Well folks, it's not bad enough that the government tells you that you have to have insurance whether you can afford it or not (motor vehicle variety). And never mind the fact that buying insurance is tantamount to gambling against yourself. If you stop saying "yes sir" for a minute and think about it, the concept is ludicrous. You would spend WAY less money in your lifetime if you took your premium payments and put them into a high yield bank account or something similar where it could pile up and earn you money rather than sending those payments off to a car insurance company. For one thing, if you never have an accident, you spend ZERO dollars on a product you didn't need. If you do get into an accident, you can pay for repairs out of pocket, on the spot, and not have to worry about owing somebody MORE money every month as a result.
I've long been aware of the fact that banks are criminal enterprises. The idea of putting your hard earned money in somebody else's hands for any reason is irrational. But then they go and make all kinds of rules and regulations that limit what you can do with YOUR OWN MONEY. Today I was told by U.S. Bank in Grand Junction, CO that my emergency GI Bill money, which arrived today in the form of a U.S. Treasury check, was no good with them. I KID YOU NOT!
I was told that without being a customer (and in fact, my wife is a U.S. Bank customer, though I am not after having been told a couple years back by this exact same branch that I couldn't cash my paycheck because of the U.S. PATRIOT Act...again, I kid you not), they would not, under any circumstances, cash my check. I did a double take because I couldn't believe my ears. I reminded the banker standing before me, albeit on the other side of the granite counter, that this was a check issued by the United States Treasury, that it was a check from the federal government for services rendered by myself to said federal government. Again she told me that I could not cash my GI Bill check at U.S. Bank. I then told her that my wife had an account with US Bank, and asked if that made any difference and she told me that it did not, seeing as how their policy also forbade her to allow me to sign the check over to anyone. AGAIN, I kid you not. I then asked for the manager, who came to the counter with her plumage pre-ruffled. I say plumage because all she managed to do was to parrot the same bullshit that the banker clerk had given me. I then told her that I needed her to write a letter to the President of the United States of America, in which she should state that she was refusing the legal tender of the U.S. Government, and then sign it with her name and branch number of the bank. Of course, she refused. I then reminded her that I was a veteran trying to cash a VA check, to which she threatened to involve the police.
Needless to say, the woman has an IQ that can't be found without several minutes worth of digging (i.e. in the negative numbers). But I'm not livid because the bankers I dealt with were morons. I'm angry because an American bank, whose deposits are all insured by the FDIC (U.S. Government), today refused to cash a U.S. Treasury issued check for an honorably discharged veteran of the U.S. Navy who has been waiting 8 fucking weeks as it is for money from the VA, who themselves can do nothing but hang up on their customers rather than deal with their overwhelmingly idiotic hurdles—like US Bank.
If it weren't illegal and highly unethical I'd be eating some Banker Jerky for dinner tonight.