My Friends,

I have heard many complaints, both in this Community and elsewhere on the Net, about outsourcing to India, among other places. There is even a lot of talk about it in the political arena. I have something to offer to the debate. I hope it serves as food for thought, and I hope that it inspires people to take up the banner of freedom and fight to protect and ensure Justice for all people, regardless of nationality, race, or economic standing.

In birth and in death, we are all equal. It is only in life that we allow our apparent individuality to highlight our differences to the point of exclusion of others.

I understand that many people are frustrated with abusive and harassing debt collectors and ignorant customer service agents, but unfortunately there is not a simple solution. America has become ridiculously (and needlessly) expensive and the financial behemoths that hold her people in a stranglehold are spreading out throughout the globe to divide and conquer to add even more blood to their bloated profits.

The expense of running a business in the US has gotten so out of hand that many companies are forced to move large portions of their operations overseas. We have gotten into such a frenetic "cost cutting" mode and "mega-merger" mania [the creation of Monopolies] that even when some companies move some of their operations overseas, they are sometimes too cheap to hire an American to be in charge of training and customer service oversight. It is the fault of poor management and a need to report higher and higher profits to their "investors" (such as stock market gamblers) or face even more pressure to cut back. Others follow along out of greed, just because it’s cheaper, and they feel they are out of the grip of US Law and so can ignore it with impunity.

I have even dialed information (411) for Reno, Nevada and talked to someone in the Philippines! What would they know about Reno?

Medical care has gotten so expensive in this country that many are forced to travel to other countries for medical care. What about those who can't even afford to travel? They must suffer with incompetent and substandard medical care or are faced with the indignity of denial of service. The medical industry lobbied mightily for the passage of the ill-begotten 2005 adjustments to the Bankruptcy code which now require people to lose nearly everything of value - the majority of Bankruptcies are filed because of crushing medical debt - just because they got sick and either didn’t have adequate insurance, or were insured by HMOs more interested in profit by Denial than serving the ill. How many of us really want to go to the hospital? So just because one gets sick means that they have to lose everything they struggled so hard to gain for themselves and for their families? Is making us slaves to never-ending debt in our best interest and to our benefit? [see * note below]

These issues are not so simple and one cannot just jump to conclusions that put people down based on where they were born, their melanin content, or any other flimsy excuse for dividing us.

On the other hand, it is not psychologically healthy to find offense where none was meant to one's person. For instance, I do not get offended when called a "cracker" or a "white devil" or any number of the many degrading names I have been called - I am quite an unusual person - even when it is intended to be personally hurtful. It is far too easy to discover the faults of others, it is the discovery of our own that is so myopic.

The only ones who have a vested interest in our divisiveness are those that would exploit us for their own filthy greed and illicit gain (Divide & Conquer, a very effective tool of War). In order to combat that tendency, we should be looking for ways within ourselves to become closer together because we have so very much in common.

The American people itself have historically fought numerous injustices and won many battles for human rights (even in the midst of inglorious mistakes) and thus shone as a light to the world by her example. In these dark times some of us forget that. And we forget that it requires We the People to stand up and reclaim that legacy of respect.

Let us remember that the battle is not with India or China or Europe, etc. The battle is with our own government that has sold itself to the highest bidder, to the chagrin and needless suffering of her own people. And it is We the People that must take back our Dignity, take back our Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - which is being callously stymied with malice aforethought, by burying us deep in the muck of debt until we are Owned in all but name.

The Credit Reporting Agencies have some of our livelihoods in a stranglehold. They stubbornly violate the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) which allows only truthful and verifiable information to be included in the credit reports, by accepting the flimsiest of excuses of so-called "evidence" offered by some junk debt buyers who are out to steal from people by attempting to collect outside of the Statute of Limitations - and sometimes not even the debt of the hapless victim (alleged debtor) at all - by daring to accept “yes it’s your debt” as verification! If you can't PROVE it, STEP AWAY and do NOT try to collect it (innocent until proven guilty).

But instead of attacking and insulting each other, let us take this ire directly to the CRAs who would let this travesty continue after the heartfelt pleas of the wronged! Let us take this ire directly to abusive debt collectors who flagrantly violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA)! Let us take this ire directly to those who fight to remove our Constitutional rights from us one by one, nailing them with spikes of fear and greed! Let us take this ire directly to the divisiveness each one of us holds in our hearts!

This is where it belongs - against all those who would enslave us. This is where it belongs - against all those who would exploit us. This is where it belongs - against all those who would deny us our Dignity that was freely given by God - by whatever name you use (or even none at all) to address or think about the Mystery of Life in each of us and is truly Sacred.

I echo the words once eloquently spoken by the incomparable Benjamin Franklin: if we do not hang together, my friends, then we shall surely hang separately! And also the words of the great Abraham Lincoln: United we stand, divided we fall! One more (attributed to both John Philpot Curran and Edmund Burke but cannot be definitely traced to either man): "Evil prospers when good [people] do nothing". These may be considered to be clichés, but they are very important words that symbolize matters of most importance within a free society governed ostensibly of the People, by the People, and for the People and we would do well to keep these words on the tips of our tongues and on the forefront of our conscience. For if Freedom be lost, what do we have to offer our children? A legacy of betrayal?

No, it must not be.
We should fight for Justice because we want to be treated justly. We should treat others as we expect to be treated - on our own individual merits and situation. And we should never tolerate those who would attempt to thwart those rights - neither king, nor CEO, nor politician, nor employer, nor debt collector. This is the Reward of our Struggle and the Responsibility to our children, - our Legacy, the legacy of our Country, and the entire World.

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” [James Madison, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788]
Let Freedom ring!
Thank you for listening.
-

* “Medical professionalism involves not just the relationship between a physician and a patient[.] … It also involves a relationship with society. This relationship can be characterized as a ‘social contract’ whereby society grants the profession privileges, including exclusive or primary responsibility for the provision of certain services and a high degree of self-regulation, and in return, the profession agrees to use these privileges primarily for the benefit of others and only secondarily for its own benefit.” [page 64-5,“Medical Ethics Manual” by the World Medical Association.]