do we work out something reasonable and equitable that allows everyone their dignity?
Today, as the gays and same sex partners achieve their legal right to dignity it seems only fitting that we ask how we can achieve this same goal and outcome for our elderly who are being robbed of their homes and security by greedy banks and real estate prospectors.
Why can’t we have a rule that says if you’re over age X whatever that is – 75, 78 80 whatever – that the banks get to Stand Down and wrack up whatever the monthly nut is until you make your transition and then they can step in and take the property, at the discounted price? Why is it so damned important to do it NOW when the elderly person is still living there and has no other reasonable option?
The real question is why do we let the financial system disrupt our way of life for their profit motive when the cost to our families, communities and society is beyond all measure in comparison to the petty dollars they seek to protect?
When a family is dislocated, or an elderly person evicted, the ramifications and destabilizing factors these events thrust upon our culture are incalculable in comparison to whether some financial institution writes off a loan for another 3, 5 or 10 years. They can juggle their books until kingdom come, if it suits their purposes, but when it disrupts the lives and very fabric of our human social system and gains nothing, it is time to call a halt to it. There is nothing in the great global book of money that says that the banks cannot wait a year, two, three or even ten to get their payoff so long as it is written in to the contract that the payoff comes, so why this rush to turn the elderly of our nation into street people?
If the goal is financial then let us get to the bottom of it and solve it. If it is other than financial then let us root it out and force it into the light where it is visible to us all.
