Man Dies in So-Called “Debtors’ Prison”

Rex Iverson, 45, died in Jail Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016
Rex Iverson, 45, died in Jail Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016

Rex Iverson died in the Box Elder County Jail Saturday after being arrested on a $350 Tremonton Justice Court bench warrant for failing to pay a $2,377 judgment on a 2013 Tremonton City Ambulance bill.

Iverson could not afford bail let alone the $2,376.92 bill to the Tremonton City Ambulance service. There was an attempt to to garnish his wages, “but he didn’t have a job, that we knew of,” City treasurer Sharri Oyler explained.

To be fair, he was arrested not merely for having debt but also for failing to appear in court about the debt. Though, to be fair in the opposite direction, a man in such financial straits may not have been in condition to reliably receive court hearing notices and afford transportation to court over a matter for which their was already a judgement of debt.

“How can you get blood out of a turnip?” Josh Daniels of the Utah-based Libertas Institute said. “The thing about going to jail, your time does not pay your debt… A person should be obliged to pay, but putting him in jail doesn’t solve the problem.”

Chief Deputy Sheriff Dale Ward told the Ogden Standard-Examiner, “We go to great lengths to never arrest anybody on these warrants. The reason we do that is we don’t want to run a debtors’ prison. There is no reason for someone to be rotting in jail on a bad debt.”

What do you think? Do you agree with the jailing of this man? Why or why not? Please reply below.

—
Sources: 1, 2, 3

Guess who pays less taxes than you?

$144 Billion for Walmart
$144 Billion for Walmart

What do you think?

Similarly, Billionaire Warren Buffet has been pointing out repeatedly for years that he pays less in taxes as a percentage of income than his secretary.(1)

Do you think the rich should pay less taxes as a percentage of income than working families? Please leave a reply letting me know what you think.

How to Protect the Two Party System

How to Protect the Two Party System

Step 1 ~ Run as an anti-establishment candidate in a meaningless primary against a shoe-in establishment candidate in a broken two party system.

Step 2 ~ Rally anti-establishment voters, especially the young and not yet jaded. (Not jaded but still anti-establishment? Yup.)

Step 3 ~ Endorse establishment candidate.

Bonus Tip: Run making your focus issue one that has very little affect on actual poor people who cannot afford to donate to campaigns, such as health care costs. (Poor people already get free medicaid, but are hurt by the fact they do have to pay taxes.) It helps if this is an issue that matters to labor unions–a labor union being just another type of corporation and source of vast campaign contributions.

There’s nothing new about promising #hope and #change. They promise to give you what you want so you don’t go looking elsewhere for it and actually get it.

Voting Democrat or Republican is partisan foolishness, in my opinion. There are no anti-establishment Democrats. The problem isn’t half of partisans; the problem is everyone and the whole system.

Disagree? Totally fine. I respect your opinion. Please leave a comment. Give me some food for thought. I’m hungry for it. 🙂

In any case, I’m calling it now: Bernie Sanders will endorse Hillary Clinton. Sanders is the gateway drug to Clinton.

Charity Nominations Needed

I had what I think is a good idea this morning.

I’m going to collect some nominations for good charities, and then let all the people who have said they will buy my book vote for their favorite charity. Then I will donate to that charity.

I’m thinking $1 per book sold on release day. Does that sound good? If we reach our goal of 5,000 votes, then that would be $5,000 for a good charity. I would love to be able to do that!

There are three ways to give me your charity nomination. Twitter, Facebook, or comment right here on this blog. I’ll try to collect all the nominations for the vote, but if there are too many I’ll just collect the ones that get seconded or thirded.

CHARITY NOMINATIONS NEEDEDI'm going to have the people who say they will buy my book vote on a charity, then I'm going to donate to that charity. Reply with suggestions for good charities. 😀

Posted by Scott Hughes on Thursday, January 21, 2016

 

To help make sure this happens and maximize the total donation, if you have not already, make sure you also vote for me to make my debut into fiction.

What do you think? Good idea? What’s your favorite charity?

Meek Mill Donates $50,000 To Flint’s Water Crisis

Awesome! 🙂 What do you think?

Dreams and Goals

Dreams are things like ending world hunger or releasing the millions of poor, sane, nonviolent people in prison or camps throughout the world. What’s your dream?

Goals are steps on the staircase to dreams.

One big goal I have right now is to get my new book to #1 on Amazon. As of this writing, it is #180 out of roughly 100,000 books.

If you have not downloaded it yet, please go to Amazon and do that now.

If you have, please share it. We can get it to #1! It’s only free for another day or so. So share now. Here is the URL:

http://www.amazon.com/Achieve-Your-Dreams-Why-Dont-ebook/dp/B019VG34XI/

When you share on Facebook and Twitter, please connect with me personally and tag me in your posts so I can say thank you there too.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thescotthughes

Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmhughes

An easy way to share is to go to my Facebook and Twitter above and just click share and retweet on my posts about it! It means so much to me.

I truly believe that when people are inspired they will naturally do amazingly kind things like battle world hunger just to name one example of the big mission–the big dream–we have. Thank you so much for your support!