A couple of things on my mind recently have led me back to blogging about it. Again more to just get my thoughts straight about this crazy world more than anything.
I've heard recently on TV and radio several different companies advertising their services for "settling debt". Credit Card debt, IRS debt, whatever.....they are all out there and they all use the same spiel. Let me break it down for you. "Do you have 5, 10, 15 or $20,000 in credit card debt? We are Credit Answers and we can help you settle that debt for a fraction of what you owe! In this era of government bailouts, don't be denied your RIGHT to settle our credit card debt." (Followed by several testimonials from people who owed the bank or IRS tens of thousands of dollars and were able to "settle" their debt for pennies on the dollar.)
The first time my wife and I heard this commercial, we looked at each other and both said,"What!?" First of all, if you bought your groceries from Wal-Mart, your dinner at Chili's, your clothes from Dillards and your vacation to Bora Bora on your American Express, you entered into a written and legally binding contract with that company to use THEIR money and repay it with interest throughout time. Nowhere in this contract was there fine print declaring that if you overdid yourself and purchased too many Margaritas on you cruise and racked up too much debt that most or even some of this debt would be forgiven. You bought it and used it with SOMEONE ELSE'S MONEY!!! If you made money from your job and didn't pay income tax on your earnings, what makes it okay for you to hire a sleazy lawyer to negotiate your taxes down from what you owe? You made the money now pay the tax just like all the rest of us. Or go to jail. Simple concept. It might be legal under the current laws to do this but in my mind it's still sleazy and a self-degrading form of evading consequence. You have no RIGHT to settle for less. And it makes my skin crawl when I hear this term thrown around like a beach ball at a rock concert.
Lately, the political discussion has been centered around the health care reform bill before Congress now. In this bill, health care for anyone within the boundaries of our country's borders regardless of their citizenship will be granted health care as a "right". No one in need of urgent medical care is denied treatment now because of their ability to pay. I know that the cost of these persons health care gets rolled into the cost of my insurance and the high prices I pay for health care. But please, pray tell, explain to me how a government can grant a right to a standard of health care. Does everyone have a right to get liposuction, botox or a tummy tuck? Where do we draw the line? Doesn't every American have the right to live in a home, eat sufficient amounts of food and have a lifetime income stream when they get old? SURE! Let's furnish everyone a house (or at least a trailer), give them food stamps to eat, and promise them a social security check. No. Our RIGHTS are earned by us or others in our behalf and certain others are only given and granted by God, not a late night television commercial, the Supreme court or even our Congress. Our basic rights, by definition in our constitution, are given by God. I assume this drives the average secularist liberal crazy to read this part of our founding documents.
My point tonight is simple our rights are earned. Life is given my our creator, Liberty is given by our soldiers and the pursuit of happiness is given to us as a gift to make of it what we will.
Perhaps if we do get a government-run health care system that spends our country even further into oblivion, with money we don't possess, we can hire these sleazy debt settlement companies to negotiate with our debtors to settle our $11 Trillion deficit for a fraction of what we owe. After all we do have the right. Right?
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