America, land of millions of invisible victims
Earlier today, I tuned in to watch the Florida House of Representative Judiciary Committee pass over changes to Florida’s foreclosure laws. I was going to write, ” watch the Florida House debate changes” but there really was no debate at all, this was more like a frat party initiation.
Citizens traveled from all across the state to appear before these their elected leaders and they probably thought their travels would entitle them to participate in some amount of debate, but that’s just a delusional schoolbook vision of what this nation used to be. The deals have been cut and this mess of a piece of legislation is moving along.
I listened intently to each of the voters who stood to address their representatives, and I was most moved by the words of a burly and articulate made who stood up and said,
” I just want you all to know that I feel invisible standing here. Invisible in this country. Like no one at all is listening to me. The courts have failed me, everyone I trusted has failed me, and you are all failing me. No one is listening to me. No one is trying to help me.”
He then quietly turned around and walked out of the room.
No one in the room and no one on the committee took the opportunity to reach out to him. No one spoke to him or addressed him. Once he left the podium, most on the committee went about their business like he was in fact”¦.invisible.
Several other everyday people also made appearances before the committee, but they too were largely invisible. They made respectful, impassioned and articulate pleas to their elected leaders, begging them to recognize and acknowledge the abuse that had been visited upon them by the fraud and the lies and the crimes that are an undeniable and unavoidable aspect of our nation, and especially this state’s foreclosure process.
They articulated very real and very important violations of their own rights and violations of basic legal and Constitutional principles that should exist to protect us all. They plainly and clearly asserted that they felt wronged and abused living in a nation where the banks, the institutions, their lawyers and all their associated entities and conspiracies were above the law, above the reach and beyond the concern of any appointed or elected official.
There were a dedicated and honorable minority of members that acknowledged the painful truth in the words presented to them, but they too were drowned out, marginalized, dismissed by a force and a political dynamic that could make no provision for recognizing the awful truth that was laid out before them. It’s as if a most horrific episode of spousal abuse is playing out right in front of the entire family, but no one says a word”¦.they just allow the bloody beating continue.
I appeared before the very same committee a week earlier. Myself, along with hundreds of other good people had traveled””many overnight””in an attempt to address this same group of elected representatives about foreclosure legislation. They could have heard from the people that had traveled so far, but they decided not to. Instead, all that had traveled so far listened to an utterly esoteric debate about a proposal to pass legislation that was entirely self-serving to those on the committee”¦ as I sat there listening to them dance around such an obviously self-serving issue””a grant of legislative immunity from compelled testimony””I became angry. Our elected representatives were wasting precious public time debating an issue that, even according to their own testimony, had been settled law for hundreds of years. The whole thing infuriated me, and I let the committee know that when I had a chance to speak. The whole scene was a slap in the face to hundreds of people”¦.how dare they disrespect them in this manner? But they could care less what I had to say”¦I too was invisible.
The foreclosure legislation currently snaking its way through the house and senate, is a confused grab bag of operative language that is quite frankly a mess. Worse, it will do little to solve the problems our legislators think they are trying to solve. Foreclosure cases are clogged in courtrooms all across this state but they remain clogged because the banks and servicers have made such a mess of things with their lies, their forgeries and their fraud that they cannot move forward with them or because they recognize that dumping hundreds of thousands of homes onto an already depressed market will only cause further asset depreciation.
But the most destructive thing about what has happened in this county since the financial crash of 2008 is the total alienation of America, the splitting of the entire country into two camps. The Untouchables and the Invisibles. The Untouchables are obviously all the banksters and White Collar criminals who crashed this nation’s economy and who still roam the halls of government and run the show. The Invisibles are every one of us. The man that spoke to the committee recognized that he was invisible, that he was a victim. But as I sat there watching him I thought about all the legislative staff and other state employees in the room…..they too are invisible victims although many don’t yet know it. Those citizens that appeared before the committee were furious that no one had been held accountable for all the lies and all the fraud throughout the entire sickening episode called fraudclosure gate. Many of them are the front line victims of the all the fraud”¦.the ground forces if you will.
What the rest of the room, and most of the country, doesn’t yet understand is that we are all victims. The same lies and fraud and forgery that are so intertwined in fraudclosure cases that are stalled in courtrooms snakes its way directly into the 401k’s, investment and retirement accounts of every single American. Florida’s retirement system in particular is heavily invested in mortgage backed securities, and those accounts are going to take major hits when they are finally forced to confront the plain reality that the statements are all lies, voodoo, fantasy.
Lisa Epstein and others are already providing undeniable proof of this phenomena, where individual fraudclosure cases are not properly booked or accounted for as losses on the trust reports that are being submitted to their investors”¦..bombed out homes that sold for $40,000 are still being reported as assets worth $250,000 to the trust investors”¦those lies will eventually hit the retirement account holders. (For just a taste of this, look here)
And in an ironic twist of fate, many of the legislators who are so quick to dismiss the invisible people that appear before them are in fact heavily vested in this state’s retirement fund that will be taking a major hit when all the lies and the fraud and the forgery are finally exposed.
So they can all ignore these invisible people for now, but eventually it will catch up with everyone”¦even the mighty legislators who now sit in their positions of power.
And to you my invisible friend, you have my respect. You have your dignity and frankly you have an enlightened sense of self awareness that eludes those who are so quick to dismiss and disregard you.
You have your dignity and frankly, you have an invaluable self awareness. Don’t obsess over the inequities before you, you’ve already moved beyond their closed and ill-informed plateau….you’re several chess moves ahead. Relish the fact that you are invisible to them. Move beyond and above the quagmire they all inhabit. Seek out a higher and more protected perch, then just sit back and watch as they all reap the seeds of chaos and conflict that they have sown.
