He previously wrote quite a bit about the need to use public policy to move the nation from Valuing "individual" rights to valuing "societies rights" by supporting policies shifting from everyone to only those citizens deemed PRODUCTIVE and thus valuable to the society as a whole and that was to be determined by those in power. The result were his recommendations that those diseases that accompany age would be eliminated from basic guaranteed health care. I have those writings and they will be put up for you to see when the commentary is finished.
DERIVATIVES BUBBLE ON SENIORS LIVES
Wall street has set up another derivatives betting on when seniors will die off. They have also rigged another scam to use on Seniors and it goes like this..... seniors have life insurance with cash value. The face value is always much higher than the cash value. When severely strapped for cash, Wall street brokers give the senior 75% of their "CASH VALUE" on their policy which might be only $7,500, but the face value of the policy maybe $100,000.
The senior then signs over that policy to the Banker as beneficiary when he/she dies for that "face value" of the policy of $100,000. The surviving senior spouse gets nothing. You can tell a lot about a psychopath by his lack of humanity and caring for the "least of these".
So now, it becomes important to know just how fast can you make that senior die so those millions in that bubble can be raked into the bankers. Thus policies have been geared to making it harder and harder for them to survive. That is criminal and if intentional, its first degree murder. Remember who owns the politicians.... thus they are included in this scam by the laws they pass that aid these bankers in their objectives. This is beyond Satanic.
I put this here because its plain that this is an added movement toward taking away the support seniors need to "survive". Between the cost of drugs, the cut back in medicare, the cut in social security benefits by freezing COLA's for TWO years.... cutting food stamps, LEAP and heat subsidies, forbidding cheaper drugs from Canada and now this to take even more away from the seniors, is moving wholesale into killing off our seniors through public policy which officially MAKES EUGENICS THE POLICY OF THE LAND. (VN: that is called "A crime against humanity")
If you cannot produce as a slave you will not receive benefits and will be genocided out of the nation using public policy. That is seniors, seriously and permantly wounded vets, the handicapped, etc. Its going to be a killer commentary when its finished.
In this instance, as usual, its the bankers who made out since they have all been paid off on those debts through government guarantees. No mention of any means test on these either.
In some cases down right fraud has occurred in cheating seniors out of their income when in fact they never owed the debt or had paid it off previously. (VN: This is rampid and because there is no statute of limitations, seniors don't know enough to save their documentation after 9 years when everything else is pass the statute of limitations so most throw their documentation away. You have to be truly soul-less to steal from seniors as bankers, and its happening more and more. Someone needs to file a class action law suit. ) That will be a whole other article with documentation to prove it. All of this in collusion with the Wall Street bankers. Another bailout? Or funds to fund more bailouts???
Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/article/109011/defaulted-loans-may-haunt-seniors?mod=retire-planning
Title: Defaulted Loans May Haunt Seniors
By: Ellen E. Schultz
Date: Monday, March 8, 2010
Social Security benefits are off–limits to creditors, such as credit–card companies and banks. But the U.S. can collect debts to federal agencies by "offsetting," or withholding Social Security and disability payments.
The Treasury currently withholds benefits of 3.1 million Social Security recipients to recover defaulted student–, farm– and small–business loans, unpaid income taxes, amounts veterans owe for health care, and other debts to the government.
Previously, the U.S. hasn't been able to withhold Social Security payments to recover most debts delinquent for more than ten years.
But a provision in the 2008 Farm Bill lifted the ten–year statute of limitations on the government's ability to withhold Social Security benefits in collecting debts other than student loans—for which the statute of limitations was lifted in 1997—and income taxes, where the limit remains 10 years.
This means that a person who defaulted on a small–business loan in 1995, for example, and who is receiving Social Security could be notified that his benefits may be reduced each month until the debt, with interest, fees, and penalties, is paid. The Treasury can withhold 15% of the benefit, though it can't be reduced to below $750. Tax debts have no floor.
The change will add more than $6 billion to the $75 billion in delinquent debt individuals owe the government, according to the Financial Management Service, the Treasury's debt collection unit.
A Treasury spokesman says the new legislation "allows Treasury's Financial Management Service to collect older debts and levels the playing field so that all eligible debts, regardless of age, are subject to debt collection. Treasury expects this legislation will result in increased collections of $10 million per year in delinquent federal non–tax debt."
Though no one argues that people shouldn't repay their debts, the change is coming at a challenging time for older Americans already pinched by mortgage woes, pension cuts and spiraling medical costs.
The shift applies to debtors of all ages, but Social Security recipients will bear much of the brunt. A Wall Street Journal analysis of Treasury Department data shows that Social Security recipients comprise a large and growing percentage of people from whom the Treasury recovers debts.
For years, most debt the Treasury collected through its "Offset Program," came from withholding income–tax refunds. But with an aging population and growing unemployment, roughly 10% of the $4.3 billion in debts collected by the Treasury came from Social Security benefits in 2008, the latest figures available. That's up from 1.6% in 2001, according to Journal computations that the Treasury confirms.
Though the law has expanded the age of debts that can be recovered, it hasn't addressed the sometimes–Kafkaesque process debtors can face when challenging the validity of a claim.
Consider the predicament of Dr. Robert Steinberg, the founder of Scharffen Berger chocolates, who spent more than six years and thousands of dollars in legal fees appealing the Social Security Administration's claim that he owed it more than $28,000.
Dr. Steinberg received disability benefits in the early 1990s while undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, a condition that ultimately claimed his life. Dr. Steinberg returned to work sporadically at a free clinic before co–founding the chocolate company.
Year later, the Social Security Administration notified Dr. Steinberg he was overpaid in the 1990s. In May 2002, with the matter still unresolved, the agency turned the debt over to the Treasury for collection.
In Oct. 2002, administrative law judge Gary Lee found that the Social Security Administration had never established the amount of the overpayment; had dismissed an earlier appeal "for spurious reasons"; had misinformed Dr. Steinberg and mishandled his later appeals; and had lost his file. He noted that Dr. Steinberg was "without fault," and told the agency to stop its collections efforts.
Dr. Steinberg died in 2008, at 61. His lawyer, Peter Young, a former staff attorney for the Social Security Administration, has handled more than 100 overpayment cases, "very few of which were accurate," he says. "Most people can't find or afford help, and give up very quickly and end up with painful offsets on a fixed budget."
An agency spokeswoman says mistakes can happen, but "over all, the process works."
A Treasury spokesman says the new regulations require agencies seeking to recover debts more than a decade old to give debtors the right to review and copy their files, make payment arrangements, and apply for disability and hardship waivers.
But a recent dispute about a student loan shows that even with these rights, a person challenging an old debt can face hurdles similar to homeowners in foreclosure trying to modify a loan that has been resold.
In 2003, the U.S. began withholding $173 a month in Social Security benefits from Annie Brown, a paralyzed 75–year–old widow living in a nursing home to repay a defaulted $8,823 student loan the Education Department says she took out in 1989. The offset reduced Mrs. Brown's benefit to about $980 a month.
Mrs. Brown said a granddaughter had forged her signature on a loan application. Her daughter and a lawyer spent more than four years disputing the debt with the owner of the loan, United Student Aid Funds, a student–loan guarantor that also was acting as one of the Education Department's 21 debt collectors. USA Funds itself farms out various debt–collection activities to others, which it did in Mrs. Brown's case.
Between 2003 and 2008, Mrs. Brown's daughter and Lynn Drysdale, a legal–aid lawyer in Jacksonville, Fla., corresponded numerous times with USA Funds and two other debt–collection companies it hired. One letter from USA Funds warned that unless documents were received "within 30 days from the date this letter was generated...your case will be closed." The letter was undated. Another letter required Mrs. Brown to refer to an attached document. There was no attachment. "I don't know how a lay person could maneuver through this process," says Ms. Drysdale. "Nobody seemed to know what was needed."
In 2007, USA Funds denied Mrs. Brown's claim, citing a recently passed federal rule requiring people claiming identity theft on student loans to obtain a criminal court verdict of the crime. That was impossible for Mrs. Brown; a statute of limitations for bringing a case had passed years earlier. In any case, she wasn't alleging identity theft, but forgery.
Robert Murray, a spokesman for USA Funds, agrees that Mrs. Brown's signature was forged. "It's absolutely a forgery," he says, "It \[the loan\] should never have been made."
But he says that USA Funds couldn't discharge the loan as a forgery because Mrs. Brown didn't return a required form in 2005, and that USA Funds must rigorously defend claims. "There are borrowers who want to get out of a legitimate debt," he says. "By the same token, we want to work with individuals who have a legitimate issue."
Ms. Drysdale, the legal–aid lawyer, finally sought to obtain a disability waiver for her client. That process took more than a year, and was achieved only after Ms. Drysdale asked for help from the Social Security Administration's ombudsman, who declined to comment.
In August 2009, the Education Department agreed that Mrs. Brown is permanently disabled, and discharged her obligation to repay the loan she never took out. The Treasury returned her withheld benefits in December.
Write to Ellen E. Schultz at ellen.schultz@wsj.com
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
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