Please Enjoy this Drivel!

Mornin, Clownies!  By now you should know that I'm a liberal minded clown, at least socially.  I frequent sites that stroke my liberal mind and typically agree with my philosophies, but I am a hard and angry social liberal.  A few days ago I received this piece of crap.  Please enjoy this drivel which is not "sent by", but "sponsored on a site run by" Moveon.org.  Let me break it down paragraph by paragraph for you.

Dear MoveOn member,

^This is me...your ol' buddy Caustic...(here comes the Capt. Kirk voice) but a member...for...how long?

Our daughter Brittani was killed in a tragic and brutal car accident three days before her twenty-third birthday—just a week before her college graduation.


I have no idea if this accident was tragic.  I wasn't there.  I have only the assertion of the authors that this is the case.  Brittani could have been the next Hitler for all I know.  Was the accident itself brutal?  The death?  I may never know.

Brittani had dedicated her life to serving people and making people's lives better. She had her whole life ahead of her.

She only thought she had her whole life in front of her.  She didn't really.  Trust me, 'cause she's dead.  Also, rarely do I meet someone who dedicates their whole lives to "serving" people and even less often someone who wants to make people's lives better.  Maybe she was a 24 hour waitress on top of being a college student.  Now that is a dedicated server.

When Brittani died, she still had student loans to pay off, and for more than three years Citibank demanded repayment from our family. While we grieved, Citibank continued to demand payment, and we struggled to pay these bills monthly.

Did you or your daughter take out this loan?  What were the terms of the loan?  I bet there was something in the contract that stipulated that you have to pay the loan off.  That is pretty standard loan agreement language.  Guess what?  In the America I want to live in, we pay off our fucking loans...dead daughter or no.  Why does everyone want a fucking free pass these days?  Would you have struggled to pay if she lived?  How does her death affect the payment schedule here?  Based on the spelling of Brittani's name, it is possible that the application process for scholarships was beyond your family's capabilities, and that she would not have received any academic ones had you managed to send in the requests.

Tell Citibank to stop trying to collect student debt from grieving families after their child dies.

No.  Citibank is arguably the outpost of Satan and his hellish minions on Earth.  I am not here to deny that.  They are the embodiment of evil banking empires and have fucked my family personally on multiple occasions.  So, you made a deal with the devil.  I hope you're happy.  Make a new daughter and help her get some scholarships this time around.  I was a complete dunder-head in high school and my family still helped me get some scholarships.

Our family is lucky. After more than three years of pleading with Citibank, we started an online petition on SignOn.org. With the help of friends, MoveOn, and so many others, our petition spread fast. And once Citibank started to feel public pressure, they called us and agreed to forgive Brittani's student debt.

  
So, by taking advantage of the sympathies of the interwebs you beat the system.  Con-fucking-gratulations. 

But what about all the other families in this situation? No one should have to go through this kind of ordeal. And we know we're not the only ones who have had this experience with Citibank and other big banks.

Screw you and screw those families.  You are embarrassing yourselves and the other hard working people in this country.  It had never occurred to me to side with Big Banking in a David and Goliath match...ever.  Until now.

Citibank received a taxpayer bailout, while most families get no help when they need it most. Citibank should institute a policy of student loan forgiveness when a student dies and stop going after family members.

Yeah.  I'm not an economist.  The issue is not whether or not Citigroup accepted a bailout.  If you had a beef with that, then why the hell did you go to them for a loan?  Way to boycott, Einsteen!  It is distinctly possible that if we did not bail out the banking system that our entire economy would have collapsed.  As far as that goes, we have to blame the lack of oversight that allowed the banks to get this large in the 1st place.  Secondly, every family has help available to them.  There are food stamps when you're hungry, bankruptcy when you're broke, scholarships when you're too poor for school, and maybe consider this...instead of jumping into any kind of loan or credit situation that you can't afford to pay off, maybe save up next time.  Or, send her to community college for a few years.  Maybe she wasn't college material.  Not everyone is.  Even better, pay for your next dead daughter's college in cash.  THAT is the way to stick it to the banking system.  That is the way to beat Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

Click here to tell Citibank to forgive student debts of young people when they die.

Not bloody likely.  Go to hell.  Stop pissing on my country.  Fuck the banks and the system that put them into place, but not like this.  Not like this.

–Keith and Michelle Norris

This petition was created on SignOn.org, the progressive, nonprofit petition site. SignOn.org is sponsored by MoveOn Civic Action, which is not responsible for the contents of this or other petitions posted on the site. The Norris family didn't pay us to send this email—we never rent or sell the MoveOn.org list.

Offended?  Good.  I'm not soft on crime.  I'm not soft on death.  I'm not soft on deadbeats and layabouts.  This is all about the tough love, and if that upsets you, then I'm doing it right.


Caustic the Clown