THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

A love most blatantly on display in their efforts to overturn or sidestep laws put in place to protect servicemen while they are on duty. Because the call of duty can be financially disruptive to service families, Congress has since the Civil War passed various laws to protect servicemen and their families at times when they can't protect themselves. As they have taken over more and more of our government, the Banksters have been tireless in their efforts to reverse these laws.

Over the years, Congress has given service members a number of protections — some dating to the Civil War — from repossessions and foreclosures.

Efforts to maintain that special status for service members has run into resistance from the financial industry, including many of the same banks that promote the work they do for veterans. While using mandatory arbitration, some companies repeatedly violate the federal protections, leaving troops and their families vulnerable to predatory lending, the military lawyers and government officials say.

“Mandatory arbitration threatens to take these laws and basically tear them up,” said Col. John S. Odom Jr., a retired Air Force lawyer now in private practice in Shreveport, La. High-ranking Defense Department officials agree, telling Congress that “service members should maintain full legal recourse.”

Last year, a bipartisan bill that would have allowed service members to opt out of arbitration and file a lawsuit met with opposition from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street’s major trade group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, or Sifma.

“While we remain very supportive of the troops, we see no empirical or other evidence that service members are being harmed by or require relief from arbitration clauses,” Kevin Carroll, a managing director and associate general counsel at Sifma, said in a statement.

The trade groups’ members include a roster of financial companies that have trumpeted their hiring of veterans and their initiatives for troops returning home from war. They include JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, and USAA, which caters almost exclusively to service members and their families.

Many banks contend — as do companies in other industries — that arbitration is a more efficient and less costly way to handle disputes. A spokesman for USAA said that the company supported the bill because it would have been “good public policy for the entire industry.” Still, USAA uses mandatory arbitration clauses in many of its financial service contracts with service members.
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The clauses clamp down on frivolous litigation, including class-action lawsuits, and the cost savings allow companies to provide more affordable products to consumers, the trade organizations say.

In lobbying against the bill, several financial industry groups and a large phone company visited with the staff of Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who sponsored the legislation along with Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat.

The trade groups told Mr. Graham’s office that they were already working to make their arbitration procedure more accommodating to service members, according to a person briefed on those discussions who would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

“The message was, ‘Let us fix this internally,’ ” the person said. “Don’t upset the apple cart with a new law.”

Right, don't upset the apple cart. We'll find a way to continue screwing the veterans in a less obvious manner. And oh by the way, how much do you need for your next election campaign?