February 23, 2012 archive

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Supreme Court To Revisit Affirmative Action

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Affirmative Action has been around since 1961 when President John F. Kennedy issued his executive order which created the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and mandates that projects financed with federal funds take affirmative action” to ensure that hiring and employment practices are free of racial bias. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. Since then Affirmative Action has gone through the courts where it has been narrowed but essentially left intact. The last major challenge to the University of Michigan’s Affirmative Action admissions policy (Grutter v. Bollinger) resulted in the Supreme Court in a narrow 5 – 4 ruling up held the University’s policy.

Challenges didn’t end there. In January of 2011, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled against a student who challenged the University of Texas’ policy in Fisher v. University of Texas (pdf). The plaintiffs appealed and the Supreme Court has decided to reconsider what has been considered decided law (stare decisis). In Grutter v. Bollinger the deciding vote was cast by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who has since retired and was replaced by the very conservative Samuel Alito. Justice Elena Kagan, who was solicitor general when the Obama administration filed the Fifth Circuit brief, recused herself from the case. So the case will be considered by only 8 Justices, 4 of whom are very conservative. The deciding vote may fall to Justice Anthony Kennedy who has sided with the more conservative justices in recent rulings.

George Washington University law professor, Jonathan Turley joined Keith Olbermann on Countdown to discuss what might happen when the U.S. Supreme Court reconsiders the legality of affirmative action:

Cartnoon

The Wild Chase

Obama’s Re-Election Isn’t Looking So In-the-Bag

FDL’s Jon Walker posted a telling entry regarding the chances of any of the GOP candidates against Obama in November.  It’s telling in that the numbers show the race well within traditional GOP election-theft margins.

It wouldn’t be this damned close if Obama governed like a progressive instead of the fascist he is.

Yes, Obama is a fascist.  Deal with it.

How else do you explain Obama’s war on whistleblowers, his appointment of someone to the Supreme Court who believes in unfettered executive power, his illegal war to overthrow the Libyan government and his disastrous push for regime change in Iran (not to mention his desire to arm pro-U.S. “rebels” in Syria), his targeting of public education, Social Security, and Medicare for deep cuts, his health insurance bailout written by and for the insurance industry, and his corporate-favoring tax policies, among other offenses?

Obama won the 2008 election with a large enough margin that not even the normally insurmountable election fraud tactics of the GOP could rig the contest in its favor.  This year, however, having governed like the far right Republican he is, Obama could still very well lose to whichever batshit-crazy Nazi-wannabe gets his party’s nomination.

Harry Truman once wrote, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”  This political truism remains just as solid today as when it was first stated.  So why do Democrats insist on blocking this fundamental truth from their thought processes?

It’s because they don’t really care about winning or holding on to nominal power.  As the second major political party serving as Wall Street’s lap dogs, their control of government, or lack thereof, changes not one significant policy, does not alter the status quo so much as one iota.  That is exactly as Democrats like it, having permanently tethered their prospects to those of their corporate paymasters.  They get all the perks of having some measure of political power with none of the responsibility that comes with it, while their alleged opponents get all the blame for policies they support and enable at every chance.  Why ruin that by passing and implementing legislation that would deprive their masters, and themselves, of power?

So Barry Obama may not win in November despite the flood of Wall Street cash that is greater than what is being raised by all of his GOP “rivals” combined.  He will, of course, have no one but himself to blame.  Nevertheless, expect the blame for his loss come November to fall on what passes for the American left.

Crooks on the Loose!

More Foreclosure Mischief: Bankruptcy Hijackings

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

One of the common complaints from banks that the concerns raised by borrowers over robosigning are mere “paperwork” problems, that everyone who is foreclosed on deserved it, and no one was really hurt. That is patently false, as there have been an embarrassing number of instances where someone with no mortgage was foreclosed on, as well all too many cases of servicer-driven foreclosures. And that’s before we get to damage to property records.

Attorney Timothy Fong called our attention to a below the radar form of chicanery that is predictable when you have nonjudicial foreclosure with no significant oversight and agents who lack incentives to do a good job.



So get this: the procedures are so bad that totally bogus documents can be created and slipped into the bankruptcy of an innocent victim to stop foreclosure sales. Even worse, the servicer, who OUGHT to know better, treats this person in BK who suddenly materialized out of nowhere from his perspective as a real owner and hits him with a motion for relief of stay so they can take a house from him that he never owned. And the foreclosure mill lawyers don’t question this because more motions of relief of stay means more fees.

If this example wasn’t such a serious indictment of our system, it would serve as a black comedy in bureaucratic incompetence.

Quelle Surprise! Servicers Rip Off Investors as Well as Homeowners

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

We’ve been giving examples off and on about how servicers scam borrowers. Examples include impermissibly deducting fees before applying payments to interest and principal; force placed insurance, inflated prices on and excessive frequency of broker price opinions, and in altogether too many cases, treating payments that are on time as late. What many observers fail to appreciate is that these are tantamount to scamming investors. If a borrower goes into default, any bogus charges will be deducted from the sale of the house, and hence come out of investors’ hides.

Lisa Epstein of Foreclosure Hamlet is a mortgage document maven and has been looking extensively at investor reports and compared them to court documents and has found serious discrepancies. Her research shows that servicers are not only taking advantage of borrowers but are also scamming investors.



Investors have told me they’ve seen signs of even more gross abuses, such as servicers treating fees as credit losses. But this sort of remark in a way shows investors suffer from the same agency problems as servicers, who have no reason to do a good job but instead are motivated to game a complex system of fees. Institutional investors are running other people’s money and therefore have no incentive to crack down on miscreant servicers (they feel it is not their job, plus if any one investor were to take this issue on, the rest of the industry would free ride on his work).

So no wonder we only have isolated and very dedicated individuals chipping away at this looting. Everyone else appears to be part of the problem.

John O’Brien: Mortgage Settlement Fails to Address Banking Criminal Enterprise

John L. O’Brien of the Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds – Salem, MA, Naked Capitalism

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

When you enter my registry you see a sign that reads “The deeds tell the story.” Before the big banks took it upon themselves to corrupt the land recordation system, the deeds used to tell a happy story, one in which people purchased a home and lived “the American Dream.” Today, however they tell a different story one of greed, fraud, and forgery. By now everyone in Massachusetts knows what I have been doing over the past two years to expose and stop the schemes by the Mortgage Electronic Recording Systems, Inc. and their shareholder banks. The accuracy and integrity of the land records in my registry are of the upmost importance to me.

Just this past week the Attorney Generals of this country said they will enter into a deal with the 5 largest banks who have agreed to stop robo-signing, provide principal reductions of between 20 to 25 thousand dollars to a million underwater homeowners. This amount will in no way solve the housing crisis that we are faced with nor even begin to turn our economy around. In addition, the settlement suggests that approximately 750,000 people who have had their homes taken by foreclosure using fraudulent documents will receive a check for $2,000. As Yves Smith has said, “that amount is the new penalty for forgery.” This is merely a slap on the wrists to these lenders. It is my opinion that this deal has been crafted for the banks and by the banks. It is not in the best interest of the consumer, the homeowner, or the taxpayer. Simply put, I do not trust these lenders who have flooded my registry with over 32,000 fraudulent documents to do the right thing. Those homeowners who now have a corrupted title are looking for answers. This deal gives them none. The illegal activity by the banks is nothing shy of a criminal enterprise, where they crossed state lines using the United States Postal Service to deliver the instruments that were fraudulent and contained forgeries.

I will continue to pursue my request for Federal and State grand juries to be impaneled to hold the CEO’s of these banks liable for the crimes that have been committed under their watch. The only thing missing in this illegal scheme that MERS and the big banks came up with was a gun and a mask. I will continue to expose this fraud and work everyday to make sure that the taxpayers are fully reimbursed for the over $44 million dollars in lost recording fees in my district alone by institutions who still believe fees are “for thee but not for me.” A message needs to be sent to these banks that they may think that you are too big to fail but they are not too big to go to jail.

Yes, Virginia, Foreclosure Is Theft

Author: L. Randall Wray, EconoMonitor

February 22nd, 2012

There’s a lot of pushback anytime someone points the finger at banks. As I’ve argued for a couple of years now, virtually all recent foreclosures really amount to theft. The banks have no legal standing to take homes. They created the MERS monster, which destroyed the chain of title and “lost” all the documents. That is why the mortgage servicers hire robo-signers to forge new ones. Yet, 4 years into the crisis, almost no one wants to admit the truth. Foreclosure in the US is theft-as practiced it is almost always illegal. Yet, the servicers are now ramping up foreclosures after they bought out the state attorneys general under pressure from the Eric Holder at the White House.

Audit Reveals 84% of San Francisco Foreclosures Violated Law

David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

City officials requested the audit that examined 382 randomly chosen foreclosures that occurred from January 2009 through October 2011. The findings revealed that 84% of the files involved “what appear to be one or more clear violations of law.” The violations included not giving homeowners warning that they were in default on their loans (6%), not giving homeowners adequate legal warning their property was being sold (10%), backdating of documents (59%) and transfers of loans by entities that had no business doing so (45%).

Another disturbing discovery related to the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (MERS). In 1995 the bigger banks created MERS as a privately owned electronic system for registering mortgage sales that was supposed to replace local county recording. In the words of the New York Attorney General’s Office, they did so “to allow financial institutions to evade local county recording fees, avoid the hassle and paperwork of publicly recording mortgage transfers, and facilitate the rapid sale and securitization of mortgages.” The San Francisco audit found that in 58% of cases, the loan beneficiary listed on the deed of sale was different from the one listed in the MERS database.

Audit Uncovers Extensive Flaws in Foreclosures

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON, The New York Times

Published: February 15, 2012

(T)he detailed and comprehensive nature of the San Francisco findings suggest how pervasive foreclosure irregularities may be across the nation.



The depth of the problem raises questions about whether at least some foreclosures should be considered void, Mr. Ting said. “We’re not saying that every consumer should not have been foreclosed on or every lender is a bad actor, but there are significant and troubling issues,” he said.

California has been among the states hurt the most by the mortgage crisis. Because its laws, like those of 29 other states, do not require a judge to oversee foreclosures, the conduct of banks in the process is rarely scrutinized. Mr. Ting said his report was the first rigorous analysis of foreclosure improprieties in California and that it cast doubt on the validity of almost every foreclosure it examined.

“Clearly, we need to set up a process where lenders are following every part of the law,” Mr. Ting said in the interview. “It is very apparent that the system is broken from many different vantage points.”



The report contradicted the contentions of many banks that foreclosure improprieties did little harm because the borrowers were behind on their mortgages and should have been evicted anyway. “We can deduce from the public evidence,” the report noted, “that there are indeed legitimate victims in the mortgage crisis. Whether these homeowners are systematically being deprived of legal safeguards and due process rights is an important question.”

Late Night Karaoke

Khameini’s position on nukes

When you lay seige to a nation, making wild accusations about their intent to build and use nuclear weapons (all without providing the slightest evidence, even admitting that none of it is true!), you should listen to what the victim has to say on the subject before threatening them with nuclear annihilation.  I’m pretty sure Obama will NOT be supplying a point-by-point rebuttal.

Anyway, Khameini addresses some key issues on the nukyoolar question:

The Supreme Leader’s View of Nuclear Energy

Good and evil use of knowledge

If advanced knowledge were at the disposal of a perfect and moral nation, it would be a source of blessings. If modern weapons were at the disposal of a wise and perfect nation, they would not pose any dangers. The situation will always be like this. They produce atomic bombs – just as what the Americans did at the end of the Second World War and the tragedy that they caused for the people of Japan. Similarly, the nuclear disaster in one of the Soviet Union’s nuclear power plants led to the death of a large number of people. If something bad comes out of nuclear technology, it is all because of the unrestrained power of the superpowers. If the power of the arrogant US government is restricted in the world, nuclear threats will decrease automatically.

The word atom is associated with the progress of human knowledge, but unfortunately it is equally associated with the most hideous event in history and the greatest genocide and misuse of the scientific achievements of humanity. Although many countries have taken action to manufacture and stockpile nuclear weapons – which in itself can be considered a preface to committing crimes and is a serious threat to global peace – there is only one government that has committed a nuclear crime so far. Only the government of the United States of America has waged an atomic war against the oppressed people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an unfair and inhumane war.

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