(People will email me sometimes saying they want to write some articles to put up on this website, just so long as they can include a link to their debt settlement company. Some of them write like third graders and are rude to boot. I may be violating some Internet rule by putting this up, but I want to make sure it stays up and doesn't disappear. Just so there is no morbid denouement here, this is the suicide note a guy who couldn't pay his bills wrote. He "self-immolated", or burned himself alive on the steps of a courthouse in New Hampshire rather than go to jail for child support. All this "Arab Spring" stuff started because some fruit vendor self-immolated in Tunisia or someplace, so this is worth knowing about. If this is an Internet hoax, then I fell for it.
Here is the original link-http://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/last-statement-sent-to-sentinel-from-self-immolation-victim/article_cd181c8e-983b-11e0-a559-001cc4c03286.html )
Last statement sent to Sentinel from self-immolation victim
Editor's note: On Thursday morning, June 16, The Sentinel received a "last statement" via mail from a man who insinuated that he planned to set himself on fire in front of the Cheshire County Court House, and an explanation of why he intended to do so. Through further reporting, The Sentinel is confident this is from the victim of Wednesday afternoon's fire, although police have not yet received confirmation of his identity. The 15-page statement is printed in full, except for two redacted items: The names of the man's mother and his three children. Details will be posted as they become available.
Last Statement
by Tom Ball
A man walks up to the main door of the Keene N.H. County Courthouse, douses himself with gasoline and lights a match. And everyone wants to know why.
Apparently the old general was right. Death is not the worst of evil...... (CLICK ON LINK TO CONTINUE READING THIS STATEMENT)
LABOR LAW
I went to law school to be a labor lawyer. Before I got to law school, I did not really even know what lawyers did, but up to that time the jobs I had were on farms, in a warehouse and on construction sites. Northeastern Pennsylvania was at that time still very Pro-Union. The trade unions were, in my mind, very proud organizations tracing back to the United Mine Workers.
So I took some classes in labor and employment law but could never really get interested. What was taught in law school did not seem to have much to do with the worksites I had been on. In fact most of it seemed so academic that I gradually lost interest.
I started in practice with no real direction until I started to do bankruptcy and financial cases. Money seemed like a pretty good thing to learn about, so I kept at it, handling hundreds of bankruptcies for debtors, and participating in many more on behalf of creditors. I was very active in this practice until Congress changed the law in 2005.
Bankruptcy is a hard job for a lawyer and Congress really added some homework to the process with the Amendments to the Code. What is worse is that the reforms were premised on the assumption lawyers and their bankruptcy clients were abusing the system. As I thought of all those hundreds of individuals and all the businesses I had counseled, represented and litigated for, I became more and more chagrined. In all those years, there had only been one or two clients who, I felt, were trying to commit bankruptcy fraud and I had refused to represent them.
All the rest were ordinary people-teachers, office workers, cab drivers, students, and contractors, who simply had made poor borrowing decisions and obtained credit on terrible terms.
What Congress had done was so offensive to me that I greatly reduced the scale of my involvement with bankruptcies. I thought about a way to help people get out of financial trouble without having to file bankruptcy under these new laws over the last few years, and finally decided to start this law firm, At times, the irony of my earlier career decision strikes me. Our representation of people who feel they cannot afford a lawyer and have nowhere else to go is designed to work for working people and for small businesses.
Maybe I turned out to be a labor lawyer after all
Instead of Rioting, Let’s all Celebrate Cinco de Mayo, or “Anti-Foreclosure Day”
Cinco de Mayo celebrates the defeat of invading French Forces by a Mexican militia in 1862, though many mistakenly think it commemorates Mexican Independence Day, which actually falls on September 15, the date Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821.
The French and Mexican struggle is sometimes referred to as “The Bondholder’s War”. A Swiss banker named Jean Baptiste Jecker despaired over ever collecting his Mexican bond debt, as Juarez was succeeding in driving out the foreign imperialists. For fractional value, he sold his Mexican bonds, which he had grossly overcharged for anyway, to the illegitimate brother of Emperor Napolean III of the France, the Duc de Morny, who was a wealthy financier living in England. He successfully lobbied Napolean III to instigate a Mexican invasion, but died before its (lack of) fruition.
Mexico had some rich silver mines the French could lay claim to by virtue of these bonds, so an invasion was begun.
Cinco de Mayo occurred after years of protracted warfare had left Mexico deeply in debt to wealthier nations. When Mexico stopped making loan payments, France became more aggressive with regards to debt collection, and sent 6500 crack troops to foreclose on the entire country. 4500 poorly trained and ill-equipped members of different Mexican militias defeated the French roundly at Puebla, as the French drove towards Mexico City. This was a remarkable event. Although Napoleon’s nephew did successfully renew the foreclosure proceedings a few years later, with 30,000 French troops this time, his “man in Mexico”, the Austrian Emperor of Mexico, Maximillian, came to an untimely and violent end after a few years, and the brief French/Austrian presence in Mexico is often forgotten.
It’s a small but poignant chapter of history. To Maximillian, who was executed by Juarez’s troops, I’m sure it was more than a footnote. For the rest of us, it can reveal an unusually detailed view of how much of history is merely the history of debt collection. The average Mexican, French, or Austrian benefitted not one iota from these proceedings, yet the adventure was couched in all kinds of patriotic verbiage on all sides, which for the Mexicans, at least, was understandable.
Now, let’s consider the invasion of Libya. In 2008, the Libyans were beat out of almost 1.3 billion dollars trading options with Goldman Sachs. This resulted in an understandable animosity on the Libyans part, and agents of Goldman Sachs had to flee the country under armed guard.
Goldman Sachs was one of the biggest contributors to President Obama in his 2008 political campaign. Has History taken a break, or fallen asleep on the job, or has the human condition changed since the days of Maximillian so that money no longer matters?
Is it possible we went to Libya to right the wrongs suffered by the aggrieved Goldman Sachs?
"It is given a man, sir, to attack the rights of others, seize their goods, assault the lives of those who defend their nationality, make of their virtues crimes, and one's own vices a virtue, but there is one thing beyond the reach of such perversity-the tremendous judgment of history."
Benito Juarez
