Will Bush repeal the Servicemember's Civil Relief Act?

[jmowreader]

In LBN there's the story of a reservist fighting to keep Wells Fargo from foreclosing on his family's home and selling all of their possessions.

Doing this is illegal under the provisions of a law called the Servicemembers' Civil Relief Act, which was created in the World War II era to stop predatory lenders from taking unsophisticated soldiers' entire paychecks. It's got a lot of other neat stuff in it (soldiers who don't come from the state they're stationed in don't have to pay taxes to it, for instance) but the lender protections are key here.

The law has a lot more protections for reservists--if someone can't make their mortgage payment because being called up for active duty has eliminated their ability to pay, they can't be foreclosed on, for instance.

But the Servicemembers' Civil Relief Act is bad for business and good for soldiers. Because Bush hates the military, do you think he will attempt to repeal this Act?

[BrklynLiberal]

1. If he can, he will.

[Ironpost]

2. more than likely.

[WildClarySage]

3. Probably. They will try to sell us a bill of goods that this will

be good for soldiers because banks will stop lending to soldiers who might be called up and unable to pay their mortgages, so to protect soldiers who want to buy homes, we should repeal this.

And the same dumbfucks who believe SS is in imminent danger will believe that banks will stop lending to soldiers.

[jmowreader]

4. The people who will really be rubbing their hands together...

The Servicemembers' Civil Relief Act establishes "home of record." It is the soldier's "hometown," and it's generally where you lived when you joined the service.

This is important for a number of reasons. It's where you pay state income tax. You can register your car either in the state you're stationed or the state where your home of record is. (If you buy a car at your duty station you'll register it in that state, but most of the people who had cars before they were stationed somewhere have them registered in their home state.) It's also where you vote.

Repealing SCRA will eliminate home of record protections, and this is what will happen:

* All military people will be required to pay taxes not only to the state they come from, but also to the state they're stationed in.
* All military people will be required to register their cars in the state they're stationed in. Not all states have income tax, but all of them have car registration fees.
* All military people will vote in the state they're stationed in, or potentially the state they're in on election day. This has serious repercussions ESPECIALLY if it's decided that they'll vote in the state they're in on election day--there would be nothing stopping the Republicans from deciding to hold a field training exercise in a "light blue" (Democratic leaning, but only slightly) state. Most GIs vote Republican. This provision alone could flip an election even if it was paper ballots hand-counted by Swedish election observers, and there's not a damn thing we could do about it. (On edit: voting in the state you're stationed in wouldn't change things much. Almost all of the big bases, the ones that have the population necessary to flip an election from blue to red, are in reliably red states. The only two big bases--which I will define as any base that has at least a division-size unit on it--that are in blue states are Camp Pendleton, California, and Fort Lewis, Washington. I'm not worried about California, but I would be about Washington since adding thirty thousand red votes, counting spouses, to the rural part of the eastern side of the state may be enough to counteract Seattle and Spokane. Then again, it may not be.)

North Carolina contains an Army base (Fort Bragg), two Air Force bases (Pope and Seymour Johnson) and two Marine bases (Camp Lejeune and Little River Marine Air Station)--what would adding 85,000 taxpayers to the state's tax rolls do for our economy? Don't think these jerks wouldn't do it if they could. And don't think the citizens of our state wouldn't support it.