With the Recent hoopla about gun control and a Facebook post by a friend, Layla Sumners I remembered a blog I did almost two years ago Titled “God Bless America and City Bank.’ I Googled the title. It popped right up under CodeforeZap. I opened it and there was nothing there but the comments. Whaaat? I went to my blog Admin site, pulled up the old blog and the same thing appeared. Other blogs during that same time were intact. I do not know how this happened. I keep copies.
I changed the title a little so there is no confusion but here is my post from 2011.
Memorial Day is a United States Federal Holiday observed on the last Monday of May, Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated among black and Northern white communities after the American Civil War to commemorate the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War. By the 20th century it had been extended to honor all Americans who have died in all wars. Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html
I have never felt so disappointed in the my country as I did in the 60’s when the United States pulled out of Viet Nam leaving the country to fend for itself. I did not then know what was in store for us. The actions or inactions of “we the people” and our politicians are disgracing the very people we are celebrating this week-end.
As a veteran I am proud to have served and I am even more proud of our young men and women who are serving today. I thank them for serving and want them to know that although at times they may not feel appreciated there are many, many people who do appreciate and thank them and their families for their sacrifices.
With all that is going on in the world today we must remember that the service people who have died in the line of duty made the supreme sacrifice for their county in the belief that it was necessary to preserve our freedom from suppression. They wanted to protect our progressive way of life and to spread our message of independence and democracy throughout the planet.
I find it disgusting that our two major political parties have no more interest in protecting this country than the Chinese do. In fact I think the Chinese might have a greater interest in protecting their investment in this country than the people who are running the country.
This brings up my question. Who exactly is running this country? Who is making decisions? What are the driving forces that dictate these decisions? How has our apathy empowered the people making decisions for us?
APATHY
I was extremely disheartened this week when for the first time in over 200 years a United States President’s request for a speech date was turned down by the opposing party. GOP speaker of the house John Boehner turned down President Obama’s request to speak on September 7th.
I was equally distressed to hear on news radio the random interviews of citizens reaction to the possibility that President Obama would instead give his speech on the same day and time as Monday Night Football. Several seemingly intelligent people said they would rather watch the football game than listen to what our President has to say. MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL??
This is representative of the apathy I refer to.
As I have said in many of my articles, I am not affiliated with any political party and I would hope that what comes next in this article in that spirit.
WHO IS RUNNING THE COUNTRY?
I am approaching 65 and am a native of Michigan. I spent many years walking the forests of this country and in some cases hunting. I decided that since I have not hunted in many, many years I would sell the two hunting rifles I own. I first went to a large firearm internet auctioning site called Gun Broker.com. Part of the process is that you have to register, give them your credit card number so they can collect their fees and verify your identity before posting your items for sale. I could not get past the credit card part of the registration. For some reason the screen just froze when entering the card information.
I supposed that it was the web site itself that had the problem so I went to a NRA gun auctioning site. The same thing happened. I finally called the help number and talked with a representative on the phone. We tried to get numerous credit cards through their system with the same results. My only question to him was why. His answer to that question sent a chill up my spine.
“ Mr. Benish” he said, “We get this all the time. Some of the credit card companies will not process the cards if the transaction is gun related”. “Your kidding” I said. “This is the United States of America, I am a citizen of the United States of America. I can purchase what I legally want to, especially with a debit card” “ I’m sorry” he said “I will manually activate your account but if I were you I would use some other type of method of payment for the fees incurred when your guns sell”
I could not believe what I was hearing. In fact anyone I told the story to could not believe the bank had anything to do with this issue.
We were wrong.
The next day I tried to use my debit card twice and both times it came back “denied” This was a US Bank Debit/Credit card. You know, the same type most of you have in your own wallet or purse. By this time I was nervous. Had I made some huge mistake in the balance of my account? Had I been the victim of fraud? I just didn’t know. I hurried home, got on line and accessed my bank account. A sigh of relief.
The bank account balance was what it was supposed to be. “But what was up with my card”? I thought. I called the card customer service number and spoke with a service young lady. After giving her all the security information she asked the magic question. “How can I help you”? “Why can’t I use my card?” I asked. “Your card has been suspended and I must transfer you to card security” she said. Soon another young lady was on the phone and verified that the card had been suspended. Of course my question was “why”? Her words were, “Are you trying to purchase a gun”? I said “What business is that of yours”? She answered, “Are you saying this is a fraud”? This was not making much sense to me. “What did fraud have to do with my desire to sell my hunting rifle” I thought. “No, I said, I’m trying to sell my guns”. I felt like she was just trying to make something out of this situation and after more discussion about it she took the suspension off of my card. It didn’t matter that it was a debit card and that it was my money in question not the banks money.
After thinking about this whole situation and what the gun auction guy had told me I became angry and had more questions about this. How big was this credit card/gun purchase thing? I went into detective mode.
I Googled my way around the internet and found that my suspicions were correct as were the statements made by the person I spoke to at Auction Arms.
I found an article written by Larry Keane of FreePublic.com about Citi Bank.
Once again Citibank has drawn the ire of the firearms community over its credit policies. This time it deals with not extending lines of credit to businesses even remotely related to the firearms industry. As many people remember back in January 2008, NSSF took Citi Merchant Services to task over its decision to stop processing credit card transactions involving the lawful sale of firearms by law-abiding, federally licensed, firearm distributors/retailers. Unfortunately, it became evident that the decision was not a mistake of a single employee, but was rather a corporate-wide policy.
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