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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Depressing Rise of People Robbing Banks to Pay the Bills
Despite inflation decreasing their value, bank robberies are on the rise in the United States. According to the FBI, in the third quarter of 2010, banks reported 1,325 bank robberies, burglaries, or other larcenies, an increase of more than 200 crimes from the same quarter in 2009. America isn't the easiest place to succeed financially these days, a predicament that's finding more and more people doing desperate things to obtain money. Robbing banks is nothing new, of course; it's been a popular crime for anyone looking to get quick cash practically since America began. But the face and nature of robbers is changing. These days, the once glamorous sheen of bank robberies is wearing away, exposing a far sadder and ugly reality: Today's bank robbers are just trying to keep their heads above water.
Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelsontime was that bank robbers had cool names and widespread celebrity. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jesse James, and John Dillinger were even the subjects of big, fawning Hollywood films glorifying their thievery. But times have changed.
In Mississippi this week, a man walked into a bank and handed a teller a note demanding money, according to broadcast news reporter Brittany Weiss. The man got away with a paltry $1,600 before proceeding to run errands around town to pay his bills and write checks to people to whom he owed money. He was hanging out with his mom when police finally found him. Three weeks before the Mississippi fiasco, a woman named Gwendolyn Cunningham robbed a bank in Fresno and fled in her car. Minutes later, police spotted Cunningham's car in front of downtown Fresno's Pacific Gas and Electric Building. Inside, she was trying to pay her gas bill.
The list goes on: In October 2011, a Phoenix-area man stole $2,300 to pay bills and make his alimony payments. In early 2010, an elderly man on Social Security started robbing banks in an effort to avoid foreclosure on the house he and his wife had lived in for two decades. In January 2011, a 46-year-old Ohio woman robbed a bank to pay past-due bills. And in February of this year, a Pennsylvania woman with no teeth confessed to robbing a bank to pay for dentures. "I'm very sorry for what I did and I know God is going to punish me for it," she said at her arraignment. Yet perhaps none of this compares to the man who, in June 2011, robbed a bank of $1 just so he could be taken to prison and get medical care he couldn't afford.
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http://www.good.is/post/the-depressing-rise-of-people-robbing-banks-to-pay-the-bills/
Selatius
(20,441 posts)We're a whipped nation. The people who own America have a slaver's mentality when it comes to their own workers.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)Now they'll just have to work harder to pay off their debts. Unless they're bankers or Wall Street CEOs...
...there you have it!
KansDem
(28,498 posts)I was being sarcastic!
I was using the ridiculous argument about "buying too much house" used by Repubs to place the onus of the TARP scandal on the victims rather than holding the bankers accountable.
"Bought too much life" would be taking that "argument" to an insane level.
Sorry to have misled...
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)n2doc
(47,953 posts)If you believe that, then you are on the wrong website.
I was being sarcastic...
sorry for the sensitivity, I've had too many troll interactions lately...
Logical
(22,457 posts)Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)KansDem
(28,498 posts)By Jennifer Glickel and Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo Staff
EAST VILLAGE The Tea Party protest outside of President Barack Obama's speech in New York City was more like tea for two on Thursday, with only a handful of members present at the event.
The protesters, who were part of a local arm of the movement called Tea Party 365, carried signs and spoke to passersby about their distaste for the Wall Street reform package Obama is promoting.
Im here as a New Yorker because Obama is bad for New York," said tea partier Ayton Eller, a Brooklyn accountant. "Im here to protest the legislation Obama wants to pass, because Wall Street is Main Street. If the banks are regulated, it will have a ripple effect on the country and the world."
Kevin Donahue, an Upper East Side resident, said he is a Democrat but he is also a member of Tea Party 365 because he believes government is getting too big.
"The more government grows, the less freedom we have because we're the ones paying for it," Donahue said. "This is a capitalist country and we want it to stay that way."
Obama's speech had five main points: Protecting taxpayers when large financial firms fail; limiting the amount of risks taken on by banks; setting new transparency rules for derivatives and other complex financial instruments; stronger consumer protections; and giving investors more of a say in who runs firms and limiting executive pay.
"Join us, instead of fighting us in this effort," Obama urged at his speech at Cooper Union, only blocks from Wall Street.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20100422/east-village/tea-party-protest-against-barack-obama-draws-only-five-people
Five people??!!!
I kind of feel sorry for the woman claiming the demise of ma and pa businesses, like her pharmacy, were the result of Freddie and Fannie...Really??!!! What about companies like WalMart? One would think she would know about how WalMart and other mega-stores led to the disappearance of "ma and pa businesses" with the blessing of Wall Street. Pathetic...
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Did Main Street need Wall Street in 1929-35?? 1988-1991? 2001? 2008?
Why not just change your signs to "Residents NEED Burglars!"??
That's got to be the dumbest fucking bunch I've ever seen in my life . . . almost as bad as the person at Glen Beck's FootShooter Extravaganza who held up a sign saying "Can't Strengthen the Weak by Weakening the Strong!" Errrrrr, how did that whole "Strengthening the Strong" work out, chumpstain?
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)facilities) is not a pleasant way to live.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)And antibiotics-resistant tuberculosis among the homeless makes prison look like Club Med.
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)sick and homeless, starving. A lot of people just adapt, then it
becomes their home, more familiar & easier than the outside.
tomkat364
(7 posts)Try working at the bank. I'm lucky enough to have a job, so I pay my bills with what I have earned. I know there are some good people out of work through no fault of their own, but I also see lots of help wanted signs and job postings in the newspapers. That guy who robbed the bank for a dollar should go to jail, and there he should be given a "job" to pay for his room and board.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)so he could go to jail and get treatment.
I presume he'd love to have had a job. Unfortunately getting hired after 50 years old is pretty damn tough once you've been outsourced, laid off or let go. Furthermore, I'll bet you big money that elderly gent bank robber will make a model worker in jail.
Damn shame that's what some are reduced to in order to survive. Welcome to the new America....
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)as if TPTB decided they didn't want more people knowing about it lest it breed it copy-cats.
IIRC, the gentleman had prodigiously reseearched ahead of time exactly what level of crime would result in what term of sentence and he did just enough crime to secure a sentence that would last until he could start collecting Social Security and Medicare at 65. No violence, no muss and no fuss. It was fiendishly brilliant in its conception, I thought, so was not surprised when the media deep-sixed the story after one day. The judge in his case was compelled to sentence him to the mandatory minimum, despite the fact that the perpetrator had absolutely no prior criminal record. It was like jiu-jitsu on the demagoguery of what calls itself the criminal justice system in this country.
tomkat364
(7 posts)They have never updated us on what "vital" medical care this man needed. There are lots of jobs that 59 year olds get all the time (school bus driver, truck driver, retail). And thanks to EMTALA regulations, he would be able to walk into any emergency room in the country and get a medical evaluation without being able to pay for it. Like it or not, he took the easy way out in getting the public to foot his bill.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)You are fucking nuts if you believe that.
Also you cannot simply walk into an ER and get chemo (or dental treatment etc. etc.) You ARE billed (and billed, and billed and billed....)
Even if he "took the easy way out in getting the public to foot his bill", going to the ER under a false name still means we ALL pay for it through our regular insurance. The reason OUR rates are so sky-high is because of guys like this who simply have no options.
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)the broader U6 unemployment rate here is well north of 15%. This economy has re-set at a far lower level of activity which explains why the percentage of long-term unemployed (unemployed longer than 26 weeks) is at historic highs. Resorting to Reagan-esque anecdotes about "lots of help wanted signs and job postings" offers small comfort to victims of the apotheosis of that self-same Reagan-Bushism.
meow2u3
(24,774 posts)the banks stole from them.
tomkat364
(7 posts)I don't understand how a bank has anything to do with someone's gas bill. Assuming any of these people had jobs, the government took taxes off of there checks. Was the government stealing from them as well? The only way a bank would have "stolen" from these people is if they had investments in a bank which went under (since they were stealing from the bank it must still have been open) or took an ill-advised loan and didn't read the fine print.
But really, ARE YOU SAYING THAT THEFT IS JUSTIFIED??? Perhaps you'd be okay if they stole money from YOU personally to pay their bills?
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Major Nikon
(36,827 posts)Anyone else notice the irony there?