Wading through the government, one missing document at a time . . .

OK, bear with me here. I’m still processing the adventure a friend and I had earlier this week as we attempted to elicit information, of the public record kind, from our country’s federal bureaucracy. I accompanied my friend on a quest for information about a long-deceased relative. Wow. After only a small glimpse into the inefficiencies of, well, everything, we could only wonder how our entire system has not yet imploded upon itself. First, some background:

This relative in question died in the mid-1930s, and my friend’s family knows that he never became naturalized as a citizen of the US. He was still a citizen of his native Italy as of the 1930 census, the only government document my friend has found thus far (found, by the way, via the genealogical website, http://www.ancestry.com). The relative died only a few short years later. My friend’s search this week is for proof of this lack of naturalization. In order to acquire some documents from Italy, he must show that a search has been conducted for naturalization papers and that they have never been found. Dates are sketchy, as the only living relative with information was just a child when this man died, so the family is working from approximations.

My friend, a very organized fellow, had all the paperwork he’d been able to gather thus far carefully compiled in a folder. He’d scoured the websites of the USCIS (that would be the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly known as the …

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We Should All Be Messiahs

There may be little original in this post, but then, there seems to be little original in its subject.  It's just that, well, no one, or not many, manage to say the obvious. I was sitting before my tv the other day watching Dune.  The SciFi Channel version, not that…

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Why should we care about people falling deeply into debt? A review of “Maxed Out”

I recently had the opportunity to view “Maxed Out,” a feature-length documentary directed by James Scurlock.

The movie is one-sided, in that it gives scant recognition that some debtors have brought their financial problems crashing down upon themselves with no one else to blame.  On the other hand, this movie presents a point of view that is not generally considered by the media.  Not all debtors are irresponsible.  There are many debtors who are generally innocent, who got tripped into debt by sophisticated and despicable measures used by disreputable creditors, with Congress turning the blind eye. 

On the issue of irresponsible creditors, Exhibit A, featured in the movie, was a severely disabled woman who lived in a nursing home.  She had no income, but was offered $30,000 in credit through the mail.

Here’s what else I learned from Scurlock’s movie:

1. Credit card companies make 4 billion offers of credit cards every year.  Fees for these cards have risen 160% over the past five years.  The average household now bears over $9,000 in credit card debt, costing the average household $1300 in interest every year.  One analysis of people going through bankruptcy showed that for each dollar in principle borrowed, the average person going through bankruptcy owed two dollars in interest and fees.

2. What is overall problem?  According to Elizabeth Warren (a professor at Harvard Law School and a recognized expert on the issue of consumer debt) we are in great danger of turning our nation into a two-tiered …

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Lose your religion for tax purposes

A Jesuit college in St. Louis just won a Missouri Supreme Court case allowing them to get public money, $8 million of it, for their college.  Not being one that believes public money should be spent in support of religion, I was aghast.  "How could that possibly happen?" you might say.  The answer…

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Want to adopt a baby from China? Not if you are an old, depressed, sick, poor, alcoholic, amputee, criminal, fat Jehovah’s Witness!

My wife and I adopted our two wonderful daughters from China on two separate occasions, in 1999 and 2001.  We very much appreciated the way that the Chinese orphanages took good care of our daughters.  When we traveled to China to meet our daughters, we were treated well by the many Chinese people we met who ran China’s adoption program.  Everything was straight-forward and as we expected.  I also cannot say enough good things about Children’s Hope International, the American adoption agency we used.

Throughout the adoption process one bit of irony repeatedly occurred to my wife and I: We had to be highly scrutinized before being allowed to adopt.  The Chinese government (and our own agency) wanted to make certain that we were going to be good parents.  My wife and I sometimes commented to each other that absolutely anyone is qualified to have a biological child, whereas people trying to adopt were treated with suspicion.  To be approved for adoption, we had to produce our arrest records, medical records, recommendation letters and a home study.

We periodically get newsletters from Children’s Hope.  This month’s letter includes the current requirements for adopting a child from China. Interesting stuff.  In fact, the requirements are much stricter than they were a few years ago:

  • China bases eligibility on each person’s age. If one spouse is under 30 or one spouse is over 55, the couple is not eligible to adopt.

Families are not eligible to adopt if any of the following …

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